MATTY: An Evening with Christy Mathewson

Featuring Eddie Frierson • Directed by Kerrigan Mahan

Welcoming the 2024 Baseball Season!

“One of the Year’s Ten Best Plays! Whether you are a baseball fan or not, Eddie Frierson’s play, “MATTY: An Evening With Christy Mathewson,” is a superb theatrical experience. MATTY hits a home run!” — National Public Radio (NPR)

The Santa Monica Playhouse Benefit Series
presents the Smash Hit ​Off-Broadway Show direct from Times Square!

Santa Monica Playhouse is delighted and proud to welcome Eddie Frierson’s MATTY back to our boards for three shows only. Baseball fan or not, you definitely want to see this show.

“It’s 100% true that you don’t have to be a baseball fan to be completely engaged by Eddie Frierson’s performance. He leaves the audience with a real appreciation of Christy Mathewson, and the place and time in which he was an authentic hero. On the other hand, if you are a baseball fan, you will be amazed at how much you didn’t know about “Matty,” his contemporaries, and the dramatic baseball events of their time.” — Bob Costas, NBC

Written and performed by Eddie Frierson, Matty is the life story of Christy Mathewson, legendary hall-of-fame pitcher for the New York Giants (1900 to 1916), gentleman, philosopher and first true American hero who inspired a whole generation of fans to make baseball America's pastime. Mathewson was arguably America's first major baseball legend - a college-educated all-American farm boy from baseball's age of innocence, a multi-faceted baseball player with homespun wit. Besides his ballpark records, still among the most impressive ever posted, he was an author of books for boys, toured in vaudeville, made a motion picture, and was a war hero, a coach, a sports writer and very likely the first major sports figure to be a product spokesperson.

“A perfect pitch! Pure Virtuosity!” Clive Barnes, NEW YORK POST

Frierson, who researched and developed the play, is also a college-educated all-American ballplayer. A baseball scholarship brought him to UCLA to pitch for the Bruins. While there he also pursued a degree in theatre and, as he says, realizing that he would never be a hall-of-famer, bypassed a professional baseball career in order to pursue acting. Staying close to his athletic roots after graduation, he was the head baseball coach at Santa Monica High School while looking for the perfect vehicle to launch his acting career. He found that vehicle with the Christy Matthewson story, spending twelve years researching and developing it into Matty, which had one of its first public performances at the Santa Monica Playhouse in 1989. Ironically, he has clearly gone farther in baseball through the stage than he ever would have on the field as it is because of his performance as “Matty” that he was ushered into Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as an “Honorary Inductee.”

Three Performances Only!

February 23 - 25, 2024

Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm • Sunday at 2:00 pm
Tickets: $20
$15 for Kids under 12!
Discounts for school and team groups of 15 or more

get  tickets  now

Santa Monica Playhouse Reserves the Right to Cancel or Reschedule Performances Without Prior Notice.