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2025-08-09 16:27:05
Christy Mathewson was one of the 5 inductees in the first class of the baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. John McGraw was inducted a year later in 1937. It can be argued that both were the greatest in their respective positions on the field - Mathewson as a pitcher and McGraw as a manager. It's interesting to note that Mathewson and Walter Johnson were voted into the Hall of Fame one year before Cy Young even though Young retired before either of those pitchers, so why is the best pitcher award named the Cy Young Award and not the Christy Mathewson Award?Frank DeFord does a fantastic job in describing the lives (personal and baseball) of these two greats of the game, as well as the era they lived in. One of the topics I found interesting was the involvement of gambling in baseball at the time. Gambling was already a problem in the 1900s and early 1910s, and perhaps it led to the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Deford writes "the fixed World Series of 1919 was a climax rather than an oddity." (p.116). Deford doesn't cover this topic in great detail but he touches on it throughout the book just enough to give the reader a feel for the gambling atmosphere in the game. Pete Rose's actions would not have raised an eyebrow in that era.I enjoyed this book tremendously. Frank DeFord has an easy-to-read writing style. I did not know much about Mathewson or McGraw before reading this book, so I feel I learned a lot about these greats of the game. I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in baseball.
D. W.
2025-07-18 18:37:54
A good read with multiple vignettes that are well worth reading through the other fluffy stuff to get to. There seems a bit too much of trying to combine a dual biography but only scratching the surface of two of the most defining characters in baseball history. Their friendship as well focuses more on world travel than substance. However, the narrative of games played, particularly the World Series, is sharp and witty. This is a 3.5 star book.
Jennifer
2025-06-18 11:02:46
This is a great read for anyone who loves baseball. It's all the standard basic information about our country's favorite pastime. It explains how baseball got started and became the game we all love.
Demosthenese
2025-05-28 11:23:05
Terrific book. I have read both major biographies of John McGraw, who I admit to admire. But this book puts him and Christy Mathewson into a perspective of the times...its not just dates and times and ballplayers but the context in which they played and managed. Frank Deford is a phenomenal writer and he outdid himself with this one. I am a slow reader, but I went through this one in a few days, word for word. May even read it again it was that good....enjoy.
Chaim Wachtel
2025-05-26 15:32:50
Deform does a wonderful job of taking us back to the beginning of baseball... he weaves a story of two hall of famers and their lives together... beautifully written, with a sometimes whimsical look back at the times. A great read for any baseball fan, even those like me who were very familiar with the story
R. R. Costas Jr.
2025-03-12 16:05:00
If you are a baseball aficionado and amateur historian, you're not going to read anything here you haven't read or heard before. If you are just starting to really get into the history of this great game, this would be an excellent way to start. There is no question about the writing. Frank Deford was one of the great sportswriters and his love of baseball is unabashed. Here he gives us mini-biographies of two of the great---and opposite---personalities of the Dead Ball Era.To the person unfamiliar with that era, this is an excellent prologue for further reading. Deford does a great job of giving us an idea of how different the game was at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, but also how similar.As many other writers, he does the best he can to explain how widely beloved Christy Mathewson was in his time by fans, teammates, media and opponents alike. I think his comparison to David Robinson (the San Antonio Spurs basketball star) is not the best he could do, with proper respect to Mr. Robinson due here (the book came out in 2005.) I would have thought that Cal Ripken, Jr. would have been closer to home on that, but that wasn't Mr. Deford's choice. Either way, I don't think that today we still can imagine the greatness of Mathewson and I don't know that in today's society, with the press and media constantly looking for chinks in everyone's armor, that it could happen. Our loss.But to the reader already familiar with that period and characters like McGraw and Mathewson, this will likely be no more than a breezy, pleasant reminder of things we had heard before. I did enjoy reading it and reliving the lessons I had been given already...especially as the baseball season winds down and we head to the magical post-season.
Tommy Mann
2025-02-25 14:48:32
Very good dual biography of Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, but I don't quite get the subtitle. It's great to read about the lives and careers of Big Six and Muggsy, but just how DID the Giants create "modern baseball"?
MJL
2025-02-11 14:30:24
Christy Mathewson & John McGraw were an unlikely pair of friends: a quiet, devout evangelical and an rough and tough Irish Catholic. But together they made a huge impact on the game of baseball in the early 1900s. Deford paints a superb picture of the men, their relationship, and the game they loved. Highly recommended.
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