First Base Faulkner

by ("Matty") Christy Mathewson, Charles M. Relyea (Illustrator)

Excerpt from First Base FaulknerGus, a small, crabbed-looking negro, was load ing a huge sample-trunk into a ramshackle dray when discovered.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1916

Reviews

[J. Boo · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the death of his father, a man of more limited income and larger debts than his wife believed, Faulkner is sent to live with his mother's spinster sister, Aunt Sarah, to finish up high school, while his mom works as a cleaning lady in a hotel. He befriends the local athletes, founds a business with a friend, joins the baseball team, and has himself a pretty good chase sequence. Reasonable fare for a boy's sports book.

But this is an unusually good one. The writing is very solid, the characters are not cardboard cutouts, and Our Hero doesn't wow the universe with his multisport talent. He's a decent baseball player - not, by any means, the star of the team - and spends a fair amount of time on the bench. Moreover, his rival - in lesser hands than Matthewson's, the expected ascot-twirling villain of the piece - has his own good qualities..

I looked up the author, and was surprised to learn that Christy Mathewson was an exceptional baseball player, one of the first five admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and regarded by all and sundry as a fine Christian gentleman. Mathewson wrote a newspaper column, and seems to have authored his books himself. And this feels, in fact, like the kind of book that a really nice guy, gifted at both baseball and story-telling, would have written.

Available on Gutenberg, as are a few more of Mathewson's books. Even though I'm no fan of baseball, I'll be reading him again.

[Steve Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘FirstBase Faulkner’ is a simple tale of a 16 year old boy who is uprooted from his home and goes to live with his aunt. In his new town, he makes new friends, starts his own business, and joins the high school baseball team. A myriad of adventures, mishaps, and triumphs ensue. This is one of a series of books supposedly written by the great Hall of Fame pitcher, Christy Mathewson. However, his books were most assuredly ghostwritten, this one by John Wheeler. Copyrighted in 1916, the appeal for the modern reader is that it transports you back in time. Meant for young readers in its day, the language, the settings, and the characters all combine to make this a pleasurable read for anyone. This edition has 328 pages of story text.