The Nugent Era: Phillies Phlounder in Phutility

A wag once wrote a history of the Philadelphia Phillies and entitled it “One Hundred Years in the Cellar.” He was not far off the mark. In fact, in the first seven decades after the Phillies entered the National League in 1883, save for two brief periods of success in the 1890s and the mid-teens of the twentieth century, the team established a record of futility unmatched in baseball history. Compared to their hometown rivals, Connie Mack’s Athletics, the Phillies were orphans in Philadelphia—with just one pennant to their credit in 1915 while playing their games in one of the most outmoded ballparks in baseball, Baker Bowl.

At no time was the Phillies’ condition more des­perate than during the decade of the team’s ownership by Gerald “Gerry” Nugent, 1932-1943. Nugent was born in Philadelphia in 1892. He graduated from Northeast High School and served with distinction in World War I with Pennsylvania’s 28th Division, twice being cited for bravery. After the war he became a successful leather salesman, but he was restless and wanted a more exciting career. He found one in the professional baseball of the “Roaring Twenties.”

In 1925 Nugent went to work for the Phillies. He was named business manager of the team two years later, succeeding longtime Phillies executive William Shettsline. At the time the Phillies were owned by William Baker, a retired New York City police commissioner and a wealthy businessman who bought the team in 1913. During Baker’s tenure the Phillies won their first pennant two years later, only to lose the World Series to the Boston Red Sox. The Phillies remained competitive for a few more years until Baker began a process that became synonymous with the team—he started selling off his best players, beginning with future Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander in November 1917. Baker pleaded poverty, saying he needed the money. They got $65,000 in cash plus a couple of players, including the legendary “Pickles” Dillhoefer. This was easily the worst trade in franchise history up to that point. Baker had no excuse—he was rich enough to support a major league franchise in those days. In fact, despite a terrible on-field record during the 1920s, the Phillies actually turned a modest profit.

Nugent proved a quick learner and became a keen student of baseball as well as an excellent judge of player potential. In a short time, he was indispensable in running the Phillies. Around the same time, he joined the Phillies he had married Baker’s secretary, Mae Desales Mallon, and the two of them became Baker’s surrogate family. When Baker died in 1930, he left Mrs. Nugent 500 of the outstanding 4,800 shares of Phillies stock. Six years later Mrs. Baker died and bequeathed 753 shares to the Nugents. During this time the Nugents gained effective control of the Phillies.

Following Baker’s death Lewis Ruch, a former executive with the Phillies, served briefly as president with Nugent handling most of the team’s day-to­ day work. When poor health forced Ruch to retire, Nugent was elected as his replacement in 1932. From that point Nugent and his wife ran the team, in the process becoming the only husband and wife duo in history to serve as president and vice president of a major league franchise. In reality, Nugent made most of the baseball and financial decisions, but his wife was a key adviser. Aside. from them the Phillies had virtually no staff. John Ogden was brought in as a kind of scout and supervisor of player development but compared to teams like the St. Louis Cardinals or New York Yankees, the Phillies were strictly small­ time operators.

Nugent’s first great baseball triumph was securing the services of an untried outfielder from Indiana named Charles “Chuck” Klein. In 1928, on the recommendation of Phillies manager Burt Shotton, Nugent bought Klein from the Fort Wayne club for between $5,000 and $7,500. All Klein did for the Phillies over the next five years, 1929-1933, was shatter various National League hitting and fielding records. Twice named league Most Valuable Player—in 1931 by The Sporting News and in 1932 by the Baseball Writers Association of America—Klein established himself as one of the greatest sluggers in National League history. His 170 RBI ranks second to Hack Wilson’s 191 in NL records while his 158 runs scored remains the top figure. Klein also was a superb outfielder, and he set the major league record for assists in one season with 44. Even today, 60 years after he stopped playing for them, Klein still ranks in the top ten in most Phillies offensive categories. 

Nugent had the misfortune to take over as team president just as the Great Depression bottomed out. Philadelphia was among the hardest-hit cities in the nation with an unemployment rate approximating 30 percent. Even Connie Mack’s successful A’s couldn’t prosper in those conditions. After winning three consecutive pennants in 1929-31 and finishing second despite 94 victories in 1932, Mack began to sell off his best players to pay his bills. Over the next three years he would part with the heart of his last dynasty, including future Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons, and Mickey Cochrane, and recoup over a half million dollars in the process. At this point Philadelphia baseball was in the hands of two men who were in desperate financial straits.

The Phillies, however, were in much worse shape than the Athletics. Unlike the A’s, they had not experienced comparable success in the 1920s, then baseball’s most prosperous decade. The Phillies finished in the cellar six times during the 1920s and did not have a winning season between 1917 and 1932. Attendance in this so-called “Golden Age of Baseball” was woeful for the Phillies, which averaged just over 225,000 a year, this at a time when just about every team in the majors established new records for attracting fans.

On the day he took over the Phillies, Nugent told the press he would not “trade or sell any of my key players.” This is precisely what he was forced to do to keep the Phillies afloat.

Nugent was a shrewd judge of baseball talent, and the Phillies under his stewardship produced some of the best players in the National League in the 1930s; unfortunately, they were unable to keep them. The 1932 team he inherited included several outstanding players, including Klein, shortstop Dick Bartell, third baseman Pinky Whitney, catcher Spud Davis, and first baseman Don Hurst. Klein, Hurst, and Whitney drove in 100 runs that year. Of the five only Whitney failed to hit .300 and he missed by only two points.

Despite Nugent’s protestations all five would be traded or sold within two years: Whitney to the Boston Braves, Davis to the Cardinals, Klein and Hurst to the Cubs, and Bartell to the Giants. In return Nugent got some fine players, including catcher Jimmy Wilson and first baseman Dolph Camilli. But the key to all these deals was what came along with the players­ cash, $65,000 in the case of Klein alone.

Like Connie Mack, Nugent had a network of friends scattered throughout baseball who alerted him to potential major leaguers. From the early 1930s Nugent bought, developed, or traded for some quality players, such as pitchers Claude Passeau, Kirby Higbe, and Bucky Walters, outfielders Ethan Allen and Danny Litwhiler as well as first baseman Camilli. After a year or two with the Phillies for some polishing Nugent would package them in a deal with an eager National League pennant contender. As Bartell observed, the Phillies ”became jobbers of players for the rest of the National League.” It worked too, as every one of these ex-Phillies except Allen went on to play for a pennant winner. The cash Nugent got in return in these deals enabled him to keep the Phillies functioning, but just barely.

Some of his deals were ingenious. He sold Klein to the Cubs for $65,000 after the 1933 season and then got him back in 1936 for two players, Ethan Allen and pitcher Curt Davis, plus $50,000 in cash. In other words, Nugent realized $115,000 in two deals for the same player. When Larry MacPhail’s Dodgers needed a starting pitcher to round out their roster in 1940, Nugent sent them Kirby Higbe and got back three undistinguished players along with $100,000 of MacPhail’s money.

Nugent once even got the best of Branch Rickey, no easy mark when it came to money matters. The Phillies drafted pitcher Rube Melton from the Cardinals’ minor league system for $7,500 and then turned around and sold him back to Rickey for $15,000. It was a perfect Nugent play: double your investment in a matter of days. Unfortunately for him, Commissioner Landis vetoed the deal, claiming that the Phillies had drafted Melton as a favor to the Cardinals to keep him out of rival hands. Nugent got the last laugh. He kept Melton for two years and then sold him to the Dodgers, where Rickey had moved, for $30,000, a nice increase of 400% on his investment. These moves showed what a clever dealer Nugent was, but they also made the Phillies into a standing joke in the National League.

The reason for Nugent’s machinations was simple: he was chronically strapped for cash. Despite taking a salary of around $20,000 for himself and his wife, the Phillies were always in debt throughout his tenure. The team’s payroll during the 1930s was approximately $250,000, with Klein drawing the highest salary the team paid, $18,000. Spring training expenses were $20,000, hotels during the season cost $15,000, railroad travel $12,000 while maintaining Baker Bowl in playing condition added another $5,000. On top of those expenses Nugent had to pay an exorbitant rent of $25,000 for Baker Bowl under a bad 99-year lease negotiated by Baker. The team also had to pay taxes of $15,000 a year.

Nugent estimated that it cost him $350,000 to run the Phillies. With attendance in the Depression averaging around 210,000, bringing about one dollar per customer, the team usually ended the year $150,000 in the red. Nugent tried any number of desperate measures to increase income, such as renting Baker Bowl to high school and college football teams, staging boxing matches, including a heavyweight bout featuring the ”Ambling Alp” Primo Camera, which drew a gate of $180,000, almost as much as the Phillies drew in one season. Nugent rented Baker Bowl to the popular local Negro League team, the Hilldale Daisies. Hilldale often drew crowds of 18,000, a turnout that Nugent could only dream about for the Phillies, which averaged around 2,500 to 3,000 throughout the 1930s.

As a way of luring new fans Nugent instigated numerous ladies day games where women paid only 10¢ admission. He set up a Knot Hole Gang system to interest kids in the Phillies, hoping if nothing else to get some money from them for his concessions. Nothing much seemed to work.

Part of Nugent’s problem in generating income arose from the existence in Pennsylvania of a strict set of blue laws that banned paid sports events on Sundays. Until the law was changed in 1934 the Phillies and Athletics when they were home had to travel to a nearby city to play a Sunday game. This forced the Phillies and A’s to play their doubleheaders, in the Depression the most popular way to see baseball, on either Saturdays or Mondays.

Sunday baseball gave a slight boost to revenue, but the Phillies were such a poor team in the late 1930s that they hardly benefited from increased fan turnout. One innovation that did add some money to Nugent’s empty coffers was the beginning of radio broadcasting in 1936. The Phillies got $25,000 for their broadcasting rights, money which Nugent desperately needed.

By the late 1930s Nugent’s various expedients were exhausted. Baker Bowl needed a thorough renovation—its stands had collapsed twice in the ballpark’s history, most recently in 1927—but Nugent could barely afford minimal repairs. In baseball circles Baker Bowl was considered the worst ballpark in the majors. Its rundown condition generated jokes that were not far off the mark. Red Smith, then writing a sports column for the Philadelphia Record, described Baker Bowl in the late 1930s as resembling a seedy men’s room. Toward the end of Nugent’s tenure, a local sportswriter brought some good news to visiting players: “National League will be pleased to learn that the visiting team dressing room at Baker Bowl is being completely refurbished for next season—brand-new nails are installed on which to hang their clothes.”

For years Connie Mack had tried to lure the Phillies to Shibe Park, located just a few streets west of Baker Bowl. The idea made sense for both teams. For Mack it would mean doubling the occupancy rate of his ballpark at a time when he needed every nickel. For the Phillies the deal offered them the use of a modern ballpark with the hope that bigger attendance would follow. Mack gave Nugent a good deal. The Phillies would have to pay the A’s only a small amount for every ticket sold.

It took Nugent some time to renegotiate his lease for Baker Bowl, but finally in June 1938 it was official—the Phillies would play their last game there and move to Shibe Park beginning in mid-July. Appropriately in their final game at Baker Bowl the Phillies were blown out by the Giants, 14-1. The deep sentiment of Philadelphia fans felt for Baker Bowl was shown by the turnout for the closing of baseball after 51 years of operation. There were 1,500 fans in a park that held 20,000.

Unfortunately for Nugent and the Phillies, the change of venue didn’t help. By this time Nugent was running out of players to sell as a way of keeping the Phillies functioning. Attendance rose in 1939, the team’s first full season at Shibe Park, but then settled back to Depression levels. Nugent had nothing to build on. The 1938-1942 teams were the worst in the Phillies’ history. They lost one hundred games for five consecutive seasons, compiling a ghastly 185-534 record during those years. Even the awful Mets teams of the 1962-1966 era could not match this record for futility.

By this time Nugent was having trouble paying his bills, as his teams in the early 1940s lacked the quality players he could turn into cash. He was forced to borrow money to stay in business and even defer paying Mack his rent. The National League helped out for a few years as a way of keeping baseball alive in Philadelphia, but league president Ford Frick began to press Nugent to sell the team. By this time, he wasn’t averse to getting out of baseball: “Find me a buyer,” he said, “and I’ll sell out.”

By 1942 it was clear that time had run out for Nugent. Frick and the National League owners refused any more bailouts, and Nugent put the Phillies up for sale. Surprisingly, there were buyers. One syndicate headed by a local millionaire businessman, John B. Kelly, father of Princess Grace of Monaco, made a serious offer. But a wealthy businessman and Yale graduate, William Cox, who was often referred to as a “sportsman,” beat out the local group. Cox paid around $50,000 in cash and assumed all of the team’s debts, a deal that totaled $400,000. Later Bill Veeck would say that he tried to buy the Phillies and stock them with players from the Negro Leagues, thus integrating baseball five years before Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. The story sounds good but is basically a figment of Veeck’s lively imagination.

In early 1943 the Nugent era of Phillies baseball came to an unlamented conclusion. It was a sad ending and something of a shame. Gerry Nugent had the makings of a skilled baseball executive. Given adequate funds, Nugent could have made the Phillies a success in the 1930s. There were no dynasties in the National League during his years at the helm of the Phillies, just good teams. The personnel that passed through his hands would have over the course of a decade constituted a serious pennant-contending team.

But it wasn’t to be. Nugent’s limited resources pointed the way to the future for baseball owners. A stable financial situation was necessary for a team to compete. Shoestring operations like Nugent’s were a thing of the past.

JOHN P. ROSSI, a professor of history at La Salle University in Philadelphia, has written extensively about baseball history. His most recent book is The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball’s Most Memorable Collapse (McFarland, 2005).

 

Sources

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Lewis, Allen and Larry Shenk. This Date in Phillies History. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.

Orodenker, Richard, ed. The Phillies Reader. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

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