| Bobby Mathews | |
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| Pitcher | |
| Born: November 21, 1851 Baltimore, Maryland |
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| Died: April 17, 1898 (aged 46) Baltimore, Maryland |
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| Batted: Right | Threw: Right |
| MLB debut | |
| May 4, 1871 for the Fort Wayne Kekiongas | |
| Last MLB appearance | |
| October 10, 1887 for the Philadelphia Athletics | |
| Career statistics | |
| Win-Loss record | 297-248 |
| ERA | 2.89 |
| Strikeouts | 1,366 |
| Teams | |
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| Career highlights and awards | |
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Robert T. Mathews (November 21, 1851 – April 17, 1898) was an American right-handed Major League Baseball pitcher for twenty years beginning in the late 1860s. He is credited as being one of the inventors of the spitball pitch,[1][2] which was rediscovered or reintroduced to the major leagues after he died. He is also credited with the first legal pitch which broke away from the batter.[1][2] He is listed at 5 feet 5 inches tall and 140 pounds, which is small for a pro athlete even in his time, when the average height of an American male in the mid-19th Century was 5 feet 7 & 1/4 inches tall.
Mathews was born in 1851, in Baltimore, Maryland, and he played as a teenager with the Maryland club of that city, and he made the team a dangerous one. For the 1871 season, he and some other Maryland players signed with the Fort Wayne Kekiongas. On May 4, 1871 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he pitched a shutout in the inaugural game of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA), the first professional league.[1][2] Mathews umpired a few games between 1871 and 1888[3] and signed with the regular staff of the Players League in 1890, returning to the AA in 1891.
Over his 16-year career, he had 297 wins, 248 losses, 525 complete games, with a career earned run average of 2.89. He had 1366 strikeouts compared with 533 walks. He won 20 games 8 times, including 42 in 1874 with the New York Mutuals of the National Association, and is the only player to win 50 games or to pitch 100 games[2] in each of three major leagues.[1] He is the 24th winningest pitcher in baseball.[4]
He died 1898 in Baltimore, at the age of 46, of paresis caused by syphilis,[5] and is interred at New Cathedral Cemetery, also in Baltimore.[3]
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