Scroll Down to Read Today’s Essay

Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive for automatic updates. As a Free Bonus, you’ll get instant access to my Special Report: Gary’s Handy Dandy World Series Reference Guide!

 Baseball and World War I Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:

Book Review:

This Never Happened,

The Mystery Behind the Death of Christy Mathewson

by

J.B. Manheim

(Reviewed by Gary Livacari)

I was recently contacted by Jarol Manheim, Emeritus Professor of Media and Public Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University. He asked if I’d be interested in reviewing his novel, This Never Happened, The Mystery Behind the Death of Christy Mathewson, which is the first in his series called The Deadball Files — four baseball-themed mysteries and thrillers from the genre of alternative history. The author describes the series as follows: “Each book is based on some event from the Deadball Era that gives rise to a contemporary plot, and each includes both baseball and more general historical references.”

Of course, as someone with an ongoing interest in the Deadball Era, this immediately piqued my curiosity. The event that serves as the backdrop for this novel is the premature death at age 45 of the Giants’ great pitcher, Christy Mathewson, following his exposure to poisonous gas during World War I — a tragic accident from which he never fully recovered.

The historical setting is 1918 during the Great War. Baseball was under intense pressure to show its support for the war effort. After canceling baseball’s exemption from military service, Secretary of War Newton Baker issued a directive offering players a choice between either serving in war-related activity or being drafted into the army. They were to be treated no differently than other able-bodied men of military age. Many players opted for the more patriotic-appearing route of volunteering for service. For others, this meant soft duty playing stateside baseball in industrial leagues rather than fighting and dying in the trenches of France.

That Never Happened is a fictionalized account of events at Camp Hancock, located during the war near Augusta, Georgia. Due to recently discovered military documents, we now know that the camp was home to at least seven major leaguers, all but two Hall of Famers. The players were recruited for Chemical Warfare Service by Major Branch Rickey. It was meant to be a high-profile unit created for recruitment propaganda purposes and to polish baseball’s wartime image. Rickey’s first inductee was the saintly Christy Mathewson, whose presence, Rickey correctly surmised, would serve as a valuable recruiting tool to attract other athletes. Appealing to Mathewson’s sense of patriotism, the plan worked. Lieutenant Mathewson reported for duty, and he was followed by other major leaguers. Their training included the hazardous duty of handling and deactivating poisonous gases.

Students of baseball history with a general familiarity with the Deadball Era will have no trouble recognizing the novel’s cast of characters. Besides Mathewson and Rickey, the irascible Ty Cobb plays a major role. Hall of Famers Honus Wagner, Frank Chance, Frank “Homerun” Baker, Ed Walsh, and Max Carey make appearances, as does Davey Jones, and even Christy Mathewson’s wife, Jane.

The official version of this snapshot of baseball history is that Cobb and Mathewson volunteered for service and, after their training was complete, they were shipped overseas. While in France, they were exposed to poisonous gas during a chemical training accident, Mathewson being the more severely injured, leading to his early death from tuberculosis in 1925.

But can we be sure that’s what actually happened to this legendary baseball figure? Could there be more to the story? Has Major League Baseball been hiding a different, more sinister version for over one hundred years? And if so, why? Author J.B. Manheim tackles these intriguing questions after uncovering genuine historical documents and military papers from 1918, including the payroll records of this training unit, Ordinance Depot Company No. 44. All the aforementioned ball players are listed on the payroll roster, so their historical presence at the camp has been confirmed.

And yet, other than in these newly discovered documents, this high-profile unit, assembled for propaganda purposes, seems to have been erased from the historical record. No one has ever heard of it. Why would that be? Is something being covered up? Those are the questions the author sought to answer. These new documents seem to dispute the sanitized official version. The author then weaves an alternative — admittedly fictionalized — sequence of events into a fast-paced novel that leaves the reader wondering just what really happened at this camp.

The story Manheim creates centers around an ace reporter for the Sporting News, JT Willett. He was on a cross-country 1930s quest to discover and then expose the truth prior to the opening of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He was fully aware that his scoop had the potential to rock the baseball world to its core. Unfortunately, Willett’s untimely death ended this quest and his notes fell by chance into the hands of an eccentric drifter, Jocko Drumm. They remained buried and forgotten in an old farm shed in upstate New York for many decades until rediscovered by Jocko’s grandson, Jason Drumm, and his friend, Adam Wallace, the protagonists of the story. What follows is an interesting tale of deceptions, multi-million dollar thefts, and multi-layered cover-ups, involving the highest-ranking government and baseball officials.

I really enjoyed This Never Happened. I came away impressed with the author’s writing skills, including his outstanding character development and his ability to create and develop a fictionalized plot — alternating between flashbacks and current day — that holds the reader’s attention from start to finish. Although I knew from the beginning that it was a work of fiction, by the end I found myself wondering if the story the author stitches together was actually closer to the truth than the official version, which, Manheim makes clear, doesn’t completely add up. We may never know.

The fact that I’m familiar with all the involved baseball personalities, and with this era of baseball and American history, added to my enjoyment. This Never Happened, The Mystery Behind the Death of Christy Mathewson, is a fascinating book I can recommend to all baseball history fans and to all others who are interested in learning about the unique role baseball played in early twentieth-century American history.

Gary Livacari 

Subscribe to our website, Baseball History Comes Alive with over 1400 fully categorized baseball essays and photo galleries, now surpassing the one million hits mark with 1, 102,000 hits and over 950 subscribers