The life story of Christy Mathewson, the Hall of Fame Baseball Player . . . his wife and son. When Sports Illustrated recently named Christy Mathewson the greatest right-handed pitcher in the history of baseball, it was a choice woven by both prowess and character. The first All-American hero, Matty aroused the values of a nation while bringing dignity to a game that had previously been reserved for ruffians. "Matty handed the game an indefinable lift in culture, brains, and personality," said Grantland Rice. "He is the only man I ever met who in spirit and inspiration was greater than his game." To grab a page from modern culture, The Christian Gentleman (Big Six) would have been considered the "first Tim Tebow." And for much of the twentieth century, the Mathewson family - father, wife, and son - had a dramatic hold on greatness. A charter member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Christy Mathewson had been a Bucknell University football star at the turn of the century. While his rise to legend would be swift, his grip on America would never falter. From king of baseball to a hero of World War I, Big Six was a gifted man in a unique time. Jane Stoughton was charming, smart, beautiful . . . a student at the Bucknell Female Institute who, had she listened to her father, never would have fallen for "a grown man playing a little boy's game that had no future." Jane Mathewson would eventually be known as baseball's "most gracious widow." Christy Jr. was a strikingly handsome and brilliant student who graduated cum laude from Bucknell in 1927, then followed his own path to become a world-renowned pilot and adventurer. His long list of heroics in the shadows of war revealed a man who thrived on challenge. But, like his father, the son would also die at far too young an age. With a touch of historical fiction to begin every chapter, The Three Mathewsons is an unusual glimpse at three extraordinary lives, from childhood days to the center stage of a nation.
About the Author: Born into a naval family, Robert D. Gaines was raised in California, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Even as a child, he had an obsession for recording his stray thoughts into hundreds of notebooks. After graduating from San Diego State, Bob became a sportswriter and columnist for a large daily newspaper in San Diego. In the early 1990s, he left California to become manager of development communications at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. He edited The Beauty of Bucknell (Harmony House, 2001) and was the key writer for hundreds of university publications, plus writing and producing several Bucknell documentaries. Gifted with excellent social skills, Bob became a university fundraiser before taking early retirement in 2009 to focus on writing. He recently signed with a well-known literary agent who is currently shopping two of his books and a movie script. Bob has a number of writing projects, all different in scope, that are finished or near completion.