New Biography Unearths a Grand View of a Baseball Great

Alan D. Gaff has discovered some of baseball’s most important lost works in ‘Baseball’s First Superstar.’

Alan D. Gaff unearths forgotten stories of baseball great Christy Mathewson.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Christy Mathewson’s death. The legendary pitcher, who was part of the first class of inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, has in a sense been resurrected. Historian and baseball savant, Alan D. Gaff, has again unearthed material from one of the game’s greats. Just as he did with his 2020 book, “Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir,” the author has gifted baseball fans with a piece of America’s pastime that might well have been lost to history.

In his new work, “Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson,” Gaff takes the reader through the early 20th century era of baseball when the sportswriters of newspapers and magazines gave the game its mythic status. The folklore of the game had become pronounced by the middle of the century, as Gaff quotes a 1945 article from sportswriter Whitney Martin, stating that sportswriters “glamorized the game, surrounded it with an aura of romance, personalized and humanized the players, built reputations.” Gaff, by some kind fate, discovered lost material that indeed “personalized and humanized” Mathewson.

Mathewson warming up as a New York Giant in 1910. Library of Congress. Public Domain

Most of the articles Gaff presents were written to be the baseball player’s biography, and much of that was written by one of the golden boys of the golden era of newspapers, Bozeman Bulger. Although their job was to “glamorize the game,” a number of sportswriters made such a significant impact on baseball that they themselves became icons in their own right. As the author notes, “Being a sportswriter prior to the World War meant joining a unique fraternity that assembled at the various watering holes in New York City.”

Finding the First Star

That unique fraternity helped expand the game across the country and made familiar the names of Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Babe Ruth. These other four joined Mathewson to comprise the first class of inductees into the Hall of Fame. These names are probably far more familiar to readers than that of Mathewson. Nonetheless, Gaff utilizes this class to pose and ultimately answer a question: Who was baseball’s first superstar.

The author’s essays about these players makes a great case for each. Gaff, however, qualifies Mathewson, writing that, “Talent is common but marvelous talent is quite rare. When combined with the character of a true sportsman and gentlemanly behavior, this country takes notice, as it did with Christy Mathewson, who was upheld as a symbol of American sportsmanship.” Undoubtedly, it is Gaff’s hope that the country again takes notice of Mathewson.

The centerpiece of Gaff’s book is Bulger’s lost biography on Mathewson, which was serialized in newspapers a century ago. The author does, though, add other articles from that era in order “to fill in gaps to keep the story flowing.” Among these pieces are articles written by Mathewson himself, as well as a heartrending piece by Mathewson’s wife, Jane, shortly after the pitcher lost his battle with tuberculosis.

The Best in Baseball and Humanity

“Baseball’s First Superstar” presents the best of baseball and its players. It also presents the best in people, a person, in the form of Mathewson. Although it’s certainly a baseball book, it’s not strictly about that. Gaff’s collection of articles written by those who knew the first class hall of famer best is about something more profound than a game. The book is a discussion on friendship, duty, sacrifice, love, and hope against a deadly disease, which he contracted during World War I (a war he did not have to volunteer for).

These ideals, in a sense, can be summed up in the final pages of the book in Jane’s article. She states, “Though I had known Christy as only a wife can know her husband for twenty years, I never quite realized his strength of character and his fortitude and his sweet consideration for others until he was stricken ill.”

Gaff quotes Mathewson’s old friend and former manager, John J. McGraw, who wrote a letter to Bulger, stating, “I do want to say that the annals of sport would not be complete without an official biography of Matty and I think every boy, young man, old man and a great many women will read it.” A century later that statement still rings true.

Baseball fans can once more be thankful that Gaff has again sleuthed his way into the lore of America’s pastime and presented a player whose name we know, but personage we do not. Just as with his Lou Gehrig work, Gaff has unearthed a trove of baseball treasure with descriptions and stories of Mathewson by those who knew him best. Such an undertaking is a testament to the author’s love and appreciation for America’s great game.

’Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson’ By Alan D. Gaff University of Nebraska Press, May 1, 2025 Hardcover: 248 pages

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