Quote:
Originally Posted by BaseballMan
I don't think i have never had Christy Mathewson go over 400 wins.
He always seems to have a few bad injury years that keep him between 350-400 wins for me.
Nice to see him do it.
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CHRISTY MATHEWSON
I think this is the most games he has ever won for me as well. It's too bad the Giants weren't that good for much of his tenure as I can just imagine what he could have done had he pitched for one of the Philadelphia teams instead.
He spent 23 years in the major leagues and was healthy the entire time except for an arm injury after age 40. With the Giants Mathewson never starting less than 30 games in a season. He won 4 pitcher of the year awards (1903,1906,1907,1910) along with 3 gold gloves and 3 silver sluggers. He leads the major leagues in both career wins (425) and losses (336) as well as games played by pitcher, games started, shutouts and innings pitched. He is also one of just 3 men with over 3000 strikeouts. His 3037 trail Walter Johnson (3260) and Rube Waddell (3201).
Mathewson's only World Series appearance came in 1909. He made 3 starts and was 1-2 with a 2.08 era as the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics in 7 games. He lost game one 3-0 to Chief Bender despite pitching very well but rebounded with a 5-4 10 inning win in Game three to get the Giants on the board. New York would also win games four and five to take a 3-2 series lead and gave the ball to Mathewson for Game Six. Noodles Hahn outduelled him as both went the distance in a 3-2 Philadelphia win at the Polo Grounds. The A's wrapped up the series the next day with a 4-1 win as the road team won all 7 games in the series.
The Giants released him after the 1921 season and he signed with the Cubs that winter at the age of 41 but a spring training arm injury ended his season. He had a brief stint in the PCL with Los Angeles in 1923 but had more arm troubles that forced him to retire.
Surprisingly, Mathewson was not a first ballot Hall of Famer, It was tough to get in during the early years as the Hall opened in my replay in 1932 and there were a ton of players eligible. Rube Waddell, Nap Lajoie and Honus Wagner went in the first year as Mathewson was included on just 60.2% of the ballots. He was finally inducted along with Harry Heilmann in the fifth Hall of Fame class, getting 75.4% of the votes to just sneak through in 1936.