SMOKY JOE WOOD

Some guys get one summer where the whole world tilts their way, and Howard Ellsworth Wood got the summer of 1912. He won 34 games that year against five losses, threw ten shutouts, and finished off the World Series with a performance that made even the old-timers go quiet. They called him Smoky Joe because the fastball left a gray blur in the air, and for two seasons that blur was the most dangerous thing in the American League. The arm was a weapon, pure and simple, and Boston knew it.

Then the cost came due. In 1913 he slid into second base and wrecked his thumb, and the trouble traveled up the arm like a slow leak. The shoulder went, then the elbow, and by 1915 the fastball that had once hummed past the best hitters in the league was just a memory of itself. The pitching career ended hard and early, no graceful twilight, no veteran craft to fall back on. He was twenty-six years old and the smoke had gone out of him.

But the story didn't stop there. Cleveland gave him a bat and an outfield glove, and Smoky Joe Wood became a ballplayer all over again. He hit .366 in 1921, played real outfield for five seasons, and got a taste of a pennant race in 1920. The arm never came back, but the ballplayer did.

That's the thing about the heritage cards you play. They hold the whole arc, the fire and the fade and the strange second act.