October brings crisper air and baseball playoffs — the perfect time for a Mattimore baseball story. Great-grandfather Henry Mattimore’s older brother Mike was a professional baseball player. Born in 1858, about three years before the American Civil War, Mike played in four major league seasons between 1887 and 1890. Although our great-granduncle’s pro career was short, it was a lively one.

He was born in North Bend, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from Renovo where the family moved in 1866. About four years older than Henry, Mike would have had a similar childhood growing up (see post about Henry HERE). But while his brothers all ended up working in or for the railroad industry, Mike gravitated towards baseball (initially, at least).

As pitcher and sometimes outfielder, Mike played for the New York Giants (1887), Philadelphia Athletics (1888-1889), Kansas City Cowboys (1889) and Brooklyn Gladiators (1890). Growing up, Mike often pitched to his first cousin, Mike Cody, who was a catcher. Mike Cody (our 1st cousin 3x removed to those in my generation), also went pro, catching for the Cleveland team.

Mike Mattimore batted and threw left. His MLB statistics included a win-loss record of 26-27, earned run average of 3.83 and 132 strikeouts (additional stats can be seen HERE).

In 1926, long after Mike had hung up his cleats, The Pittsburgh Sunday Post featured our ancestor in the following article, which is worth a read. If you can’t enlarge this on a tablet to read it, let me know and I’ll send you a PDF.

There’s also an interesting article about the Library of Congress’s collection of early baseball cards that talks about Mike and how it is we have all of these great old baseball cards of him and for those in his generation. Check it out HERE.

For additional details of his career and some color surrounding Mike, I leave you to read this post from Baseball History Daily:

“Hilariously and Shockingly Drunk” about the Philadelphia Athletics players who were notorious for their drinking. Mike was named a part of that rowdy bunch but certainly wasn’t the worst of them.

Mike’s last MLB game appearance was on July 21, 1890, for the Brooklyn Gladiators. He then went to Seattle of the Pacific Northwest league in 1891. In time he was with the Walla Walla team in Washington, but ended his baseball career when that engagement was up.

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He never married, and eventually moved to Butte, Montana, to be near his brother Joseph (who also never married). Both brothers worked for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company as boilermakers. Yes, he too, ended up a boilermaker! [Note: his brother Joseph is the same brother who worked with Henry in Panama building the canal, and who brought Henry’s body home after his death there.]

Mike was 72 when he died, after having lived for 35 years in Butte.

As one article says, Mike Mattimore will be forever young as a result of having all these old baseball card images of him. How nice for his ancestors.

NOTE ABOUT PREVIOUS POST: The lucky recipients of the Ancestry DNA kits were Emily Hirsch and Johanna Cronin. Yay! I love to see the next generation get involved with ancestry!

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