by Frank Deford
And the men of Philadelphia were primed to pour out their venom upon Mathewson. Remember, he’d busted up the little lemonade vendor right here, back in April. The bleachers were enclosed with chicken wire to keep the more boisterous fans trapped within. But, oh, did they get an eyeful when the Giants took the field. McGraw had outfitted his men in brand-spanking-new uniforms—basic black with only a white NY insignia, plus white belts, socks, and cap beaks. “The effect of being togged out in snappy uniforms was immediately noticeable among the players,” one New York reporter gloated. “The Athletics appeared dull alongside our players.”
About five hundred New Yorkers made the trip down, and although, midst the Philadelphia throng, they were “like a peanut in a bushel basket,” they cheered wildly for their ebony-garbed heroes, and when Gotham’s fifty-six-piece Catholic prefectory band struck up “Give My Regards to Broadway,” George M. Cohan himself led the rousing song. Pompadour Jim Corbett was such a Giant fixture that he worked out with the team before the game, and then he and Roger Bresnahan, the tempestuous catcher, waved a large Irish flag.
The A’s had a little surprise, too. McGraw, remember, had some years before sought to disparage them as “white elephants.” This had, however, become something of a badge of honor for the team, and the A’s had taken to wearing little elephant logos on their warm-up sweaters. Now, just before the game started, Connie Mack, the tall, gaunt Philadelphia manager, who eschewed a baseball uniform for a business suit (complete with high collar and stickpin), called McGraw to home plate and presented him with a small, carved white elephant. Muggsy thereupon delighted the crowd by doffing his white-beaked cap, making a sweeping bow, and then dancing an Irish jig.
Play ball!
The A’s sent that star collegian of their own, Eddie Plank, to the mound. A southpaw, Plank had won twenty-four games during this season and been almost as dominating as the absent Waddell. True to form, Plank got the Giants out in the first inning, beginning what would probably be the most sustained domination of pitching ever seen in baseball, let alone in a World Series. For the five games, only six pitchers were used. All five games were shutouts, with both teams combining to score a total of only eight earned runs in eighty-eight innings at bat.
Even in this brilliant company, though, Mathewson was the nonpareil. He retired the side in the first inning on five pitches, a fair sample of all that followed when he was on the mound. In the fifth inning, Mathewson was clobbered by a line drive hit by outfielder Socks Seybold, stung so hard in the thigh that after Matty retrieved the carom and tossed the batter out, he had to repair to the bench. But after the leg was inspected and he deemed himself fit enough, he returned to the mound and shut out the A’s the rest of the way on four hits. The Giants won 3–0. “Matty is certainly a phenomenon,” McGraw said.
The Giants returned home for the first World Series game ever contested in New York, and the stadium was overflowing this Tuesday—Ironing Day. The mob poured onto the field before the game. Attendance was announced at 25,000, but the players and other cynical observers suspected that it might have been as much as 30,000, that the Giants’ management was lowballing the figure to keep down the players’ share of the gate. In any event, the Herald found the crowd to be “full of American health, vigor and optimistic enthusiasm.” References to baseball then were invariably larded with favorable qualities that, often as not, were employed to also reflect on the best of all America.
But, alas, for the joyful throng, Chief Bender—“the much favored brave,” as the Times described him—matched Matty’s four-hitter from the day before. The A’s won by the identical 3–0 score, besting McGinnity. One game apiece.
Returning to Philadelphia, the third game, on Wednesday, October 11, Sewing Day, was rained out, so even though Thursday, Market Day, came up raw and cold, McGraw decided to bring back Mathewson to officiate on but two days’ rest. Only 10,991 ventured over to Brewerytown to see Andy Coakley, another of Mr. Mack’s collegians—from Holy Cross—toe the rubber for the A’s. It was not pretty for the home side. Coakley gave up nine hits but, behind him, his team made four errors, and the Giants coasted to a second victory, 9–0. Once again, Mathewson allowed only four hits.
New Yorkers were able to follow the game on large billboards that some newspapers set up outside their offices. As the reports came in by telegraph, the news would be relayed by a man with a megaphone, while on a large, simulated diamond, player figures would be moved about the bases. Next, though, the real players returned to Manhattan and, out at the Polo Grounds, on Friday the thirteenth, Cleaning Day, it was Iron Man’s turn to shut out the A’s. He beat the luckless Eddie Plank, 1–0. “Goose eggs are becoming as staple an item of Father Penn’s diet as scrapple,” the Sun crowed.
Because of the rain-out, the fifth game was also scheduled for New York. It was easily the grandest sports day in the history of any American city. Not only was there the World Series, but out on Long Island, one of the first major automobile races, the Vanderbilt Cup, was being contested. It drew crowds in excess of one hundred thousand, including many anxious members of Mrs. Astor’s famous Four Hundred, SOCIETY LOSES SLEEP, BUT SEES THE THRILLING RACE, headlined the Herald, Even the most blasé New Yorkers had to be astounded by the speed, as the winner was timed at 61.5 miles per hour—“hurtling over the oil soaked course at a rate of speed which can only be likened to that of the wind,” Tribune readers were advised.
Notwithstanding this gasoline-powered marvel of modern times, Matty was just as impressive at his game with his soupbone. In the Herald, a poem signed by Diedrich Knickerbocker put things in perspective for true New Yorkers:
Let others sing of motor cars,
Extol the record run;
But let me sing, oh Stripes and Stars,
Of Christy Mathewson.
The crowd overflowed the Polo Grounds, reaching perhaps 27,000, as fans stood ten-deep behind the outfield ropes. It was a pretty day, and a spirited throng came to celebrate the championship. “Clinch it today,” they called out to McGraw.
“That’s what you’ll get,” Muggsy hollered back. Then, when that “Argus-eyed” manager saw Chief Bender, “that stolid, phlegmatic, copper-colored man” who was Matty’s pitching opponent this afternoon, McGraw had some sprightly new Indian-tuned badinage for him. “It’ll be off the warpath for you today, Chief,” he hee-hawed.
Not to be outdone, Turkey Mike Donlin sallied: “I’m sorry, old Pitch-Em-Heap, but here’s where you go back to the reservation.”
With Matty on the mound, the Giants were obviously confident and in high spirits.
And yes, now here comes a-tootin’ that Giant big-game staple, the Catholic prefectory band. Today’s choice offerings were “Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Carry the News to Mary,” and the Tammany Hall fight song. That brought down the house: Tamm . . . annn . . . eeeee!
Then Matty took off his duster and, once again, began to toy with the A’s. They did manage all of five hits and actually got one man to second base, but Mathewson shut them out again. Bender himself permitted only five hits, but the Giants got one run in the fifth without making a hit, and Matty himself scored in the eighth when he walked, went to third when Bresnahan knocked a ground-rule double into the crowd, and then scored on an infield smash.
The whole affair took barely an hour and a half, and when Matty got the last out with a ground out, New York’s finest were overwhelmed, unable to halt the joyous mob from pouring onto the field. Somehow, Matty and Muggsy and the other Giants found their way to the safety of their center-field clubhouse.
As the crowd surged after the Giants, naturally the name most cheered was Mathewson. Never since has any pitcher—any player—dominated a World Series as Matty did. He had pitched three shutouts in six days, allowing only fourteen hits and a single walk. He struck out eighteen batters and, never mind score, he allowed but one Athletic to reach third base. The Times was especially beside itself, calling his a “superhuman accomplishment,” addi
ng: “The Giant slabman . . . may legitimately be designated as the premier pitching wonder. . . . [Mathewson] bestrode the field like a mighty Colossus, and the Athletics peeped about the diamond like pigmies.”
Over time, even Matty acknowledged that it was the best he ever officiated.
Out in center field, one by one the Giants ventured onto the pavilion to greet their worshipers below. Some of them even tossed their gloves and caps into the happy mob. A pretty debutante was heard to sigh: “I’d like one of those old gloves to put among my cotillion favors.” But no matter how many of the victors showed themselves, it was Mathewson the crowd wanted.
Finally, he not only appeared, but he and Bresnahan unfurled a large banner, hurriedly made up, that read:
THE GIANTS
WORLD’S CHAMPIONS 1905
That produced “a reverberating roar that lifted Manhattan’s soil from the base.” In all of New York’s history, there had never been a moment like this. Why, this was New York’s first secular communion. If not already the first city of the world, it would pass London and Paris soon enough. Anyway, it was already a depot of dreams, and what could have certified that more than this triumph at the American national sport?
“Big Six” waited for the tumult to die down, and then he was his proper, modest Mathewsonian self. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I want to thank you for your kindness, but you must remember there were eight other members of the team who worked for our success just as much as I did.” That only occasioned more cheers to roll up to him, and then on to the heavens above. Saith the Times, which now put baseball on the front page: “Baseball New York gave Mathewson a marvelous vocal panegyric and placed upon his modest brow a billowed wreath that evoked only a half-suppressed smile and bow.”
Only one more Giant did the crowd call for. And finally here he came, McGraw emerging to address the multitude. As befits a Napoleon, his speech, as it often was when he was neither at the bar nor upon the field of play, was courtly. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Muggsy proclaimed solemnly, “I appreciate the great victory as well as you. I thank you for your patronage and hope to see you all next spring.”
So he would. But who would have ever imagined that it would never again be the same for Matty and Muggsy as it was on this one most glorious of all Baking Days.
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 Mike Donlin—in the cavalcade that included all the Giants (plus those old reliables DeWolf Hopper and Gentleman Jim Corbett). He was well recovered from his spring’s bout with diphtheria by now, and he greeted his fans jauntily, “his arm flung with careful carelessness over the back of the automobile.”
“Turkey Mike” Donlin sporting his Giants World’s Champions jersey
As the Times reported, “Big Six” was the cynosure. “‘Hooray for Matty,’ yelled a dirty little street arab.
“‘Who is that they are cheering?’ asked a man who was caught in the crowd.
“‘Aw, doncher know Matty?’ asked the boy in tones full of disgust.”
On the mound, Mathewson would brush back batters and occasionally even argue with umpires. Never, though, was there any trash-talking to the hitters he faced; he left that to McGraw. “Repartee is not my line,” Matty said. But neither did he take any guff from Muggsy. There’s a story told by Jimmy McAleer, a contemporary manager of the St. Louis Browns, about how McGraw would let Mathewson position his outfielders—a responsibility he denied all his other pitchers. In a key game, Muggsy suddenly decided to regain that power. He signaled to the outfielders to shift their spacing. They followed his command. Mathewson glared at McGraw, then turned around and tried to reposition the outfielders as he desired them. The poor outfielders, in McGraw’s thrall, wouldn’t budge. Mathewson glowered at McGraw, then simply reared back and struck out the side, not allowing anyone to hit a ball to McGraw’s outfield. Muggsy got the point. He didn’t want Mathewson just firing for strikeouts. He immediately resumed his old practice of letting Matty position his outfielders his way.
It didn’t hurt Mathewson’s image that he was also exceptionally handsome. His countenance was friendly and kind and touched with sympathy. He parted his wavy brown hair in the middle and filled out a suit nicely. Altogether, he was the exemplar of the Gibson Man, that fresh-faced, well-groomed, broad-shouldered, quintessentially turn-of-the-century American male. Who knows how many young men stopped wearing mustaches because Matty was clean-shaven? Women would send him mash notes (which Jane would politely answer). One contemporary summed up Mathewson this way: “He talks like a Harvard graduate, looks like an actor, acts like a businessman and impresses you as an all-around gentleman.”
He read seriously and regularly, taking such works as those by Victor Hugo, William James, and Charles Lamb on the road with him. Horticulture interested him. He played golf in the low seventies and was superb at cards. Heywood Broun, the journalist, was Matty’s regular partner at bridge and whist. He was also a ruthless poker player and accomplished at chess. Mathewson’s best game, though, was checkers. At one point he was elected second vice president of the American Checkers Association. Mathewson would take on all comers, playing up to half a dozen games simultaneously. He could even play blindfolded, because he had numbered the board in his own mind and needed to be told only where the checkers were. Regularly, whenever he would lose two or three games on the mound, some critic would write that Mathewson was wasting his concentra
tion on checkers. McGraw, though, would never have any of that. On the contrary, he took great pride in that a baseball player could be so good at a game of the mind. Muggsy would even often take Mathewson over to the Lambs Club to, in effect, show him off beating everyone at checkers.
If Matty had any physical defect, it was his unusually high voice. (One thinks of Jack Nicklaus or Mike Tyson, who also have voices that don’t seem deep enough for their big, athletic bodies.) So a few of his detractors did call him “Sis.” He was also known as “Old Gumboots” for his slightly knock-kneed gait. But that was about as critical as anybody could get of Christy Mathewson. Well, Damon Runyon thought he was a bit much when Matty told him: “I think any man who cheats on his wife would betray his country.”
The comparison with the fictional Frank Merriwell was a common one. In fact, so closely was Matty identified with that make-believe idol that Edward Stratemeyer, a children’s books producer who would also develop the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew thrillers, took advantage of Mathewson’s hero status to create a character named “Baseball Joe.” Stratemeyer had no shame; Baseball Joe was almost indecently drawn from Mathewson. Writing under the pseudonym Lester Chadwick, Stratemeyer wrote at least fourteen Baseball Joe books.
Our hero, Joe Matson, resided in the bucolic town of Riverside, where he lived an exemplary life; indeed, art followed life so closely that Momsey wanted him to be a minister. But Joe was just too good at baseball. From prep school at Excelsior Hall, Joe proceeded to Yale (just like Merriwell), and then, in On the Giants, he went on to play in New York for Manager McRae (hmm). It was a busy time for Baseball Joe, as he knocked out a kidnapper with an iceball and then saved his chaste girlfriend Mabel by hurling a stone at a leopard that was menacing her. (Never mind how the great jungle cat got to Riverside.) Then came the real good news. “The Giants, Sis!” Joe hollered, opening a letter from Manager McRae. “The class of the National League. I’m getting right to the top of the ladder. I’m going to play with the first team in the biggest city in the most famous grounds in the United States!”