Copyrights at https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Connie-Mack/
Researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong
He was known as “The Tall Tactician” and was
baseball’s grand old gentleman for more than a generation. Statuesque, stately, and slim, he clutched a
rolled-up scorecard as he sat or stood ramrod straight in the dugout, attired
in a business suit rather than a uniform, a derby or bowler in place of a
baseball cap. He carried himself with
quiet dignity and commanded the respect of friend and foe. Widely addressed by players and other
officials as Mr. Mack, he and the Philadelphia Athletics were so closely linked
for 50 years the team was often dubbed “the Mackmen.”
Connie Mack’s Hall of Fame career spanned 65
major-league seasons as a player, manager, team executive, and owner. He posted 3,731 wins, a mark that exceeds any
other manager’s total by more than 1,000 victories. He guided the Athletics to nine American
League championships and won five World Series titles in eight
appearances. He was the first manager to
win three World Series titles, and the first to win consecutive titles two
times. The valleys were as low as the
peaks were high – he also endured a major league record of 3,948 losses, and
his team finished last in its league 17 times.
He built his dynasties with rising young players, won championships with
the stars he developed, and then sold off those stars when he could no longer
afford them.
A journeyman catcher who offered more in the way of
innovation and creativity than ability during an 11-year-major-league playing
career, Mack served as player-manager for the National League’s Pittsburgh (the
city was actually known as “Pittsburg” from 1890 to 1911) Pirates for three
seasons during the rollicking 1890’s, and then for four seasons for the
Milwaukee Brewers of the Western League, which became the American League in
1900. In 1901, when the circuit declared
it was a major league and began to invade Eastern cities, A.L. President Ban
Johnson asked Mack to show the Philadelphia Athletics. Mack managed the team through 1950 and was a
team owner for the franchise’s entire 54-year existence.
In the early years of the Athletics, Mack skippered
some of the Deadball Era’s best teams, winning six A.L. pennants and three
World Series in the league’s first 14 years, primarily with players he
discovered on school grounds and sandlots and developed into stars. Faced with financial difficulties because of
the onset of World War I and competition for players from the fledgling Federal
League, he dismantled his dynasty and endured a decade of miserable finishes. As he advanced into his sixties, many sportswriters
and fans suggested the game had passed him by.
But he adjusted to the times, opened his checkbook to buy rising stars
from minor-league teams, and built a second dynasty by the end of the Roaring
Twenties.
That team won three straight A.L. championships
(1929-31) and a pair of World Series titles, but suffered declining attendance
as the Great Depression devastated Pennsylvania’s economy. A pragmatic businessman, with no other
streams of income other than his ball club, Mack felt forced to sell of his
stars to more solvent teams. Once again,
the Athletics tumbled to the bottom of the A.L. standings, where they would
hover for the rest of their stay in Philadelphia.
He believed that he would eventually build another winner
and took pride in his ability to discover and develop talented young
players. “No other manager in the
history of the game ever managed more young players and brought more of them to
stardom and to fortune,” the New York Times observed in Mack’s
obituary. “But it is probable that he
will be best remembered for his sensational scrapping of champion machines…”[1]
Mack’s enduring legacy is his longevity and his
civility. He spent a remarkable 71 years
in Organized Baseball, and by the time he left the game, he was a living
legend, revered by the public and by those inside the game. Contrary to popular belief, the distinguished
old gentleman did swear, and he did yell at his players, but rarely, and
usually behind closed doors. He
addressed his players by their proper given names; they generally called him
“Mr. Mack.”
Sabermatrician and baseball historian Bill James
related a story about Mack and Robert “Lefty” Grove, his star pitcher
during the glory years of the late 1920s and early 1930s:
Grove was a loudmouth and a hothead. His manager, Connie Mack, was a quiet,
soft-spoken man who didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, swear, or raise his voice. In 1932, after a tough defeat, Grove was in
the clubhouse raising Cain, throwing chairs, screaming at people, and menacing
lockers. Finally, Connie Mack came out
to try to quiet him down. Grove was
having none of it. “The hell with you,
Mack,” he screamed. “To hell with
you.” To which Mack responded quietly,
as Grove stormed off to the shower, “And to hell with you too, Robert.”[2]
Cornelius McGillicuddy was born on December 22, 1862,
in East Brookfield, Massachusetts, the third of seven children of Irish
immigrants Michael and Mary McKillop McGillicuddy. He arrived one week after Robert E. Lee
defeated Union forces at the Battle of Fredericksburg (Virginia), and six
months before the Battle of Gettysburg.
At the time, his father, who had worked in cotton mills and shoe
factories before the war, was serving in the 51st Massachusetts
Infantry and did not return home until July 1863. As was true of many Mcgillicuddy’s, the
family was known by Mack, except in legal documents.
Connie, a tall, thin boy dubbed “Slats” by his
friends, began to play baseball at an early age. He dropped out of school at the age of 14,
worked in a local shoe factory, and became the catcher and captain for the town
team. At age 21, he decided that his
future was in baseball and embarked on a minor-league career. He debuted at Meriden in the Connecticut
State League in 1884. In 1885, he played
one game for Newark in the Eastern League; then joined Hartford in the North
East Connecticut League. In 1886, Mack
caught 69 games for Hartford and had moved up in class to join the Eastern
League.
After the Hartford season ended, the Washington
franchise in the National League bought Mack and three other players for
$3,500. The 6’2 1/2”, 150-lb
right-handed batting beanpole catcher made his big-league debut two days later,
on Saturday, September 11, 1886, in a 4-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies
before 1,500 fans at Washington’s Swampoodle Grounds. Although the Nationals won 13 of 26 games the
rest of the way – including four by giving up – they still finished with the
worst record in the eight-team N.L. at 28-92.
Over ten games, Mack collected 13 hits in 36 at-bats, recorded 88
bare-handed putouts and 22 assists, and was charged with five errors and 10
passed balls.
From 1887 to 1889, Mack was Washington’s regular
backstop, playing an occasional game at first base, second base, in the
outfield, and even one at shortstop. He
batted .201 in 1889 when the Nationals again slid back into the cellar a seventh place in 1888.
Mack was a leader in the players’ rebellion against
the N.L.’s salary cap and reserve clause that led to the formation of the
Players League in 1890. He invested his
savings of $500 in the Buffalo club and caught 123 games for the Bisons, who
finished last in the eight-team loop.
When the P.L. collapsed after one season, Mack signed with Pittsburgh in
the National League.
He spent the next six seasons in the Smokey City. While there, his wife of five years, Margaret
Hogan, died in 1892, leaving him with three infant children. He did not remarry until 1910 when he and
Katherine Hallahan began his second family, four girls and a boy.
On the field, he was the N.L.’s leader in catcher
fielding percentage in 1891 and 1892.
“By that time, he had become known as a smart catcher and a dependable
batsman in the pinches, though he never was a heavy hitter,” the New York
Times remembered.[3] Though not
highly skilled, he was creative and competitive. He was one of the first major-league catchers
to move up from the backstop to just behind the batter, and among the first to
block the plate.
He was also cunning, though he cultivated a clean-cut
image. He mimicked the sound of a foul
tip and was so proficient at catching them that the N.L. changed its rule so
that a batter was no longer out if the catcher snagged a foul tip with fewer
than two strikes. In 1893, he
intentionally dropped a popup and turned it into a triple play.[4] He physically disrupted batters by grabbing
or tipping their bats as they swung and mentally disturbed them by pointing
out a flaw or weakness. “Since his minor
league days, Connie Mack had continued to work on perfecting the arts of
distracting chatter, quick pitches, and bat tipping,” Mack biographer Norman
Macht wrote, adding that Mack would feign innocence after the act.[5] Hall of Fame catcher and manager Wilbert
Robinson remembered, that “Mack never was mean like some of the catchers of
the day. But he kept up a string of
chatter behind the plate, and if you had any soft spot, Connie would find
it. He could do and say things that go
more under your skin than the cuss words used by other catchers.”[6]
Though he believed in fair play, Mack was able to take
pride in his gamesmanship in an era when gaining an edge was a valued
characteristic. “Farmer Weaver
was a catcher-outfielder for Louisville.
I tipped his bat several times when he had two strikes on him one year,
and each time the umpire called him out.
He got even, though. One time
there were two strikes on him, and he swung as the pitch was coming in. But he didn’t swing at the ball. He swung right at my wrists. Sometimes I think I can still feel the
pain. I’ll tell you I didn’t tip his bat
again. No, sir, not until the last game
of the season and Weaver was at bat for the last time. When he had two strikes, I tipped his bat
again and got away with it.”[7]
Mack was spiked and suffered an ankle injury during
the 1893 season while blocking the plate against the Boston Beaneaters’ Herman
Long. “I was never the same player
after that,” Mack later told sports writer Fred Lieb. “I was slower on the bases and couldn’t stoop
behind the plate as well. It would catch
me in the calf, where I had been spiked.”[8]
He caught 70 games in 1894. The
Pirates started the season with a 53-55-2 record before Al Buckenberger
was dismissed and Mack was named manager at the age of 32. On September 3, the Tall Tactician earned the
first of his record-setting 3,731 managerial wins in a 22-1 walloping of his
old team, Washington in a home game at Exposition Park. The next day, Mack tasted the first of 3,948
losses in a road game at the Polo Grounds.
“He was a new type of manager,” The New York Times observed
at the time of Mack’s passing. “The
old-time leaders ruled by force, often thrashing players who disobeyed orders
on the field or broke club rules off the field.
One of the kindest and most soft-spoken men, he always insisted that he
could get better results by kindness. He
never humiliated a player by public criticism.
No one ever heard him scold a man in the most trying times of his many
pennant fights.”[9]
Pittsburgh posted a 12-10 record the rest of the way
and remained in seventh place among the 12 teams in the expanded N.L. Never the same after the 1893 injury, Mack
appeared in just 14 games as a player in 1895, and though the Pirates finished
seventh again, they improved to 71-61-3 and even led the league briefly in
August. But they faded quickly, and on
September 6 at the Polo Grounds, the frustrated Mack argued a call at second
base, and veteran umpire Hank O’Day tossed him out of the game, the only
official ejection of the Tall Tactician’s long career. After being thrown out of the game, Mack
refused to leave the field. O’Day asked
a New York City policeman to remove him, but Mack shook him off and didn’t
leave until other officers arrived at the scene. He later said he was embarrassed by the
incident. Though extremely enthusiastic
and highly competitive, the pragmatic Mack managed to keep his composure
through the rest of his career, because thought it best for his team.
Mack appeared in 33 games in 1896, 28 of them at
first base, and participated in his final major league contest as a player on
August 29, 1896, at the age of 33. The
Pirates climbed to sixth place in 1896 with a 66-63-2 record, but disagreements
with the team’s owners led to Mack’s dismissal.
Mack moved on to Milwaukee and became manager and 25
percent owner of the city’s Western League franchise. Majority owner Henry Killiea told the
Tall Tactician, “You’re in charge. Manage
the club as if it belonged to you.
Engage the players you think will strengthen the team without consulting
any directors of the club.”[10]
Mack skippered the Brewers for four seasons. A player-manager for the first three, he took his
last turn in the field on September 4, 1899.
“Once he gave up playing,” baseball historian Charles C. Alexander
observed, “Mack had managed from the bench in street clothes. His high starched collar was basic male
attire at the turn of the century, but many years later, long after it had
become unfashionable, he would still be wearing one.”[11] He would also carry a scorecard for the
remainder of his career, waving it to send signals to his players on the
field. He relied on his experience and
his understanding of the skills of both his players and opponent players to
position his fielders.
Concerned with both wins and the box office receipts,
Mack assembled and developed a competitive squad that included a talented but
mercurial pitcher, Rube Waddell.
In 1900, when league president Ban Johnson transformed the Western
League into the American League, the Brewers finished second. When he invaded the eastern cities to compete
directly with the N.L., Johnson tabbed Mack to set up the Philadelphia
franchise that would compete against the Phillies in the nation’s third-largest
city.
Johnson turned to Charles Somers, the Cleveland
owner who had bankrolled several of the other A.L. entries, to finance the
Philadelphia franchise until local ownership could be arranged and directed
Mack to Ben Shibe. Shibe owned
the A.J. Reach Company, which manufactured baseball equipment, and a minority
share of the rival Phillies. Mack
persuaded Shibe to but 50 percent of the A.L. franchise from Somers, promising
Shibe that Reach would become the sole provider of baseballs for the American
League. Mack obtained 25 percent of the
franchise himself, and two Philadelphia sportswriters, Frank Hough and Sam
Jones, bought the remaining 25 percent, which they sold to Mack in 1912.
The agreement between Shibe and Mack was cemented with
a handshake and wasn’t on paper until 1902.
Shibe served as team president and managed the team’s business affairs;
Mack served as treasurer and managed baseball matters. The agreement endured through Shibe’s death
in 1922, in which Mack worked in partnership with Shibe’s sons Tom and John, until
their deaths in the 1930s when Mack became the majority shareholder.
With the partnership in place, Mack needed a place to
play and players to play there. He
solved the first problem by leasing a vacant lot and commissioning the construction
of Columbia Park. To solve his second
problem, Mack turned his attention to his cross-town rivals. Like other American League executives, Mack looked
to stock his team with the best available talent source, the National
League. With a salary offer of $4,000,
Mack lured Napoleon (King Larry) Lajoie away from the Phillies, and
signed pitchers Chick Fraser, Bill Bernhard, and Wiley Piatt.
Mack also signed young New York Giants pitcher Christy
Mathewson, but Matty jumped back to the Giants. Although Mack accused Mathewson of reneging
on his contract, he later referred to Matty as the greatest pitcher ever. The two crossed paths several times during
the next two decades.
Although he didn’t land Mathewson, Mack did acquire
players who made an impact in the A.L.’s inaugural season of 1901. Lajoie was the American League’s best player,
leading the league in batting average (.422), slugging percentage, runs,
doubles (48), home runs (14), and RBIs (125).
Fraser won 20 games, Bernhard 17, and a 25-year-old lefty, Eddie
Plank, also won 17. Mack also added Harry
Davis, Socks Seybold, and Lave Cross to the fold. However, the Athletics managed just a 74-62
record and finished fourth in the American League, nine games behind Clark
Griffith’s Chicago White Sox, and just ahead of John McGraw’s fifth-place Baltimore Orioles.
Mack once again set his sights on the Phillies, who
had finished second in the N.L. This
time, he signed away outfielder Elmer Flick, pitcher Bill Duggleby,
and shortstop Monte Cross. But
before the 1902 season started, the Athletics suffered a severe setback when
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Lajoie, Fraser, and Bernhard could
not play for any other team than the Phillies.
The ruling, which was valid only in Pennsylvania, also affected the
three new jumpers. Fraser followed the
order, but Mack made an agreement with Somers, and Lajoie, Flick, and Bernhard
chose to sign with Cleveland, staying out of Pennsylvania when the Indians
played there, which allowed them to stay in the American League.
With half his team pulled out from under him on
opening day, Mack had to rebuild in a hurry.
He bought catcher Osee Schrecongost from Cleveland, picked up
second baseman Danny Murphy from Norwich, Connecticut, and mercurial
lefthander Rue Waddell, who he had managed in Milwaukee, from the
California League. Waddell joined the
A's on June 26 and posted a 24-7 record with a 2.05 earned run average and 210
strikeouts the rest of the way. Plank, a
20-game winner for the first time, and Seybold, who hit 16 home runs, an
American League record that stood until Babe Ruth hit 29 in 1919, led
the Athletics to their first AL pennant.
The flag was the first for the City of Brotherly Love
since 1883 and helped the Mackmen win the battle of the box office. The Athletics drew 420,078 to Columbia Park,
more than double what they had drawn during their inaugural season, while the
Phillies, jilted by the three men who would win the new league’s first five
batting championships (Lajoie 01-03-04, Ed Delahanty 02, and Flick 05),
attracted just 112,066 to the Baker Bowl.
The Mackmen would outperform and outdraw the Phillies for the next 13
years.
N.L. champion Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss
declined an opportunity to play in what would have been the first “modern”
World Series, and manager John McGraw, who had jumped from the A.L.’s Baltimore
Orioles to the N.L.’s New York Giants during the season derisively labeled the
Athletics “a White Elephant,” a term generally used to describe an ornate,
impractical, and burdensome possession.
Rather than consider it an insult, Mack immediately adopted the
pachyderm as the team’s symbol and attached a white elephant patch to the
Athletic uniforms from 1903 to 1928.
The two leagues reached a “peace agreement” in January
1903, which effectively ended the player raiding between the two leagues. The Mackmen finished second that season, as
Boston earned the right to play in the first modern World Series. Philadelphia finished 14 ½ games back in 1904
but finished fifth despite 26 wins from both Plank and Waddell.
With largely the same team, the Athletics outdistanced
the Chicago White Sox by two games in 1905.
Waddell won 26, Plank won 25, youngster Andy Coakley won 20, and
Bender added 16. In addition to the
strong pitching, the Athletics led the American League in hitting and runs
scored.
As fate would have it, the Mackmen faced the Giants
and Mathewson in the World Series and as luck would have it, the Athletics were
without Waddell, who had been injured.
Mathewson tossed three shutouts, including a six-hitter in Game Five to
wrap up the series, and McGraw, who had clad his squad in new black uniforms,
earned his first World Championship. The
Athletics scored just three runs in the series, all in Chief Bender’s 3-0 Game
Two win.
The A’s slipped to fourth in 1906, finished 1 ½ games
behind Ty Cobb’s Tigers in 1907, and a distant sixth in 1908. But during that season, Mack began to build
his first dynasty, supplying playing time for 21-year-old second baseman Eddie
Collins, 21-year-old shortstop Jack Barry, and 22-year-old third
baseman Frank Baker.
With the three youngsters in the starting lineup and
the Athletics playing their home games at newly finished Shibe Park,
Philadelphia finished second as the Tigers won their third straight pennant in
1909.
The Mackmen returned to the top in 1910. Jack Coombs won 31 games, Bender 23,
and the 34-year-old Plank won 16 as Philadelphia steamrolled the first the
American League, and then the Chicago Cubs, four games to one in the Fall
Classic. Coombs won three games and
Bender one to give Mack and Philadelphia their first World Series Championship.
Coombs, Plank, and Bender combined to carry the
Athletics to a second straight championship in 1911, and 20-year-old first
baseman Stuffy McInnis stepped into the starting lineup, along with
Collins, Barry, and Baker, to complete what would become known as “the $100,000
infield.” Once again, Mack squared off
against McGraw’s black-clad Giants. This
time, the Athletics prevailed as Baker hit two key home runs and earned the
moniker of “Home Run” Baker; Bender won twice and Coombs and Plank each picked
up a victory in the 4-1 Series.
The Athletics slipped to third in 1912 but bounced
back to finish ahead of Walter Johnson’s Washington Senators in
1913. Once again, the World Series
matched Mr. Mack and Muggsy, and for the second time, the Athletics won, this
time by a four-games-to-one margin as the 37-year-old Plank out-dueled
Mathewson in the finale and Bender won two more World Series games.
With three World Series wins in four years, two over
McGraw, Mack had earned his reputation as “The Tall Tactician.” Philadelphia cruised to its fourth A.L. title
in five years in 1914 behind the $100,000 infield and pitching of Bender,
Plank, 21-year-old Bullet Joe Bush, 23-year-old Bob Shawkey, and
20-year-old Herb Pennock. The
Athletics, like their manager, were efficient.
But as tranquil as the season was in Philadelphia, there were storm
clouds on the horizon. World War I broke
out in Europe, an event that shortened the 1918 season and reduced box office
revenues. The Federal League began
operation in eight cities, and its well-financed owners dangled cash in front
of major leaguers. And like a cyclone,
the Boston Braves, mired in last place on July 18, arose in the summer heat,
stormed past the rest of the National League, and demolished the Athletics in a
stunning World Series sweep.
Mack later claimed his team lost because it had been
splintered by the specter of Federal League money. Unwilling and unable to match the lucrative
F.L. salaries, Mack watched the Federal League lure away Plank and Bender,
released Coombs, who had missed two seasons because of illness and injury, and
sold Eddie Collins to the White Sox because owner Charles Comiskey
afford a high salary to keep Collins out of Federal League hands.
He refused to renegotiate a three-year contract Baker
had signed in 1914, and Baker retired to his family farm and sat out a year
before the equally stubborn Mack traded him to the New York Yankees.
Mack’s 1950 “autobiography,” most likely penned by a
ghostwriter [12], justifies his actions:
“After giving the crisis much careful
thought, I decided the war had gone too far to stop it by trying to outbid the
Federal moneybags. Nothing could be more
disastrous at this time than a salary war.
There was but one thing to do: to refuse to be drawn into this bitter
conflict, and to let those who wanted to risk their fate with the Federals go
to Federals. The first to go were Bender
and Plank. I didn’t get a nickel for
them. This was being struck by a hurricane. Others followed. There was only one way to get out from under
the catastrophe. I decided to sell out
and start over again. When it became
known that my players were for sale, the offers rolled into me. If the players were going to ‘cash in’ and
leave me to hold the bag, there was nothing for me to do but to cash in
too. So, I sold the great Eddie Collins
to the White Sox for $50,000 cash. I
sold Home Run Baker to the Yankees. My
shortstop Jack Barry told me he wanted to go to Boston, so I sold him to the
Bostons for a song. “Why didn’t you hang
on to the half of your team that was loyal and start to build up again?” This question has been asked me. My answer is that when a team starts to
disintegrate it is like trying to plug up the hole in the dam to stop the
flood. The boys who are left have lost
their high spirits, and they want to go where they think the future looks
brighter. It is only human for everyone
to try to improve his opportunities.”[13]
When the 1915 season started, Mack hoped that Bush,
Shawkey, and Pennock could offset the loss of his veteran pitchers. They weren’t ready. Although the three would combine for 636 wins
over their careers, they went just 14-29 for the Athletics in 1915. Before the season ended, he sent Shawkey to
the Yankees and Pennock and Barry to the Red Sox. The scuttled squad managed to lose 109 games,
and finished 58 ½ games behind the Red Sox, even though Lajoie, at the age of
39, returned to the fold. A year later,
Larry closed out his career on an even more dismal Athletics squad, one that finished
36-117. The Mackmen placed last for
seven straight seasons, including the final five of the Deadball Era. In 1919, the A’s finished 52 games back, and
the cross-town rivals Phillies finished 47 ½ back in the N.L. in a dismal
baseball year for the City of Brotherly Love.
In the early 1920s, as Mack neared and passed his 60th
birthday, baseball writers and fans openly suggested that the old-timer should
surrender his spot on the bench to a younger man. But Mack was busy building his next
dynasty. The Mackmen finally escaped the
cellar in 1922, when they finished seventh.
They improved one more place each year between 1922 and 1924 and then
jumped to second place in 1925, and Mack plowed his profits right back into the
team. By the end of that year, Mack had
added future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and
Robert “Lefty” Grove – all purchased from minor-league clubs – to his roster,
which also included Eddie Rommel, Rube Walberg, Jimmy Dykes, and Max
Bishop. The Mackmen slipped to third
in 1926, then finished second to the “Murderer’s Row” New Your Yankees in 1927.
They finished second again in 1928, and Mack managed
three hitters who had collected more than 3,000 hits. Both Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb, who had
joined the Athletics in 1927, collected the final 114 of his 4,189
safeties. Eddie Collins, who had
returned to the Athletics in 1927, managed three hits in 1928, raising his
career total to 3,314; he would add number 3,315, his last, with a pinch-hit
single in 1930. The three made up half
of the six players who reached the milestone by that time, Lajoie, who had
spent two stints with Mack, Cap Anson, and Honus Wagner, made up
the rest of the exclusive club. (Mack
also managed some near misses. After a
long N.L. career, Zack Wheat played his final season in Philadelphia in
1927 and finished with 2,884 hits.
Simmons was on his way to 2,927 career safety.)
The following year, the Athletics posted 104
victories, finished 18 games ahead of the Yankees, and crushed the Chicago Cubs
four games to one in the World Series.
Surprise Game One starter Howard Ehmke delivered a complete-game
3-1 victory, and the Athletics, trailing 8-0 in Game Four, rallied for ten runs
in the bottom of the seventh inning to win, 10-8. Mack later called Ehmke’s performance “my
greatest thrill.”[14] Cochrane, Foxx,
Simmons, Dykes, Mule Haas and Bing Miller all batted .300 or better;
George Earnshaw, who Mack had purchased a year earlier from the minors, posted
24 wins, Grove 20, Walberg 18, and Rommel 12.
Philadelphia won 1002 games in 1930, finished eight
games ahead of the runner-up Washington Senators and 16 ahead of the Yankees,
and downed the St. Louis Cardinals four games to two in the Fall Classic behind
a pair of wins each from Grove and Earnshaw, two homers each from Cochrane and
Simmons, and a game-winner from Foxx.
Grove won 28 games during the regular season and Earnshaw 22; Foxx
homered 37 times and drove in 156 runs; Simmons hit 36 homers and drove in 165.
In 1931 they were even better during the regular
season. The Athletics posted 107 wins to
finish 13 ½ games ahead of the Yankees.
Grove posted a 31-4 record, Earnshaw and Rube Walberg each won more than
20, Foxx hit 30 home runs, and Simmons hit 22.
But Johnny “Pepper” Martin, the “Wild Horse of the Osage,”
collected 12 hits, ran wild, and willed the Cardinals to victory in a
seven-game Fall Classic rematch, the finale a 4-2 win at Sportsman’s Park.
It was the last time Mack managed a World Series game
as the second Athletics dynasty ended much like the first. This time it was the Great Depression that
devastated the city of Philadelphia’s economy.
Attendance plummeted while the Athletics had the highest payroll in the
league. Mack sold off his stars to
owners with deeper pockets, and his team returned to the nether regions of the
American League.
The descent started slowly. Foxx smashed 58 home runs and drove in 169
runs, and the Athletics won 94 games in 1932 but finished 13 games behind the
Yankees, who returned to dominance after the three-year interruption. The Athletics had drawn 839,176 to Shibe Park
in 1929, and though they had won three straight pennants, attendance fell to
just 405,500 by 1932. In September, Mack
sold Simmons, Dykes, and Mule Haas to the Chicago White Sox for $100,000. Two months later, he released Rommel.
In 1933, Mack served as the A.L. manager for the first
All-Star Game, meeting and beating the ailing John McGraw for the last time,
when Babe Ruth homered to give the junior circuit the win in Chicago. Mack had missed the opportunity to manage
Ruth earlier in his career, turning down a chance to buy the rookie pitcher
from Baltimore owner Jack Dunn in 1914, insisting he had no money to do
so.
The A’s slipped another spot in 1933, finishing
third. In December, Mack dealt Grove,
Walberg, and Bishop to the Boston Red Sox for two journeyman players for $125,000,
sold Cochrane to Detroit for $100,000 and pitcher Johnny Pasek, and
packaged Pasek and Earnshaw in a deal with the White Sox that netted $20,000
and another journeyman player.
The Athletics fell to fifth the next year and dove all
the way to the cellar in 1935 when they attracted just 297,138 to Shibe
Park. In December, Mack completed the
dismantling of his dynasty when he traded Jimmie Foxx in a four-player trade
that brought back $150,000 in cash.
Between 1935 and 1946, the Athletics finished nine times in 12 years. Mack, who turned
75 and the 1937 season, missed the final 34 games of that campaign and 91 more
games in 1939 because of illness. His
son Earle, who had played five games for Philadelphia’s pennant-winning
teams in the 1910’s and managed in the minors before he joined his father as a
coach and heir apparent in 1924, served as the interim manager. many thought that once the Grand Old Man
retired, Earle would become manager, and his half-brother Connie Mack, Jr.,
would manage the team’s business affairs.
It never happened. Earle served a
Prince Charles-like apprenticeship, serving 27 years as bench coach, with just
two interludes, before he was reassigned as chief scout in 1950.
By the late 1930s, Tom and John Shibe, who partnered
with Mack after their father’s death, had also died, and the Tall Tactician bought
shares from John Shibe’s estate that gave the Mack family a majority
ownership. Named team president in 1937,
he was unwilling to give up the responsibility for baseball operations and ran
the ball club like a small business.
With baseball as his primary business, Mack never had the money to
compete against owners who had become wealthy through other financial endeavors,
but he continued to aspire to make his team more profitable and rebuild another
dynasty. In 1938, he reached an
agreement to share Shibe Park, embracing his box office rivals as a tenant. In 1939, he added lights and the Athletics
became the first A.L. team to play night games at home.
They may have been better off in the dark. The Athletics continued to finish last in the
early 1940s as the United States entered World War II, though Al Simmons became
the latest in a legion of former players to rejoin Mack as coaches, a list that
included Ira Thomas, Danny Murphy, Eddie Collins, Eddie Rommel, and
Jimmy Dykes.
In 1943, the Athletics suffered through a 20-game
losing streak on their way to another eighth-place finish, but in 1944, a
season that saw most able-bodied young men in military rather than baseball
uniforms, the St. Louis Browns won their only A.L. pennant, and the Mackmen
climbed into sixth place.
They slid back into the cellar the following year, and
the two after that, before making Mack’s modest last hurrah. The Athletics posted winning records all
three seasons between 1947 and 1949, finishing fifth twice and fourth in
1948. Attendance, which ran between as
low as 233,173 during lean seasons, spiked to a three-year average of
891,052. Bolstered by the box office
receipts, Mack at long last had cash to spend.
But while he may have dreamed of another dynasty, his age, his financial
situation, his unwillingness to embrace and build a minor-league system, and a
reluctance to add minority players because he believed Philadelphia fans
wouldn’t accept them, doomed the dream to failure.
After three straight winning seasons, Mack
optimistically embarked on the 1950 campaign, but at the age of 87, suffered
through a 50-102 season. The Athletics
drew just 309,805 to Shibe Park, while their tenants, the Whiz Kid Phillies,
won the N.L. title and attracted more than one million fans for the fifth
straight year.
Mack endured lapses of memory, napped during games,
and made bad coaching decisions that his assistants quietly reversed during the
1950 season. Despite his vow that he
would not step down, he was too old to physically continue, and their promise in
August that he would not have to, his sons, Earle and Roy, urged him to
surrender his spot in the dugout. On
October 18, 1950m at the age of 87, Connie Mack retired as manager of the
Philadelphia Athletics, with a tally of 3,731 wins (3,582 with Philadelphia) and
3,948 losses (3,814 with the A’s), both major league records, nine A.L.
pennants, and five World Series wins in eight tries. “I’m not quitting because I’m getting old,
I’m quitting because I think people want me to.”[15]
Jimmy Dykes, one of many former players who had
returned to serve as coaches for Mack, and who had replaced Earle as the top
assistant, was named manager. Dykes
guided the team to fifth- and fourth-place finishes the next two years, but the
Athletics slipped to seventh in his
final season, 1953, and finished last under Eddie Joost in 1954.
Mack stayed on as team president, though his sons took
on more and more of the duties as he aged.
Roy and Earle (his sons from his first marriage) had acquired nearly 80
percent of the franchise’s stock by August 1950, including shares from Connie
Mack Jr., (his son from his second marriage) after considerable squabbling
among the children from the two marriages (the turmoil had resulted in a
temporary separation from his second wife, Katherine in 1946-47). [16] To buy
the shares, Roy and Early heavily mortgaged the club through the Connecticut
General Life Insurance, and the debt-laden club once again faced financial
difficulty as attendance continued to fall.
“Toward the end, he was old and sick and saddened, a figure of forlorn
dignity bewildered by the bickering around him as the baseball monument that he
had built crumbled away,” veteran sportswriter Red Smith wrote. [17]
Though his legacy and career-winning percentage had
been eroded by the string of last-place finishes, he was revered by those in
the game and the public. Shibe Park was
renamed “Connie Mack Stadium” in 1953 and continued to house both the
Athletics and Phillies, who were still winning the battle of the box office
between the two. The other A.L. owners
unhappy about their share of the low gates at Philadelphia – just 362,111 in
1953 and a paltry 304,666 in 1954 – urged the Macks to sell or move the team.
The Macks resisted, but Roy and Earle were pressured
by the New York owners to sell the team to Arnold Johnson, a Chicago vending
machine magnate who owned the Yankees farm team in Kansas City. When Earle and Roy finally agreed to sell,
the other AL owners unanimously voted to accept the deal. Upon hearing the news that the Athletics
would move away from Philadelphia, the 91-year-old Connie Mack collapsed.
He bounced back and endured the summer of 1955, his
first outside of organized baseball since he embarked on his playing career in
1884. In early October, he fell and
suffered a hip fracture that needed surgery and was using a wheelchair when he
celebrated his 93rd birthday on December 22. In early February, he fell ill while at his
daughter’s house.
Connie Mack died in Philadelphia on February 8, 1956,
at the age of 93 “of old age and complications from hip surgery.” [18] Hundreds of fans, friends, former players,
and baseball executives turned out for the funeral at St. Bridget’s, his
parish church. He was buried at Holy Sepulcher
Catholic Cemetery in Philadelphia. He
was survived by Katherine, four daughters, three sons, 24 grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. His grandson Connie
Mack III, the son of Connie Mack, Jr., served in the U.S. House of
Representatives from 1983 to 1989. And represented Florida in the U.S. Senate
from 1989 to 2001. His son, Connie Mack,
IV, also served Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 2005 to
2013.
Mack received many honors during his long career. He was proudest of the Bok Award, which was
presented to him for his service to the city of Philadelphia in 1929. The honor had always gone to someone
prominent in the arts or professions. In
1941, the City of Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania both declared May 17
“Connie Mack Day.”
In December 1937, 13 years before he retired as the
Athletics manager, Mack was selected for induction into Baseball’s Hall of
Fame, along with his old nemesis, McGraw, and old ally, Ban Johnson. In June 1939, Mack was honored at the
dedication of the Hall of Fame at
Cooperstown. His plaque there called him
“Mr. Baseball.”
Decades after both he and his beloved Athletics left,
The City of Brotherly Love continues to honor the Mackmen legacy. Mack was posthumously inducted into the
Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame in 2004 and was among the inaugural group for
the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame.
The wall stood inside Veterans Stadium from the 1970 season, until
2004, when they moved into Citizen’s Bank Park.
There, a new Wall includes only Phillies contributors, and the names of
the Athletics’ honorees now appear on the base of a life-sized statue of Connie
Mack, attired in a business suit, waving his rolled-up scorecard, outside the
ballpark. It is a fitting tribute to the
man who meant so much to baseball in Philadelphia.
Source:
1. Charles C. Alexander. John McGraw. New York:Viking Penguin Books, 1988.
2. Charles C. Alexander. Ty Cobb. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984.
3. Ted Davis. Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball.
Lincoln, NE, Writers Club Press, 2000.
4. Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella. The New
Biographical History of Baseball, Chicago,
Triumph Books, 2002.
5. Steve Goldman, ed. It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, The
Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.
Philadelphia Basic Books, 2007.
6. Donald Honig. The American League, An
Illustrated History New York Crown Publishers,
1987.
7. Bill James and John Dewan, Neil Munro, Don
Zminda, Jim Callis. All-Time Baseball
Sourcebook Skokie IL, STATS, Inc., 1998.
8. Bill James. The New Bill James Historical
Abstract, New York: Free Press, 2001.
9. Bill James. The Bill James Guide to
Baseball Managers New York Scribner, 1997.
10. William C. Kashatus. Connie Mack’s ’29
Triumph Jefferson, NC, McFarland and
Company Inc., 1999.
11. William C. Kashatus. Money Pitcher, Chief
Bender and the Tragedy of American Indian
Assimilation, College Station Penn State
Press, 2006.
12. William C. Kashatus. The Philadelphia Athletics.
Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002.
13. Jonah Keri, ed. Baseball Between the Numbers,
Why Everything You Know About The Game is
Wrong Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2006.
14. Rick Huhn. Eddie Collins, A Baseball Biography.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company,
Inc., 2008.
15. Frederick Lieb. Connie Mack. New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1945.
16. Frederick Lieb. Baseball As I Have Known It.
Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
17. Philip Lowry. Green Cathedrals, Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley Press, 1992.
18. Norman Macht. Connie Mack and the Early Years
of Baseball. Lincoln: the University of Nebraska
Press, 2007.
19. Norman Macht. Connie Mack, The Turbulent and
Triumphant Years, 1915-1931. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2012.
20. Norman Macht. “Cornelius McGillicuddy (Connie
Mack) ”Baseball’s First Stars. Cleveland:
Society for American Baseball Research, 1996.
21. Connie Mack. My 66 Years in the Big Leagues,
The Great Story of America’s National Game.
Philadelphia Universal House, 1950.
22. Connie Mack. From Sandlot to Big League,
Connie Mack’s Baseball Book. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1960.
23. Tom Meany. Baseball’s Greatest Teams. New
York: A.S.Barnes & Company, 1949.
24. David S. Neft and Richard M. Cohen. The World
Series Complete Play-By-Play of Every
Game 1903-1989. New York St. Martin’s Press,
1989.
25. David S. Neft and Richard M. Cohen. The Sports
Encyclopedia Baseball, New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1987.
26. Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein. Baseball
Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time.
New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.
27. Lawrence S. Ritter. Lost Ballparks. New York:
Penguin Books, 1992.
28. Lawrence S. Ritter. The Glory of Their
Times. New York: William Morrow, 1992.
29. Jerome C. Romanowski. The Mackmen.
Camden, NJ: Graphic Press, 1979.
30. Robert Schmuhl. Making Words Dance:
Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and
Writing. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel
Publishing, 2010.
31. Barry Sparks. Frank “Home Run” Baker: Hall
of Famer and World Series Hero Jefferson,
NC, McFarland and Company, 2006.
32. Alfred H. Spink. The National Game. 2nd ed.
Writing Baseball Series Edition. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois Press, 2000.
33. Fred Stein. And the Skipper Bats Cleanup: A
History of the Baseball Player- Manager with
42 Biographies of Men Who Filled the Dual Role:
Jefferson, NC McFarland & Company, Inc.
Publishing, 2002.
34. Tom Swift. Chief Bender’s Burden, The Silent
Struggle of a Baseball Star, Lincoln, NE, Nebraska
Press, 2008.
35. Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker, eds.
Nineteenth Century Stars. Kansas City, MO:
Society for American Baseball Research, 1989
Republished 2012.
36. Robert D. Warrington. “Departure Without
Dignity: The Athletics Leave Philadelphia.
”Baseball Research Journal. 39 (Fall 2010),
95-113 Philadelphia Athletics Historical
Society’s Official Website:
o TheDeadballEra.com
o Baseballlibrary.com
o Baseball-reference.com
37. National Baseball Hall of Fame website.
38. Heritagequest online census.
39. Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown.
40. SABR.org.
41. Philadelphia Inquirer, various dates.
42. New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956.
Notes
1. “Connie Mack, Mr. Baseball, Dies in Philadelphia
at the Age of 93,” New York Times, Feb. 9,
1956, 1, 36.
2. Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Abstract
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 848.
3. The New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956, 1, 36.
4. Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years
of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2007), 97-98.
5. Macht, 99-100.
6. Macht, 99-100.
7. Macht, 100.
8. Frederick Lieb, Connie Mack (New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1945), 40.
9. The New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956, 1, 36.
10, Macht, 131.
11. Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York:
Viking Penguin Books, 1988),
12. Connie Mack. My 66 Years in the Big Leagues, The
Great Story of America’s National Game
(Philadelphia: Universal House, 1950), 35-36.
According to Philadelphia Athletics historian Bob
Warrington, "Dick Armstrong,” the Athletics
director of public relations when the book was
published, acknowledged years later he was the
ghostwriter of Mack’s autobiography. Mack,
struggling with mental deterioration by 1950,
certainly needed considerable aid in telling the
story of his life, whether Mack uttered these
words, or they sprung from the fertile mind of
Armstrong is open to question.” “Departure
Without Dignity: The Athletics Leave
Philadelphia,” Baseball Research Journal, 9
(Fall 2010), 113.
13. Mack, 35-36.
14. Mack, 46-48.
15. William C. Kashatus, The
Philadelphia Athletics Charleston, SC:
Arcadia Publishing 2002), 90.
16. Robert D. Warrington, “Departure Without
Dignity: The Athletics Leave Philadelphia,
Baseball Research Journal, 39, (Fall 2010), 113.
17. Robert Schmuhl, Making Words Dance
Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and
Writing (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel
Publishing 2010), xxiii.
18. Ted Davis, Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball
(Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2000), 215.
Full Name: Cornelius Alexander Mack.
Birth: December 22, 1862, at East Brookfield,
MA (USA)
Death: February 8, 1956, at Philadelphia, PA (USA)
No comments:
Post a Comment