GMS/TEAMS
SEASONS
CAREER STATS
May 15,1915
Well, I have nothing else to do, so I suppose I can kill some time by starting a diary. A lot of the fellows on the team seem to do it, and Lord knows I have more time to kill than most of them.
I went with a few of the boys to see a movie last night: “Birth Of A Nation”. Some of the fellows liked it- mostly farm boys who had never seen a movie before- but for me it wasn’t as good as it was cracked up to be. It went on and on forever. And I’ll tell you this: I was glad none of my Negro teammates were with me. Whoever made that movie certainly didn’t have much of an opinion of colored folks. They surely never played ball alongside a fellow like Joe Williams. Why, you couldn’t ask for a better hurler or a straighter teammate…
I’ve been feeling down lately, mostly because I can’t seem to get into a game. Dick Hoblitzel is the starter, but he’s not doing all that well, and even when he needs a breather, in goes someone else. I wonder why I’m even travelling with this team. Sometimes I feel as useless as a piece of driftwood…
I got to talk to Honus Wagner on the bench the other day, and he told me to keep my chin up. “Your day will come, kid”, he said, “and when it does you’ll look back on these days of just relaxing on the bench with affection.
When you’re sore all over from running the bases and getting hit by pitches, and the bugs in the stands are riding you hard, and you can’t buy a base knock, this season won’t seem to bad to you. Of course, when you get to be my age, you’ll wish you could do your whole career over again. I guess we all forget the bad parts of the past”.
I got a big kick out of having a real conversation with him, because Honus has always been a hero of mine since I was a kid. I even showed him one of the treasures of my childhood: a baseball card of him. To my surprise, he grimaced. “That’s a bad memory for me; I never wanted my picture to be used to sell tobacco. I stopped it as soon as I could”. So as a gesture of good will to a teammate, I tore the card up into little pieces right there in front of him. I thought it was a nice thing to do, and after all, it’s just a little piece of cardboard…it’s not like it will ever be worth anything. WHH
Walter Henry Holke