Kim Miller had heard the story many times over the years – the one about how her father, as a young boy in the 1940s, came face-to-face with the great Honus Wagner one day while shopping with his family in Carnegie.
And how her grandfather ran to his car and scrambled to find a piece of paper to capture the great Wagner’s autograph for his son. And how Wagner – simply the finest shortstop to ever play the game of baseball and the greatest Pittsburgh Pirate of all time – obliged by putting pencil to that scrap of paper for young Jacob Schmitt:
“to Jake
with best wishes
from
Honus Wagner
Pirates 45”
“I always loved that story so much,” Miller said earlier this week, “because it’s basically an unlikely story of a young boy and his sports hero.”
But until Miller’s father passed away earlier this year, she had never actually seen the object of that story: the autograph itself.
That all changed when, shortly after Schmitt’s death in late January at the age of 86, Miller was going through his possessions at his home in Bethel Park.
There, under a chair, wrapped in butcher paper, was a plaque that featured a photo of Wagner, a small engraved metallic piece containing Wagner’s name, the date of his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame and the years he played for the Pirates — and the autograph itself.
Unbeknownst to his daughter, Schmitt had the plaque made several years before.
“I’d heard that story over the years and I knew there was an autograph,” she said. “But my dad had it framed, and I didn’t know that.
“I think he left it (under the chair) for me to find.”
Before he passed, Schmitt had made his wishes known – he wanted the autograph donated to the Honus Wagner Museum in Carnegie.
So on Saturday, in a private ceremony at the hall, the Historical Society of Carnegie will take possession of the Wagner plaque and add it to the collection of artifacts already on display at the Wagner Museum.
The new piece – and the rest of the collection – will be open for all to see from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays going forward. The museum also is open Sundays until early September.
Jeffrey Keenan, president of the Historical Society, was only too happy to accept the donation when Kim and her husband David came forward several months ago.
“Of course we were very, very excited when they approached us,” Keenan said. “This was Dr. Schmitt’s wish, that this be donated to the Honus Wagner Museum.”
Miller said her father grew up in nearby Heidelberg and he and his family would go shopping most Saturdays in Carnegie. It was there, one Saturday, when they spotted the great Wagner out and about. That led to the search for something to write on, but Schmitt’s father, also named Jacob, could only find a small scrap of paper after running back to his car.
The scrap-turned-plaque is worth a few dollars. Jeff Patton, owner of the Baseball Card Castle in Cranberry Township, said the autograph and plaque would fetch anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 as long as it was authenticated. Kim Miller said her father indeed had the piece authenticated and had a certificate to prove it.
She also said she never gave much thought to how much the autograph was worth – financially speaking – because it always was destined to end up in the Wagner Museum.
“I never asked and I never investigated,” she said. “Someone who knew about the autograph and knew my dad wanted to buy it from me. But no amount of money would have convinced me to do anything but give the autograph to the Honus Wagner Museum.”
Miller believes her father had the scrap of autograph made into the plaque within the last three or four years but until then, he had hung on to this tiny scrap of paper for nearly 80 years.
“I think it’s amazing,” Miller said.
David Miller described his father-in-law, who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dentistry, served in the U.S. Coast Guard and established a successful dental practice in Scott Township for over half a century, as a shy person who never wanted to be the center of attention. He theorized that’s the reason why Schmitt didn’t take the autograph to the Wagner Museum himself before he passed.
“He didn’t like a lot of fanfare,” David Miller said.
Miller said he thinks the experience his father-in-law had with Wagner left a major impression on him, given that it happened with Schmitt was only 7 or 8 years old.
“It’s a story about how one man’s kindness really affected a young boy,” he said. “To have Honus Wagner be so gracious and kind, it stuck with him.”
Meetings between fans and their sports heroes don’t always end so well. David Miller, who grew up in Cincinnati as a rabid Reds fan, said when he was about 12, his family visited the Reds’ spring training complex while vacationing in Florida. He said his father went up to Johnny Bench, but the future Hall-of-Fame catcher “couldn’t give him the time of day.”
“I think that happens more often than not,” he said. “That’s why that moment that Jake had with Honus Wagner was so memorable.”
Kim Miller said her father never lost his admiration for Wagner. She said that when she and her husband and their daughter, Emily, would visit Schmitt from the Dayton, Ohio, area, they would often go to Jefferson Memorial Cemetery to pay their respects to Schmitt’s parents and other family members.
That also happened to be Wagner’s final resting place.
“When we’d go to leave the cemetery, he’d make us stop at Honus Wagner’s gravesite,” Kim Miller said. “We’d stop the car and my dad would get out and carefully take all the baseballs off Wagner’s marker, and then take his grass clippers and carefully trim around the marker. Then he’d brush (the clippings off) and put the baseballs back. He’s in his 80s at this point, and he’d be on his hands and knees doing this. And then we’d take off.
“That really resonated with me. It showed me how much he really respected Honus Wagner, to be doing that all those years later.”
As a final piece to the story, Kim Miller said, Jacob Schmitt now lies in rest at Jefferson Memorial Cemetery “not very far from Honus Wagner – his sports hero for all those years.”
Keenan said the Historical Society considers the Wagner autograph and plaque a valuable addition on three levels: from a marketing standpoint, from a nostalgia standpoint and from a historical standpoint.
“We knew this was a winner,” he said. “What a wonderful addition.”
The Millers’ donation will give the museum its third Wagner autograph; one is on a postcard and the other on a sign-in register from the local Elks Club.
Wagner was born in 1874 in what was then known as Chartiers – one of two boroughs that eventually merged to form Carnegie in 1894 – and after retiring from the Pirates in 1917 he moved into the house where he would live in until he died in 1955.
“That was about a mile from where he was born,” Keenan said.
Wagner, whose real name was John Peter Wagner, was often seen in and around Carnegie while coaching for the Pirates from 1933 to 1951.
“He was a character, and he was well-known around town,” Kennan said of Wagner. “The Elks Club, where he hung out, was only about a half to three-quarters of a mile from his home. He was very visible. And he had great stories to tell. When he was on the banquet circuit, he was always good for a laugh.”
Keenan said the new plaque will be the main feature on one of the museum walls, which was recently cleared and painted. It’ll be one of the first things you see when you walk into the museum, located in the Husler Building at 1 W. Main St. in Carnegie.
“We’ll have the plaque and the story behind it and a photo of Dr. Schmitt from the Coast Guard – and a closed-circuit camera above it,” Keenan said. “It will become one of our top five acquisitions.
“This wall will remain just for that. It’s got a beautiful blue-gray background. When people walk in, it’s going to be a wow moment.”
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