Bonner had a great rookie season, batting .322. He could have been one of the best, instead he played just six years in the majors, including one year with Washington. Here is Bonner talking about his struggles.
The Senators’ second base man is another player who did not realize that insobriety and baseball do not mix until he had spent several years in a minor league. “If I had behaved myself I would never have been out of the National League after I once entered it,” said he last night, “and I would be $20,000 better off today. It was an act of kindness on the part of Ned Hanlon that led to my downfall. I had played sixty-one games for Baltimore in 1891, and was leading the league in batting and the second basemen in fielding. One day in Philadelphia we were not scheduled to play, and Hanlon came to me, saying: ‘Frank, if you want to you can go up home and visit your family.” Up to that time I had not touched a drop. I went to Wilkes-Barre, and, as is always the case, fell into bad company and into my old habits. The result was that when I returned to join the team Hanlon laid me off. I got in the game again, but it was not long until I jumped over the traces again, and that virtually settled my job in the big league, though I caught on In St. Louis later. Now I realize what a fool I was. I wasted the best years of my life and lots of money, and now that I am no longer a kid I am next to myself, and am behaving, as I should have done years ago.”
Bonner died in 1905, he was just 36. His wife committed suicide in 1904.
