Pitching in a Pinch, Or, Baseball from the Inside

Front Cover
U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 1994 - Sports & Recreation - 304 pages
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.

Pitchingøin 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.

 

Contents

ITHE MOST DANGEROUS BATTERS I HAVE
1
II TAKE HIM OUT
21
IIIPITCHING IN A PINCH
54
IVBIG LEAGUE PITCHERS AND THEIR
74
VPLAYING THE GAME FROM THE BENCH
93
VICOACHINGGOOD AND BAD
117
VIIHONEST AND DISHONEST SIGN STEALING
140
VIIIUMPIRES AND CLOSE DECISIONS
161
IXTHE GAME THAT COST A PENNANT
183
TRAINING
206
XIJINXES AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO
230
XIIBASE RUNNERS AND HOW THEY HELP
255
XIIINOTABLE INSTANCES WHERE THE IN
281
Copyright

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About the author (1994)

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

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