Frank Deford (1938–2017)

Summary: A dual biography of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants and their partnership in elevating the game.

Muggsy and Mattie. Those are the nicknames of the subjects of this dual biography of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson. Two men could not be more different. McGraw grew up in a hardscrabble Irish community and was a scrapper as ballplayer and manager. He fought with umpires, often getting ejected from games. Mathewson was the good looking, college-educated show more pitcher, the poster child for “muscular Christianity.” Surprisingly, they got along so well that they and their wives shared lodgings for many years. The secret, Frank Deford reveals, is that they loved the art and strategy of the game, and not just the physical athleticism.

In this work, veteran sportswriter Frank Deford combines a dual biography of the two men with a study of their unique partnership. Together, they elevated the New York Giants, and professional baseball, from mediocrity to greatness. They were a part of the transformation of baseball from poorly run teams of “ne’er do wells” to increasingly well-managed and more highly disciplined teams. This was accompanied by a move from ramshackle, small stadiums to modern concrete and steel ballparks able to accommodate the larger crowds the game attracted.

But it almost didn’t happen. Specifically, Mathewson signed for a mediocre Giants team under poor ownership. And McGraw loved his wife’s home of Baltimore, coming to manage the new Baltimore franchise in the American League. From 1900 to 1902, Matty showed only glimpses of future greatness, including a no-hitter in 1901. But McGraw was finding out he didn’t fit the manager mold of Ban Johnson, the organizer of the American League. So he was forced out in 1902. Then New York hired him, along with a pitching ace from Baltimore, “Iron Man” McGinnity.

By 1905, they won the pennant and agreed to play in the nascent World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics. While there had been a couple previous “inter-league series” this was the first to garner national attention. Deford takes us through game by game, chronicling the utter mastery of Mathewson over the A’s. He won three shutout games, with Iron Man winning the other in a five game series. McGraw’s Giants dominated.

However, they never repeated this success during Mathewson’s years despite a number of 30 game seasons for Mathewson and pennant wins. They missed out on one pennant due to a baserunning error at the end of a game that would have put the Giants in the Series. Although the winning run scored, the baserunner on first never tagged second base. The error was spotted, the ball thrown to second and the run nullified. While everyone on the Giants insisted he had tagged second, Mathewson stood out by saying he didn’t. Then in 1912, a dropped fly ball cost Matty a victory and the Giants a the Series.

McGraw was know as “The Little Napolean,” not only for his size but his tight control of how his team played. A mark of the confidence he had in Matty is that he was the only one permitted to call his own game, including positioning his fielders. He tried to keep his players sober by tight discipline, including some with drinking problems. Sadly, alcohol would contribute to his own ill health in later years. Players stopped listening to him. He finally hung it up in 1932, dying two years later.

However, tragedy came for Mathewson young. One brother died of tuberculosis, another took his own life. But Mattie kept winning over twenty games a year until 1914, after which his arm gave out. He won only a handful more, finishing with 373 wins. In 1916, McGraw helped Matty get a managing job in Cincinnati. But he wasn’t there long before going to war. He was never the same after, debilitated by gas exposure. His lungs weakened, he contracted tuberculosis. He returned to the Giants as a coach, recovered briefly in 1922, but worsened in 1924, dying the next year on October 7, at the end of the first game of the 1925 World Series.

Deford’s account focuses less on statistics than on the character and achievements of the two men. Together, they helped lift the Giants from mediocrity in 1902 to become a powerhouse team through the rest of the decade. They attracted record crowds to the re-built Polo Grounds. Mathewson defined the art of pitching with his consummate control. McGraw became the model of the tough guy manager, later exemplified by Earl Weaver, and Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight. All in all, it is a fascinating account–a good way to begin another season of baseball. show less

I saw the movie with Dennis Quaid and Jessica Lange before I read the book. The movie runs close to the book except for the ending. I enjoyed both the movie and the book. Not an unusual story. Football star becomes legend in college. Good, not great career in the pros. Then a sad decline as the years build up and the injuries mount. Gavin, the Grey Ghost was a running back and athletes in that position do not usually have long careers.

Gavin suffers financial setbacks, betrayal and his show more marriage to his college girlfriend Babs begins to suffer. When Gavin’s playing days are over, he does not make an easy transition to a new career. He flounders and hopes he gets the chance to play football again. Babs moves on with her life.

All the attention, accolades and glamour leaves his life. He hangs on tight to his past legends and memories to the dismay of his wife and friends.

This is not so much a sports book but a tale of human tragedy. One reads actual stories like this of other athletes who retire or unable to compete and become financiually destitute and suicidal. A cautionary tale not only for athletes but all who choose to live on past laurels. show less

They just don't make sports writers like Frank Deford anymore. I shouldn't call him a sports writer really because Deford can and has written on many topics and he is just a great American writer period. This is a baseball story at it's base but it is really much deeper than that. Deford touches on everything from rape to Fidel Castro to the World Series but finds a way to tie them all together to tell not only a very compelling story that never lags but to do so in a literate style that you show more just don't often see these days in fiction especially sports fiction. show less

Frank Deford has long been one of my favorite writers, someone whose work I search out, be them in written or spoken form. His erudite and opinionated commentaries on the state of athletics in our society has sustained me, entertained me, as well as disturbed me.

This collection of vignettes are intended to be an autobiography of sorts, they are written as if they were individual essays. Deford is opinionated, brutally honest, and comes off as a curmudgeon. I think he really enjoys the show more curmudgeon part, or else he wouldn't be projecting this role with such panache and joy. he takes on all comers, he talks about his start in sports journalism, his lucky breaks and he name drops like nobody's business. Many of those names take hits while many others are elevated into the Deford pantheon of all around good guys. Whether you want to believe his observations or not, the delivery is impeccable and always fascinating.

The story that Deford tells is of the evolution of the mass market sports world. It is a recounted of the sports journalism genre as it evolved through the most revolutionary and some say the least beneficent era: the era that goes from the rise of the sports press to today, the social media age. Even though Deford wasn't there at the very beginning, he was an observer through rise and possible demise of the written sports presst. Deford tells the story, or actually history extremely well and does a very elegiac accounting of the history without seeming maudlin or too sentimental.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the essays were of the perfect length for short breaks and interesting enough for the reader to recall the thread when he or she returns to the book. show less