The Old Ball Game by Frank Deford

Author:Frank Deford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2005-08-25T22:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

By 1912 the Literary Digest would write: “The name of Christy Mathewson . . . is known to about as many people as that of any man in the United States except President Taft, Colonel Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan.” Inasmuch as Roosevelt had been president before Taft and Bryan had run for the office three times, that shows what kind of popular company the pitcher was in. Not only that, but for all his fame, Matty’s personal reputation remained impeccable. Ray Robinson, Mathewson’s biographer, writes: “It is a safe prediction that no sports figure will ever again approach the hold that Matty once had on America in the early days of the new twentieth century.”

In a sense, Mathewson had it both ways. The public thought he was faultless, while those who knew him thought Matty was wonderfully human. Donald Honig, the sports historian, wrote: “He was the first truly national baseball figure who captured the country’s admiration and hero worship by combining all the elements of baseball, religion and American culture. . . . In a broadly ’religious sense,’ he epitomized humanity as it was created in the Garden of Eden. He lived and played in a ‘garden paradise,’ a pure specimen of the ideal ballplayer and created being.” Not surprisingly, Honig felt that Mathewson was such a paragon that he lifted the whole sport of “baseball’s pure, idyllic status” to a higher level.

Yet if Mathewson was somewhat distant from most of his fellow ballplayers, they liked him a great deal. On his own terms, Mathewson was a regular guy. How else could he get along so well with McGraw? In the term of that time, he was no “prig.” Said Laughing Larry Doyle: “We were a rough, tough lot in those days. All except Matty. But he was no namby-pamby. He’d gamble, play cards, curse now and then and take a drink now and then. But he was always quiet and had a lot of dignity. I remember how fans would constantly rush up to him and pester him with questions. He hated it, but he was always courteous. I never saw a man who could shake off those bugs so slick without hurting their feelings.”

By the same token, Mathewson would pull down the shades in his sleeping car so that he would be protected from the view of fans who came out to the station specifically to catch a glimpse of him. He drew a firm line in these matters. “I owe everything I have to the fans when I’m out there on the mound,” he declared, “but I owe the fans nothing and they owe me nothing when I’m not pitching.”

When the city of New York gave its first baseball parade in honor of the 1905 champions the next June 12, Mathewson seems to have smiled down almost beatifically upon the worshipers who lined the great route that went from Union Square to city hall. He was placed in the only white automobile—with McGraw and Turkey

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