The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball - Softcover

Deford, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802142478 ISBN 13: 9780802142474

Publisher: Grove Press, 2006

Synopsis

In The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford, NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson was one of baseball's first superstars. Over six feet tall, clean cut, and college educated, he didn't pitch on the Sabbath and rarely spoke an ill word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York Giants manager John McGraw, by contrast, was ferocious. The pugnacious tough guy was already a star infielder who, with the Baltimore Orioles, helped develop a new, scrappy style of baseball, with plays like the hit-and-run, the Baltimore chop, and the squeeze play. When McGraw joined the Giants in 1902, the Giants were coming off their worst season ever. Yet within three years, Mathewson clinched New York City's first World Series for McGraw's team by throwing three straight shutouts in only six days, an incredible feat that is invariably called the greatest World Series performance ever. Because of their wonderful odd-couple association, baseball had its first superstar, the Giants ascended into legend, and baseball as a national pastime bloomed.

About this title

About the Author:

The author of fourteen books, Frank Deford has worked in virtually every medium. He is senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated, where his byline first appeared in 1962. A weekly commentator for NPR's Morning Edition, he is also a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. As a journalist, Deford was most recently presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles, and has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters. Voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times, he was also cited by The American Journalism Review as the nation's finest sportswriter and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review. He has been presented with a Christopher Award and awards for distinguished service to journalism from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University. For his radio and TV work, Deford has won both an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* When John McGraw stepped down in 1933 after 31 years as manager of the New York Giants, the team had won 10 National League pennants and three World Series trophies--and baseball had become the national pastime. McGraw--known somewhat redundantly as "Little Napoleon"--was the most well-known personality in the game during his early years at the Giants' helm, but his celebrity was soon outstripped by his star player, the game's first "hero," pitcher Christy Mathewson, who won 30 or more games in each of McGraw's first three full seasons as his manager. Deford, a senior contributing editor at Sports Illustrated and author of 14 books, does much more than make a case for his two subjects' sporting legacy. He portrays their fame and emerging preeminence in America's consciousness as parallel to and emblematic of baseball's explosion in popularity, showing in the process how the growth of sport was made possible in the early years of the twentieth century by the rise of the middle class and the increase in disposable income. With McGraw as the gruff but fair father figure and the college-educated Mathewson as the golden boy whom parents wanted for their daughters, the pair became the first sports figures to intrigue the public as individuals. Deford effectively weaves the threads of these two touchstone lives into the broader tapestry of an ascendant sport and a rapidly modernizing America. A fine baseball book but just as fine a study of American popular culture. Wes Lukowsky
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About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0802142478
• ISBN 13: 9780802142474
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256