I am a CristyMathewson fan. I will read anything about the man. This is a wonderful tribute to an outstanding man and baseball hero, things we have painfully few of today.

Enjoyed immensely. Well written and researched- I’d read a lot about Christy but not this stuff. If you love stuff about early baseball, you will love this stuff.

Who was the first American sports superstar? It seems a bit like splitting hairs, but the author makes a pretty good case for Christy Mathewson. He compares Matty to fellow Hall of Fame inductees, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.

The book is divided into two parts. The first gives us a quick history into the newspaper business and its rise to prominence in New York and beyond. It tells of the emergence of the sports beat writer, evolving from sports reporters to the front page news. However, the second half of the book is the real gem. It's billed as "the lost life story of Christy Mathewson". Written as an obituary after Christy's death, it ran as a series in the newspapers as a final accurate salute to the man. The story is part autobiographical, written by Mathewson himself with content from his wife Jane with additional material from writer Bozeman Bulger, a personal friend of the Mathewsons.

As a reader of many of Mathewson's biographies, I find this new-old material very exciting. Bits and pieces of this article have come out over the years but when printed in its entirety, it paints a true picture of who the man was. For example, many authors may lead you to believe that Christy was aloof or uppity, but after reading this it clearly shows that he was a shy, private person who did not seek the spotlight, even though the limelight stalked him.

I highly recommend this book for baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike for a glimpse of the real person Mathewson was.

This book, for me, is the first time that I have read anything totally about Christy Mathewson; most of the time, his name is referenced in another book that I am reading about someone else. Here, the author gives you a look into his life before baseball, while playing baseball, and then after his time in WWI, and his problems with his lungs because he was exposed to gas. The author also puts his accomplishments up against Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. All of those men had outstanding records, but after comparing them, I had to agree with Mathewson being the top, even though I don’t like to pick one player, but you can’t go against what he did, especially in the Series of 1905. An outstanding book with lots of research, and for a baseball fan, really worth the read.

Note: Thank you to NetGalley, University of Nebraska Press, and author Alan D. Gaff for the advanced reader copy of this book. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

One thing to keep in mind while reading Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson is that over one hundred years ago, the relationship between sportswriters and the teams they covered was quite different from what it is now. Writers in that day and age had close relationships with the team and individual players and were complicit in not reporting anything that could prove embarrassing to the team or the individual.

That’s important because this book is not a modern biography of Christy Mathewson. Prior to his death from tuberculosis in 1925, he had begun work on an autobiography with the help of his wife, Jane, and sportswriter and close friend, Bozeman Bulger. This book reprints the results of that effort, which is often dated, as to be expected. However, it’s also lacking any negative about Mathewson. True, he was known as “The Gentleman” or “The Christian Gentleman” while he played, the “Christian” part coming from a promise to his mother not to play baseball on Sundays. It also seems that there was a dearth of players who had anything negative to say about Mathewson after his death.

The first few chapters are written by the author, Alan D. Gaff, as he makes his case for Christy Mathewson being considered baseball’s first superstar. He spends an inordinate amount of time on the lives of other players he considers to be possible holders of the title, Baseball’s First Superstar. This felt an awful lot like filler and wasn’t a great way to start the book. However, he also recalls the atmosphere of the times that led to the close relationship between sportswriters and the players they covered. This is important to understand as you consider the rest of the book.

The bulk of the book is a reproduction of the draft manuscript found among Bulger’s papers, where they were working on a definitive biography of Mathewson. Several chapters were written by Mathewson himself, but the bulk of it is notes put together by Bulger while crafting the biography he and Mathewson wanted to publish. Following his death, it would seem Bulger collaborated with Jane in trying to finish the project, but it never saw the light of day until now. It is very interesting to read about events from over a hundred years ago. Everything was so different for the players. This was a time before there was media outside of the newspapers. The writers really had to work hard to create a readable article that described what the readers couldn’t see. The access that sportswriters had to teams and players was predicated on the fact that both saw it as a way of generating publicity for the team as well as selling papers. It was a mutually beneficial situation.

Of course, this was a time when people thought much differently about things than they do now. The typical vices Mathewson stayed away from. There’s no record of him drinking and carousing the way there was about Babe Ruth. He did gamble a bit with his fellow players, but their card games seem to be the extent of that vice. Smoking cigarettes was seen as a healthy thing to do at the time, and modern readers might be shocked at Mathewson’s views on it. It was not considered to be a vice, and only the tuberculosis he contracted, which led to his death, caused him to stop that habit.

I found Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson to be a very entertaining book, especially the parts written by Mathewson himself. Although I’d say Babe Ruth might have an edge on that title simply because he was more widely known than Mathewson, I do think Mathewson embodied some of the best characteristics that people look to admire. If there were faults, you won’t find them in this book. It is a great piece of history.