The one baseball card I take a look at day-after-day has no quantity and is from a league many baseball followers know little if something about. The cardboard is from the 1909-11 T212 Obak set (this one from the 1909 sequence) and options Felix Martinke of the Vernon Tigers. It’s a uncommon horizontal card — simply the oldest I personal — and likewise the one within the worst situation. It’s barely collectible by any typical commonplace, however for me it’s practically priceless.
The cardboard reveals Martinke from the waist up, arms raised and palms open towards the sky, ready to obtain. The picture is small and worn, with a blue sky and a stripe of inexperienced past him. He seems up and outward, not on the digital camera. A person anticipating one thing.
I first seen Felix Martinke after I was doing volunteer work for Ted Turocy’s Chadwick Baseball Bureau. My work concerned typing field scores from the 1910 Pacific Coast League season right into a textual content file for processing right into a grasp minor league database. However I used to be unable to withstand the sport tales alongside these field scores, and Martinke was a sensation within the early months of the PCL’s 1910 season. Vernon was a suburb of Los Angeles on the time, and each the Tigers and the Angels have been lined completely by the Los Angeles Instances.
I used to be following his season intently into June when abruptly Martinke was shipped off to Portland’s membership, the Beavers, who would finally win the pennant that season. However Martinke had little to do with their success. He was launched by the identical man who had purchased him from Vernon, Choose McCredie, citing poor on-field efficiency. Wanting on the sport tales and field scores, Felix’s sturdy 1910 season had continued for just a few weeks in Portland, then light severely in July and August.
What went incorrect?
Felix Martinke was born in what’s now Poland in 1878 and got here to America in his dad and mom’ arms in 1881. He grew up in San Diego, and as a younger man channeled what appears like real restlessness into baseball, working his manner by way of metropolis leagues and finally into skilled ball. He served within the Military and noticed transient motion within the Philippines, was discharged honorably in 1903, and finally settled in Santa Barbara, the place he married Mathilda Ruiz, from one of many oldest households within the space.
By 1907, Felix was enjoying within the Northwest League for Tacoma, and the separation from his household was already taking a visual toll. From the September 1907 Tacoma Information Tribune: “Felix Martinke, Tacoma’s left fielder, is anxious to get dwelling to his spouse and youngsters, who dwell at Santa Barbara, California. ‘Marty’ has 4 within the household and he hasn’t seen them since he got here north to play ball.” The separation had worn on him a lot that even the sportswriters discovered it value remarking on.
He signed with Vernon in 1909 — a lot nearer to dwelling — and had his finest season: 210 video games performed with a .286 common. Felix and Mathilda welcomed their first and solely daughter, Camille, in March of 1910, and Felix returned to the Vernon membership performing in addition to ever. However Vernon bought him to Portland in June, and what adopted seems very very like a person who had misplaced his footing. The space from his rising household doubtless undermined his focus in ways in which confirmed up within the field scores.
Between the cardboard and 1920, Felix’s fortunes fell steadily. He continued on the diamond for just a few extra years, enjoying in metropolis leagues and briefly returning to Vernon in 1912, however was launched after two weeks. His play was deemed erratic; he was error-prone irrespective of the place he performed. Off the sector, his spouse grew pissed off together with his diminished earnings, and with a household of 5 to assist, the time he spent on baseball turned a supply of battle.
Home disputes peaked in 1913, when the courts received concerned in a custody battle over Camille. She was positioned briefly in a Catholic youngsters’s dwelling earlier than being awarded to her mom, with Felix ordered to pay ten {dollars} a month in baby assist. Mathilda cited his ingesting as trigger for her petition — but she admitted that when Felix had his ballplayer pals over, all was properly. His baseball life produced no friction at dwelling. Camille’s personal late-life recollections recalled nothing adverse of her father, and she or he remained near him all through his life.
For just a few years Felix managed to maintain up his assist funds and located work with the phone firm, enjoying on their ball membership. However he sank additional into despair each time he wasn’t on a discipline. In February 1918, through the low season, he tried suicide. Newspapers reported that he “feared he had misplaced his thoughts” and that he slashed his wrists with a razor. He survived. The person who had written in his enjoying days about lacking his household — the person who needed, above all else, to go dwelling — had by this level misplaced the thread that when linked him to that dwelling. Mathilda divorced him in 1920 and remarried quickly after.
For the following forty years, Felix Martinke drifted between Outdated Troopers’ Properties and his daughter’s home in Santa Barbara. He was repeatedly arrested for public drunkenness. His youngsters thrived — his oldest son turned a musician who appeared in a number of movies within the Thirties and Nineteen Forties — however I believe his sons had little time for him. When Felix died in 1960, it was Camille who dealt with all of the paperwork to make sure he obtained a veteran’s funeral and burial.
And now we come again to his baseball card.
He stands together with his arms raised, palms upward, as if interesting for one thing — favor, maybe, or forgiveness. He’s the place he needs to be, on a ball discipline, his entire physique reaching. He’s in all probability monitoring a fly ball. However figuring out what I learn about this man, the pose seems like greater than that. It seems like a person who is aware of he’s vulnerable to error, asking for one thing he can not give himself.
I do know there’s a cause this card appeals to me. He was a father, and he wasn’t all the time an awesome one. I don’t know a father who thinks he was. However the pose is likely to be a person wanting up towards some larger commonplace, conscious of the space between who he’s and who he needs to be. I feel most fathers know that feeling. The sense that you simply want one thing — endurance, steadiness, one other probability — that you simply can not manufacture by yourself.
And that’s what youngsters need from their fathers, in the long run. Not perfection. Simply an acknowledgment of falling quick, and the ask — nonetheless fumbling — for understanding.
Day by day for a couple of minutes I maintain this card and sit with what I learn about this man. He was reaching for one thing. On the proof, I feel he caught a little bit of it — sufficient, not less than, for Camille. That’s what the cardboard is about for me: not the error, however the attain.
–Jay Wigley, not Wrigley, is the creator of How Retrosheet Saved Baseball History, and is a father of 4, husband to 1, and the one baseball fan amongst them.
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