Educated at Bucknell University, Mathewson was class president and a natural athlete who would go on to become one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history. After pitching for a minor league team in 1899, he was signed by the New York Giants, but returned to the minors after losing three games. He returned to the Giants in 1900 in a trade and pitched for them for the next 15 years. He is credited with inventing the "screwball" - a reverse curve ball. His three consecutive complete game shutouts in the 1905 World Series are still regarded by many as the greatest pitching achievement of all time. When his career was over, he enlisted in the Army as a captain in 1918. He was accidentally gassed in a training exercise and developed TB, which would claim his life 7 years later. He became a coach for the Giants in 1919, but illness limited his time with the club. He served as president of the Boston Braves in 1923. In 1936, he became one of the original five inductees (together with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Honus Wagner) to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Mathewson wrote a number of short stories and produced two full-length books, Pitching in a Pinch (1912) and The Battle of Baseball (1912). His other works include Pitcher Pollock (1914), Catcher Craig (1915), Won in the Ninth (1916), First Base Faulkner (1916) and Second Base Sloan (1917). |
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