Matty: A Giant in San Francisco

by James E. Elfers  

James has recently written a book on the 1913 World Tour featuring the White Sox and Giants. For more information see The Tour to End All Tours.

Christy Mathewson's arm was gone long before the ides of November. A matchless   1913 season, a World Series win, and touring with the Giants and White Sox everyday   since October 18, had left the Big Six with little of his legendary dazzle. Matty, however   definitely wanted to win this game. Unknown to the crowd of 10,000 crammed into   Recreation Park, his best friend and manager John McGraw, and perhaps even to his wife   Jane, this would be Matty's last appearance with the tour.

For his finale Mathewson turned in one of his best performances of the tour.   The grueling transcontinental jaunt across he country by America's two most popular   baseball teams was an unprecedented spectacle. The endless rounds of train travel, sell   out crowds, buffets, handshakes and sport had worn everyone down,  especially the pitchers.

Wins had been scarce for the Big Six throughout the tour, the Sox had taken a   perverse delight in teeing off on Matty, and he wanted to level the scales a bit on this   beautiful Saturday afternoon. 

San Francisco, indeed all of California, had been a wonderful adventure for the Giants   and White Sox. The Bustle of Los Angeles, the beauty of San Francisco, the overflow   crowd in San Diego's Athletic Park for James "Chief" Meyers' homecoming, the chaotic   and surreal man verses horse race around the bases in Oxnard, only a rainout in   Sacramento marred the baseball teams tour of the Golden State. Many of the players on both teams had either played in California or were born there. The Giants Fred Snodgrass   was a native of Oxnard. Hal Chase lived in Los Angeles. Mike Donlin had been scouted   from a California sandlot game decades before. The White Sox held Spring Training in   several California communities, and their working relationship with the San Francisco   Seals of the Pacific Coast League had netted them Buck Weaver. 

Not yet converted to third base, Buck played short and greatly impressed his old   hometown fans. Buck had been an especially irritating burr under Matty's saddle, hitting   Matty a ton. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote of his appearance in the previous day's   game : "Buck Weaver looks like the same old happy-go-lucky kid who made his   reputation with the Seals. He appears more finished, however, and certainly as a lot of   boosters, who claim that he is coming shortstop of the country." (1)  

On this day, however, things would break Matty's way. Facing off against Buck  Weaver's, good friend and roommate Jim Scott, Mathewson and the Giants held the   advantage from the get-go. Matty surrendered two hits in the first inning but pitched out   of trouble. This half inning turned out to be the only chance that the Sox would get to   bust the game open. The Giants scored five runs in the first three innings while Matty   held the Sox scoreless Until the fifth, when he surrendered a single run. 

Jim Scott retired Fred Snodgrass, then gave up the game's first run on Mike Donlin's,   double, a Hans Lobert walk, and Larry Doyle's single. Native Americans accounted for   all of the Giants scoring in the second inning. Jim Thorpe clouted a double and used his   Olympic speed to score on a Chief Meyers single. 

The third inning is where things really came apart for Scott and the Sox. Buck   Weaver made a rare miscue that afforded for most of the resultant Giants runs. His   overthrow of first put Mike Donlin on first. Lightning fast Hans Lobert, followed with a slow roller to Buck Weaver. Lobert crossed the bag before Buck's throw to first reached   the infamous Hal Chase. A walk to Larry Doyle filled the bases. Fred Merkle sacrificed   in Mike Donlin. Jim Scott then threw a wild pitch, and in came Lobert and Donlin. Hall   of Fame catcher Ray Schalk contributed to this nightmare of an inning. After chasing   down Scott's wild pitch, he muffed his throw to home plate where Scott was covering. 

Although the Sox staunched the flow of Giants crossing the plate, boos, catcalls, and   demands for a new pitcher tumbled out of the stands. Their own slip shod play also put   the White Sox in a very foul mood. 

This lead was all that Matty would need. He eased up a bit, allowing the Sox one run   in the fifth and two more in the eighth after the Giants padded their lead by one. The   final score, 6-3. Christy Mathewson's pitching philosophy and practice placed as little   stress as possible on his arm. Rather than bear down for every out, Matty was inclined to   let a run cross the plate if he had the lead in a game. Having the superlative Giants   defense behind him , gave Matty licence to "waste" a run and save stress on his arm.   Matty' s apparent effortlessness and aloof air was, in reality, a cerebral chess match with   runs in place of pawns. 

The Sox showed just how beaten they were when their frustrations boiled over into a   full scale mutiny against Bill Klem's authority in the sixth inning. While much of the   Sox behavior was an obvious result of frustration, the Sox had a legitimate beef. Buck Weaver got so carried away, that Bill Klem bounced him from the game.  

Matty went the distance. Then he strode over to the Giants Bench where his son and   namesake, six year old Matty, Jr. waited. Holding the child aloft, the delighted father strode towards the clubhouse and exited to the cheers of 10,000 San Franciscans. 

This San Francisco game was more than merely Matty's triumph. This exhibition   series on the West Coast by two of the most powerful Eastern teams brought out great   crowds of curious fans. The east and west coasts of the United States played baseball by   the same rules, but not with the same style. Before their games, the Giants and White Sox   showed off some shadowball. Before the tourists arrived in California, shadowball had   been unheard of in the state. In virtually every city that the tourists traipsed through, the   introduced shadowball. Baseball without the ball put the crowds into hysterics. Many in   the crowd, and at least one sportswriter thought that shadow ball would make a great   stage act. Germany Schaefer, borrowed from the Washington Senators for the duration of   the tour, was baseball's current master of shadowball. A prankster and pantomime artist,   Herman "Gemany" Shaefer was one of the funniest men to ever lace up spikes. His pre-  game antics included juggling baseballs, pratfalls, shadowball and an endless verbal   fusillade of wisecracks.  

Steve Evans, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder touring the world as a member of the   White Sox, and the Giants Mike Donlin, frequent star of vaudeville, competed for fan   adulation. Donlin was more of a Braodway review man, while irrepressible Evans strove   to match Schaefer pratfall for pratfall. In San Francisco they all became a movie stars. 

Recording Matty's game on sodium nitrate stock was a transplanted New York film director name Frank McGlynn. A one-time stage actor trying to make it in the emerging Hollywood film industry, McGlynn endeavored to film the world's first feature   length sports documentary. Well, not exactly. Mixed in with legitimate action was some   sort of screwball comedy plotline. 

Don't bother looking for this one at your local video store. "World Tour Giants and   White Sox" is a lost work. However, through the director's writings and other sources,   this author has been able to reconstruct whole chunks of McGlynn's film.

The bustle and hum of San Francisco delighted the players. Newly rebuilt, the   vibrant city was making plans for hosting the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915. The   exhibition would celebrate not only their own city's rise from the ashes of earthquake   and fire, but also the grand opening of the, soon to be completed, Panama Canal. San   Francisco, like every other city, threw open her gates for the baseball players.   Passes to plays, lavish dining and great hotels catered to the tourists. San Francisco would   see three games played in Recreation Park by the touring Giants and White Sox, more   games than any other city. Oakland, across the bay, would get two games of its own. Not   all of the five game series games would be classics by any means, but they did give fans   on both sides of the ferry route a taste of major league baseball. A taste most of the fans   of this bright November series would never taste again in their lifetimes. But the Giants   would, after the world went trough the wringer of two World Wars, a conflict in Korea,   and the arrival of a television in every home, at last come home to San Francisco to stay.  

1 "Christy Mathewson Slated to pitch Saturday's Game" San Francisco Chronicle 14 November 1913.