The only baseball card I look at every day has no number and is from a league many baseball fans know little if anything about. The card is from the 1909-11 T212 Obak set (this one from the 1909 series) and features Felix Martinke of the Vernon Tigers. It’s a rare horizontal card — easily the oldest I own — and also the one in the worst condition. It’s barely collectible by any conventional standard, but for me it is nearly priceless.
The card shows Martinke from the waist up, arms raised and palms open toward the sky, waiting to receive. The image is small and worn, with a blue sky and a stripe of green beyond him. He looks up and outward, not at the camera. A man expecting something.
I first noticed Felix Martinke when I was doing volunteer work for Ted Turocy’s Chadwick Baseball Bureau. My work involved typing box scores from the 1910 Pacific Coast League season into a text file for processing into a master minor league database. But I was unable to resist the game stories alongside those box scores, and Martinke was a sensation in the early months of the PCL’s 1910 season. Vernon was a suburb of Los Angeles at the time, and both the Tigers and the Angels were covered thoroughly by the Los Angeles Times.
I was following his season closely into June when suddenly Martinke was shipped off to Portland’s club, the Beavers, who would eventually win the pennant that season. But Martinke had little to do with their success. He was released by the same man who had bought him from Vernon, Judge McCredie, citing poor on-field performance. Looking at the game stories and box scores, Felix’s strong 1910 season had continued for a few weeks in Portland, then faded severely in July and August.
What went wrong?
Felix Martinke was born in what is now Poland in 1878 and came to America in his parents’ arms in 1881. He grew up in San Diego, and as a young man channeled what sounds like genuine restlessness into baseball, working his way through city leagues and eventually into professional ball. He served in the Army and saw brief action in the Philippines, was discharged honorably in 1903, and eventually settled in Santa Barbara, where he married Mathilda Ruiz, from one of the oldest families in the area.
By 1907, Felix was playing in the Northwest League for Tacoma, and the separation from his family was already taking a visible toll. From the September 1907 Tacoma News Tribune: “Felix Martinke, Tacoma’s left fielder, is anxious to get home to his wife and children, who live at Santa Barbara, California. ‘Marty’ has four in the family and he hasn’t seen them since he came north to play ball.” The separation had worn on him so much that even the sportswriters found it worth remarking on.
He signed with Vernon in 1909 — much closer to home — and had his best season: 210 games played with a .286 average. Felix and Mathilda welcomed their first and only daughter, Camille, in March of 1910, and Felix returned to the Vernon club performing as well as ever. But Vernon sold him to Portland in June, and what followed looks very much like a man who had lost his footing. The distance from his growing family likely undermined his concentration in ways that showed up in the box scores.
Between the card and 1920, Felix’s fortunes fell steadily. He persisted on the diamond for a few more years, playing in city leagues and briefly returning to Vernon in 1912, but was released after two weeks. His play was deemed erratic; he was error-prone no matter where he played. Off the field, his wife grew frustrated with his reduced earnings, and with a family of five to support, the time he spent on baseball became a source of conflict.
Domestic disputes peaked in 1913, when the courts got involved in a custody battle over Camille. She was placed briefly in a Catholic children’s home before being awarded to her mother, with Felix ordered to pay ten dollars a month in child support. Mathilda cited his drinking as cause for her petition — yet she admitted that when Felix had his ballplayer friends over, all was well. His baseball life produced no friction at home. Camille’s own late-life memories recalled nothing negative of her father, and she remained close to him throughout his life.
For a few years Felix managed to keep up his support payments and found work with the telephone company, playing on their ball club. But he sank further into despair whenever he wasn’t on a field. In February 1918, during the off-season, he attempted suicide. Newspapers reported that he “feared he had lost his mind” and that he slashed his wrists with a razor. He survived. The man who had written in his playing days about missing his family — the man who wanted, above all else, to go home — had by this point lost the thread that once connected him to that home. Mathilda divorced him in 1920 and remarried soon after.
For the next forty years, Felix Martinke drifted between Old Soldiers’ Homes and his daughter’s house in Santa Barbara. He was regularly arrested for public drunkenness. His children thrived — his oldest son became a musician who appeared in several films in the 1930s and 1940s — but I suspect his sons had little time for him. When Felix died in 1960, it was Camille who handled all the paperwork to ensure he received a veteran’s funeral and burial.
And now we come back to his baseball card.
He stands with his arms raised, palms upward, as if appealing for something — favor, perhaps, or forgiveness. He is where he wants to be, on a ball field, his whole body reaching. He is probably tracking a fly ball. But knowing what I know about this man, the pose looks like more than that. It looks like a man who knows he is prone to error, asking for something he cannot give himself.
I know there’s a reason this card appeals to me. He was a father, and he wasn’t always a great one. I don’t know a father who thinks he was. But the pose might be a man looking up toward some higher standard, aware of the distance between who he is and who he wants to be. I think most fathers know that feeling. The sense that you need something — patience, steadiness, another chance — that you cannot manufacture on your own.
And that’s what children want from their fathers, in the end. Not perfection. Just an acknowledgment of falling short, and the ask — however fumbling — for understanding.
Every day for a few minutes I hold this card and sit with what I know about this man. He was reaching for something. On the evidence, I think he caught a little of it — enough, at least, for Camille. That’s what the card is about for me: not the error, but the reach.
–Jay Wigley, not Wrigley, is the author of How Retrosheet Saved Baseball History, and is a father of four, husband to one, and the only baseball fan among them.