"Big Six," they called him, and often "The Christian Gentleman" or just plain "Matty." One of the first educated men to enter professional baseball, Christy Matthewson was the oldest of five children raised in a strongly religious (Protestant) home near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Rejecting the pressures of his family to become a minister, Mathewson enrolled in Bucknell University where he was a star athlete in football, basketball, and baseball. He also sang in the glee club, took part in the literary society, and was elected president of his class. To top it off he had outstanding looks--the "All-American hero" as they used to say. The legendary writer Grantland Rice called Mathewson "the knightliest of all the game's paladins" who "brought something to baseball no one else had ever given the game. He handed the game a certain touch of class, an indefinable lift in culture, brains, and personality.’"
Mathewson was an intelligent man, an intellectual of sorts, and he put it to good use in his pitching. He threw a variety of pitches, and delivered them with pinpoint accuracy. Together with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Honus Wagner, he was one of the "original five" inductees in the Hall of Fame in 1936, he spent almost all of his career on John McGraw's New York Giants, perhaps the greatest team of the deadball era. Mathewson's dedication to baseball was obvious to all when he and his wife Jane spent their honeymoon at the Giants' baseball camp! McGraw, the consummate tactician and competitor, took the young Mathewson under his wing. They shared a special friendship and common attraction the mental side of the game. McGraw would later be a pall-bearer at Mathewson's funeral.
His sterling "Christian Gentleman" image off the field did not always match his on-field behaviors. He threw wicked brushback pitches at batters' heads, chewed out umpires, and occasionally threw punches during the Giants' many on-field brawls. Revealing his contempt for umpires, he once said: "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." During one brawl in 1904, Mathewson reportedly knocked down a boy selling lemonade near the Giants' bench. Contradicting his clean-cut image, he occasionally drank beer, played poker and smoked cigars, but these habits were rarely reported in the popular press. One must remember, in fairness, that John McGraw's Giants were a surly bunch. McGraw was a fierce competitor and demanding a brawling style of play from his players. Even so, Mathewson's competitive nature was no less than his managers. When he took a turn at managing himself, he once benched firstbaseman Frank Chance for what he called "indifferent play."
Mathewson 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. "Anybody's best pitch is the one the batters aren't hitting that day," he said famously.
During WWI Mathewson was on assignment in France when he was accidently gassed by friendly forces. This unforunate event led to tuberculosis, which he fought stoutly until his death in 1925 at a sanitorium in Saranac Lake, NY.
Matthewson amassed 373 career victories, tying him for third on the all-time list. He was a truly dominant pitcher of his era. His career ERA of 2.13 ranks 5th, and his career winning percentage of .665 is 6th on the all-time list. In 1909 his ERA was a minuscule 1.14!
