Pitching in a Pinch: or Baseball from the Inside (Bison Book)

One of baseball's more enduring classics and earliest memoirs, Christy Mathewson's primer, first published in 1912, has also become one of the game's foremost anthropologies. Mathewson was one of baseball's first immortals: he was a star on the field, winning 373 games between 1900 and 1916--all but one as a Giant; an educated gentleman off the field; and a legitimate war hero who died from the effects of being gassed in World War I. Pitching in a Pinch passes on Mathewson's substantial knowledge of the game in general, and the intricacies of the mound in particular. The book's continuing delight and value rests in Mathewson's facility for capturing--from the inside--the game's ethos in the early 20th century, and the generous combination of anecdote and insight with which he shares it.