The Celebrant: A Novel

Amazon.com

In the Ragtime tradition of revolving a fictional world around a factual core, Greenberg's 1983 novel is a polished gem, which is fitting because it is partly built around a jeweler. Though The Celebrant never caught on much with the general public, its adherents were virtual zealots; to them, reading the novel bordered on having a religious experience. Its sophisticated weaving together of the life of Christy Mathewson, the Giants' great hurler and role model, with a family of immigrant Jews in New York in the first quarter of the 20th century captured their imaginations--then sadly disappeared for almost a decade before its welcome reissue.

On the surface, The Celebrant is obviously a baseball story--many of "Matty's" greatest on-field feats are meticulously recreated--as well as a story of how deeply the game reached into the lives of new arrivals from the Old World desperate to become American. On a deeper level, it is a stunning meditation on the fragile balance between the heroism of a man who won World Series rings and the hero worship of the young jeweler who made those rings for him. Its simplicity is deceptive. The Celebrant does much more than celebrate; it paints the corners of another era and another ethos with the command and control Matty himself was known to exhibit. --Jeff Silverman

Book Description

The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of promise and innocence in America. Hardworking immigrants could achieve the American dream; heroes were truly heroic. Eric Rolfe Greenberg brilliantly and authentically chronicles the real-life saga of the first national baseball hero, Christy Mathewson, and the fictional story of a Jewish immigrant family of jewelers. In these pages Mathewson and other great players like John McGraw, Honus Wagner, and Connie Mack discover the realities behind the shining illusions: the burdens of being a hero and the temptations that taint success.

Customer Reviews:

baseball, dark and glimmering.......2007-03-05

Eric Rolfe Greenberg's The Celebrant gives us not only a fictional account of the career of Christy Mathewson, the great New York Giants pitcher of the early 1900s, but also a revealing look into hero-worship, all through the eyes and voice of a young jeweler who designs rings to celebrate Christy's masterful performances on the mound.

The book is well-crafted, the writing measured and often reverential, a wonderful example of form and function working as one. Greenberg captures the rough energy of the world of McGraw's Giants and their fans, and also paints an interesting picture of the unlikely friendship between the earthy McGraw and Mathewson, his college-educated ace. The story of the Kapinski brothers involves not only McGraw and Mathewson, but other, less savory characters such as Hal Chase and his associates on and off the field.

A dark historical baseball novel, and one of the best.

Baseball When the Only Juice was Alcoholic.......2004-11-19

If there were a Hall of Fame for baseball books, Mr. Greenberg's book would surely be inducted. Perhaps not on the first ballot, but definitely within the first few years of eligibility.

This book made me feel as though I'd stepped through a time-warp and into the stands of the Polo Grounds 100 years ago. The baseball scenes are told with an obvious fondness through the eyes of the narrator, whose life we learn about through his musings on his beloved Giants and the magnificent Christie Matthewson.

Spanning almost twenty years of baseball action, from Matty's rookie season no-hitter through his death in the mid 1920's, we are given a glimpse of how life used to be for an avid baseball fan. We are treated to encounters with John McGraw, Hal Chase, Smokey Joe Wood, Amos Rusie, and Christie Matthewson himself. Near the end of the book there is an impressive amount of time given to the 1919 Black Sox, and the tainted World Series against the Reds.

A time machine.......2004-05-04

This book not only takes you back in time to see the early baseball legends so clearly you think you actually watched them play, but it also creates a picture of the era they lived in: life-style, business experience, ethnic experience. It would make a great choice for a high school student doing a book report or history report on the early 20th century.

The Celebrant shows us the origins of hero worship at the birth of the pop culture era - both good and bad. Jackie's love of Matty is embodied in the beauty of the rings he gave the pitcher and at the same time it is obsession that leads (at least in part) to the destruction of someone Jackie has a "real-life" relationship with (as opposed to one based on fantasy).

Some reviewers here are not satisfied with the ending, but I kind of enjoyed the ambiguity of it. This man will never be able to remember the joy of watching Matty pitch without also thinking of the personal tragedy it will forever be linked with. The great and the terrible are forever woven together in a past we see clearly through Jackie's memories.

This observation won't make sense unless you've seen the film, but there's an epilogue at the end of Barry Lyndon (and I'm butchering it) - "all these souls, whether good or evil, great or small, are all long dead and forgotten save to memory." Something like that. That's how this book plays out. It's very much in the past. Very much a part of distant memory and yet Grenberg gives us access to those memories as if they are our own. When I see picture of Matty now I smile as if I watched him play myself. And there's saddness in the memory. I remember Matty's life cut short and I remember Eli. And they both are equally real to me.

Anyway, it's a wonderful time machine and you need to have that baseball fan in your life read it - especially if it's a young person who never heard of the "immortals."

Like Living Through The Era.......2003-06-02

Essential to understanding and enjoying "The Celebrant" is knowing just who Christy Mathewson is. The book is half the action on the field, the dugouts and the offices, half the business of the Kapinskis, a Jewish immigrant family who carry a high fanatical esteem of Mathewson. But the book is very much baseball, so understanding the "hero" status of Mathewson would be helpful, and the author assists with tiny statistical boxes laced throughout the book.

The book is also a zealous, near-stalkerish account of Mathewson, famous for his 327 wins (with the highest winning percentage of all righties), career 2.13 earned run average, as well as his blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Bucknell-educated pedigree. The tall Mathewson dominated the early 1900s by developing a "fadeaway" pitch that tailed into righthanders, more familiar as today's screwball.

The book follows the Kapinskis gradual absorption into the baseball world after the younger brother, a talented artist, designs a beautiful commemorative World Series ring in an era when such rings weren't commonplace. His business savvy and gambling-addicted brother pushes all the deals and the pair soon gain prominence not only within the jeweler's circle, but in baseball, particularly with their worshipped idol Mathewson, the rest of his teammates and hard-as-nails manager McGraw.

The book includes many historical aspects of baseball: the gambling scene that once heavily threatened to ruin the game; the pre-free agency relationship that had owners literally owning their players (who had little control over their careers), and the gradual integration of all sorts of fans into the game.

It's a good read, leaving you with the sort of feeling you get after watching a long baseball movie based on fact.

This book is not for Baseball buffs.......2003-03-05

I bought this book many years ago. I'm surprised it's still in print -- It should have never been in print. It is a contrived historical novel with fictional characters of zero intrest. ...

The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball

Average customer rating:

Good book
Good baseball book about two greats of the game.
A Pleasing Valentine & Fine Introduction
Baseball Delight
How Frank DeFord Failed to Create a Book

The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball
Frank Deford
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0871138859

Book Description

In The Old Ball Game, America's most beloved sportswriter, Frank Deford, masterfully chronicles how a friendship between two towering figures in baseball helped make the sport a national pastime. At the turn of the twentieth century, every American man wanted to be Christy Mathewson. One of baseball's first superstars, he was clean-cut, didn't pitch on the Sabbath, and rarely spoke a negative word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York Giants manager John McGraw, by contrast, was ferocious. Nicknamed "the Little Napoleon," the pugnacious tough guy had been a star baseball player who helped develop the hit-and-run. When McGraw joined the Giants in 1902, the team was coming off its worst season ever. Yet within three years, Mathewson clinched New York City's first World Series title by throwing three straight shutouts over six days, an incredible feat that is often called the greatest World Series performance ever. Frank Deford, a senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and weekly commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, recounts the rise of baseball's first superstar, the Giants' ascent into legend, and the sport's transformation into a national obsession.

Customer Reviews:

Good book.......2007-03-20

What I liked about the book was that Deford gave the reader credit for knowing baseball and knowing the times of the story. The background information built upon that knowledge. To say this was a glorified article can only be made if one knows that Deford was a sportswriter for SI and others. It was not and many baseball books have taken small subjects.

One suggestion (and this covers almost all sports bios) is to give a page of stats for the subjects. It does not have to be extensive, just the teams, records and years played. Just like a photo section, it is something that the reader can often flip to.

Good baseball book about two greats of the game........2005-11-23

Christy Mathewson was one of the 5 inductees in the first class of the baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. John McGraw was inducted a year later in 1937. It can be argued that both were the greatest in their respective positions on the field - Mathewson as a pitcher and McGraw as a manager. It's interesting to note that Mathewson and Walter Johnson were voted into the Hall of Fame one year before Cy Young even though Young retired before either of those pitchers, so why is the best pitcher award named the Cy Young Award and not the Christy Mathewson Award?

Frank DeFord does a fantastic job in describing the lives (personal and baseball) of these two greats of the game, as well as the era they lived in. One of the topics I found interesting was the involvement of gambling in baseball at the time. Gambling was already a problem in the 1900s and early 1910s, and perhaps it led to the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Deford writes "the fixed World Series of 1919 was a climax rather than an oddity." (p.116). Deford doesn't cover this topic in great detail but he touches on it throughout the book just enough to give the reader a feel for the gambling atmosphere in the game. Pete Rose's actions would not have raised an eyebrow in that era.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. Frank DeFord has an easy-to-read writing style. I did not know much about Mathewson or McGraw before reading this book, so I feel I learned a lot about these greats of the game. I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in baseball.

A Pleasing Valentine & Fine Introduction.......2005-08-22

`The Old Ball Game' serves as a fine introduction to its subject, which is John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, the New York Giants, and to a much lesser extent their whole era of baseball. There is no new or groundbreaking material here for the fan that is already familiar with the subject, but for them it can still serve as a baseball valentine celebrating these heroes and their times. While the book stops far short of its sub title's claim - that McGraw, Mathewson, and the Giants created modern baseball, it does nicely illustrate their importance in the continuing evolution of the game.
A note on Deford's writing style is necessary. I heard him speaking about this book on NPR, and his oratory was beautifully captivating. He writes in much the same way that he speaks, but what works for him in his spoken word stories is not as effective in print - sometime his language gets in the way of the story rather than moving it along. It was enough of a problem for me to dock a star from my review rating, but I still found the book enjoyable.
If you are already knowledgeable on the subject of McGraw, his star pitcher, and his amazing team, you can take or leave this book depending on how you feel about baseball "valentines". If you are new to the subject, however, this is a fine place to start to whet your imagination and encourage you to learn more about these great stars and this fascinating era of baseball's history.

Theo Logos

Baseball Delight.......2005-08-03

When I was six years old my father took me to the Polo Grounds for my first baseball game. We saw the New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-1. And as Annie Savoy said in the classic movie "Bull Durham" the stadium was to me like a cathedral - the cathedral of baseball. The grass was greener than any I had seen and the confluence of scents of beer and hot dogs and tobacco was unlike anything I have ever experienced.
I think about that first game often as I peer from my upper deck seats from behind home plate watching my Arizona Diamondbacks (baseball teams are always referred to in singular possessive). But it really jumped back at me through the reflections of Frank Deford's, "The Old Ball Game". I actually shared a space in the same stadium in which two immortals once pitched, and played, and managed. And the story of the immortal pitcher Christopher "Christy" "Big Six" "Matty" Mathewson and most innovative energetic manager John "Muggsy" McGraw leaves that kind of a lasting impression.
Time tends to romanticize sports events and the heroes who populated them. McGraw and Mathewson are no exception. McGraw was the hard scrabble manager who was yet an old softy in many ways to his friends and his players.. Here was a guy who would loan money to members of the team but never really expected to be paid back. Deford writes that these loans were in the tens of thousands of dollars. Yet McGraw would harass umpires with vile and vulgar tirades and established himself every bit as the little Napleon he resembled in his loud dictatorial on the field style.
And yes, Mathewson was indeed the tall, handsome, college educated perfectionist. He was generally quiet and always polite. Matty worked hard at his craft and became the pre-eminent player of his time at any position. Frankly, as Deford notes, the award for the best pitcher in the game each year shouldn't be named after Cy Young who played most of his ball in the 19th century, it should be named after Christy.
The fact that he played in New York obviously didn't hurt. But it was a time devoid of mass media so newspapers and other print periodicals and word of mouth was all a man had to promote his ability. Christy made the best of it.
They are both, in many ways, however, tragic figures. Both were destined to die much too young the latter painfully so. Mathewson watched all of his siblings die before him - one from suicide - and McGraw lost his first wife to illness. McGraw himself suffered from severe sinusitis the result of a being hit with a bat on the ball field. And, of course, Mathewson's brief stint in Europe during World War I exposed him to the poison gases of warfare that ultimately led too tuberculosis and his death.
Mathewson didn't have the intial support of his family to be a ball player - it wasn't a very respectable profession for a good Christian boy in those days. She had always dreamed of his becoming a minister but baseball won out. In later years when Mathewson became larger than life, so admired for not just his athletic ability but his idyllic life style his mother relented her approval. At least he was setting a good example of how a good Christian man should live his life.
But through these slightly romantic rose colored glasses "The Old Ball Game" approaches our heroes with honesty, clarity and enjoyment. The descriptive visuals of the games themselves put you in the stadiums. You can feel the stares and see the plays. And the game really mattered in those days. No television meant that thousands of fans would have to gather to see the status of important games relayed by telegraph posted on large boards at various locations. The game of baseball was important - there was nothing in all of sport at the time like it in comparison. Perhaps an occasional horse race would incite great spectator interest. And horse racing had a powerful following amoung the gambling set. Occaionaly a champiosnhip prize fight would temporarily divert the attention of fans. But baseball was what captured sporting minds and their imagination.
Yes, it was a time before steroids and amphetamines but their era was not devoid of its own problems. Gambling was rampant. Hal Chase openly courted his teammates to throw games for betting purposes. Ballparks were made of not much more than kindling wood which led them to burn down with regularity. But it was also a time of transition in the world and the game of baseball and its stadiums were no exception.
The Polo Grounds was the first permanent steel structure built to house the hallowed game - built to house the swelling crowds who were coming to see McGraw and his charges play and to see Matty pitch. Baseball was growing from a sport that drew a few thousand on average per game to attract tens of thousands in the right park for the right game. And oh how those Giants dominated New York until the Yankees built their own collossal park in 1923 and replaced men like Mathewson and McGraw with a guy named "the Babe".
The Old Ball Game is in fact, a book born out of a magazine article. Deford wrote a piece about these two icons and the odd but unique relationship that helped them and their team captivate not just New York but all of baseball during the first two decades of the 20th century. But one magazine article hardly could do this duo justice. So Deford was convinced to expand the project.
Baseball fans will be very happy that he did. For us it will bring back the magic of that first time there - of the first visit - when, as Deford concludes, ". . . all the innings were in the sun"!
991words
Barry M. Aarons is a senior research fellow for the Lewisville, Texas based Institute for Policy Innovation. He owns The Aarons Company, a Public Policy Consulting firm in Phoenix.

How Frank DeFord Failed to Create a Book.......2005-07-27

I agree with the reviewer who says this feels like a heavily padded article. In recent years, a number of wonderful books with original research have come out on McGraw and his era (such as Baseball's Radical for All Seasons, Hit Em Where They Ain't) but this book ignors them, and adds nothing new. Deford's book is written in the smarmiest language possible. Mr. DeFord loves writing but I didn't love this book.

The Player: Christy Mathewson, Baseball, and the American Century

Average customer rating:

Great Book
A look back to a different time
Not very deep
Decent but too broad
I Was Plesantly Surprised

The Player: Christy Mathewson, Baseball, and the American Century
Philip M. Seib
Manufacturer: Four Walls Eight Windows
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1568582684

Book Description

Christy Mathewson (1880-1925) was baseball's first superstar pitcher who still ranks among the all-time leaders in wins, earned run average, and shutouts. Mathewson was in the first group elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, with Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson. At a time when professional ballplayers were regarded as hard-living rogues, Matty was a soft-spoken college boy who espoused clean living and did more than any other athlete to elevate the place of sports in American life. Parents longed for their children to model their lives after his. He even wrote children's books to help instill the values of hard work and determination. With a diverse cast of characters including Teddy Roosevelt, Edith Wharton and Scott Fitzgerald, The Player is an exciting, cinematic evocation of a singular American life — and what that life means today. Photographs are featured.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book.......2006-08-29

When I was given this book, the gift-bearer informed me that it was the perfect gift for me, "... a book about baseball AND U.S. history.". Being the grateful recipient of said gift I of course bit my tongue, didn't respond, "How do you separate the two?", and accepted the gift in the spirit it was given. Now, after reading it, I realize how smart my niece is. The book is indeed about both, and without wandering too far from its subject, (Christy, in case there is some confusion), is a very enagaging read. Similar books about this time period in baseball tend to get repetitive and somewhat choppy to read by piecing together newspaper reports and box scores. This author alleviates that problem by also tracking events in the U.S., (and the world as 1914 approaches), while Christy pitches his way through his baseball career. This is recommended for baseball novices, hard core fans and anyone in between as it's a nicely written book.

A look back to a different time.......2006-04-23

"The Player" provided a trip back in time to what it was like playing ball around the turn of the century through the times of the first World War.

To understand what Mathewson meant to the game itself is truly amazing. Not only being a phonomenal pitcher with exceptional control, he realized that he was a role model for others, not only the young kids that idolized him, but the everyday american worker. To know what he gave of himself to others off the ball field, his charity work, volunteering for WWI at the age of 37, gives us a better insight to the individual.

The book also tells of his attempts to clean up the game, before the Black Sox scandal. He knew it was going on, tried to warn others, but no one would listen.

A great read if you want to get a much clearer insight into one of the greatest ball players of all time. One that is unfortunatelly forgotten by too many in today's game.

Not very deep.......2004-05-11

This book is a decent read but it is less a biography of Mathewson than it is a commentary on the times and events that he lived through. I had hoped to learn about who Christy Mathewson was and what made him so great and instead I felt like I read an overview of the major events in baseball and history during the late 1800's to the mid 1900's.

Decent but too broad.......2004-01-15

As a fan of baseball history, I have been looking for a modern, definitive biography of Christy Mathewson ever since I grew to admire him many years ago. I was hoping that Philip Seib's The Player would be that elusive work, but I was wrong. Although it covers the major events of Matty's life, Seib works very hard to put him in context as the first major baseball star and the times that he lived in, so what we're left with is less of a biography and more of a social history.

This is all well and good, and the premise is an interesting one, except that Seib doesn't take it far enough and when he tries to expound on his theory, he ends up giving more info on other figures of the times like Billy Sunday and Woodrow Wilson than on Mathewson.

Almost contradictorally, the main problem is that it all just feels too thin. At less than 200 pages it's a one and a half day read at best and you come away not knowing anything more about Mathewson than you would reading any history of baseball. Were I Seib's editor, I would have recommended that he go in the opposite direction and really blow out his research. Joseph Durso wrote an excellent double biography of John McGraw and Casey Stengel that captured the general history of American society as well as baseball and that is clearly what Seib is aspiring to but falls short.

I don't want to knock the book too much since I enjoy general history as much as anyone, but I guess I just expected so much more. Also, Seib labors in spots to draw his conclusions and ends up being extremely repetitive. His reverence for Mathewson is well-appreciated, but borders on overindulgence.

If you are interested in reading more on Mathewson, I would recommend seeking out the Jonathan Yardley essay "The Real Frank Merriwell" for a terrific mini-bio and tribute to a great pitcher.

I Was Plesantly Surprised.......2003-11-13

Considering the book is less than 200 pages long I wondered what this book would tell me about Christy Mathewson I haven't already read somewhere else. Author Philip Seib emphasizes the positive role model Matty played both as a player and as a private citizen. The author also provides us with details of former major leaguer Eddie Grant who lost his life fighting in World War I. His monument used to appear in center field in the Polo Grounds, and I was pleased to read details I hadn't read before. Mathewson enlisted in World War I, and came in contact with poisonous gas in a training drill in Europe shortly before The Great War ended. He returned from Europe to help McGraw as a coach with the Giants, and once again encountered the crooked Hal Chase whom Matty had in his brief tenure as manager of the Cincinnati Reds after his (Matty's) playing days were over. He was an observer of the 1919 World Series between the White Sox and Reds, and to his dismay, observed what he believed to be crookedness in the play of the Chicago team. His cough persisted, and progressed to tuberculosis. Matty spent time at Saranac Lake in upstate New York where the dry air was thought to be helpful to patients. He felt well enough to join the Boston Braves in the front office, but had to return to Saranac Lake where he died during the 1925 World Series. This would be an excellent book for both beginning readers of Christy Mathewson, or those who have a more extensive knowledge of one of the first five members elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame.

Pitching in a Pinch: Or, Baseball from the Inside

Average customer rating:

Absolutely amazing reading
mom, baseball and apple pie
Great inside view of how baseball used to be.

Pitching in a Pinch: Or, Baseball from the Inside
Christy Mathewson
Manufacturer: Stein & Day Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0812821963

Amazon.com

One of baseball's more enduring classics and earliest memoirs, Christy Mathewson's primer, first published in 1912, has also become one of the game's foremost anthropologies. Mathewson was one of baseball's first immortals: he was a star on the field, winning 373 games between 1900 and 1916--all but one as a Giant; an educated gentleman off the field; and a legitimate war hero who died from the effects of being gassed in World War I. Pitching in a Pinch passes on Mathewson's substantial knowledge of the game in general, and the intricacies of the mound in particular. The book's continuing delight and value rests in Mathewson's facility for capturing--from the inside--the game's ethos in the early 20th century, and the generous combination of anecdote and insight with which he shares it.

Customer Reviews:

Absolutely amazing reading.......2002-03-24

What an amazing read. It makes you realize that not much has changed since Mathewson once ruled the roost on the pitching mound. The things he say, the wisdom of experience he imparts sounds so fresh, so immediately relevant to the game as it is played today that it might as well have been written yesterday.

Particularly impressive is the idea that there are pitchers who are fabulous when there are no runners on base, but once the pinch is on (hence the title of the book) they become tentative shrinking violets. The pinch, Mathewson writes, is the true test of a pitcher's character. How right he is, in this true baseball classic. A must read for all who love the game.

mom, baseball and apple pie.......2000-05-10

Reading a book like Pitching in the Pinch will stir an earnest yearning in my heart. It is Christy Mathewsons ghostwritten account of his career in major league baseball. It is a classic work of baseball writing. Mathewson was a 373 game winner in his career and had a lot of great thoughts on the game. He shares insight into John McGraws management skill and he delves into the psychology of the game. You can learn a lot about Americas past-time before Babe Ruth revolutionized the game.This is a highly entertaining and educational book.

Great inside view of how baseball used to be........1997-06-10

If you want to have an insider's view of how the world of baseball was in the early part of the century, this is the book for you. Mathewson takes us there in all its glory. Well done

Matty, An American Hero: Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants

Average customer rating:

The life of Christy Mathewson, a man who did a great deal to change public perceptions of baseball players
A Serviceable, Readable Biography, at Best
Wonderful but not memorable
Please don't just fadeaway...

Matty, An American Hero: Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants
Ray Robinson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 019507629X

Book Description

When all-time pitching great Christy Mathewson died of tuberculosis in 1925 at the age of 45, it touched off a wave of national mourning that remains without precedent for an American athlete. The World Series was underway, and the game the day after Mathewson's death took on the trappings of
a state funeral: officials slowly lowered the flag to half-mast, each ballplayer wore a black armband, and fans joined together in a chorus of "Nearer My God to Thee." Newspaper editorials recalled Mathewson's glorious career with the New York Giants, but also emphasized his unstinting good
sportsmanship and voluntary service in World War I. The pitcher known to one and all as "Matty" or "Big Six" was as beloved for the strength of character he brought to the national pastime, as for his stunning 373 career victories. "I do not expect to see his like again," said his best friend and
former manager, John McGraw. "But I do know that the example he set and the imprint he left on the sport that he loved and honored will remain long after I am gone."
In Matty, Ray Robinson tells the story of a man who became America's first authentic sports hero. Until Mathewson, Robinson reveals, Americans loved baseball, but looked down on ballplayers and other athletes as hard-drinking, skirt-chasing ne'er-do-wells. Deprived of real-life role models,
millions of readers followed the serialized exploits of Frank Merriwell, a fictional hero who excelled at sports from baseball to billiards and never drank, smoke, or swore. Robinson shows how an eager public greeted Mathewson as a flesh-and-blood version of Merriwell from his first year at
Bucknell University, where he shone as star pitcher, premier field-goal kicker, and class president. Lured into the big leagues before he could graduate, the tall, handsome pitcher soon won over men, women and children with his sense of fair play and his arsenal of blazing fastballs, sweeping
curves, and infamously deceptive fadeaway pitches. Robinson skillfully details the highlights of Mathewson's career, including his showdowns against the great batters of his day and his encounters with the young Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh and St. Louis teams. Here are the six remarkable days in
October, 1905 when Mathewson became the only pitcher ever to hurl three straight shutouts in a World Series, and the afternoon at West Point when he won $50 in a bet that he could throw 20 of his best pitches to exactly the same spot. Robinson does not underplay Mathewson'soccasional failings, but
the most surprising aspect of this fascinating portrait is just how close America's first Hall of Fame pitcher came to living up to his image.
Drawing on rare interviews, press clips, and long overlooked eyewitness accounts, Matty brings baseball's golden age to life--not only the great teams and the early superstars, but the long train trips between games,with cramped berths and no air conditioning; the small town ballplayers let loose
amidst big city vice; and the two-bit gambling that eventually led to the infamous Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 Series (a scandal that might have escaped detection if the sportswriters in the press box with Mathewson had not been able to rely on his experienced eye for clues to how ballplayers
might throw games). Offering rare insight into the making of an early twentieth century American hero, Matty is must reading for anyone who loves baseball.

Customer Reviews:

The life of Christy Mathewson, a man who did a great deal to change public perceptions of baseball players.......2007-09-25

It is a historical anomaly that at the end of the nineteenth century the violent game of football was a sport for the privileged gentleman yet baseball was the game of the uneducated, profane and in essence the masses. Football was confined to the college campuses, which at that time, meant it was restricted to the wealthy. Baseball was a popular sport, yet the players were often little more than thugs. Nearly all of the players were from the lower classes, which meant they came from working class backgrounds such as the steel mills or coal mines. Professional baseball players were generally denigrated in society, at that time it was not an occupation that was looked upon as a stellar career.
Christy Mathewson entered the major leagues from college, one of the first players who attended college before playing. He was one of the most intelligent men ever to play the game; he was capable of playing championship caliber checkers against several players simultaneously. Mathewson was also an excellent card player; he regularly accepted challenges from others as he moved from place to place. In his role as a gentleman baseball player, he did a great deal to transform the image of the baseball player from that of an uneducated brute to someone to be emulated. He served as a positive role model for children interested in pursuing a sports career and was idolized by the sports media of the time. Mathewson was also a very good and durable pitcher, his 373 career wins ranks him second all time behind Cy Young and Walter Johnson.
In this book, Robinson captures Mathewson as he was, considered standoffish by some, yet a consummate professional on the mound. His relationship with his manager, the volatile John McGraw, was an unusual one as Mathewson, McGraw and their wives once shared an apartment. Given McGraw's temperament, this would truly be another example of "The Odd Couple." Robinson never apologizes for some of the negative comments made about Mathewson, merely pointing out that many of those instances can be explained by the context of the times. In general the country was uneducated with racial and personal slurs being part of daily speech. Babe and Rube were common nicknames of professional baseball players, being synonyms for naïve and ignorant. A deaf man was given the nickname "Dummy" and a Native American was usually called "Chief."
Mathewson's time was also one of great transition in major league baseball, the American league was formed and considered inferior by the older National league. Players were very poorly paid, a consequence of the reserve clause which bound a player to a team and which allowed him to be traded against his will. Robinson points out that one of the reasons why the World Series was continued is because it was a significant financial windfall for the players. Groups of players also regularly barnstormed around the country and even overseas, in many cases to earn enough money to live.
Mathewson was a charter member of baseball's hall of fame and it is unfortunate that he did not live long enough to be there in person. His health failed him very quickly after he retired from baseball, there is some evidence that the tuberculosis that took his life was brought on by his being gassed during World War I. While he had his faults, compared to those around him, they were few and far between. It has been said that Base Ruth did the most to help make modern baseball what it is today. I agree with that, but also firmly believe that Christy Mathewson occupies second place on that list. His approach to the game and the example he set in life did a great deal to elevate professional baseball players in the mind of the public. His life was an interesting and productive one, you can honor his memory be reading this book and learning all about him.

A Serviceable, Readable Biography, at Best.......2005-06-19

Ray Robinson is a sports journalist and editor, and this book is very much in the genre of many other conventional sports biographies. It is a good, serviceable biography; but it is far from great. In it, we learn about one of the earliest stars of major league baseball. Christy Mathewson had been born in 1880, attended Bucknell University and gained fame there as both a football and baseball player. He signed with the New York Giants and played sixteen seasons with them; arguably the most dominant pitcher in major league baseball during his time in the Majors. While with the Giants, Mathewson won 20 games thirteen times and 30 games four times. During that same period, he won at least 20 games twelve consecutive years (1903-1914). A power pitcher, Mathewson had the most wins in Giant franchise history (372), and had more than 2,500 strikeouts. Perhaps his most dominant performance came in the 1905 World Series when he pitched a record three shutouts in six days against the Philadelphia Athletics, leading the Giants to the championship.

Robinson does a credible job telling the story of Mathewson's remarkable career. He expends considerable effort narrating the dramatic events of his various pitching performances. He also delves into the story of Mathewson's close relationship with his Giants manager, the legendary John McGraw, who is credited with working effectively with a sensitive and talented player to make him more dominant than he might have been otherwise. Robinson also explores the role Mathewson plays in helping to remake the image of major league baseball from one of rowdy hooliganism into one of the "national pastime." Mathewson served as a model of clean living when the sport was known for its hard-living, hard-drinking players. He became a role model for young boys, and MLB exploited his lifestyle to remake its image. He enthusiastically aided this process, and even wrote a series of boy's books advocating a moral, strenuous lifestyle.

Of course, Mathewson served as the perfect example of "clean living" for MLB because of his dominance on the mound. Accordingly, in 1936 he joined four other MLB legends--Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson, none of whom exemplified "clean living"--as the first class of baseball players to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. It was a posthumous induction because Mathewson had died in 1925, at age 45, of tuberculosis.

Ray Robinson has written a solid, readable biography of Matty. I give it three stars because it fails to go beyond the basics of what we already know about him, and has no references or even a bibliography with other works to read on the subject.

Wonderful but not memorable.......1998-07-19

Ray Robinson does a fine job depicting one of baseball's greatest pitchers from Christy's grand beginnings to his unfortunate plight in the end. The book gives a fair amount of detail about the game's first national idol but lacks punch because of the mostly serene nature of "BIG 6's" life. To the extent that the book is kind of fluffy for its depiction of a man who is nearly perfect-save for incidences like his punching a vendor during a melee-it is almost Rockyesque in that one cannot help but wish they were a personal friend of Christy.It is currently the best I've read on the perfector of the fadeaway.

Please don't just fadeaway..........1997-07-23

This is the best effort by Ray Robinson to date. The book starts off slowly but eventually picks up steam. Robinson effectively captures the era but really does not give you an awful lot more. Christy Mathewson was one of the best pitchers ever in my opinion (based on my research). I just wish that Ray Robinson could have confirmed it with the decisiveness one would come to expect from a seasoned author. Instead, I was left to wonder why certain facts were omitted and why he did not do more to make Matty an American Hero. A few more efforts like this and Christy Mathewson and others of his era will emulate his trademark pitch...Fadeaway! Anthony DeMedeiros, Toronto, Ontario

The Battle Of Base-ball (McFarland Historical Baseball Library) (McFarland Historical Baseball Library)

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The Battle Of Base-ball (McFarland Historical Baseball Library) (McFarland Historical Baseball Library)
Carl H. Claudy , Christy Mathewson , and C. H. Claudy
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786420200

Product Description

C.H. Claudy might have trouble finding a publisher for his Battle of Base-ball today. His yoking of baseball to warfareaccounts of ways to cripple the enemy and descriptions of managers as battlefield generalsto teach the young and inexperienced about the game would not likely be applauded in the age of political correctness. But as Claudy says in his preface, The points of similarity are actual, not imagined, and he spends most of the book, meant to be both instructional and historical, demonstrating his assertion. Originally published in 1912, this work consists of chapters on batting, running, offensive game planning, the pitcher-catcher battery, fielding, defensive strategy, umpiring, drills (titled Battlefield and Arms), major league regulations, and A.G. Spaldings organizational rules. Christy Mathewsons How I Became a Big-League Pitcher is also included.

The BATTLE Of BASE-BALL. Including How I Became a Big-League Pitcher by Christy Mathewson.

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The BATTLE Of BASE-BALL. Including How I Became a Big-League Pitcher by Christy Mathewson.
D. H. Mathewson, Christy. Claudy
Manufacturer: Bell & Cockburn,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MZCMSQ

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Catcher Craig,
Christy Mathewson
Manufacturer: Dodd, Mead and company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Christy Mathewson
Schoor
Manufacturer: Julian Messner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JCUK0E

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Quick read, a bit flawed, but interesting and fair
A Giant Giant!

Christy Mathewson
Michael Hartley
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball

ASIN: 078641653X

Book Description

Christy Mathewson made headlines in the summer of 1905 for his amazing pitching exploits for the New York Giants, but the 25 year old already had an exalted place in public opinion because of his classic handsomeness, his reputation as a college man, and his moral stance in refusing to pitch on Sundays.

Mathewson benefited from a strict Baptist upbringing, natural intelligence, and superb athletic ability. He excelled in tense situations—"pitching in a pinch" he called it—and won 373 games in 17 seasons, all but one of those victories for the Giants. After his playing career, he was a manager, army officer and baseball executive, played a role in the unraveling of the Black Sox, and fought a courageous battle against tuberculosis. He did not have a flawed personality like Ty Cobb, nor was he larger-than-life like Babe Ruth; rather, he was a man with a keen sense of honor and responsibility for both private and public obligations. This biography documents in great depth his life on and off the baseball field, and draws from sources, old and new, to let Mathewson's life speak for itself. Not many sports figures can withstand such scrutiny.

Customer Reviews:

Quick read, a bit flawed, but interesting and fair.......2007-09-16

I recently purchased a few modern biographies of baseball players, and this was the best of the lot by a wide margin. It's not the most exciting biography I've ever read, but it covers Mathewson's career without a lot of extraneous personal life fluff or other modern biography madness. Short, easy, enjoyable read which manages to stick to baseball; it probably helps that Mathewson never got involved with any movie stars and wasn't able to sell autographs for seven kazillion dollars each.

But quite frankly, the publisher's proofreader needs to be beaten with a cluestick. (I strongly suspect Word was the sole proofreader.) Far too many spelling errors (rather, "correctly" spelled but incorrect words), partially-duplicated sentences, cut-up sentences which don't make any sense at all, and several other minor nits. This sort of mess is difficult to excuse, as it looks as if the book were published straight from the writer's final manuscript with little or no editing. It's certainly not unreadable, but the errors are a surprise.

A Giant Giant!.......2005-04-09

Mike Hartley has written an outstanding book about Giant's pitcher Christy Mathewson. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Mathewson was one of Pennsylvania's finest, an ace pitcher, and a fine gentleman. It's no surprise that Mike Hartley would choose to write about a figure like Mathewson. Mike, too, is one of Pennsylvania's finest, and a gentleman of high moral character. (I don't know if he's an ace pitcher, but he probably could be if he set his mind to it.) Mathewson stayed on high moral ground throughout his life, while many professional baseball players were drunks, gamblers, womanizers, cheaters, and the like. Author Hartley has managed to do the same, even though he spends much of the year on ships crewed by heavy drinkers, gamblers, profaners, and womanizers. You should buy...and read...this book, if for no other reason than to honor two fine gentlemen: Christy Mathewson and Mike Hartley. You might also want to check out my books (Although I'm not nearly as fine a gentleman as Mike Hartley. But I am a sailor. And I need the royalty money. Thanks.)

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