Show Low knows Mathis as an ace
The RedHawks pitcher is from Show Low, Arizona, a picturesque small town that sits in the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine in the United States.
"I get asked about it all the time," Mathis said. "No one's ever heard of the name. Even people from back home in Arizona ask me, because I'm living in Phoenix now. They'll ask me where Show Low's at, because it's a funny story. But it's a good little town, though."
Show Low's backstory is fun, too.
The town's name came around 1876, after a game of "Seven Up" between Marion Clark and Corydon Cooley. They owned a ranch of nearly 100,000 acres in what would become Show Low. And they decided the town wasn't big enough for the both of 'em.
So they played cards. Winner stays, loser leaves.
They played all night with neither having a winning hand. Clark said, "Show low, and you take the ranch."
Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs and won the ranch, the cattle, the crops, the buildings and rights to the town's name.
"Show Low, it is," Cooley said, and he became the town's first postmaster in 1880.
"It's funny that that's the way they did it," said Mathis, who turned 27 on June 7. "Just playing a card game and that happens. Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore."
Mathis' parents still live in Show Low, located 175 miles northeast of Phoenix and 195 miles north of Tucson.
At an elevation of 6,412 feet, Show Low offers, according to town publicists, "panoramic views, good fishing in mountain lakes and streams, and miles of wilderness for hiking, camping, cycling, horseback riding and downhill and cross-country skiing."
"They've got a lot of stuff going on there," Mathis said. "A lot of people vacation there in the summertime. They have cabins and it's a real nice area. They take their families and go fishing and hang out in the woods and do a lot of outdoor stuff. It's a good area for that."
Good place to grow up, too. Good place to be a high school sports star, which Mathis was for the Show Low Cougars.
"It's a small town, about 10 to 15,000 people live there, depending on what time of year it is," said Mathis, who pitched for Missouri in 2005. "It's a town that loves its high school sports. If you're good in sports in high school, everyone knows. It's just a small town where a bunch of families live the real good life."
In the middle of the good life is a statue of old Marion Clark and Corydon Cooley, playing that card game around a wooden barrel in the 1870s.
"The statue's right downtown - well, there's not really a downtown in Show Low," Mathis said. "But it's on the main street."
And the main street in Show Low is named, of course, Deuce of Clubs.