After completing grammar school, Mathewson entered Keystone Academy (now Keystone College) in 1894.
College/University
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
One Dent Dr, Lewisburg, PA 17837, United States
Mathewson studied at Bucknell University.
Career
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1907
New York City, New York, United States
Christy Mathewson warms up before a huge crowd ahead of a game at the Polo Grounds.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1910
Christy Mathewson takes his warm-up throws.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1910
Christy Mathewson
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1911
Marlin, Texas, United States
Fred Merkle, Larry Doyle, Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, and Fred Snodgrass.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1911
Marlin, Texas, United States
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants, poses for a photo at the Giants' spring training facility in March of 1911 in Marlin Springs, Texas.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1912
Marlin, Texas, United States
Christy Mathewson is shown in Marlin Springs, Texas, spring training site for the New York Giants.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1912
Christy Mathewson
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1913
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Frank Baker waits for the ball during the tenth inning of the game of two of the 1913 World Series in Philly on October 8th, as Giants' pitcher Christy Mathewson slides safely into third.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1914
Christy Mathewson
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1916
Marlin, Texas, United States
Christy Mathewson, one of the "grand old men" of baseball, photographed at the Spring Training Camp in Marlin.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1916
Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
Christy Mathewson, manager and player of the Cincinnati Reds, following through a pitch, training in Shreveport.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1916
Christy Mathewson of the Cincinnati Reds looks on from the dugout.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1917
Christy Mathewson in action
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
1918
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Christy Mathewson of the Cincinnati Reds delivers a war fund donation to uniformed members of the American Red Cross, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
New York City, New York, United States
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants, warms up before a National League game at the Polo Grounds circa 1910 in New York City.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
New York City, New York, United States
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants, warms up before a National League game at the Polo Grounds circa 1910 in New York City.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
New York City, New York, United States
Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, Hall of Fame pitcher and manager respectively for the New York Giants, pose in the Polo Grounds before a game circa 1911 in New York City.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
New York City, New York, United States
Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants speaks to a young boy circa 1915 in New York City, New York.
Gallery of Christy Mathewson
A portrait of Christopher Mathewson of the New York Giants
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants, poses for a photo at the Giants' spring training facility in March of 1911 in Marlin Springs, Texas.
Frank Baker waits for the ball during the tenth inning of the game of two of the 1913 World Series in Philly on October 8th, as Giants' pitcher Christy Mathewson slides safely into third.
Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, Hall of Fame pitcher and manager respectively for the New York Giants, pose in the Polo Grounds before a game circa 1911 in New York City.
(Pitching in a Pinch is an insider's account blending anec...)
Pitching in a Pinch is an insider's account blending anecdote, biography, instruction, and social history. It celebrates baseball as it was played in the first decade of the twentieth century by famous contemporaries like Honus Wagner and Rube Marquand, managers like John McGraw and Connie Mack, and many others.
(Two boys and a dog sat at the edge of a little wood and s...)
Two boys and a dog sat at the edge of a little wood and shiveringly watched the eastern sky pale from inky blue to gray. One of the boys was white and the other was black; and the dog was yellow. The white boy was seventeen years old, the black boy sixteen, and the yellow dog - well, no one knew just how old he was. The white boy's name was Wayne Torrence Sloan, the black boy's name was Junius Brutus Bartow Tasker, and the dog's name was Sam. An hour ago they had been rudely awakened from their sleep in a box car and more rudely driven forth into cold and darkness and mystery.
(In order to attend a baseball game he desperately wants t...)
In order to attend a baseball game he desperately wants to see, an office worker tells his boss a phony story about a family emergency in order to get the day off. However, things don't work out quite the way he planned.
Christy Mathewson was an American professional baseball player. Educated and self-confident, he was a role model for the youth of his era and one of baseball's greatest pitchers. Mathewson won 373 games in 17 seasons and was among the "Immortal Five" players who were the first inductees into major league baseball's Hall of Fame.
Background
Christy Mathewson was born on August 12, 1880 in Factoryville, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the third of five children of Gilbert Bailey Mathewson, a landowner and developer who isolated his family from the heavy anthracite coal industry that flourished in and around the city of Scranton, and Minerva J. Capwell.
Education
From the time he was four, Mathewson pleaded with his older brothers to be included in their games. With guidance from an older cousin, Mathewson became adept at making tossed stones change their trajectory by manipulating his grip on them. When he was about eight, he declared that one day he would be a major league pitcher - an unusual ambition in that, at the time, professional baseball was only about a decade old.
After completing grammar school, Mathewson entered nearby Keystone Academy (now Keystone College) in 1894, where he had a chance to do with a baseball what his cousin had taught him to do with stones. Mathewson could make a ball dart in several different directions by use of a different grip. His two most baffling pitches were his "fade away," or curve, and a "drop," which broke down from a batter as it approached home plate. In his mid-teens, "Husk," as he was also called, was offered a dollar a game to pitch for Mill City, a neighboring town, after the Factoryville team folded in mid-season.
In June 1898, Mathewson graduated from Keystone. On a trip to Scranton, he attended a game between a local YMCA team and the Pittston Reds. The start of the game was delayed, and Mathewson was told that the "Y" team's manager wanted to see him. Mathewson was asked to pitch. Mathewson pitched several games for Scranton, but his real "summer job" was throwing for the Honesdale Eagles in a town thirty miles away. He earned $25 a month, plus room and board at a local hotel. Mathewson won three straight games: his first, a 16-7 victory; his second, a rare - for the time - shutout; and his third, an even rarer no-hitter.
That fall, Mathewson used some of his pitching money toward tuition on enrolling at Bucknell University. Mathewson's family, staunch Baptists, approved of his matriculation at the small, church-related school. Having played football, basketball, and baseball at Keystone, Mathewson made the Bucknell varsity football team.
In 1899, Bucknell University football coach George Hoskins offered a new raincoat to the first Bucknell player to score against the University of Pennsylvania, and a pair of shoes to the second player to score. Although Bucknell lost to Penn, 47-10, Mathewson's two five-point field goals allowed him to augment his collegiate wardrobe. In fact, at Bucknell, Mathewson's football skills actually overshadowed his pitching. A true student-athlete, he was also a freshman class historian, a member of the band and glee club, cast in class plays, a member of the Latin and philosophy clubs. The lure of professional baseball drew him from college before he had completed his course.
In 1899, Mathewson turned professional, playing minor league baseball with Taunton. The next season, he went to Norfolk and compiled a 20-2 record, which earned him plenty of attention from major league scouts. The New York Giants signed him to a contract, offering him a $1,500 bonus. They brought him right to the majors during the 1900 season, but Mathewson won none of his five starts and was sent back to Norfolk.
In 1901, the Cincinnati Reds drafted Mathewson for $100. Before the season started the Reds traded him back to the Giants for pitcher Amos Rusie. It proved to be one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history. Mathewson went on to win 372 games for the Giants before returning to the Reds for one final victory in 1916. The explanation for the deal was that Reds' owner John Bush was about to buy the Giants, and he wanted fresh young arms on his new team.
In his first full season for the Giants, Mathewson won twenty games and lost seventeen. On Opening Day in 1902, he shut out Philadelphia but ended up that season with a losing record of fourteen wins and seventeen defeats. The next year, he began a twelve-year stretch of dominance in which he averaged 26 wins a season and compiled four thirty-win years. Mathewson won 317 games and lost only 133 games in that span. He was the dominant pitcher in the National League, leading his league in wins four times, in earned run average five times, and in strikeouts five times.
The renowned tactician John McGraw immediately took Mathewson under his wing after becoming Giants' manager in 1903.
Mathewson became a huge fan favorite in New York after he led the team to a National League championship in 1904 while compiling a record of thirty-three wins and twelve losses. McGraw refused to play in the World Series because he considered Boston, the champions of the upstart American League, too lowly to challenge. In 1905, the Giants easily won the pennant again. This time McGraw agreed to face the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. Mathewson electrified the nation by pitching three shutouts in the five-game series. In the three games, he gave up fourteen hits and walked only one batter. His feats made him the new century's first modern sports icon.
In the spring of 1906, Mathewson came down with diphtheria. He never regained his full strength that season, yet still managed to win twenty-two games. Two years later, Mathewson had his finest year, winning an amazing thirty-seven of his forty-four starts and pitching thirty-four complete games and 390 innings. The thirty-seven victories set a post-1900 baseball record that has never been broken. His earned run average in that season of 1908 was a low 1.43, and the following year it was even better, a remarkable 1.14.
McGraw occasionally used Mathewson in relief. In one game in 1908, with the Giants leading 4-1 in the ninth, Mathewson had already showered and dressed in street clothes. But when the Giants' Joe McGinnity walked the bases loaded, McGraw called for Mathewson. Still dripping wet, he went to the mound hatless and in street shoes and speedily retired the side.
The 1908 race went down to the wire. To determine the National League winner, officials ordered a disputed tie game between the Giants and Cubs replayed at the end of the season. The Cubs won the game when the Giants' center fielder ignored Mathewson's pleas to back up, and Joe Tinker hit a triple over his head.
The Giants returned to the World Series in 1911 against the Philadelphia Athletics. During the series, a New York Herald baseball reporter paid Mathewson $500 for the privilege of ghostwriting a column under the pitcher's name. In the opening game, Mathewson won 2-1, throwing a complete game with only ninety-two pitches. In the second game, Giants' pitcher Rube Marquard gave up a game-winning homer to A's slugger Frank Baker. Mathewson's column the next morning criticized Marquard for throwing a pitch to Baker that McGraw had warned him not to throw. But in the ninth inning of the third game, with the Giants leading 1-0, Mathewson served up a home run ball to Baker. Mathewson eventually lost that game and another, and the Giants lost the series, four games to two.
In 1912, Mathewson started three more World Series games, but did not win any of them, and the Giants lost to the Boston Red Sox, four games to three. In the final game, Mathewson had a 2-1 lead in the tenth inning when outfielder Fred Snodgrass dropped a fly ball. Then Mathewson and first baseman Fred Merkle let a catchable foul ball drop, giving Tris Speaker a second chance, and Speaker delivered a game-winning hit.
In 1913, Mathewson finally won his fifth World Series game, a 3-0 win in ten innings. However, it was the Giants' only win of the Series, which would be Mathewson's last. Mathewson still holds the all-time World Series records of four shutouts and ten complete games. His World Series earned run average was a microscopic 1.15. All five of his Series losses were due to a lack of run support from his teammates.
After his dozen brilliant seasons, Mathewson faded quickly. In 1915, troubled by back and shoulder pain, he won only eight games. The next season the Cincinnati club wanted Mathewson to be their new manager, and McGraw obliged by trading his friend.
Mathewson managed the Reds for three seasons without getting them into contention. His most notable move as manager was suspending first baseman Hal Chase for "indifferent playing." Mathewson knew Chase was involved with gamblers and suspected him of throwing games. It was a bold move in an era when gambling encroached on the sport's integrity.
In 1918, Mathewson enlisted in the Army to fight in World War I. He was gassed by friendly forces in a training exercise. The poison gas caused tuberculosis. Mathewson returned to the Giants to coach for three more seasons under his old friend McGraw and later served as a part-time owner and president of the Boston Braves. But his poor health eventually forced him into a tuberculosis sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York.
(In order to attend a baseball game he desperately wants t...)
1906
Religion
Mathewson's Protestant parents were staunchly religious and he himself strictly adhered to the Baptist faith from an early age.
Views
Quotations:
"You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat."
"I always tried to learn about the hitters. Anytime someone got a hit off me, I made a mental note of the pitch. He'd never see that one again."
"You must have an alibi to show why you lost. If you haven't one, you must fake one. Your self-confidence must be maintained."
"A boy cannot begin playing ball too early. I might almost say that while he is still creeping on all fours he should have a bouncing rubber ball."
"I am not a veteran environmentalist. I don't live in a house made of recycled tires, I've never handcuffed myself to a tree, and I don't grow my own organic rutabaga."
"A pitcher is not a ballplayer."
"Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile."
"No man can have a 'yellow streak' and last. He must pay much attention to his nerves or temperament. He must hide every flaw."
"A young ballplayer looks on his first spring training trip as a stage-struck young woman regards the theater."
"If you've ever been around a group of actors, you've noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting... It's exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work."
"I owe everything I have to them when I'm out there on the mound. But I owe the fans nothing and they owe me nothing when I am not pitching."
"Luck is a combination of confidence and getting the breaks."
"Anybody's best pitch is the one the batters ain't hitting that day."
Membership
Christy Mathewson was a member of the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta.
Personality
It was the character as much as the accomplishments of Mathewson, known all over the country as "Matty," "Christy," and "Big Six," that brought him lasting fame and wide recognition. A college man, a gentleman, a soldier, and an outstanding athlete, he was an inspiration to the younger lads of the country, a sportsman that educators could point to as a model for college athletes to emulate. He had scholarly interests as well, and during his days at Saranac, he took up the study of natural history and became acquainted with all the birds, trees, and flowers of that region. Because of a promise made to his mother, he never played baseball on Sunday throughout his whole career. He was much in demand as a speaker before boys' clubs and college gatherings. By his example and his success, he became the leader of the "college element" in big-league baseball and did much to improve the tone of the game.
Like his legendary manager, Mathewson hated to lose. He used all his wits in battle. His memory was so sharp that he would often take on eight teammates in checkers. On the field, he studied and memorized his opponents' weaknesses. He never made a mistake a second time against a batter. He had command of four pitches - a screwball, a wicked curveball, a chance of pace, and a respectable though not overpowering fastball. His screwball, then called a fadeaway, was his trademark pitch.
Physical Characteristics:
Christy Mathewson stood 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) tall and weighed 195 pounds (88 kg).
Mathewson died of tuberculosis.
Quotes from others about the person
John N. Wheeler: "Besides being a national hero, Matty was one of the closest students of baseball that ever came into the Big League."
Interests
nature walks, reading, and checkers
Sport & Clubs
golf
Connections
In 1903, Christy Mathewson married Jane (Stoughton) Mathewson. They had only one child, Christopher Mathewson, Jr.
Father:
Gilbert B. Mathewson
Mother:
Minerva J. (Capwell) Mathewson
Wife:
Jane (Stoughton) Mathewson
Son:
Christopher Mathewson, Jr.
Friend:
John McGraw
References
Christy Mathewson: A Game-By-Game Profile of a Legendary Pitcher
During his remarkable 17-year career, Christy Mathewson was the dominant pitcher in the National League. His 373 wins will stand as the third-highest total in baseball history. Mathewson was a gentleman, a rarity in the raucous world of baseball at the turn of the century, and a favorite among fans. Game-by-game, the remarkable career of this Hall of Fame hurler is analyzed. Interwoven are tales of his personal life and the colorful characters who were a part of baseball in the early 1900s - like John McGraw, Joe McGinnity, Rube Marquard, Bugs Raymond.
Matty: An Evening With Christy Mathewson
The script for the universally acclaimed one-person play written by Eddie Frierson and based on the life and writings of Baseball Hall of Fame and New York Giants pitching legend Christy Mathewson.