Christy Mathewson

Christopher Mathewson pitched 17 seasons in the major leagues and won 373 games, all but one of them for the New York Giants. He posted a career ERA of 2.13, threw 79 shutouts, and walked fewer batters per nine innings than almost any pitcher in history. In the 1905 World Series, he threw three complete-game shutouts in six days, allowing 13 hits and one walk across 27 innings. He was also, by every contemporary account, one of the most admired men in American public life, a college-educated, clean-living counterpoint to the roughneck culture that dominated professional baseball at the turn of the twentieth century.

Bucknell to the Polo Grounds

Mathewson was born in Factoryville, Pennsylvania, and attended Bucknell University, where he played football, baseball, and basketball. He was class president and a member of the literary society. His education and bearing set him apart from most professional ballplayers of the era, and his reputation for personal integrity followed him throughout his career. Sportswriters and fans called him "Big Six," a nickname whose origin is disputed but most often attributed to Sam Crane of the New York Journal, who compared Mathewson's speed to that of New York City's famous Big Six fire company.

He reached the Giants in 1900 after a brief stint with the Cincinnati Reds, who drafted him and then traded him to New York before he had proved anything. John McGraw, who took over as Giants manager in 1902, recognized what he had and built his pitching staff around Mathewson for the next decade and a half.

The Fadeaway and the Three Shutouts

Mathewson's signature pitch was the fadeaway, a reverse-breaking ball that moved away from left-handed hitters instead of toward them. Modern pitchers call it a screwball. He threw it with such precision and so little apparent effort that batters often swung through it without understanding what they had missed.

From 1903 to 1914, Mathewson won 20 or more games twelve times, including four seasons of 30 or more victories. In 1908, he went 37-11 with a 1.43 ERA and 11 shutouts. He completed 34 of 44 starts. During the 1913 season, he pitched 68 consecutive innings without issuing a walk, a National League record that stood for more than sixty years.

His defining performance came in the 1905 World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics. He started Games 1, 3, and 5 and shut out Connie Mack's team each time. In Game 1 on October 9, he allowed four hits, walked none, and struck out six. In Game 3 on October 12, he again allowed four hits with one walk and eight strikeouts. In Game 5 on October 14, he allowed five hits, completing the series with 18 strikeouts and a single walk in 27 innings. No pitcher has matched the feat.

The World Series That Got Away

Mathewson returned to the World Series three more times, in 1911, 1912, and 1913, each time against the Athletics or their American League rivals. The results reversed. In the 1911 Series, he won Game 1 but lost Games 3 and 4 as the Athletics took the championship. In 1912 against the Boston Red Sox, he pitched brilliantly across three complete games and posted a 0.94 ERA, but the Giants' defense failed him and he finished with no wins and two losses. The 1912 Series ended on a dropped fly ball by Fred Snodgrass in the tenth inning of the final game, a play that gave the Red Sox their opening.

In the 1913 Series, he won Game 2 with a ten-inning shutout and lost Game 5 to Eddie Plank. His career World Series record finished at 5-5 with a 0.97 ERA, numbers that capture both his dominance and the limits of what one pitcher can control.

Cincinnati and the War

Mathewson was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in July 1916 and named player-manager. He pitched one final game on September 4, winning against Mordecai Brown in what became a farewell for both men. In 1918, at age 38, he resigned from the Reds to join the Army's Chemical Warfare Service. He was commissioned as a captain and shipped to France, where he served alongside Ty Cobb and Branch Rickey as an instructor in gas defense.

During a training exercise near Chaumont, France, in which soldiers entered sealed chambers filled with poisonous gas, Mathewson was exposed when a signal to don gas masks was missed. He told Cobb afterward, "Ty, I got a good dose of the stuff. I feel terrible." The connection between the exposure and his subsequent illness remains debated by historians, but Mathewson developed tuberculosis shortly after the war. He moved to Saranac Lake, New York, to seek treatment at the Trudeau Sanatorium.

He died there on October 7, 1925, at age 45, during the 1925 World Series. Baseball held a moment of silence before that day's game.

The First Class

Mathewson received 205 of 226 votes in the Hall of Fame's inaugural 1936 election, a 90.7 percent share. He finished behind Ty Cobb (222 votes) and Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner (215 votes each), but ahead of Walter Johnson (189 votes). He had been dead for eleven years by the time the vote was taken. The five men elected that day became the first class of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Mathewson was the only one among them who could not attend the 1939 induction ceremony in Cooperstown.