Ray Robinson (1) (1920–)

I had an early affinity for the great baseball pitcher of the early 1900s, Christy Mathewson, no doubt because we shared a birthday, albeit one 70 years apart. He died 25 years before I was born, so of course I never saw him play. But we were August 12 babies and he was the greatest pitcher of all time, they said, and I wanted to be a ballplayer more than anything, so he became one of my quartet of baseball heroes -- Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, and Mathewson. Only Mantle did I ever get to see play, and then only on television. But I devoured books on baseball and the men who had played the game over the century (then) of its existence. I wish I'd been able to read this book then, when I was a boy, as I have no doubt it would have lifted Mathewson even higher in my esteem. As it is, I'm very happy to have read it now. It's a story of, as the subtitle has it, an American hero, but not, as so often the term means today, merely a great player who thus becomes a hero, but in the grander sense of a man who behaved heroically, in his life, in his sport, and for his country. Few players have ever graced the game as Christy Mathewson did, and few are remembered in quite the same manner. Matty was one of those athletes about whom almost no one had an unkind thing to say. Ray Robinson has done a fine job reporting Matty's life, covering games and seasons with wonderful detail. If the inner Mathewson remains somewhat hidden from the reader, it is possibly because the inner Mathewson was not often allowed out of the man himself. This is a fine biography.… (altro)