Most of today's baseball headlines concern which player receives the highest annual salary or which one has the highest multi-million-dollar contract. It wasn't always thus. In a more innocent age, one of the greatest baseball pitchers and Hall of Famer, Christy Mathewson, received the grand sum of $10,000 per year to play for the New York Giants. This was a princely sum in pre-income tax days, but pales in comparison with salaries paid to today's utility players.

Mathewson started 552 games and completed 435 of them-a 75 percent record! Today's critics may scoff that it was the dead ball error and no one could repeat that today. A dead ball it may have been but tell that to the likes of Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner and several other Hall of Fame players from that era. In the l905 Series against Connie Mack's Athletics, Mathewson pitched 27 scoreless innings with 3 shutouts, walked only one batter and struck out l8.

In one of the greatest World Series of all times, John McGraw's New York Giants squared off against the Boston Red Sox in l9l2. This was a grudge match as McGraw had refused to play the Red Sox in l904 thus canceling the Series. He didn't consider a team from the upstart American League (i.e. begun in l901) worthy of his Giants. He had enough clout to get away with it in an era of weak team owners and commissioners. This Series would pit the great Mathewson, who had started his professional career with the Honesdale Reds, against Pike County resident, Smokey Joe Wood.

Smokey Joe pitched and won the first game 4-2. The next day it was Mathewson's turn before a partial and hostile Boston crowd. In the eighth inning the Giants were ahead 5-4 but an error allowed the Red Sox to tie the score. In the top of the 10th the Giants scored but in the bottom of the inning Tris Speaker's line drive was muffed and the tying run scored on an error. The plate umpire looked up at a darkening sky (i.e.lights in ballparks were still to come) and called the game. The next afternoon, the entire game was replayed and the Giants's Marquard won 2-l.

Boston won the next two games with Wood winning one of them 3-l and the Sox were up 3-l. One of the Giant's losses was charged to Mathewson although an error permitted the winning run to cross. It looked as if the Giants were out of it but on a Monday in the Polo Grounds, Marquard beat the Sox 3-2. The next day, Smokey Joe was back on the mound but got pounded by the Giants in the first inning en route to an 11-4 loss and sending the Series into a decisive seventh game.

On a cold October l6, McGraw left the Giant's fate in the hands of his all time great, Mathewson. Smokey Joe sat on the sidelines. In the seventh inning the game was tied and the Boston manager called on Wood to redeem himself. Wood was up to the task and two of the greatest pitchers of the day kept the game tied. For the first time a World Series would be decided in extra innings as they entered the 10th. The Giants scored a run and led 2-1. The Boston crowd roared as Tris Speaker, a .383 hitter, came to bat with a man on third. On the first pitch, Speaker popped up and Mathewson, the first baseman and the catcher all lunged for the ball only to see it drop harmlessly between the three of them. Speaker then delivered a single to tie the game. With a man on third, a fly ball to right field was caught but the throw home was too late to catch the runner who slid under the throw to score the winning run and win the Series for the Red Sox.

The great sports writer Ring Lardner summed it up thus, "...there was seen one of the saddest sights in this history of the sport... It was the spectacle of a man, old as baseball players are reckoned... with bowed head and drooping shoulders, with tears streaming from his eyes... a man who would have proved his... title to the trust reposed in him if his mates had stood by him in the supreme test... Christy Mathewson." Hollywood couldn't have written a better script, although they might have changed the ending.