Al Sommons

Original article written by Fred Stein

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Al-Simmons/

Researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong

 Left-fielder for Connie Mack’s formidable Philadelphia Athletics from 1924 to 1932 and then for other major-league clubs through 1944. Simmons was born in Milwaukee on May 22, 1902, the son of Polish immigrants.  He played high-school baseball before briefly attending Stevens Point Teachers College as a football player and later playing semipro baseball in Juneau, Wisconsin.  The hometown Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association signed the hard-hitting 6-foot, 200-pounder in 1922. They sent him to Aberdeen, South Dakota, of the Class D Dakota League, where he hit .365 in 99 games.  He also played in 19 games for Milwaukee that season, getting 11 hits in 50 at-bats (.220).  moved up the following year to Shreveport in the Texas League, he duplicated his performance, hitting .360 in a full season before playing out the rest of the season with Brewers, where he sparkled, hitting .398 in 24 games. Simmons’ powerful hitting was achieved despite his unusual batting stance.  A right-handed hitter and thrower, Simmons stood at the plate with his left (front) foot pointed toward third base, “in the bucket” in baseball parlance.  So, he gained the nickname Bucketfoot Al, which he resented.  Theoretically, he should have had difficulty in hitting outside pitches solidly.  But Simmons overcame this clear weakness by using an unusually long bat and moving his left foot closer to home plate with the approach of an outside pitch.  As Simmons explained, “I’ve studied movies of myself batting.  Although my left foot stabbed out toward third base, the rest of me, from the belt up, especially my wrists, arms, and shoulders, was swinging in a proper line over the plate.”

Though he was still the property of Milwaukee, Simmons was interested at the time in playing for New York Giants manager John McGraw.  In 1922 he wrote to Roger Bresnahan, the manager of the Giants’ American Association farm team at Toledo, and showed his availability for $150 in expenses.  Bresnahan never responded.  Years later, Simmons often commented, “I’m not sure I would have enjoyed playing for McGraw.  We were both hotheads and I’m afraid we’d have clashed.”  Athletics owner-manager Connie Mack bought Simmons’ contract from Milwaukee after the 1923 season and Al was an immediate success with the A’s debuting on April 4, 1924, and hitting .308 with 102 RBIs in his freshman year.  He had a breakthrough season the following year with a sensational .387 average and an eye-opening 253 hits.  In 1926 Simmons “slipped” to .341 and 199 hits.  He was hampered by injuries the following two seasons although he hit high averages.  But he rebounded over the 1929-31 seasons and, along with Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, and Jimmie Foxx, carried Connie Mack’s A’s to three straight overpowering pennant wins and two World Series victories.  Simmons was at his peak during those three years.  In 1929 he won the MVP award.  In his last season with Connie Mack, 1932, Simmons hit .322 while again leading the league in hits, with 216.  Simmons holds the major league record for reaching 1,500 hits in the fewest games, 1,040.

Simmons hit .329 in the four World Series in which he played.  He touched off the most improbable inning in Series history, the seventh inning of the fourth game between the A’s and the Cubs in 1929.  With the Cubs ahead 8-0, Simmons led off the inning with a home run.  The Athletics batted around and were losing by only 8-7 when Simmons singled in his second at-bat of the inning as the A’s completed a historic and unforgettable ten-run inning and went on to win, 10-8.

Tommy Henrich recalled a story Bill Dickey told him about Simmons.  In 1928 the A’s were an up-and-coming team.  They came into New York late that season for a crucial four-game series with the Yankees.  Before the first game, the Yankees were discussing what to do with the A’s big hitters like Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, Mule Haas, and Simmons.  Dickey remembered that somebody thought it would be a good idea to rough Simmons up, to knock him down a little.  “So, we roughed him up," Dickey said.” "In a four game-series, he had 11 hits, ten of them for extra bases.”  Henrich said, “Yeah, they roughed him up all right, and he returned the compliment.  He hated the Yankees, but I liked him.  I liked the way he would bear down against us.”

Simmons had one of his most impressive days on Memorial Day in 1930.  The first-place A’s were losing to the second-place Washington Senators 6-3 with two out and two on in the bottom of the ninth.  Simmons homered to tie the game.  He doubled in the 11^th inning but was left stranded.  Simmons doubled again in the 13^th but again didn’t score.  He doubled again in the 15^th, his fourth straight extra-base hit, and he was finally driven home for a 7-6 win.  Before he scored, he injured a knee but managed to limp home.

Simmons’ swelling knee prevented his starting the second game of the doubleheader.  The Athletics were losing 7-5 in the fourth inning when Simmons pinch-hit and hit a grand slam that led to another A’s win.  After the A’s won the 1930 pennant, Washington owner Clark Griffith said, “Simmons hit 14 of his 34 homers in the eighth and ninth innings and everyone figured importantly in the final score.  We were never the same he licked us in that doubleheader.”

For a right-handed hitter, Simmons had great power on his drives to the right of second base.  Hall of Fame second baseman Charley Gehringer told author Donald Honig that Simmons hit the most wicked ground to second base.  Simmons was pitched outside to negate his pull-hitting power and, as Gehringer described it, “He’d hit to the right side.  And he'd slice them. …He could blister it.”  Lefty Grove was another Simmons admirer.  “Could he ever hit that ball!  One year (1931) he held out until the season started – finally signed for $100,000 for three years – and came into Opening Day, no spring training or anything, and got three hits.  And he was a great (defensive) outfielder.”

On the field, Simmons was a warrior, intent on damaging the opposition and demolishing pitchers with his bat, stifling opposing teams’ rallies with his glove, and upsetting infielders with violent takeout slides.  He never lost his intensity for baseball even when he was an Athletics coach after his playing days.  During batting practice, the Yankees’ Tommy Henrich used to urge coach Simmons to grab a bat and display his old hitting form.  Henrich remembered: “It was something to see.  When Al Simmons would grab hold of a ball bat and dig in, he’d squeeze the handle of that doggone thing and throw the barrel of that bat toward the pitcher in his warm-up swings, and he would look so bloomin’ mad even in batting practice, years after he had retired.

Joe Cronin also was highly impressed by Simmons’ fielding.  Cronin said: “He was great all-around, running, fielding, and throwing, as well as hitting and as a competitor.  There never was a greater left fielder in going to the line and holding a double to a single.  He’d even dare you to make the wide turn at first on a ball hit to his right.”

In 1932 Simmons hit .322 with a league-leading 216 hits, but it was a difficult year for Connie Mack as, after three straight pennants, his club finished second to the Yankees, and the relatively high salaried A’s cost more than he could afford.  And so, at season’s end, Simmons was traded to the White Sox along with infielder Jimmie Dykes and outfielder Mule Haas for $100,000.  Simmons had two decent years with the White Sox (.331 and .344), and helped out when the team moved home plate closer to the outfield fences.  But in 1935, playing for an uninspiring second-place club, the 32-year-old Simmons slipped, his batting average dropping to .267 and his RBIs slipping below triple-digits for the first time in his major-league career.  Years later, Simmons admitted to a writer that he had accepted the White Sox’ second-division attitude and had slacked off in his customary strenuous practice habits.  It was time to move on and in the offseason, his contract was sold to Detroit for $75,000.  The Tigers had won the 1935 pennant.  Although he was well past his prime, Simmons hit .327 with 112 RBIs in 1936, but the Tigers finished behind the murderous Yankees.  And Simmons was dealt to Washington after the season.

Simmons had in indifferent years with the Senators, then suffered through the 1939 season with the Braves and the Reds.  After returning to the A’s in 1940-41, he sat out the 1942 season as a coach but with World War II military demands for younger players, he became a virtual baseball relic, appearing in 40 games for the Red Sox and batting .203.  After six at-bats for the Athletics in 1944, retired.  He played in only 90 games in his last four big-league seasons.  Simmons was a player-coach for the A’s in 1944, then remained with Connie Mack as a full-time coach through the 1949 season.  He concluded his major-league involvement by coaching for the Indians in 1950-51.

Late in his playing career, Simmons set a goal of obtaining 3,000 base hits.  He came up 73 hits short.  He bemoaned the times he had begged off playing a nurse a hangover or left a one-sided game early for a quick shower and a night out on the town.  Proud of his Polish ancestry, Simmons as a veteran coach imparted his unachieved goal to another Polish-American.  “Never relax on any at-bat; never miss a game you can play,” he advised a young Stan Musial.”

Writer Donald Honig wrote: “Simmons was a testy character who was called ‘a swashbuckling pirate of a man’ by one contemporary.  King of his leagues’ right-handed hitters for a decade, he was an elitist who bullied rookies, manifested a chilly disdain for lesser mortals, and even on occasion questioned the wisdom of Mr. Mack. …Still” – discussing the fading recollection of Simmons by later generations of fans and writers – “Simmons, with his old boiling hatred of pitchers and a batting average of .334 which slots him fifth among right-handed smackers, is becoming a statue in a dark and unvisited basement.”

Simmons had a lifetime batting average of .334 with 2,927 base hits (including 539 doubles_ and 1,825 RBIs.  Despite his induction into the Hall of Fame in 1953, Simmons is not rated by all baseball experts as highly as his gaudy statistics would suggest.  Bill James did rate him seventh among left fielders based on his 375 Win Shares.  But In the Seventh Edition of Total Baseball, possibly through inadvertence, Simmons was not rated among the top 100 all-time players.

Well-respected catcher and baseball observer Ralph “Cy” Perkins summed up Simmons when he spoke at Al’s Hall of Fame induction: “He had that swagger of confidence, of defiance when he came up as a kid.  He was as sensational as a rookie as he was as a star.  I’ve always classed him next to Ty Cobb (Simmons’s idol) as the greatest player I ever saw. …He was what I would call the ‘perfect player,’”  Sportswriter Bob Broeg agreed with that tribute, writing, "High praise indeed, and even when he began to spend more time with the sauce (drinking) in his last professional baseball job as a coach with Cleveland in 1950, Simmons took pride in proper techniques and methods.”

Simmons apparently mellowed as he neared the end of his career.  George Case was a young outfielder with the Washington Senators when Simmons, then in his late 30s, became his teammate.  One evening in a Boston Bar, Simmons invited Case to join him for a drink.  With no game the next day, the two men drank together until 2:30 a.m., the teetotaling Case drinking ginger ale and Simmons downing Scotch and water.  Simmons recounted the story of his life, telling Case, “You know, I have a reputation for being coarse and a little ornery, but believe me, enough things have happened to me in my lifetime to account for that.”  Simmons went on to describe his rough time as a boy, how poor his family was, and how hard he had to work when he was a young boy.  After that, the two men became close friends and Simmons gave Case a lot of good advice and encouragement.  As Case recalled, “He turned out to be, under that gruff exterior, a very kindly and thoughtful man.”

In his last years in baseball, Connie Mack reflected on his long baseball career.  He kept only one picture of a former player in his office, and it was the swaggering Simmons.  He asked which player could provide the most value to a team, and Mack sighed, “If I could only have nine players named Al Simmons.”

Simmons married Doris Lynn Reader of Chicago in August 1934.  The couple had one son, John, before divorcing.  Because of religious convictions, the restless Simmons remained single after his marriage broke up.  Close personally to Connie Mack, Simmons told a writer, “Mr. Mack seemed to look on me as his son.  He never stopped feeling sorry for me about the breakup of my marriage,”  and Mack unsuccessfully urged him to patch things up.  Simmons died in his beloved Milwaukee on May 26, 1956, four days after his 54^th birthday.

Sources:

·         Biographical Dictionary of American Sports, Greenwood Press, 1987
·       Bob Broeg, Super Stars of Baseball,  The Sporting News, 1971
·         Cooperstown Where the Legends Live Forever,” Arlington House, 1988
·         Donald Honig, Baseball When the Grass Was Real,  Berkley Medallion Publishing
·         Donald Honig, Baseball America, Macmillan Publishing, 1985
·         Donald Honig, Baseball Between the Lines, University of Nebraska Press,1976
·         Bill James, The New Bill James Historial Baseball Abstract, The Free Press
·         The Ballplayers, Arbor House, William Morrow, 1990
·         Total Baseball Seventh Edition, Total Sports Publishing, 2001

Full Name:  Aloysius Harry Simmons

Born:  May 22, 1902, at Milwaukee, WI (USA)

Died:  May 26, 1956, at Milwaukee, WI (USA)

Christy Mathewson

Christy Mathewson – Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)

Original article written by Eddie Frierson
researched  and compiled by Carrie Birdsong

In the times when Giants walked the earth and roamed the Polo Grounds, none was more honored than Christy Mathewson.  Delivering all four of his pitches, including his famous “fadeaway” (now called a screwball), with impeccable control and an easy motion, the right-handed Mathewson was the greatest pitcher of the Deadball Era’s first decade, compiling a 2.13 ERA over 17 seasons and setting modern National League records for wins in a season (37), wins in a career (373), and consecutive 20-win seasons (12).  Aside from his pitching achievements, he was the greatest all-around hero of the Deadball Era, a handsome, college-educated man who lifted the rowdy world of baseball to gentlemanliness.  Matty was the basis, many say, for the idealized athlete Frank Merriwell, an inspiration to many authors over the years, and the motivation for an Off-Broadway play based on his life and writings.  “He gripped the imagination of a country that held a hundred million people and held this grip with a firmer hold than any man of his day or time,” wrote sportswriter Grantland Rice[1].

The oldest of six children of Minerva (Capwell) and Gilbert Mathewson, a Civil War veteran who became a post-office worker and farmer, Christopher Mathewson was born on August 12, 1880, in Factoryville, Pennsylvania, a small town in the northeastern part of the state, not far from the New York border.  His forebears, original followers of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, had settled in the region as the nation began to expand westward after the Revolutionary War.  The blond-haired, blue-eyed Christy was always big for his age – he eventually grew to 6 feet- 1 ½ and 195 pounds, and his playmates called him “Husk.”  At age 14 he pitched for the Factoryville town team.  Christy continued pitching for semipro teams in the area while attending Keystone Academy, a Factoryville prep school founded by his grandmother.  The summer after he graduated from Keystone, Christy was pitching for the team from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, when a left-handed teammate named Dave Williams, who later pitched three games for the Boston Americans in 1902, taught him the fadeaway.

In September 1898 Mathewson enrolled at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, 75 miles west of Factoryville.  He pitched for the baseball team and played center on the basketball team, but football was his chief claim to fame at Bucknell, which played a rugged schedule that included powerhouses such as Penn State, Army, and Navy.  For three years Christy was the varsity’s first-sting fullback, punter, and drop kicker; no less an authority than Walter Camp, the originator of the All-America team, called him “the greatest drop-kicker in intercollegiate competition.’[2]  Majoring in forestry, Mathewson also was a top-flight student who excelled in extracurricular activities, serving as class president and joining the band, glee club, two literary societies, and fraternities.  It was also at Bucknell that he met his future bride, Jane Stoughton.

During the summer after his freshman year, Mathewson signed his first professional contract with Taunton, Massachusetts, of the New England League.  He pitched in 17 games and went 2-13.  To make a bad season worse, Taunton folded, and the players had to arrange a Labor Day exhibition just to raise funds for their transportation home.  Before the start of the Bucknell-Pen football game that fall (in which Matty kicked two long-range field goals, then worth five points apiece, the same as touchdowns), an old major-league player named Phenomenal Smith signed him to a contract with Norfolk of the Virginia League for the following summer.  Reporting right after final exams, Mathewson became an immediate sensation in the Virginia League, amassing a 20-2 record by mid-July.  After the last of those victories, Smith took Matty aside in the clubhouse and offered him a choice between being sold to Philadelphia or New York of the National League.  Christy chose New York, thinking the Giants needed pitching more than the Phillies, and made his major-league debut on July 17, 1900, one month shy of his 20^th birthday.

Mathewson did little more than pitch batting practice for the Giants, becoming so frustrated that he wrote a friend, “I don’t give a rap whether they sign me or not.”[3]  Towards the end of the season, he received two starting assignments and lost both, ending the year winless in three decisions with a 5.08 ERA.  The Giants returned him to Norfolk.  That offseason the Cincinnati Reds drafted him for $100, then promptly traded him back to the Giants for a washed-up Amos Rusie.  It was part of a collusive grand plan to save $900; the Giants would have to pay $1,000 to Norfolk if they kept Mathewson after the season, and Reds owner John T. Brush was negotiating to buy the Giants from Andrew Freedman.  In 1901, his first full season in the majors, Mathewson pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals on July 15 and went 20-17 with a 2.41 ERA for the seventh-place Giants.  New York fans started calling their ace “The Big Six.”  Matty thought it was because of his height, but the nickname probably originated when sportswriter Sam Crane compared him to New York City’s Big Six Fire Company, the fastest to put out a fire[4].

The Giants floundered again at the start of 1902, prompting new manager Horace Fogel to play Mathewson in three games at first base and four in the outfield in addition to his pitching duties.  Many have implied that this was a sign of Fogel’s ineptitude. Still, years later Matty defended Fogel, explaining that the manager knew he was a good hitter and fielder and was willing to try anything to turn around his team.  The experiment ended, however, when John McGraw took over as manager on July 19.  To that point, Mathewson had won only one game, but over the rest of the season, he won 13, eight of them shutouts, winding up at 14-17 with a 2.12 ERA as the Giants finished last.  That winter Matty married Jane Stoughton while McGraw rebuilt his team through trades and free-agent acquisitions.  The Mathewsons honeymooned in Savannah, where the Giants held spring training.  Blanche McGraw took the young pitcher’s wife under her wing, while the McGraws treated Christy like the son they never had.

Christy Mathewson enjoyed a breakout year in 1903, the first of three consecutive 30-win seasons.  That year he went 30-13 with a 2.26 ERA and a career-high 267 strikeouts, which stood as the NL record until Sandy Koufax struck out 269 in 1961.  Matty was just as good in 1904, leading the Giants to the NL pennant with a 33-12 record and 2.03 ERA, but the following year he was even better.  Mathewson was 31-9 with a minuscule 1.28 ERA, capping off his banner 1905 season with the best World Series any pitcher ever had.  Opposing him in the opener on October 9 was Philadelphia’s Eddie Plank, a fellow Pennsylvanian who’d pitched against him several times while attending Gettysburg College.  Mathewson got the victory, as he had in each of their college match-ups, shutting out the Athletics on four hits.  After Chief Bender shut out the Giants in Game Two, Matty was ready to pitch again in Game Three but received an extra day’s rest when the game was rained out.  On October 12 he shut out the Athletics, 9-0, on another four-hitter.  The next day Joe McGinnity defeated Plank, 1-0, and Mathewson returned on just one day’s rest to clinch the Series with a 2-0 victory over Bender.  Within six days, he’d pitched 27 innings, allowing 14 hits, one walk, and no runs while outstriking 18.  The next week Matty and his catcher Frank Bowerman went hunting in Bowerman’s hometown of Romeo, Michigan.  Coaxed to pitch for Romeo in its final game of the season against archrival Lake Orion, Christy lost, 5-0, to an obscure group of semipros.

Mathewson was the toast of New York.  Endorsement offers poured in, with Matty “pitching” Arrow shirt collars, leg garters (for socks), undergarments, sweaters, athletic equipment, and numerous other products.  he received an offer to put his name on a pool hall/saloon but turned it down when his mother asked, “Do you really want your name associated with a place like that?”[5]  But in a pattern that haunted him for the rest of his life, disappointment and tragedy followed his greatest triumph.  In 1906 Matty caught a dose of diphtheria and nearly died, struggling to a 22-12 record and an uncharacteristic 2.97 ERA.  Later that season the Giants called up his brother Henry, who was only 19 years old.  In his first start, Henry walked 14 Chicago Cubs.  Disappointing though the ’06 season was, Matty experienced his greatest joy on October 6 when Jane gave birth to the couple’s first and only child, a son they named Christopher Jr.

Mathewson’s biggest year came in 1908 when he set career highs in wins (37), games (56), innings (390 2/3), and shutouts (11).  His control was never better, averaging less than one walk per nine innings.  Matty’s season ended in disappointment, however, when he took a no-decision in the “Merkle Game” and lost to Mordecai Brown, 4-2, in the one-game playoff.  By his own admission, he had “nothing on the ball” in that contest, and he also felt responsible that four people had lost their lives in falling accidents at the Polo Grounds that day (according to Christy’s second cousin, Harold “Alvie” Reynolds, if Mathewson had only said the word, the Giants would’ve refused to play and those tragedies would’ve been averted)[6].  Compounding his guilt, on the afternoon of January 14, 1909, Christy’s youngest brother, Nicholas, shot himself at their parents’ home in Pennsylvania.  Christy, in New York at the time, was summoned to Pennsylvania and arrived in time to be at his brother’s bedside when Nicholas, who never regained consciousness, was pronounced dead at 7:10 AM on January 15.  Two years earlier, Detroit Tigers manager  Hughie Jennings had wanted to sign the 17-year-old Nicholas and bring him directly to the majors, but Christy had advised against it[7].

 Mathewson nonetheless bounced back to go 25-6 with a career-best 1.14 ERA in 1909.  He helped the Giants win three consecutive NL pennants from 1911 to 1913, leading the NL in ERA in both 1911 (1.99) and 1913 (2.06).  in 1914, however, the 34-year-old Mathewson started experiencing constant pain in his left side towards the end of the season.  Doctors found nothing wrong and told him he was just getting old.  It affected his performance, however, his ERA increased by 3.00 in 1914 even though he still managed to win 24 games, and the following year he was just 8-14 with a 3.58 ERA.  By the midpoint of the 1916 season, Matty had won just three games.  Knowing that his days as an effective pitcher were behind him. He decided that he wanted to manage.  On July 20 McGraw came through for his friend, trading him for Cincinnati Reds player-manager Buck Herzog on the condition that he replace Herzog as manager.

Mathewson was a good manager who might have become a great one, but he could do little with Herzog’s leftovers and finished tied for last in 1916.  At least he added some interest to an otherwise dismal season, pitching one last game against his old rival on “Mordecai Brown Day” in Chicago.  In the only major-league game, he ever pitched in a uniform other than New York’s, the 36-year-old Matty yielded 15 hits but defeated a nearly 40-year-old Brown, 10-8, giving him the 373^rd and final victory of his 17-year career.  In 1917 Mathewson guided Cincinnati to a 78-76 record, its first winning season since 1909, but tragedy struck on July 1 when his brother Henry died of tuberculosis at age 30, leaving behind four daughters.  Matty’s Reds continued their improvement in 1918, but on August 9 he suspended his notorious first baseman Hal Chase, after confronting him about suspicious-looking misplays and a $50 payment to pitcher Jimmy Ring.  Cincinnati went on to finish third but by that point Mathewson was in France, having been commissioned a captain in the Army’s Chemical Warfare Division.  While Mathewson was overseas, Chase’s case came before the National Commission; without the star witness against him, Chase was exonerated.

While in France Mathewson endured a bad bout of influenza and was exposed to mustard gas during a training exercise.  He was hospitalized and apparently had recovered by the time he returned to the United States in the spring.  On his arrival, however, he discovered that Pat Moran was managing the Reds.  When owner Garry Herrmann didn’t hear from Mathewson that he’d be back in time for spring training (both had written each other but neither had received the other’s message), he did what he felt he needed to and hired a new manager.  Mathewson resigned from the Reds and accepted a position from McGraw as assistant manager of the Giants.  In 1919 New York finished second to the Matty-built Reds, and Mathewson covered the World Series for the New York Times.  Before the first game, he saw several Chicago White Sox conversing with Chase in the lobby of Cincinnati’s Hotel Sinton.  It had been rumored that doubting the legitimacy of the Series before a single series pitch was thrown, Mathewson discussed the possibility of a fix with sportswriter Hugh Fullerton and agreed to circle suspicious-looking plays on his scorecard[8].  Angry at what he saw, believing that “his” team would have won the Series on its own merit, Matty sent his findings to the National Commission and walked away from the Black Sox Scandal.

Returning to the Giants in 1920-21, Mathewson was unable to shake the cough that had plagued him since joining the club in 1919, and the pain in his left side was back and worse than ever.  The physicians who examined him in 1921 immediately diagnosed the condition as tuberculosis.  It’s possible that he’s contracted the disease from his brother Henry and had it since 1914, but the physicians who’d examined him then were looking for muscle strain, not lesions irritating his lung and rubbing the inside of his ribs.  Along with his wife Jane, Christy set off for the tuberculosis sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he initially received a prognosis of six weeks to live.  For the next two years, he fought as hard as he ever had on the diamond to recover from the deadly disease.  But in the winter of 1922-23 Matty thought he was strong enough to return to baseball.

That winter McGraw urged Judge Emil Fuchs of New York to buy the Boston Braves.  “And if you buy them,” McGraw said, “I’ve got the man who can run the club for you.”[9]  On February 11, 1923, Fuchs announced that he’d bought the Braves and Christy Mathewson would run the club as president.  His physicians warned him that he couldn’t undertake too much, but Matty nonetheless threw himself into the task of rebuilding the pitiful Braves.  Some say his cough returned in 1925 after he was soaked in a spring-training rain shower.  Whether it was stress, the rain, or a disease that wouldn’t give in, Mathewson’s body began to fail, and he was forced to return to Saranac Lake where he died on October 7, 1925.  On that day McGraw was in Pittsburgh, covering the World Series for a newspaper syndicate.  When he received the news, he immediately left for New York to meet his wife, Blanche.  Together they went to Saranac Lake to be with Jane Mathewson and Christy Jr.

Three days later, with his manager, wife, and son standing at the graveside, Christy Mathewson was laid to rest in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in view of the Bucknell campus.  Today there is a memorial gate at the entrance to the campus, built in 1927 with donations from every big-league team, and in 1989 Bison football stadium was renovated and re-dedicated as Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium.

Last revised: April 17, 2021 (zp)

An earlier version of this biography appeared in SABR’s “Deadball Stars of the National League” (Brassey’s Inc., 2004), edited by Tom Simon. It also appeared in “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors“ (SABR, 2018), edited by Rob Edelman and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

For this biography, the author used a number of contemporary sources, especially those found in the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes

1.     Grantland Rice, “Christy Mathewson,” obituary,
        New York Herald Tribune, October 9, 1925.
2.     A Loomis Field Hero (Christy Mathewson
        Stadium Re-Dedication Program), Bucknell
        University Athletics, September 30, 1989, 3.
3.     Personal letter written to Earl Manchester by
        Christy Mathewson, dated July 26, 1900.
        Facsimile copy in author’s possession.
4.     The Big Six Fire Company in New York won
        several contests in New York fire departments
        in the early part of the twentieth century and
        was regarded as the quickest able to respond to
        an emergency. The nickname for Mathewson
        (“The Big Six”) is noted in Frank Graham, The
        New York Giants: An Informal History of A
        Great Baseball Club (New
        York: G P Putnam and Sons, 1952), 30.
5.     Author interview with Alvie Reynolds, August
        1984, Factoryville, Pennsylvania.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Author interview with Grace Mathewson Van
        Lengen (niece of Christy Mathewson, daughter
        of Henry Mathewson) Taped Interview, August
        15, 1985, Liverpool, New York.
8.     Hugh Fullerton, “Is Big League Baseball Being
        Run for Gamblers, with Players in the Deal?
        ”New York Evening World, December 15, 1919.
        Fullerton went into more detail about his World
        Series conversations with Mathewson in Hugh
        Fullerton, “I Recall,” The Sporting News, October
        17, 1935. Thanks to Jacob Pomrenke for these
        citations.
9.     Baseball’s Immortals No. 7 (Cooperstown, New
        York: Home Plate Press, 1961), 27.

Full Name: Christopher Mathewson
Born: August 12, 1880, at Factoryville, PA (USA)
Died: October 7, 1925, at Saranac Lake, NY (USA)