Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1912 — STAR PITCHER OF NEW YORK GIANTS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STAR PITCHER OF NEW YORK GIANTS

By HOMER CROY.

You have to put on your glasses, grip your hands and hold your breath till the stars come to find Factoryville, Pennsylvania, on* the map. When a freight train backs on the siding you could drive along the right of way withput knowing a town was there until you got down to the crossroads and saw the grocery signs. But sometime there may be a monument there that will tickle heaven’s blue, ethereal dome, for it is the birthplace of Christopher Mathewson. There —that puts it on the map. When he was a boy Inshort trousers and jam he wanted to be a lumber dealer. His idea of the highest, most delirious Joy that could come to one on this mundane sphere was to put on a carpenter's apron with a real pocket for shingle nails and another for Number 9’s, climb up on a pile and throw down buroak posts .or measure joists with a man’s folding pocket rule. As soon as School was out each evening he would hurry to the lumberyard and stand around In open-mouthed wonder, watching the dealer check off the ends with blue chalk and walking around as unconcerned as could be with a wonderful flat-sided lead pencil Sticking behind his ear. Christy’s life has been a bitter disappointment, for nowv although thirty-two years old, he has never realized his ideal, never once having. worked In a lumberyard, now being only a hired pitcher for a baseball team! The first curve he learned to throw was the "roundhouse,” one of * the old-fashioned ilk, so slow that the catcher always tied on his mtt after' it started; hut it was the first curve ever seen in Factoryville and the people flocked In Bwearfng and byhecking up and down that it was ag’in the law of Natur 1 for a ball to go crooked, They thought that for

pore wonder and amazement Joshua, who made the sun stand still, was just cutting his milk teeth compared to Christy Mathewson. For the first professional game he played he received one dollar; now he wouldn’t crook his finger for less than forty cents—three crooks for a dollar —getting S3OO for each game he pitches. He went to college but lacked one year of being able to write A. B. after his name in a careless, nonchalant hand. He used tojfltch for the Y. M. 0. A.., hut he came to New York city for tide first time over the Erie. The only other thing that can be said against him is that he smokes. He is a regular devil at that, sometimes smoking a cigar in the morning and a cigarette before company in the evening as cool as you please. The day he landed in New York he had two telescope bags and had to ask his way twenty-two times to get to the Polo grounds, and now every time he wants to cross the street or go around the corner to get shaved he calls a taxicab. In the winter time he lives in St Nicholas Place, New York city, sells insurance and plays checkers, Ts the vice-president of the Consolidated Air, Ozone and Oxygen company was just ready to sign for a life insurance policy for a quarter million, and somebody would come along and sing out, “Say, Christy, I’ll bet I can beat you a game,” he would Jump up from the vice-president and hustle away after a board muttering his awfullest oath: “By George, I’ll betvon can’t.” He would rather play checkers than be turned loose in the kitchen of the Knickerbocker hotel with at vtwo hundred pound can of case parfait just opened square in front of him and the handle of a tablespoon pointing toward him. (Copyright. 1811 by W. G. Chapman.)

Christy Mathewson as Been by Artist Cesare.