Matt Christopher

**Matt Christopher and I** Matt Christopher (August 16, 1917 - September 20, 1997)
Matt Christopher earned millions of fans from his more than 120 novels - undoubtedly most of them males of elementary school age. He also earned the respect and admiration of at least one 50+ year old school teacher, baseball researcher and struggling writer. In July 1996 I began to investigate and record the story of a minor league baseball team in Smiths Falls Ontario, my home town. The team competed in the Class C Canadian-American League for only one season, 1937. Early in my researches I discovered a team program from early in the season. The opening day roster included a "Mattie Christopher" from South Lansing NY playing third base. One of my children noticed that the player had the same name as one of his favourite authors. I assured him that they were two different people. Over the next few months I tried to find out what happened to the 29 players who wore the uniform of the Smiths Falls Beavers in 1937. I received wonderful letters and phone calls from Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania, Vermont, California, Arkansas, New York. But the most surprising phone call was one on a Sunday afternoon in November 1996 from South Carolina. It was then that I learned that the professional baseball player Mattie Christopher and the well known author Matt Christopher were the same person. During our first conversation, he said that when his brother Rudy told him that somebody was trying to contact "Mattie" Christopher, he knew it must have been someone in Canada, because, "the only time in my life I was called 'Mattie' was when I was 19-years old playing baseball in Smiths Falls." Over the next several months we exchanged a few letters and phone calls. He was a wonderful person to get to know. He provided me with a lot of biographical information as well as photographs. He sent an autographed copy of one of his novels to each of my four children. At one point over the winter Matt agreed to read my manuscript. he sent a letter in June 1997 wondering where it was. That spurred me on to finish the draft I was working on. On July 16, I received a very complimentary letter from Matt regarding my story of the 1937 Smiths Falls Beavers as well as an autographed copy of his latest book, a biography of Wayne Gretzky. He also enclosed a cheque to cover the cost of my manuscript - my first sale! In his letter, he referred to his medical problems and an operation on July 22. Regretfully, I had not responded to his letter when I saw his obituary in the Ottawa Citizen in late September. Matt Christopher was the oldest of nine children, seven boys and two girls. He got interested in writing while a freshman in high school. Rudy, his youngest sibling, remembers that Matt always wanted a typewriter. When he finally got one as a present, he practiced his writing skills for hours at a time, much like he must have practiced to perfect his fielding skills on the baseball	diamond. Matt won a prize in a short story writing contest when he was 17. Following his brief career as a professional baseball player in Smiths Falls, the 19-year-old got a job with General Electric in Syracuse and later the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Ithaca NY, and continued his writing in the evenings. His first sale was a one act play, published in 1940 by Greenburg Publishers in New York. In 1943 he sold his first short story, "The Missing Finger Points", to Detective Story Magazine. His first book was an adult mystery novel, "Look for the Body", published in 1952 by Phoenix Press. His first children's book was "The Lucky Baseball Bat", published in 1954 by Little, Brown and Co of Boston MA. The book was in print for twenty five years, and in 1992 was reprinted in a shorter form by his publisher. In 1958 he received the first of many awards for his writing, from the Boys' Clubs of America for his book Basketball Sparkplug. Matt Christopher developed into one of the best and most popular writers for younger readers, especially boys. He had more than one hundred and twenty novels published. While he wrote adventure stories, true life stories, adult mystery novels and more than 275 short stories and articles published in more than sixty five magazines, Matt is best known for his sports fiction novels. If you have a son, there is a very strong probability that Matt Christopher will become, is, or has been, your child's favourite author. Or, depending upon your own age, Matt Christopher may have been your favourite writer for a few years. He was a writer for more than sixty years. In one of his letters, he described his approach to the writing process. "When you really want to do something, you make time for it. I loved writing, and I worked hard at it. In the early days I analyzed the sort of story I was interested in writing. I would read it first for enjoyment, then study it word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. In time I sold a play. And then my stories started to sell and my books began to be published. I never gave up. Sometimes I had from thirty to thirty five short stories in the mail to magazines at a time. One story sold on its sixteenth submission. I am 79 years old and still keep up with my profession as a writer of sports books for children, which I started when I was 14 years old, even before I was asked to play baseball with the Smiths Falls Beavers. I quit my job at the NCR plant in Ithaca NY in 1963 after some 40 short story sales to magazines, and about 14 book sales, nearly all for children. Since 1963 I've had 102 hardcover books published, nearly all sports books for children, and over half of them (about 60) in paperback. If I've learned one thing from my writing career, it's this: don't ever let anyone stop you from trying to realize your dreams. Don't ever stop doing what you believe in." Thanks, Matt. It was a pleasure to know you.