In The Old Ball Game, America's most beloved sportswriter, Frank Deford, masterfully chronicles how a friendship between two towering figures in baseball helped make the sport a national pastime. At the turn of the twentieth century, every American man wanted to be Christy Mathewson. One of baseball's first superstars, he was clean-cut, didn't pitch on the Sabbath, and rarely spoke a negative word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York Giants manager John McGraw, by contrast, was ferocious. Nicknamed "the Little Napoleon," the pugnacious tough guy had been a star baseball player who helped develop the hit-and-run. When McGraw joined the Giants in 1902, the team was coming off its worst season ever.
