Philadelphia Baseball’s Unappreciated Founders: Al Reach and Ben Shibe

Two of America’s most important sports figures were dissimilar men, who impacted the development of the national pastime in Philadelphia and set new standards for the emerging sporting goods industry.

Al Reach was a pioneering second baseman for the original Philadelphia Athletics of the 1860s, and was possibly the game’s first professional ballplayer. Later, he became a successful maker of sporting equipment and the founding president of the National League Phillies. Ben Shibe took another avenue to prominence. Never active in sports because of an injured leg, he managed the family’s leather and harness company into a sports manufacturing enterprise. Shibe was most noted for his automatic baseball-winding machine. Beginning in the 1880s, Shibe and his sporting goods partner, A. J. Reach, made balls for all the major leagues. Both men were also innovative stadium builders and founders of the new Athletics of Philadelphia.

Al Reach was born in London, England on May 28, 1840, the son of Benjamin Reach, “a trading agent.” His parents emmigrated to Brooklyn, New York when he was almost a year old. Raised with strong work and ethical values, the young Reach sold newspapers on Broadway, worked as a ship caulker and became an iron molder, working twelve hours a day in a foundry.

Following in his father’s cricket-ball playing tradition, Reach discovered he had a talent for the popular “New York” style game of baseball. On the sandlots of Brooklyn he gained notoriety as a catcher for the Jackson Juniors of Williamsburg. His move to the famous Eckford baseball club of Brooklyn in 1861 brought him to the attention of prominent east coast teams. Impressed with the integrity and business acumen of Colonel Thomas Fitzgerald, the president of the original Philadelphia Athletics, Reach in the summer of 1864 started playing ball in the Quaker City. He was one of the first ballplayers to compete for pay. Al earned $25 a week and commuted to Brooklyn between games. At the start of the 1866 season Fitzgerald set him up with a center city cigar and tobacco store above Fourth and Chestnut Streets. The site quickly became a popular gathering spot for the city’s sportsmen, and before the year was out, Reach was brokering tickets and merchandising baseball gear. After the season he married and moved to Philadelphia.

For most of the next decade, “Pops” Reach was one of the sport’s most popular and respected ballplayers. Fast and sure-handed, Reach set the standard for playing second base. He was said to be the first to play his position mid-way between the bases. He also stationed himself very deep, about twenty feet behind the infield line. Reach was known as the “Scratcher” for his ability of digging up hard-hit balls. At five-foot-six-inches and 155 pounds, Al Reach hit left-handed with skill and power. His feats and gentlemanly behavior for the renowned Athletics were lauded by the sporting press. In 1874, Reach became the playing manager of the Athletics and led them to England on baseball’s first European tour. Three years later, after the National League was formed, Reach retired to devote his attention to his expanding business ventures.

The year of the English tour, Al Reach, anticipating an increased demand for baseball and sporting equipment, established a large retail store on south Eighth Street. His commercial successes were due to his athletic reputation and his “sterling integrity … [and] Steady industry.” But with the advent of the new decade, he was ready to get into the manufacturing side of sports supplies, thus his relationship with Benjamin Franklin Shibe.

Ben Shibe was born on January 28, 1838, in the Kensington section of Philadelphia known as “Fishtown.” He had little formal education, but had a great interest in things mechanical. Eventually, Shibe adapted these skills to his father’s small harness-making business, and with his brother John, produced leather sporting goods. By 1881, his ingenious machinery and many patents made it difficult for Reach to compete with Shibe’s company. It did not take long for both men to realize it would be mutually advantageous if they merged their businesses. The result was a co-partnership. The new wholesale company was named for Reach and run by Shibe as president. They also moved to larger quarters across the street from Reach’s old store site. The hottest merchandise for the expanded Reach Company was the Shibe baseball, considered to be the best on the market. The merger was perfectly timed because Reach was about to invest in a new National League franchise that was being relocated from Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Philadelphia Phillies ball club was incorporated in November 1882 with Reach heading a group of prominent investors. A critical member of this association was John Ignatius Rogers. Born in Philadelphia on May 27, 1844, Rogers got a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in corporation and real estate law. Active in politics, Rogers served a term in the state legislature and was appointed Judge-Advocate of the state national guard, with the rank of colonel. It was these political contacts that made the would-be colonel a logical choice to help Al Reach bring a National League team back to Philadelphia.

Ownership was composed of four investors, who divided 150 shares at $100 apiece. Reach, with twenty shares, and Rogers with ten were minority partners. Nevertheless, Reach was named president, and Rogers became the club’s secretary. And though both men assumed majority ownership by the end of the decade, Rogers initially deferred to his more experienced colleague when the ball club was being established. Years later, the colonel’s role changed when the litigious, self-promoting attorney became the league’s spokesman in baseball’s burgeoning labor-management disputes.

With nothing more than a “right to franchise,” Reach renovated an old, oddly shaped ballpark at 24th and Columbia Avenue (Recreation Park), and hastily assembled a team. To commemorate the inaugural season, Reach also began publishing the Reach Official Baseball Guide. But Al Reach was accustomed to success, and after a dismal first year, he signed the sport’s leading manager, Harry Wright. The team showed immediate improvement and within a few years their little ballpark proved to be inadequate. In 1887, Reach and Rogers built a spacious state-of-the-art wooden baseball stadium at Broad and Lehigh for the unprecedented cost of $80,000.

Despite good attendance and the growth of the sporting goods market place, Al Reach was alarmed by the rising operational costs of a major-league franchise. His biggest concern was the threatening troubles over players’ salaries and the infamous reserve clause contracts. By 1889, the ballplayers’ new union, the Brotherhood, was suggesting a strike and a rival players league. The anticipated litigation and feuding alarmed the business-conscious Al Reach.

Compounding the pending costs of a baseball war was the increased pressure from the A.G. Spalding sporting goods empire. The Reach Company could not bankroll the expansion necessary to meet the new demands, particularly the subletting contracts to produce more baseballs for Spalding. Unwilling to go into debt with a baseball strike on the horizon, Reach and Shibe in December 1889 sold all of their retail outlets to the enterprising A.G. Spalding for $100,000. Reach retained the company’s name and the production side of the business. In the new corporate agreement, Reach got 600 shares of full-paid, non-assessable stock, and Shibe received half that number. The critical part of the transaction was that Reach and Shibe held on to the wholesaling business of baseballs. Under the watchful direction of Shibe and Robert Reach, Al’s brother, a large factory was set up in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. They even had a training school for their workers. When the new American League was founded in 1901, Shibe’s winding machines were outfitting balls under a variety of brand names. It was estimated that the Reach Company was producing 1,200 dozen baseballs a day.

The Spalding transaction and Reach’s sale of center-city properties helped the Phillies president survive the disruptive strike year of 1890. But the prospect of greater post-strike expenses strained his deteriorating relationship with John Rogers.

Colonel Rogers’ role as a litigator allowed him to assume a greater presence in league and franchise affairs. The colonel, however, was a long-winded meddler, whose grudges and grievances were legendary. Suspicious and manipulative by nature, Rogers wanted the kind of recognition and admiration reserved for his partner. Determined to assert himself in team business, Rogers blindsided Reach.

Both men held equal shares of the Phillies restructured stock, and agreed that neither would disturb the balance by pursuing the remaining shares. Rogers did not abide by his promise, and under the guise of helping Harry Wright’s widow, he purchased the old manager’s stock. Rogers now became the majority owner with 53% to Rogers’ 43%. From this point forward, Colonel Rogers, not Al Reach, made the major decisions affecting the running of the franchise and its facilities. Reach became a figurehead president as Rogers made himself the new secretary-treasurer with a substantial raise in salary. In addition, Rogers spent large sums of money on unnecessary refurbishing and alienated ballplayers with his mean-spirited bargaining. The source of much of this discontent derived from the financial crisis of rebuilding the Phillies fire-vanquished Ballpark.

When an August 1894 fire destroyed the Broad and Lehigh wooden stadium, the insurance covered only $20,000 of the $150,000 replacement costs. Before the reconstruction started, Reach and Rogers agreed that the new facility would be a model for new ballpark construction, the emphasis being on viewing and safety. Wood was covered by galvanized iron and soaked in asbestos paint. Obstructive posts were eliminated and relegated to the rear of the pavilions. In its place was an innovative cantilever construction of hanging steel platforms (roofs and double decks) from vertical gravity-bearing piers. Reach also installed a new water main pipe system that could “deluge every portion” of the grandstands. The structure was a forerunner of the steel and concrete stadiums of the next century.

But the hastily built ballpark had many serious layout faults that required constant attention. These renovations, together with Rogers’s obsession of making the stadium a multi-purpose moneymaking facility, undid the relationship with his partner. By the end of the 1899 season, Reach allegedly offered Colonel Rogers around $150,000 for his shares.

The Reach-Rogers schism fully erupted when the new American League threatened the old league’s status quo. This strain also exposed the instability of the Rogers-run Phillies, and brought Al Reach’s sporting goods partner, Ben Shibe, directly into the fray. The underlying cause was Ban Johnson’s desire to move his Western League teams into the cities abandoned by the National League. These ventures soon expanded to existing old league cities like Philadelphia. The new league’s point man in the Quaker City was Connie Mack, a manager in Johnson’s old organization. While looking for suitable stadium sites, Mack made inquiries about possible backers. After many closeted meetings, Mack and his investors announced that Ben Shibe would be the principal owner and president of the new Athletics ball club.

Shibe had always been interested in Philadelphia baseball. In the late 1870s he was the main stockholder in a prominent semi-pro Shibe Ball Club. He later became a minority partner in the American Association Athletics, a position he held until the franchise collapsed in the wake of the players’ strike. At the end of the decade, Shibe resurrected the Athletics name for an Eastern League team. But his jump to the American League was a puzzling one, given his close ties with Phillies president A. J. Reach.

Shibe and Reach were a lot more than old business associates. Ben Shibe’s only daughter, Mary, in 1894 married Al Reach’s only son, George. But the marriage was a product, not a factor in the families being close. It was said that the partners were like brothers and did nothing without consulting the other. They even invested money together and spent most of their social hours in each other’s company. The conclusion was that Ben Shibe would not make a decision to invest in a competing league without Al Reach’s input.

To understand their decision, one must take into consideration the role of Colonel John Rogers. Reach believed Rogers had violated his trust, and rather than go through another costly league war with Rogers, he preferred to divest himself of his interest in the Phillies. Another factor was the status of the Reach-Shibe baseball. It had been the official ball of Ban Johnson’s Western League and was now adopted by his new baseball association. Reach also was put off by Rogers’ corrosive relationship with his players that drove Napoleon Lajoie and three starting pitchers in 1901 to the first-year Athletics. Therefore, Reach had both motive and incentives to abandon John Rogers and support Ben Shibe.

The Shibe-run Athletics played their games at 29th and Columbia Avenue. They finished fourth while the Phillies came in second with a dissent-ridden ball club. In 1902, Ed Delahanty and eight of his Phillies teammates joined other American League clubs. The Phillies’ decline, coupled with failing attendance, contrasted with the success of Shibe’s Athletics. In March 1903, John Rogers, disgusted with the disintegration of his franchise, joined Reach and sold the team for $170,000 to a syndicate led by socialite, James Potter.

In contrast, Shibe’s Athletics were very successful and in 1909 they opened the season in a new ball park, the first steel and concrete stadium, five blocks west of Reach’s cantilever ball field, soon to be known as the Baker Bowl. The new ball yard, Shibe Park, retained its name until 1953 when it was renamed Connie Mack Stadium, for the man who guided the Athletics for over fifty years.

Soon after Shibe Park was erected, “Uncle Ben,” with the same humility that marked his career, turned the daily management of the franchise over to Connie Mack and Shibe’s two sons, Tom and John. Ben Shibe died on January 14, 1922. “Pop” Reach, the grand old man of baseball retired to Atlantic City, New Jersey, leaving the Reach Company in the hands of his son George, Ben Shibe’s son-in-law. Al Reach died in 1928 on the same day as his long-time partner. Both men and their families were even interred within a few hundred yards of each other at West Laurel Hill Cemetery, just outside of Philadelphia.

Connie Mack carried on the baseball legacy begun by these two founding Philadelphia sportsmen. The city and major league baseball would forever bear the influence of these two patriarchs. Although neither man graces baseball’s Hall of Fame, their mark on the national pastime is unmistakable every time a baseball is put into play.

JERROLD CASWAY is a professor of History and the Social Sciences Division Chair at Howard Community College in Columbia Maryland. His book on Ed Delahanty will be published this spring.