Pitching in a Pinch: Or Baseball from the Inside - Softcover

Mathewson, Christy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803282125 ISBN 13: 9780803282124

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1994

Synopsis

Christy Mathewson (1880–1925) was the greatest baseball pitcher of his day, a hero with appeal reaching beyond sports. A college-educated player from Pennsylvania farm country, he restored respectability to a game tarnished by the rowdies who had dominated baseball in the 1890s.

Pitching in a Pinch, originally published in 1912, is an insider’s account blending anecdote, biography, instruction, and social history. It celebrates baseball as it was played in the first decade of the twentieth century by famous contemporaries like Honus Wagner and Rube Marquand, managers like John McGraw and Connie Mack, and many others. Always sensitive to psychology as well as technique, Mathewson describes the “dangerous batters” he faced, the “peculiarities” of big-league pitchers, the “good and bad” of coaching, umpiring, sign-stealing, base-running, spring training, and the importance of superstition to athletes. Matty, as he was called, makes the reader feel that tense moment when a player in a pinch must use his head.

About this title

About the Author

Introducing this Bison Books edition is Eric Rolfe Greenberg, whose acclaimed novel The Celebrant (1993), also a Bison Book, portrays the immortal Christy Mathewson.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803282125
• ISBN 13: 9780803282124
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320