Note: Thank you to NetGalley, University of Nebraska Press, and author Alan D. Gaff for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

One thing to keep in mind while reading Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson is that over one hundred years ago, the relationship between sportswriters and the teams they covered was quite different from what it is now. Writers in that day and age had close relationships with the team and individual players and were complicit in not reporting anything that could prove embarrassing to the team or the individual.

That’s important because this book is not a modern biography of Christy Mathewson. Prior to his death from tuberculosis in 1925, he had begun work on an autobiography with the help of his wife, Jane, and sportswriter and close friend, Bozeman Bulger. This book reprints the results of that effort, which is often dated, as to be expected. However, it’s also lacking any negative about Mathewson. True, he was known as “The Gentleman” or “The Christian Gentleman” while he played, the “Christian” part coming from a promise to his mother not to play baseball on Sundays. It also seems that there was a dearth of players who had anything negative to say about Mathewson after his death.

The first few chapters are written by the author, Alan D. Gaff, as he makes his case for Christy Mathewson being considered baseball’s first superstar. He spends an inordinate amount of time on the lives of other players he considers to be possible holders of the title, Baseball’s First Superstar. This felt an awful lot like filler and wasn’t a great way to start the book. However, he also recalls the atmosphere of the times that led to the close relationship between sportswriters and the players they covered. This is important to understand as you consider the rest of the book.

The bulk of the book is a reproduction of the draft manuscript found among Bulger’s papers, where they were working on a definitive biography of Mathewson. Several chapters were written by Mathewson himself, but the bulk of it is notes put together by Bulger while crafting the biography he and Mathewson wanted to publish. Following his death, it would seem Bulger collaborated with Jane in trying to finish the project, but it never saw the light of day until now. It is very interesting to read about events from over a hundred years ago. Everything was so different for the players. This was a time before there was media outside of the newspapers. The writers really had to work hard to create a readable article that described what the readers couldn’t see. The access that sportswriters had to teams and players was predicated on the fact that both saw it as a way of generating publicity for the team as well as selling papers. It was a mutually beneficial situation.

Of course, this was a time when people thought much differently about things than they do now. The typical vices Mathewson stayed away from. There’s no record of him drinking and carousing the way there was about Babe Ruth. He did gamble a bit with his fellow players, but their card games seem to be the extent of that vice. Smoking cigarettes was seen as a healthy thing to do at the time, and modern readers might be shocked at Mathewson’s views on it. It was not considered to be a vice, and only the tuberculosis he contracted, which led to his death, caused him to stop that habit.

I found Baseball’s First Superstar: The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson to be a very entertaining book, especially the parts written by Mathewson himself. Although I’d say Babe Ruth might have an edge on that title simply because he was more widely known than Mathewson, I do think Mathewson embodied some of the best characteristics that people look to admire. If there were faults, you won’t find them in this book. It is a great piece of history.