The Three Mathewsons

The life story of Christy Mathewson, the Hall of Fame Baseball Player . . . his wife and son. When Sports Illustrated recently named Christy Mathewson the greatest right-handed pitcher in the history of baseball, it was a choice woven by both prowess and character. The first All-American hero, Matty aroused the values of a nation while bringing dignity to a game that had previously been reserved for ruffians. “Matty handed the game an indefinable lift in culture, brains, and personality,” said Grantland Rice. “He is the only man I ever met who in spirit and inspiration was greater than his game.” To grab a page from modern culture, The Christian Gentleman (Big Six) would have been considered the "first Tim Tebow." And for much of the twentieth century, the Mathewson family – father, wife, and son – had a dramatic hold on greatness. A charter member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Christy Mathewson had been a Bucknell University football star at the turn of the century. While his rise to legend would be swift, his grip on America would never falter. From king of baseball to a hero of World War I, Big Six was a gifted man in a unique time. Jane Stoughton was charming, smart, beautiful . . . a student at the Bucknell Female Institute who, had she listened to her father, never would have fallen for “a grown man playing a little boy’s game that had no future.” Jane Mathewson would eventually be known as baseball’s “most gracious widow.” Christy Jr. was a strikingly handsome and brilliant student who graduated cum laude from Bucknell in 1927, then followed his own path to become a world-renowned pilot and adventurer. His long list of heroics in the shadows of war revealed a man who thrived on challenge. But, like his father, the son would also die at far too young an age. With a touch of historical fiction to begin every chapter, The Three Mathewsons is an unusual glimpse at three extraordinary lives, from childhood days to the center stage of a nation.