Mathewson

Strong men are rare. Once in ten years, or twenty perhaps, one rises up, tempered and knowing, warden of an imperious secret. He lasts a little longer or goes a little harder than another before his strength, too, crumbles, and Death takes him. Last week it took Christy Mathewson.

In Manchester, N. H., lives an elderly policeman named John Smith. He was manager of the Norfolk Club in a Virginia minor league when Mathewson, a big boy, knock-kneed and ungainly, was starting with a team from Taunton. John Smith saw him pitch a game in Manchester and lose 6-5 and signed him for a season with the Virginia club.

Mathewson had just graduated from Bucknell University, where he had pitched good college ball-- exceptionally good college ball. A friendly enemy of his was Eddie Plank, a left-handed youth, who went to Gettysburg College. In 1905 Mathewson pitched again against this Eddie Plank in the World series. Between the college games and that 1905 series was a story known to almost everyone in the U. S.--the story of how Mathewson, after one brilliant season with Smith's Norfolkers, was bought by the New York Giants, how he had perfected his famed "fadeaway," studied the personal weaknesses of every batter who opposed him, become recognized as the master baseball technician of his day.

Certainly no baseball pitcher, perhaps no player in any game, had a triumph equal to Mathewson's in the famed World Series of 1905. Plank, the mainstay of the Athletics, was a fine pitcher, heady and fast, but he could be scored on, Mathewson could not. There were other men with the Giants besides Mathewson; occasionally they came up to bat; they did not have much else to do. While the enormous crowds shouted themselves into a frenzy, and small boys and statesmen muttered his name in their sleep--a name heard round far more of the world than the shot that began the battle of Lexington--Mathewson created a legend. He pitched three shut-out games.

It was the banner moment, the top of his hour. After that, even if only a little, and although pushed rather by ill-luck than any failure in himself, he began to slip. In 1908 he pitched and lost the celebrated 12-inning play-off game against the Cubs which decided the National League pennant. Mordecai Brown--the pitcher with the pirate's name--worsted him in that struggle, "the hardest game," Mathewson said, "of my life." In 1914 he injured his right shoulder. Still, with speed impaired, he could win games with his curves, his strategy, his matchless fadeaway. For a while, he tried without much success, to manage Cincinnati. When the U. S. entered the War, he enlisted in the Gas Service.

The rumor was slow in getting about. People would not believe it at first; impossible, they said, a man with his physique. . . . Then he went to Saranac and it could not be doubted. Gas had damaged the tissue of his lungs. He had tuberculosis.

For two years he played checkers and told jokes to gay people who sat around in little red cottages by a bleak northern lake and coughed into their handkerchiefs. Then, almost well again, and mocked by the irony of the disease that increases a man's keenness for living while depriving him of life, he bought a part interest in the Boston Braves. Overwork weakened him; he caught a cold; returned to his lake.

On, Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, where the World Series was being played while he lay dying, players, spectators paid tribute to his memory. Numberless editorial writers recalled his sporting generosity, his memorable achievements; 'a man," said The New York Times, "in whom self-control, correct habits and personal integrity were conspicuous, though he was engaged in a calling where they are often painfully lacking. . . ." Memorial resolutions were drawn up by the American Legion at its convention, by the Magistrates of Baseball, by President Emory Hunt of Bucknell (where Christy Mathewson Jr. is a junior), by the Giants, the Reds, the Boston Braves.

Retired Southpaw Eddie Plank, living on memories and planked steak in Gettysburg, thought of a long word. "Baseball has lost its mightiest pitcher," said he.

Said John Smith: "He was the cleanest player in the game."