The Old Ball Game - Frank Deford

John McGraw

"... Tributes to eras one did not grow up in or later cover are quite rare, which makes Frank Deford's portrait of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, whose symbiotic brilliance never shone brighter than in 1905, all the more alluring. The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball tips a journalist's fedora, rather than a child's cap, to one of the most remarkable pairings in sports history. 'Never,' Deford writes, 'were two men in sport so close to one another and yet so far apart in ilk and personality.' His proclamation is tough to dispute. Muggsy McGraw, a squat, pugnacious Irishman, had made his name years before becoming manager of the New York Giants by starring for the roughhouse Baltimore Orioles, a virtual street gang that spiked shins with abandon and brazenly cheated their way to pennants."
NYT: The Old Ball Game

"Frank Deford writes with a felicitous pen and with a charming approach to the game of baseball. He creates beautiful images of the game and in an almost melodramatic manner ties the lives of Muggsy (John McGraw) and Matty (Christy Mathewson) together. His writing is peerless, to borrow another baseball nickname. When describing McGraw's penchant for gaining weight. Deford states that McGraw went 'from being a beardless Katzenjammer Kid to a paunchy dead ringer for W. C. Fields' (p. 66). Throughout the book, Deford's delightful images spark the reader's mind if they are old enough to remember either the crazy Katzenjammers or the quaint, naughty, and off-beat humor of W. C. Fields's comedy. Perhaps the only visual image of the two friends that Deford evaded was that of Mutt and Jeff; but I may have just missed it."
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

Christy Mathewson

"When John McGraw stepped down in 1933 after 31 years as manager of the New York Giants, the team had won 10 National League pennants and three World Series trophies--and baseball had become the national pastime. McGraw--known somewhat redundantly as 'Little Napoleon'--was the most well-known personality in the game during his early years at the Giants' helm, but his celebrity was soon outstripped by his star player, the game's first 'hero,' pitcher Christy Mathewson, who won 30 or more games in each of McGraw's first three full seasons as his manager. Deford, a senior contributing editor at Sports Illustrated and author of 14 books, does much more than make a case for his two subjects' sporting legacy. He portrays their fame and emerging preeminence in America's consciousness as parallel to and emblematic of baseball's explosion in popularity, showing in the process how the growth of sport was made possible in the early years of the twentieth century by the rise of the middle class and the increase in disposable income. With McGraw as the gruff but fair father figure and the college-educated Mathewson as the golden boy whom parents wanted for their daughters, the pair became the first sports figures to intrigue the public as individuals. Deford effectively weaves the threads of these two touchstone lives into the broader tapestry of an ascendant sport and a rapidly modernizing America. A fine baseball book but just as fine a study of American popular culture." Wes Lukowsky, American Library Association
amazon: The Old Ball Game