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 that 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 nearly 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 3,948 losses, and his team finished last in the American 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 1890s, 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, AL President Ban Johnson asked Mack to establish 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 AL 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 purchase rising stars from minor-league teams, and built a second dynasty by the end of the Roaring Twenties.

That team won three straight AL 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 ballclub, Mack felt forced to sell off his stars to more solvent teams. Once again, the Athletics tumbled to the bottom of the AL standings, where they would hover for most of 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 handled 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 championship machines…”[fn]“Connie Mack, Mr. Baseball, Dies in Philadelphia at the Age of 93,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956, 1, 36.[/fn]

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.”

Sabermetrician 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 hot-head. 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.”[fn]Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2001), 848.[/fn]

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 seven 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 McGillicuddys, 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, which had moved up in class to join the Eastern League.

After the Hartford season ended, the Washington franchise in the National League purchased Mack and three others players for $3,500. The 6-foot-2 1/2, 150-pound, 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 forfeit—they still finished with the worst record in the eight-team NL at 28–92. Over 10 games, Mack collected 13 hits in 36 atbats, 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, the outfield, and even one at shortstop. He batted .201 in 1887 and just .187 the next year, though he did smack a career-high three home runs and steal 31 bases. He batted .293 in 1889, when the Nationals again slid back into the cellar after a seventh-place finish in 1888.

Mack was a leader in the players’ rebellion against the NL’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, which finished last in the eight-team loop. When the PL 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 NL’s leader in catcher fielding percentage in 1891 and 1892. “By that time he had become known as a smart catcher and a reliable batsman in the pinches, though he never was a heavy hitter,” the New York Times remembered.[fn]The New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956, 1, 36.[/fn] 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 NL 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.[fn]Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 97-98.[/fn] 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.[fn]Macht, 99-100.[/fn] 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 got more under your skin than the cuss words used by other catchers.”[fn]Macht, 99-100.[/fn]

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.”[fn]Macht, 100.[/fn]

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 sportswriter Fred Lieb. “I was slower on the bases and couldn’t stoop as well behind the plate. It would catch me in the calf, where I had been spiked.”[fn]Frederick Lieb, Connie Mack (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), 40.[/fn] He caught 70 games in 1894. The Pirates started the season with a 53–55 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 oldtime 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 of 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.”[fn]New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956, 1, 36.[/fn]

Pittsburgh posted a 12–10 record the rest of the way and remained in seventh place among the 12 teams in the expanded NL 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 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 passionate and highly competitive, the pragmatic Mack managed to maintain his composure through the rest of his career, because he 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 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 Killilea told the Tall Tactician, “You’re in charge. Handle the club as if it belonged to you. Engage the players you think will strengthen the team without consulting any directors of the club.”[fn]Macht, 131.[/fn]

Mack skippered the Brewers for four seasons. A player-manager during the first three, he took his last turn in the field as a professional player 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.”[fn]Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking Penguin Books, 1988), 116-117.[/fn] 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 understanding of the skills of both his players and opponents 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 NL, Johnson tabbed Mack to establish 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 AL 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 buy 50 percent of the AL 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 put on paper until 1902. Shibe served as team president and handled the team’s business affairs, while Mack served as treasurer and managed baseball matters. The agreement endured through Shibe’s death in 1922, after 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 as well as players. He solved the first problem by leasing a vacant lot and commissioning construction of Columbia Park. To solve his second problem, Mack turned his attention to his cross-town rivals. 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 him as the greatest pitcher ever. The two crossed paths several times during the next two decades.

Although he did not land Mathewson, Mack did acquire players who made an impact in the AL’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 25-year-old lefty Eddie Plank won another 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 NL 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 team other than the Phillies. The ruling, which was valid only in Pennsylvania, also affected the three new jumpers. Fraser complied with 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 team 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 acquired catcher Osee Schrecongost from Cleveland, picked up second baseman Danny Murphy from Norwich, Connecticut, and mercurial lefthander Rube 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 in 1901 and ’03–04, Ed Delahanty in 1902, and Flick in 1905), attracted just 112,066 to the Baker Bowl (which was called Philadelphia Base Ball Park in 1902). The Mackmen would outperform and outdraw the Phillies for the next 13 years.

NL 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 AL’s Baltimore Orioles to the NL’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 them. The Mackmen finished second that season, as Boston earned the right to play in the first modern World Series. Philadelphia finished 14 1/2 games back despite 20-win seasons by Plank and Waddell, and 17 from newcomer Chief Bender. The Athletics closed the gap to 12 1/2 games 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 New York Giants and Mathewson in the World Series. As luck would have it, the Athletics were without Waddell, who had been injured. Mathewson tossed three shutouts, including a six-hitter in Game 5 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 2 win.

The A’s slipped to fourth in 1906, finished one-and-a-half 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, providing 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 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 triumph.

The Athletics slipped to third in 1912, but bounced back to finish 6 1/2 games 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 AL title in five years in 1914 behind the $100,000 infield and the 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. 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 its lucrative 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 could 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 ghost writer[fn]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 that he was the ghostwriter of Mack’s “autobiography.” Mack, struggling with mental deterioration by 1950, certainly needed considerable assistance in telling the story of his life. Whether Mack actually 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, 39 (Fall 2010), 113.[/fn], 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 the Federals. The first to go were Bender and Plank. I didn’t get a nickel for them. This was like 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 are 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 often 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.”[fn]Mack, 35-36.[/fn]

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 1/2 games behind the Red Sox, even though Lajoie, at age 39, returned to the fold. A year later, Larry closed out his career on an even more dismal Athletics squad, one that finished just 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 rival Phillies finished 47 1/2 back in the NL 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. Shibe Park attendance, which had bottomed out in 1918 at 177,926, jumped to 869,703 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 now also included Eddie Rommel, Rube Wahlberg, Jimmy Dykes, and Max Bishop. The Mackmen slipped to third in 1926, then finished second to the “Murderer’s Row” New York Yankees in 1927.

They finished second again in 1928, and Mack managed three hitters who each had collected more than 3,000 hits. Both Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb closed out their Hall of Fame careers that summer in Philadelphia uniforms. Speaker collected the final 51 of his 3,514 career hits, and Cobb, who had joined the Athletics in 1927, knocked out 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, and would add number 3,315, his last, with a pinch-hit single in 1930. The three made up half of the six players who had 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 NL 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 safeties.)

The following year, the Athletics embarked on one of the greatest three-year runs in baseball history, winning 313 games in that span, three AL pennants, and a pair of World Series titles.

The 1929 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 1 starter Howard Ehmke delivered a completegame 3–1 victory, and the Athletics, trailing 8–0 in Game 4, rallied for 10 runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to win, 10–8. Mack later called Ehmke’s performance “my greatest thrill.”[fn]Mack, 46-48.[/fn] Cochrane, Foxx, Simmons, Dykes, Mule Haas, and Bing Miller all batted .300 or better, while George Earnshaw, who Mack had purchased a year earlier from the minors, posted 24 wins, Grove 20, Wahlberg 18, and Rommel 12.

Philadelphia won 102 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, and 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 1/2 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 being a 4–2 win at Sportsman’s Park.

It was the last time that 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, as New York 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 AL 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 purchase 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 and $125,000, swapped 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 last nine times in 12 years. Mack, who turned 75 after the 1937 season, missed the final 34 games of that campaign and 91 more in 1939 because of illness. His son Earle, who had played five games for Philadelphia’s pennant-winning teams in the 1910s 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 the 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 purchased 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 ballclub 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 with the Phillies to share Shibe Park, embracing his box office rivals as a tenant. In 1939, he added lights, and the Athletics became the first AL 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 a coach, 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 AL pennant, and the Mackmen climbed to 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 a winning record in all three seasons between 1947 and 1949, finishing fifth twice and fourth in 1948. Attendance, which ran as low as 233,173 during the 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, financial situation, unwillingness to embrace and build a minorleague 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 NL title and attracted more than a 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 carry on, and, despite 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, 1950, 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. Mack said, “I’m not quitting because I’m getting old, I’m quitting because I think people want me to.”[fn]William C. Kashatus, The Philadelphia Athletics (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing 2002), 90.[/fn]

Jimmy Dykes, one of many former players who had returned to serve as a coach 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).[fn]Robert D. Warrington, “Departure Without Dignity: The Athletics Leave Philadelphia,” Baseball Research Journal, 39, (Fall 2010), 113.[/fn] To acquire the shares, Roy and Earle 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.[fn]Robert Schmuhl, Making Words Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and Writing (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing 2010), xxiii.[/fn]

Though his legacy and career winning percentage had been eroded by the string of last-place finishes, Mack 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 the Phillies, who were still winning the battle of the box office between the two. The other AL 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 required 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.”[fn]Ted Davis, Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball (Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2000), 215.[/fn] 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 Sepulchre Catholic Cemetery in Philadelphia. He was survived by Katherine, four daughters, three sons, and 24 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One grandson, Connie Mack III, the son of Connie Mack Jr., served in the US House of Representatives from 1983 to 1989, and represented Florida in the US Senate from 1989 to 2001. One great-great-grandson, Connie Mack IV, also served Florida in the US 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 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 Museum at Cooperstown. His plaque there called him “Mr. Baseball.”

Decades after both he and his beloved Athletics departed, 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 selected for the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame. The Wall stood inside Veterans Stadium—where the Phillies moved when they left Connie Mack Stadium after the 1970 season—until 2004, when they moved into Citizens Bank Park. There, a new Wall includes only Phillies contributors, and the names of the Athletics’ honorees now appear on the base of a lifesized 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.

DOUG SKIPPER has contributed to a number of SABR publications and profiled more than a dozen players and managers for the SABR Baseball Biographical Project. A SABR member since 1982, he is active in the Halsey Hall (Minneapolis) Chapter and the Deadball Era Committee, and is interested in the history of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, the Boston Red Sox, and old ballparks. A market research consultant residing in Apple Valley, Minnesota, Doug is also a veteran of father-daughter dancing. Doug and his wife have two daughters, MacKenzie and Shannon.

Sources

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Alexander, Charles C. Ty Cobb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Davis, Ted. Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball. Lincoln, NE, Writers Club Press, 2000.

Dewey, Donald and Acocella, Nicholas. The New Biographical History of Baseball, Chicago, Triumph Books, 2002.

Goldman, Steve, Editor. It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2007.

Honig, Donald. The American League, An Illustrated History. New York: Crown Publishers, 1987.

James, Bill and Dewan, John; Munro, Neil; Zminda, Don; Callis, Jim. All Time Baseball Sourcebook. Skokie, IL, STATS, Inc., 1998.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Abstract, New York: Free Press, 2001.

James, Bill. The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, New York: Scribner, 1997.

Kashatus, William C. Connie Mack’s ’29 Triumph. Jefferson, NC, McFarland and Company, Inc., 1999.

Kashatus, William C. Money Pitcher, Chief Bender and the Tragedy of American Indian Assimilation, College Station: Penn State Press, 2006.

Kashatus, William C. The Philadelphia Athletics. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002.

Keri, Jonah, Editor. Baseball Between the Numbers, Why Everything You Know About the Game is Wrong. Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2006.

Huhn, Rick. Eddie Collins, A Baseball Biography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2008.

Lieb, Frederick. Connie Mack. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945.

Lieb, Frederick. Baseball As I Have Known It. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.

Lowry, Philip. Green Cathedrals, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Press, 1992.

Macht, Norman. Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Macht, Norman. Connie Mack, The Turbulent and Triumphant Years, 1915-1931. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

Macht, Norman. “Cornelius McGillicuddy (Connie Mack).” Baseball’s First Stars. Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1996.

Mack, Connie. My 66 Years in the Big Leagues, The Great Story of America’s National Game. Philadelphia: Universal House, 1950.

Mack, Connie. From Sandlot to Big League, Connie Mack’s Baseball Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.

Meany, Tom. Baseball’s Greatest Teams. New York: A.S.Barnes & Company, 1949.

Neft, David S. and Cohen, Richard M. The World Series: Complete Play By Play of Every Game 1903-1989. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Neft, David S. and Cohen, Richard M. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

Neyer, Rob and Epstein, Eddie. Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.

Ritter, Lawrence S. Lost Ballparks. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times. New York: William Morrow, 1992.

Romanowski, Jerome C. The Mackmen. Camden, NJ: Graphic Press, 1979.

Schmuhl, Robert. Making Words Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and Writing. Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2010.

Sparks, Barry. Frank “Home Run” Baker: Hall of Famer and World Series Hero. Jefferson, NC, McFarland and Company, 2006.

Spink, Alfred H. The National Game. 2nd ed. Writing Baseball Series Edition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2000.

Stein, Fred. 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.

Swift, Tom. Chief Bender’s Burden, The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star, Lincoln, NE, Nebraska Press, 2008.

Tiemann, Robert L. and Rucker, Mark, Editors. Nineteenth Century Stars. Kansas City, MO: Society for American Baseball Research, 1989. Republished 2012.

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Philadelphia Inquirer, various dates.

New York Times, Feb. 9, 1956.

It is where the Declaration of Independence was signed, it was the nation’s first capital, and is the home of the world-famous Philadelphia Orchestra, the internationally renowned Museum of Art, Fairmount Park, the largest inner-city park in the nation, and the legendary Mummer’s Parade. Soft pretzels, cheese steaks, scrapple, and carbonated water originated in the region. Andrew Wyeth, Bill Cosby, Louisa May Alcott, Mario Lanza, Betsy Ross, John Bartram, Will Smith, Ethel Barrymore, George McClellan, Marian Anderson, Bobby Rydell, Thomas Eakins, Margaret Mead, Grace Kelly, and Benjamin Rush were all born in the area.

Philadelphia also has played a major role in the history of American’s national pastime. Baseball, or an early version of the game, has thrived in the city for nearly two centuries, and has been prominent in the evolution of the sport. Indeed, Philadelphia and baseball are unequivocally linked in a relationship that is as tight as anything else in the city. And that is a statement that cannot be taken lightly.

The city that’s been around since William Penn arrived in 1682 and is often referred to as “The Cradle of Liberty,” featured horse racing in the mid-1700s. By then, rowing was also a major sport in the area. Boxing was popular as far back as the 1850s, tennis took hold in the city in the 1880s, and golf began to become fashionable in the 1890s. There was even professional auto racing on city streets in the early 1900s. 

By then, though, baseball was firmly entrenched as Philadelphia’s most popular sport. And it wasn’t just professional baseball. Hundreds of club teams were scattered throughout the area, having long replaced cricket as the preferred bat-and-ball game. Even college baseball, dating back to 1867 when the University of Pennsylvania fielded its first team, had a large following. Unquestionably, baseball was the most dominant sport in Philadelphia, and for the most part, it would hold center stage in the area right up to the present.

Although a game distantly related to a form of baseball had been played in Philadelphia as far back as the mid-1700s, and soldiers played a “game of ball,” as they called it, during the Revolutionary War, the sport that was a forerunner of today’s game really began to be taken seriously in the city in the 1820s. Called “town ball,” “cat ball,” or “rounders,” the game’s first known local team was founded in 1831 as the Philadelphia Olympic Club.

Originally comprised of players 25 years of age or older, Olympic Club members claimed it was the first baseball club in America. Because of what were then known as blue laws, a term that was used to describe a law in Pennsylvania that prevented sports and other activities from being performed on Sundays, the club was forced to play its games in Camden, New Jersey, where no such laws existed. Accordingly, a group of 15 to 20 players would board a ferry at the bottom of Market Street in Philadelphia and travel across the Delaware River to Camden to meet other club teams. 

In 1833, the Olympic Club merged with an unnamed club team made up mostly of graduates of Central High School to form the Olympic Town Ball Club of Philadelphia. A clubhouse was built at Broad and Wallace Streets, a constitution with bylaws and membership requirements was written, and within a few years as many as 100 young men had become members of the club. 

While making their own bats and balls and playing in Camden on fields where no rent or permission was necessary, the Olympics attracted crowds that grew increasingly larger as time went on. And as baseball’s popularity grew, so did the number of teams playing in the area. By the Civil War, the city’s population numbered more than 500,000, and as many as 100 club teams, many formed initially as alcohol-drinking social groups, were scattered throughout the area­—all areas of Philadelphia, but also in surrounding towns including Chester, Norristown, Ardmore, Wilmington, and Camden. They carried names such as Keystone, Mercantile, United, Winona, Minerva, and Benedict. 

In the mid-1800s, Philadelphia teams began to play a more modern form of baseball known as “the New York Game.” Unlike its predecessor, “the Massachusetts Game,” the New York Game featured an infield diamond, canvas-covered bags, rounded bats, and nine players on a side. The pitcher stood 45 feet from home plate, and a thrown ball hitting the batter did not count as an out. 

One of the earliest games in Philadelphia in which there were recorded results took place in 1860 when a team called Equity beat the Pennsylvanias in anything but a pitchers’ duel, 65–52. Unlike today, the scores in those days were usually high. In another game in 1866, the Athletics trounced the Alert Club, 67–25, with slugger Lipman Pike hitting six home runs, including five in a row. 

The 1860s proved to be especially important in the history of Philadelphia baseball, which by then was attracting as much interest to the game as were the teams in New York. Although there had been other fields where baseball was played—most notably at Camac Woods at 12th Avenue and Berks Street—the first real ballpark was opened in 1860. Called Recreation Park, it could hold as many as 6,500 spectators and was located in North Philadelphia on an oddly shaped block boarded by Columbia and Ridge Avenues and 24th and 25th Streets. 

The park featured strange dimensions. It was 300 feet down the left-field line, 331 feet to straightaway center, and 369 feet to right-center before the wall tapered to 247 feet down the right-field line. There were no dugouts, benches sufficed, and no locker room. In later years, when professional teams played there, visiting players dressed in the nearby hotels where they stayed and rode horse-drawn carriages to the ballpark.

Although used initially only for baseball, Recreation Park took on another dimension during the Civil War when it became an encampment for Union soldiers. During their idle moments, the soldiers played baseball on the part of the field that was not in use.

1860 was also the year that the Athletic Club began. Often described as “the first real baseball team,” it was led by Colonel Thomas Fitzgerald and played other than Sunday games at Columbia Park at 15th Street and Columbia Avenue. Eventually, the club was said to have 1,000 members.  

The Athletics attracted the best players to the team, which included raiding other area teams of their top players. The club thrived throughout the 1860s, playing not only local teams, but exchanging visits with clubs from other cities such as New York, Brooklyn, and Newark, New Jersey. In 1858, these and other teams formed the National Association, a loosely connected group of squads from New York. Within a few years, the confederation comprised 55 teams, including 40 from Philadelphia, plus others from Pittsburgh, Easton, Johnstown, and West Chester. By 1866, the NA membership totaled 201 teams.  

In 1865, Al Reach, a man whose name would become indelibly etched in the annals of Philadelphia baseball history, became one of the game’s first professional players when he signed with the Athletics for a salary of $1,000 for the season. A left-handed second baseman who was born in England, Reach had played for the Brooklyn Eckfords before becoming Philadelphia’s first pro baseball player.

Eventually, the Athletics, who by then were practicing four days a week, paid other players, too—as much as $25 a week. With teenage pitcher-shortstop Dick McBride, slugger Levi Meyerle, and Reach leading the way, the team became one of the top squads in the nation. So good were the Athletics that in one game they slaughtered the first rendition of the Nationals of Washington, 87–12. In 1865, they played a game against the Atlantics of Brooklyn with an estimated 20,000 people crammed into Columbia Park or sitting on rooftops, in trees, and on the tops of carriages. Then in 1866, the Athletics were scheduled to meet the Atlantics again in what was billed as the “true” baseball championship. With 30,000 fans storming the gates, there was such chaos that the game had to be cancelled. 

In 1866, Philadelphia became the birthplace of another landmark event when the city’s first African American team, the Excelsior Club, was formed. Later that season, another black team called the Pythian Base Ball Club, surfaced. Led by Octavius V. Catto, the club’s promoter, second baseman, and captain, the Pythians would become one of the city’s most noteworthy African American teams, and in a era of strict segregation in sports, the first black team to face an all-white squad. In 1869, the Pythians met the white Olympic Club, losing in a slugfest, 44–23, before an orderly crowd estimated to number 5,000. 

Two years later, Catto, a former Army officer in the Civil War, a teacher at the Institute of Colored Youth (later to become Cheyney University), and a civil rights activist who fought successfully to integrate the city’s streetcars and for the passage of the 15th Amendment—which allowed black males to vote—was murdered by a white segregationist as he walked to his home in South Philadelphia. The Pythians floundered after his death. Other African American teams flourished, however, and in the mid-1880s, the first black professional squads were formed and various leagues began, including one called the National Colored Baseball League. For the rest of the nineteenth century, African American baseball proliferated in Philadelphia with dozens of teams playing throughout the city. 

Meanwhile, quickly becoming the top hitter on the Athletics, Reach was named first-team All-American by the New York Clipper in 1868. Three years later, he was still one of the top players on his team when the Athletics joined the new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA), a nine-team circuit that would be the sport’s first professional league. Each team paid $10 to join the league.

The Athletics played at 25th and Jefferson Streets at Jefferson Park (sometimes called Athletic Park), one of nine fields in North Philadelphia that were now used for baseball. Jefferson Park was not only the city’s first fully enclosed field, it was the home of the first team in the nation to win a championship of a professional league.

With Meyerle hitting .492 to become the first batting champion in professional baseball and tying for the league lead with four home runs, Reach recording a .353 batting average, and McBride posting an 18–5 mark on the mound, the Athletics captured the pennant in their last game of the season with a 4–1 victory over the Chicago White Stockings. The Athletics had a final record of 21–7, finishing with a one-game lead over the Boston Red Stockings.

In 1872, the Athletics added a hot young player named Adrian “Cap” Anson, who would play four seasons with the Athletic team, hitting well above .300 each year and once as high as .415. But the team did not finish higher than third in the four remaining years of the NA, while Harry Wright’s Red Stockings won four straight championships. 

Along the way, the Athletics stopped having Philadelphia to themselves. In 1873, they were joined in the league by a new team called the Philadelphia White Stockings. The White Stockings not only argued their way into using Jefferson Park, too, they raided the Athletics of some of their players. In their first year, the White Stockings finished in second place, well ahead of the fifth-place Athletics.

In 1874, in an attempt to introduce baseball to the cricket-minded British, the Athletics and Red Stockings toured England together, meeting in 14 games, seven baseball and seven cricket. The US team won every game. “Our British friends didn’t understand the game and didn’t seem to be anxious to learn it,” Anson said later. “But they fell all over themselves in their effort to make us feel at home.”

That season, the Philadelphia White Stockings changed their name to Pearls and finished fourth, one place behind the Athletics. In a move that spread attendance thinner for each team, the Athletics and Pearls were joined by a squad called the Centennials, that played its home games at Recreation Park (or Centennial Grounds, as some called it) in what had become a 13-team league. 

On July 28 that year, the Pearls’ Joe Borden, recently signed as a 21-year-old amateur and playing under the assumed name of Joe Josephs so his father wouldn’t know that he was playing professional baseball, became the first pro pitcher to hurl a no-hitter. Throwing from a spot that was then 45 feet from home plate and with the rule that a pitcher’s arm had to be below his belt when he threw, Borden blanked the White Stockings, 4–0, in what would be the only no-hitter pitched in the five years of the National Association.

Borden’s feat was easily the highlight of the season and provided one last gasp for the fading National Association. The Athletics were third and the Pearls fifth. The Centennials, plagued by dissension among the players, disbanded before the end of the season. That fall, with attendance dwindling and a new league about to begin, the NA folded. Many of its better players would jump to the new National League (NL), while the Athletics, Pearls, and Centennials continued to play as independent semipro teams. The National League started with eight teams, each paying a $100 entrance fee. The league ruled that each team had to represent a city with at least a 75,000 population. 

The first National League game took place, appropriately, in Philadelphia on April 22, 1876, at Jefferson Park during a year in which the city staged a historic Centennial celebration to commemorate the nation’s 100th birthday. Ironically, Borden, a native of Yeadon in suburban Philadelphia, who was now pitching for the Boston Red Caps, beat the Athletics, 6–5, before an estimated crowd of 3,000. Incredibly, two days later, the Athletics whipped Borden and Boston, 20–3. Before the end of the season, Borden was released. He stayed in Boston as a groundskeeper before eventually returning to Philadelphia to work in Reach’s factory. 

The Athletics team was made up of some players from the Athletics squad of the NA, including Meyerle, plus some new, younger players from the Philadelphia area and other NA teams. In a game in June, the Athletics defeated Cincinnati, 20–5, with George Hall and Ezra Sutton each hitting three triples, the only time that two players from the same team have ever done that. 

The Athletics, however, did not finish the season. Having at one point during the season taken nearly three weeks off to rest at Cape May, New Jersey, team officials decided not to send the team on its final road trip, contending that they had no money to pay for travel expenses. The team finished with a 14–45 record. That December, the Athletics were expelled from the league by a unanimous vote of the six other teams. Subsequently, much of the squad played as an independent team, facing other Philadelphia sandlot clubs. 

In 1882, a new league called the American Association of Base Ball Clubs (AA) (also called the Beer and Whiskey League because many of the team owners were involved in the booze business) was formed. A third team called the Athletics was one of six ballclubs to join the circuit. Among the new Athletics owners was Charlie Mason, an ex-player and owner of a saloon and bookie joint, and Lew Simmons, a minstrel show producer and performer. Bill Sharsig, a theatrical producer who had formed a semipro team in 1880 that he called the Athletics, was another team leader, and later in the decade also became the team’s manager. 

After starting at Oakdale Park at 11th and Cumberland Streets, the Athletics moved following their first year to Jefferson Park. The team finished second in the first year, then in 1883 won the league championship, posting a 66–32 record and edging the St. Louis Browns by one game. Among the members of that Athletics club was a 5-foot-3 second baseman named Cub Stricker. Another member of the Athletics was Harry Stovey, who won his second of five major-league home-run titles that year, and would go on to become an early superstar in the city, and one of the great hitters in early baseball. Stovey played seven seasons with the Athletics and was the first major leaguer to reach 100 career home runs while twice batting over .400.

One year later, yet another new league was formed. While competing with the two other leagues, it was called the Union Association and was considered by its backers to be a “major league.” It consisted of eight teams, including the Philadelphia Keystones, who played in what they named Keystone Park at Broad and Dauphin Streets in North Philadelphia. The site was originally the grounds of the Forepaugh Circus and would later be called Forepaugh Park. But the Keystones, lacking funds and good players, failed to finish the season, disbanding in August with a 21–46 record. At the end of the season, the whole league, losing both players and lawsuits to teams from the other leagues, folded.

By then, though, baseball in Philadelphia had taken a turn that would forever affect the city’s connection with the sport. Starting in the 1883 season, Philadelphia was back in the National League after a six-year absence. Started by Reach and playing at Recreation Park, within a few years the Phillies would become the most prominent team in Philadelphia. In 2013, 131 years after they began, the Phillies were still around, holding a spot as the city’s premier sports team and owner of the longest consecutive, one-city, one nickname franchise in baseball history.

As the 1880s progressed, baseball was played on virtually every corner of the city. Males ranging from young boys to middle-aged men played the game. And if you were a pro and couldn’t find a team in Philadelphia, you’d leave and play somewhere else. Such was the case with Ned Williamson, a Philadelphia native who played with the Chicago White Stockings. In 1884, Williamson knocked 25 home runs, many over the short right-field fence at Chicago’s Lark Front Park, setting a record that was not broken until Babe Ruth smacked 29 homers in 1919. 

Another Philadelphian was Matt Kilroy, a pitcher with the American Association’s Baltimore Orioles. In 1886, Kilroy hurled a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. A few years later, he came home and established a bar across from the right-field corner of Shibe Park at 20th Street and Lehigh Avenue. Kilroy’s was a hugely popular venue that before, during, and after games catered to legions of fans for more than half a century (it was later called Quinn’s Tavern).

Another player of some note in that era was Athletics pitcher Frank Chapman from Newburgh, New York. His whole big-league career consisted of just one game and five innings in 1887 in which he allowed eight hits and four runs. But Chapman was just 14 years old at the time, the youngest player ever to perform as a major leaguer.

Philadelphia, which had experienced the presence of three professional teams once before, did it again in 1890 when a group of players, who had formed a union because of their dissatisfaction with the league’s $2,500 salary cap, jumped from the NL and AA and formed an eight-team Players (or Brotherhood) League. A number of key players, including Ed Delahanty, left the Phillies and the Athletics to join the new league. The Philadelphia team was called the Quakers, and it also played at Forepaugh Park. 

With the Phillies now playing at Philadelphia Base Ball Park (or Huntington Grounds) at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue, and the Athletics taking the field for one more year at Jefferson Park, all three teams played home games within about one mile of each other in North Philadelphia. Although each team had its own set of fans, the competition for the spectators’ dollars was fierce. Those dollars didn’t just fly around at the entrance gate, either. Betting in the stands was extremely popular among fans, who would wager not only on final scores, but sometimes on runs scored in an inning or even whether the pitch would be a ball or a strike.

The Players League folded and the AA and the Athletics were in trouble, too. Never again serious contenders for the title after their 1883 crown, the Athletics stayed at Forepaugh Park in 1891. At the end of the season, the whole AA disbanded and four of its teams joined the NL. The Athletics merged with the Phillies, with outstanding A’s Gus Weyhing, Lave Cross, and Bill Hallman playing for the Phils. 

For the rest of the century, the Phillies were Philadelphia’s only major-league team. As the twentieth century approached, though, major changes were in the works. One happened in 1894 in Pittsburgh when the Pirates moved their catcher into the manager’s job late in the season. It was the start of a 57-year managerial career for Cornelius McGillicuddy, later to be called Connie Mack. In 1897, Mack became manager of Milwaukee in the Western League. A few years later, he moved to Philadelphia.

Shortly afterward, the reason for the move became obvious. Western League owners desiring a major league to compete with the National League, hired Byron “Ban” Johnson as president and changed its name to the American League in 1900. Naturally, he wanted to place a team in Philadelphia, and Mack was his personal choice to make that happen.

Mack’s job was to put together a team and find a place for it to play. He recruited Reach’s business partner, Ben Shibe, to become majority owner of the team (Mack wound up owning 25 percent and—incredibly by today’s standards—local sportswriters Sam “Butch” Jones of the Associated Press and Frank Hough of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who had helped Mack form the team, would each own 12.5 percent). Mack also signed players and had a ballpark built at 29th Street and Columbia Avenue in North Philadelphia. Also called Columbia Park, the ballpark was built at a cost of $35,000 and had a seating capacity of 9,500.    

The American League played its first season as a major league in 1901. A sixth Philadelphia team called the Athletics was one of its inaugural members. Mack would go on to serve as the team’s manager for 50 years. The last rendition of the Athletics remained in the city through 1954, along the way winning nine pennants and five World Series. The Athletics, whose presence guaranteed that there would always be a big-league game going on in the city, were the dominant team in Philadelphia until the Phillies won the National League pennant in 1950. 

Long before then, however, Philadelphia’s rich baseball history had been indelibly established. Whether it was the Phillies, the Athletics, notable Negro League teams such as the Philadelphia Giants, the Hilldale Daisies, and the Philadelphia Stars. Or whether it was great players, managers, and executives, or the many other clubs that dotted the city’s landscape, Philadelphia holds a special place at the top of the baseball kingdom. 

Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, who spent nearly 14 years with the Phillies, profoundly summarized that view. “I loved playing in Philadelphia,” he once said. “Playing in Philly always meant something very special to me.”

RICH WESTCOTT is a former newspaper and magazine editor and writer, and is the author of 23 books, including the recently published “Philadelphia’s Top 50 Baseball Players.” Considered the leading authority on Phillies and Philadelphia baseball history, his books include eight on the Phillies, three on Philadelphia’s old ballparks, and a history of Philadelphia sports in the twentieth century. Among his other books are collections of interviews with former baseball players, plus books on no-hitters, 300-game winners, home run hitters, Mickey Vernon, and Eddie Gottlieb. He is the immediate past president of the Philadelphia Sports Writers’ Association.

Sources 

Charlton, James, Editor. The Baseball Chronology – The Complete History of the Most Important Events in the Game of Baseball. New York, NY. Macmillan Publishing Co., 1991.

Goldstein, Warren. A History of Early Baseball – Playing for Keeps:1857-1876. New York, NY. Barnes and Noble Books.

Guenther, Karen. Sports in Pennsylvania. Mansfield, PA. Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2007.

Koppett, Leonard. Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball. Philadelphia, PA. Temple University Press, 1998.

Melville, Tom. Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League. Jefferson, NC. McFarland & Company, 2001.

Nemec, David. The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball. New York, NY. Donald I. Fine Books, 1997.

Orem, Preston. Baseball, 1845-1881. Altadena, CA. 1961.

Romanowski, Father Jerome. The Mackmen, Reflections on a Baseball Team. Philadelphia, PA. 1979.

Rosenberg, John. The Story of Baseball. New York, NY. Random House, 1977.

Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Early Years. Oxford, England. Oxford University Press, 1960.

Shiffert, John. Base Ball in Philadelphia – A History of the Early Game, 1831-1900.

Jefferson, NC. McFarland & Company, 2006.

Sullivan, Dean, Editor. Early Innings – A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908. Omaha, NB. University of Nebraska Press, 1995. 

Westcott, Rich. Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks. Philadelphia, PA. Temple University Press, 1996.

Westcott, Rich and Bilovsky, Frank. The Phillies Encyclopedia. Philadelphia, PA. Temple University Press, 2004. 

This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of the game’s finest players—from Ed Delahanty to Chuck Klein to Richie Ashburn to Mike Schmidt, from Grover Cleveland Alexander to Robin Roberts to Steve Carlton to Roy Halladay—the Phillies can lay claim to a vibrant history. 

Although their recent seasons have produced the greatest era in team history with five straight trips to the playoffs and back-to-back appearances in the World Series, the Phillies have experienced the highs and lows, the ups and downs, and the good and the bad as much as any baseball team ever did. While they have not always been successful, the Phillies are undeniably one of baseball’s most colorful franchises: one that has often been last, but seldom dull.

For more than 13 years, the Phillies had a left-handed catcher named Jack Clements. Around that time, the team’s shortstop, Bill Hulen, was also left-handed. Third baseman Hans Lobert once raced a horse around the bases. Outfielder Sherry Magee kayoed an umpire with a punch after being called out on strikes. Later, Magee became an umpire. 

Once, Mike Schmidt tried to escape the wrath of the fans by wearing a wig onto the field. John Kruk rebelled when a woman called him “an athlete,” saying, “I ain’t an athlete, lady, I’m a baseball player.” For his rookie initiation, Scott Rolen was forced to wear skimpy women’s clothes when he left the ballpark. And Ryan Howard claimed that he first knew he was an exceptional power hitter when his mother told him as much at eight years of age.

Richie Ashburn once hit the same woman twice with foul balls during the same at-bat. And when first called up to the Phillies while on a road trip with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, Chase Utley was put off the bus and had to sit for nearly an hour on a curb in a parking lot along an interstate highway in upstate New York, waiting for a car to pick him up and transport him to Philadelphia.

World-famous evangelist Billy Sunday played briefly with the Phillies. So did Pro Football Hall of Famer Earle “Greasy” Neale, the greatest coach in Philadelphia Eagles history. Future manager Casey Stengel also played with the Phils. Stan Baumgartner pitched for the Phillies’ 1915 pennant-winner and covered the club’s next National League champs in 1950 for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Jimmie Foxx pitched in nine games with the Phillies. Five professional basketball players—Frankie Baumholtz, Howie Schultz, Dick Groat, Gene Conley, and Ron Reed—wore the uniform of the Phillies. 

The Phillies have been guided by 51 managers. One (Harry Wright) is called the Father of Professional Baseball on his tombstone. The group also includes a one-time ticket-taker who later became the team’s president (Billy Shettsline), a former medical student (George Stallings), a practicing dentist (Doc Prothro), a college professor (Eddie Sawyer), a future vaudeville singer (Red Dooin), and the owner of major league baseball’s highest single-season batting average of .440 (Hugh Duffy). Fourteen Phils pilots held the job for four years or more, 16 skippered the team for one year or less, 22 played with the Phillies, 38 had no prior big-league experience, and 33 never managed in the big leagues again after leaving the Phillies. Charlie Manuel was the winningest manager in Phillies history with 727 victories (569 losses) by Opening Day 2013, which far surpassed the marks of the previous leaders, Gene Mauch (645), Wright (636), and Danny Ozark (594). 

Woodrow Wilson was the first sitting US President ever to attend a World Series when he came to Philadelphia in 1915 to watch the Phillies play the Boston Red Sox in Game 2. In 1921, at Pittsburgh, the Phillies took part in the first major-league game broadcast on the radio. They also participated in the first big-league night game, which was played in 1935 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pitcher Hugh Mulcahy was the first major-league player drafted into World War II. In 1946, the Phillies hired Edith Houghton as baseball’s first full-time female scout.

The Phillies have a reputation for often acquiring the wrong brother. These signings included Irish Meusel, Vince DiMaggio, Ken Brett, Mike Maddux, Frank Torre, Juan Bell, and Mark Leiter. Of course, the Phillies did sign Delahanty, Granny Hamner, and Allen in addition to their less-successful siblings. But they also did themselves no favors by trading away future Hall of Famers Ferguson Jenkins and Ryne Sandberg. Yet, with Bob Boone and David Bell they had two of the three players in baseball history who were members of three-generation baseball families who performed in the big leagues. 

Since they were formed, the Phillies have played in seven World Series, winning two, and have appeared in postseason play in 14 years. More than 30 people connected with the club as players, managers, or executives are members of the Hall of Fame. Phillies players have won or tied for 28 home-run crowns, eight batting titles, seven Most Valuable Player awards, seven Cy Young awards, four Rookie of the Year awards, and 47 Gold Gloves.

Conversely, the Phillies have finished in last place 31 times and sixth or below 50 times. The Phils are the only team in American professional sports to have lost 10,000 or more games representing a single city (other than the Washington Generals). They have lost 100 or more games in a season 14 times. It has indeed been a highly varied run for a club that has been in existence far longer than any other professional team in Philadelphia.

The Phillies joined the National League in 1883, taking the spot previously held by the Troy club. 

NL president Colonel A. G. Mills realized he was in charge of a league with no teams in the nation’s two biggest cities, New York and Philadelphia. He contacted an old friend, Al Reach. Would he be interested in a team in Philadelphia? 

Since his playing days had ended in 1875, Reach, a left-handed second baseman born in England, and one of baseball’s first professional players, had become a highly successful businessman. Originally, he had operated a cigar store. Then, noticing the increasing demand for baseballs, bats, and other sports equipment, he opened a sporting goods store. Soon, Reach decided to launch a sporting goods manufacturing company, and took in a partner named Benjamin F. Shibe, a leather expert and a manufacturer of horse whips. The business was soon flourishing, and with many clients, including professional baseball teams, Reach and Shibe (later the first owner of the Philadelphia Athletics) were becoming exceedingly wealthy.

Mills had no trouble convincing Reach to start a baseball team. Enlisting Colonel John I. Rogers, a lawyer and member of the governor of Pennsylvania’s staff, as his partner, Reach entered the team in the National League. The Phillies name was said to identify the team with the city in which it played. Although over the years the team would sometimes be called by other nicknames, the name was officially always the Phillies, and more than a century later, it would rank as the longest continuous, one-city nickname in professional sports history.

Reach received no players from the defunct Worcester franchise. He recruited almost an entirely new squad, including local players and some from other pro teams. He also had to find a ballpark. Reach located an old ball field in North Philadelphia that had previously been called Recreation Park. Although it had been used by numerous Philadelphia baseball teams and served as an encampment for Union soldiers during the Civil War, it had become neglected and rundown, with overgrown weeds and deteriorating grandstands blighting the landscape. Some of the park had even been used as a horse market.

The new owner had to restore the ballpark, leveling and re-sodding the playing surface, building wooden grandstands, and generally rebuilding the ballpark into a 6,500-capacity stadium with up-to-date accouterments. 

The Phillies held their first spring training at Recreation Park. In their first game there, they beat a semipro team from Manayunk called the Ashland Club with John Coleman pitching a no-hitter. The Phillies’ first NL game was played on May 1, 1883, at Recreation Park against the Providence Grays. Facing Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourne, who would go on to win 48 games that year, the Phillies took an early 3–0 lead, but a four-run Grays rally in the eighth inning gave the visitors a 4–3 victory.  

The Phillies would go on to lose games by scores of 29–4 to Boston and 28–0 to Providence. Manager Bob “Death to Flying Things” Ferguson was fired after the team lost 13 of its first 17 games, and the Phillies went on to finish their first season with a 17–81 record, with Coleman losing 48 games, an all-time major-league record.

Better days, though, were just around the corner. In 1884, Reach hired Harry Wright as the team’s manager. Wright, who had piloted the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 when they became baseball’s first openly all-professional team and was the skipper of four Boston Red Stockings National Association championship teams, quickly turned the franchise around. From 1885 through 1895, the Phillies finished in the first division every season.

Along the way, they also moved into a new ballpark. Mindful that Recreation Park could not hold the increasingly large crowds that came to watch Phillies games, Reach built a new stadium at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue at a total cost of $101,000. Called Philadelphia Base Ball Park or Huntingdon Street Grounds, the park was erected on the site of a dump with a creek running through it. When it opened in 1887, the ballpark held 12,500, although the capacity was later increased to 18,800. Originally, regarded as the finest stadium in the nation and a magnificent showplace, the ballpark was noted for its short right-field wall, which initially stood 272-feet down the line, and its clubhouses in center field. 

Despite several catastrophes—one in 1894 when a destructive fire forced the Phillies to play six games at the University of Pennsylvania’s field and required much of the park to be rebuilt, and one in 1903 when 12 people were killed and 232 injured when a balcony collapsed—the Phillies played there until midway through the 1938 season. 

From 1891 through 1895, Delahanty, Billy Hamilton, and Sam Thompson played together, giving the Phillies the only Hall of Fame outfield in baseball history. While playing with the Phillies, Delahanty, whose career batting average of .346 ranks as the fourth-highest in big-league history, hit over .300 for 10 years in a row while exceeding .400 three times and winning one batting crown. Hamilton led the league in hitting twice on the way to a career batting average of .344, and Thompson, who hit the second-most home runs (126) in the nineteenth century, won two home-run crowns while finishing with a .331 career batting mark. In 1894, all three hit over .400, as did reserve outfielder Tuck Turner.

Prior to the turn of the century, when the Phillies also had future Hall of Famers Nap Lajoie and Elmer Flick in the lineup, they could never quite make it to the top. They came close several times under manager Shettsline. But Reach sold the team in 1903 for $170,000, and with a succession of owners, team presidents, and managers following, the Phillies had an inglorious run topped by the 1904 season, during which they posted a 52–100 record and finished 53 1/2 games out of first place.

In 1910, Magee won the league batting title with a .331 mark. The same year, the Phillies bought the contract of Alexander for $750 from Syracuse of the New York State League. In his first season with the Phillies, Alexander posted a 28–13 record. Then in 1911, the Phillies picked up 30-year-old Gavvy Cravath from the minor-league Minneapolis club. 

Also in 1912, Phillies president Horace Fogel, a former sports editor of a local newspaper, was banned for life from baseball for making derogatory comments about baseball, one in which he said that year’s pennant race was fixed. Former New York City police commissioner William Baker bought the team and gave the ballpark a new nickname: Baker Bowl. He would prove to be an ultra cheapskate, but also one with unsound baseball judgment, making some terrible trades over the years and destroying a successful franchise.

Before that happened, though, the Phillies captured their first National League pennant in 1915. With Alexander winning 31 games and Cravath leading the league in home runs (24) and RBIs (115), the Phillies finished seven games ahead of the defending world champion Boston Braves. In the World Series, however, after Alexander and the Phillies won the first game, the Boston Red Sox came on to win four straight games by one run, including three in a row by 2–1 scores. After winning their first pennant in 33 seasons, the Phils would not win another flag for 35 more years.

Alexander won 33 games, 16 of them shutouts, in 1916 and 30 games the following year, and the Phillies finished second both times. But Baker, fearing that Alexander would be drafted now that World War I was underway, traded him and catcher Bill Killefer to the Chicago Cubs for $55,000 and two players who would play a combined total of 46 games in Phillies uniforms. The deal was considered one of the worst in Phillies history.

To make matters even uglier, the Phillies soon fell into an abyss from which they wouldn’t escape for more than three decades. Starting in 1918, the Phillies went 31 seasons with just one first division finish (fourth in 1932). During those ultra-lean years, the club finished in last place 16 times and in seventh place eight times. They lost 100 or more games in 12 seasons. In one of those seasons (1930), the Phillies had a team batting average of .315—then the third-highest mark since 1900—but lost 102 games, finishing 40 games out of first. The pitching staff had a combined ERA of 6.71.

There were a few bright spots. Cravath became baseball’s premier home-run hitter in the years leading up to Babe Ruth, with six home-run crowns over a seven-year period. In late 1917, the Phillies made a trade that landed Cy Williams, who collected three home-run titles, including one that set a National League record of 41 in 1923. Klein came to the Phils in 1928, and on his way to the Hall of Fame won four home run championships, one batting title, a triple crown, and one MVP Award. Klein in right field and Dick Bartell at shortstop were both starters in the first All-Star Game in 1933. 

But the bad days far outnumbered the good. The Phillies lost a 26–23 decision to the Chicago Cubs in 1922, an all-time major-league record for most runs in one game. They had pitchers with nicknames such as Boom Boom (Beck), Losing Pitcher (Mulcahy), and Weeping Willie (Willoughy). Hurler Hal Kelleher once allowed 12 runs in one inning. Once, after losing 11 straight games, the Phils had to wear Brooklyn Dodgers away uniforms in a game at Ebbets Field because theirs had been lost. They won the game, then proceeded to lose 12 in a row. 

The Phillies traded key players, including future Hall of Famers Dave Bancroft and Eppa Rixey, and in the 1930s, star players such as Bartell, Klein, Ethan Allen, Claude Passeau, and future MVPs Bucky Walters and Dolph Camilli, in most cases getting very little in return. In the 1930s, after outfielder Johnny Moore hit over .300 in four straight seasons, he was sold to the highest bidder—a minor-league team.

The 1930s deals were the work of Gerry Nugent, a former Phillies business manager and chief aid to Baker during the 1920s. After Baker’s death in 1930, Nugent and his wife Mae, an executive with the club, wound up owning 51 percent of the club’s stock in 1936. Nugent became president in 1932, taking over a team that was in dire financial straits.  

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Phillies drew single-season crowds of more than 300,000 only three times. Four times they attracted less than 200,000 fans for a season. Games often drew as few as 1,500. Baker Bowl had deteriorated to such a low point that it had become the laughing stock of baseball, called names such as the “toilet bowl” and “a bandbox.” At one point, the Phillies finances had dropped so precipitously that, in the absence of groundskeepers, they had to hire three sheep to trim the grass on the field.

Midway through the 1938 season, the Phillies finally accepted Connie Mack’s long-standing offer and relocated to Shibe Park, the home of the Athletics, which had been built in 1909 and stood at 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue, just seven blocks from Baker Bowl. While escaping the deplorable conditions of Baker Bowl eventually helped at the gate, Phillies teams remained terrible. They lost more than 100 games in each season from 1938–42, including a club-record 111 in 1941. Second baseman Danny Murtaugh said that “if the Phillies ever won two games in a row, it might be grounds for a Congressional investigation.”

The Phillies reached the bottom of the barrel in 1942, when National League commissioner Ford Frick forced Nugent out of the league and took over management of the penniless team. That season, there was one highlight, however, as Danny Litwhiler became the first major leaguer to play 150 or more games in the outfield without making an error. 

Later that year, Frick found a new owner in New York lumber dealer, William Cox. The inexperienced Cox headed a 30-member syndicate. His term, however, lasted less than one year as, toward the end of 1943, he was found to have bet on Phillies games and was banned for life from baseball by Commissioner Kenesaw Landis. 

Subsequently, the wealthy Carpenter family, which had ties to the DuPont Company in Delaware, bought the team for a reported $400,000 and installed 28-year-old Bob as president. The youngest club president in National League history quickly named former pitching standout and Boston Red Sox farm director Herb Pennock as the team’s general manager. 

Like his predecessors—Fogel, who wanted to change the team’s nickname to “Live Wires” and Lobert, who thought “Phils” would sound better—Carpenter was convinced that the team needed a new image to erase the scars caused by the “Phillies” moniker. He ran a contest in local newspapers asking fans to submit suggestions. There were 5,064 entries, with Blue Jays declared the winner. But, despite the use of a Blue Jay logo on caps, pennants, stationery, and other team items, the club never officially changed its name, and after several years, Blue Jays was dropped as a nickname. 

Almost immediately after Carpenter took the reins, the Phillies began signing young players. While they already had Del Ennis and Andy Seminick in the system, they added youngsters such as Roberts, Ashburn, Curt Simmons, Granny Hamner, and Willie Jones. Eventually joining this group were veterans including Dick Sisler, Jim Konstanty, Bill Nicholson, and Eddie Waitkus, who would be shot in a Chicago hotel room by a deranged woman. With this mixture of young players and veterans, the Phillies were on the way up, and in 1949 finished in third place.

Nicknamed the Whiz Kids, the team followed that by winning the pennant in 1950. Although holding a six-game lead at the end of August, the Phillies went into a tailspin and had to go to the final game of the season to clinch the flag, winning it when Sisler’s three-run, 10th-inning home run defeated the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers, 4–1. Making his third start in the last five days, Roberts went the distance to get his 20th win, the Phils’ first 20-game winner since 1917.

The Whiz Kids, who were sometimes called The Fightin’ Phils, met the New York Yankees in the World Series, but with the exhausted Roberts unable to pitch, Manager Sawyer named reliever Konstanty as the club’s starter in the first game. Konstanty had won 16 games and saved 22, all in relief, but he lost the opener, 1–0. The Phillies then dropped the next three games, losing two more by one run and dropping Game 4, 5–2. 

That year, Konstanty, who often worked out with an undertaker during the offseason, was named the league’s Most Valuable Player, the first reliever ever to win the honor. Meanwhile, the Phillies became the favorite team of Philadelphia baseball fans, replacing the Athletics, who had ruled for many years, but had become largely ignored and in 1954 would move to Kansas City.

The Phillies were expected to rank among the league’s elite teams in the 1950s, but it never happened. They tumbled all the way to fifth place in 1951, and were never a contender for the rest of the decade, despite six straight seasons with 20 or more wins by Roberts, including a 28–7 mark in 1952 and a record 28 straight complete games, batting championships in 1955 and 1958 by Ashburn, and the yearly performances of Ennis as one of the league’s premier power hitters. 

Although they had been signing African American players since 1952, the Phillies became the last National League team to put a black player in a major-league game when infielder John Kennedy made a few appearances with the team in 1957. That same year, shortstop Chico Fernandez, a medium-dark-skinned Cuban, was incorrectly described as the first black player to appear in the Phillies’ regular lineup. 

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Phillies roster featured some young and talented players such as pitchers Jack Sanford and Dick Farrell, first baseman Ed Bouchee, and outfielder Harry Anderson. Future Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson was the second baseman in 1959, his only year as a major-league player. Sawyer, who had been fired in 1952, returned in 1958, in the midst of four straight last-place teams.

When Sawyer quit after the first game of the 1960 season, saying, “I’m 49 years old and I want to live to be 50,” Gene Mauch was hired as manager. But the Phillies remained at the bottom of the league, hitting an all-time low in 1961 when they lost 23 consecutive games. In the following years, though, bolstered by the presence of young stars who were products of the team’s farm system, such as Allen and pitchers Chris Short, Art Mahaffey, and Jack Baldschun, plus players who came to the club in trades, like Jim Bunning, Tony Taylor, Johnny Callison, Tony Gonzalez, and Cookie Rojas, the Phillies’ fortunes were seemingly considerably increased.

Then disaster struck. In one of the most catastrophic collapses in sports history, the Phillies blew a six-and-a-half game lead with 12 games left to play, losing 10 straight and sending a whole city into mourning. Despite Bunning’s perfect game—the first in Phillies history—Callison’s game-winning three-run homer in the All-Star Game, and Allen’s sparkling rookie season, the 1964 debacle was one that has forever encumbered the minds of all those who were around at the time.

It took the Phillies a decade to recover, as mediocre teams cluttered the landscape. In 1970, the team played its last game at Connie Mack Stadium (Shibe Park until the name was changed in 1953), and the following year moved into Veterans Stadium, a multi-purpose venue that was built at a cost of $52 million and had a capacity of 56,371 for baseball. In 1972, Ruly Carpenter replaced his dad, Bob, as team president. 

By then, the Phillies had again plunged heavily into the practice of signing young players. Greg Luzinski, Larry Bowa, Bob Boone, Dick Ruthven, and Larry Christenson were among the best of the lot. They were joined by a former switch-hitting shortstop who had planned to become an architect, and whose favorite sport was basketball. Little did anyone know at the time that Mike Schmidt would some day win seven home-run titles and tie for another, capture three MVP awards, win 10 Gold Gloves, and be named to 12 All-Star teams while becoming the greatest all-around third baseman in history and a member of the Hall of Fame.

In addition to the home-grown players, the Phillies landed Steve Carlton in 1972 in the last trade engineered by general manager John Quinn. Controversial at the time because the Phils gave up popular star pitcher Rick Wise, the trade was justified when Carlton posted a 27–10 record with 15 straight wins for a last place team that won only 59 games. He would go on to win four Cy Youngs while recording five seasons of 20 or more wins. It was said that hitting against Carlton “was like drinking coffee with a pitchfork.” 

The Phillies also acquired other outstanding players like Dave Cash, Richie Hebner, Garry Maddox, Jay Johnstone, Bake McBride, Manny Trillo, Tug McGraw, and Jim Lonborg. These trades were executed by general manager Paul “The Pope” Owens, a brilliant and fearless wheeler-dealer who had previously been a minor-league manager and farm system director with the Phillies.

Once they began bringing in top players again, the Phillies headed back up the ladder. In 1974, under manager Danny Ozark, the team finished third in the Eastern Division. The following year, they were second and the team’s most successful era up to that point was underway.

The Phillies won East Division titles in 1976, 1977, and 1978, posting identical 101–61 records in the first two years. Each time, however, they were defeated in the League Championship Series, getting swept in three games in 1976 by the Cincinnati Reds and losing in each of the next two years, three games to one to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The ’77 series was particularly distressing. The Phils lost the third game after a controversial call by umpire Bruce Froemming, who ruled Davey Lopes safe at first in what would have been the last out of the game. Replays showed he was out. Lopes then scored the winning run. The next night, in a game played almost entirely in a steady rain, the Phils lost the series.

In 1979, the Phillies were out of contention, and during the season Dallas Green replaced Ozark as manager. The high point of the year had been when the team signed Pete Rose as a free agent. Rose would become the club’s sparkplug, driving the Phillies in 1980 to their first pennant in 35 years.

With Schmidt leading the league in home runs (48) and RBIs (121), and Carlton posting 24 victories, the Phillies had won 19 of 26 games when they clinched the East Division title in the next-to-last game of the season, with a 6–4 win over the Montreal Expos. 

The Phillies captured the pennant in a storied five-game series with the Houston Astros, with four of the games going extra innings. In the deciding game, the Phils overcame a 5–2 eighth-inning deficit against Nolan Ryan to win it in the 10th, with Maddox’s double driving home the winning run. Trillo was the series MVP.

Then, facing the Kansas City Royals, the Phillies won their first World Series, triumphing in six games. Only the final game was decided by more than two runs as the Phils clinched the Series with a 4–1 victory behind the pitching of Carlton and McGraw. Carlton won two games in the series, while McGraw posted a 1–1 mark with two saves. Schmidt was named World Series MVP after hitting .381 with two homers and seven RBIs. Two days after the Series ended, more than two-million fans lined Broad Street to watch the Phillies victory parade.

The team returned to postseason play in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign after being declared the first-half champion of the East Division. In the opening series, the Phils lost to the Expos, the second-half winner, three games to two. After the season, Green resigned and became general manager of the Chicago Cubs, and the Carpenter family sold the team for $30 million to a syndicate led by the highly creative vice president Bill Giles, who was named team president. 

Two years later, Owens stepped down from the GM post at midseason to become manager. The Phillies—with a team that included former Cincinnati stars Rose, Joe Morgan, and Tony Perez—and was called the Wheeze Kids because of the advanced age of many members of the roster—won the East Division title with Schmidt lashing 40 homers, then beat the Dodgers in four games in the NLCS as Carlton won two. Gary Matthews was named the series MVP after lacing three home runs and driving in eight. The Phillies then bowed to the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series in five games with Cy Young Award winner John Denny capturing his club’s only victory.

The Series ended what had been a glittering run for the Phillies. They had posted a 791–612 (.564) regular-season record from 1975 through 1983 and appeared in six postseason playoffs and two World Series. It would be 10 years before the team returned to postseason play, even though many fine players, such as Juan Samuel, Von Hayes, Glenn Wilson, Mickey Morandini, Shane Rawley, and 1987 Cy Young winner Steve Bedrosian, dotted the roster.

In 1993, the Phils went from last place the previous year to the World Series with an exciting team led by Darren Daulton, John Kruk, and Lenny Dykstra in the field, and Curt Schilling, Tommy Greene, Terry Mulholland, and Mitch Williams on the mound. Called “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” by Daulton because the team was largely composed of players traded away by other teams, the Phils were led by veteran manager Jim Fregosi. 

The Phillies captured the NLCS against the Atlanta Braves, coming from a two games to one deficit that included a 14–3 loss to win the best-of-seven series in six games. In the finale, the Phils beat Greg Maddux, 6–3, with Dave Hollins lacing a two-run homer and Greene getting the win. Williams saved two games and won two, and Schilling was voted MVP of the series.

It was a vastly different story in the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.         

The Phils won Game 2 on Jim Eisenreich’s three-run homer, but trailed in the Series as the fourth game unfolded. In an incredible game, the Blue Jays overcame a five-run eighth-inning deficit to capture a 15–14 win. Dykstra hit two homers and drove in four runs as the teams combined for a Series record 32 hits. The following day, Schilling hurled a five-hitter to give the Phillies a 2–0 win.

 But two days later, in one of the most infamous games in Phillies history, Joe Carter’s three-run ninth-inning home run off Williams gave Toronto a stunning 8–6 victory and the world championship.  

The loss was followed by another bleak period during which the Phillies dropped out of contention while fashioning seven straight losing seasons, including three with more than 90 losses. But at the start of the twenty-first century, with the team now under the leadership of president David Montgomery, the picture brightened considerably. General manager Ed Wade laid the groundwork, and his successor Pat Gillick applied the finishing touches. The Phils had some stars in Bobby Abreu, Scott Rolen, and Jim Thome, who won a home run title in 2003. 

Guided by new manager Bowa, the team posted two second- and two third-place finishes. And in 2004, it moved into Citizens Bank Park, a sparkling, strictly baseball stadium that cost $345 million to build and had a seating capacity of 43,651. Over the years, the ballpark would cater mostly to large crowds, which at one point reached 257 straight sellouts.

In 2005, the Phillies hired Manuel as their new manager. He would guide a team led by shortstop Jimmy Rollins, second baseman Utley, and first baseman Howard, each one of the best players at his position in Phillies history. Howard (2006) and Rollins (2007) won MVP awards with Howard claiming two home-run crowns, including 2006 when his 58 four-baggers set an all-time Phillies record. Joining this trio during at least part of the run were outfielders Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, and Pat Burrell, and catcher Carlos Ruiz. During all or parts of the era, the pitching staff was anchored by a group of outstanding starters in Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Cliff Lee, and reliever Brad Lidge.

After three straight second-place finishes, the Phillies returned to the playoffs in 2007 for the first time in 14 years, winning the first of what would become five straight East Division titles as Howard smashed 47 home runs and Hamels posted a 15–5 record. The Phils overcame a seven-game Mets lead, winning 23 of their last 34 games while the New Yorkers lost 12 of their final 17. The Phils, however, were swept in three games by the Colorado Rockies in the NLDS. 

In 2008, with Howard clouting 48 homers, the Phillies overcame a 3 1/2-game lead by the Mets in mid-September, winning 13 of their last 16 games (while New York lost nine of its final 15) to finish first in the East Division. The Phillies won the NLDS, three games to one, over the Milwaukee Brewers with Burrell blasting two homers and Joe Blanton getting the win in the clinching game. The team then won four out of five over the Dodgers in the NLCS, as Hamels got two wins and Lidge three saves. During the season and throughout the postseason, Lidge had been virtually unstoppable, saving 48 games in 48 opportunities.

The Phillies laced the Tampa Bay Rays in five games in the World Series. Hamels was named the Series MVP, after also getting the NLCS MVP, with a combined total of three wins. Howard’s two homers and five RBIs in a 10–2 win in Game 4 proved to be the biggest offensive performance of the fall classic. The Series clincher was a 4–3 victory that took three days to complete. Heavy rain had halted play on the first night of the game. Then, after another day of rain, the game was finally completed with reliever J.C. Romero getting his second win of the Series. Once again, a crowd of more than two million was jammed along Broad Street to watch the Phillies victory parade.

In 2009, Ruben Amaro Jr., became the Phils general manager. With Howard belting 45 homers, Raul Ibanez 34, and Utley 31, the club finished first during the regular season, six games ahead of the second-place Florida Marlins. They beat Colorado in the NLDS, 3–1, and the Dodgers in five games in the NLCS behind three homers from Werth. This time in the World Series, though, the Phillies lost in six games to the Yankees, despite two wins by Lee and two homers by Utley in a 8–6 Phils win in Game 5.

The Phillies returned to postseason play in 2010, garnering 97 wins during the regular season for their highest total since 1993. During the offseason, they had acquired Halladay in a trade with the Blue Jays. The ace right-hander went on to pitch a perfect game against the Marlins, and posted a 21–10 record to win the Cy Young Award. In the playoffs, Halladay twirled a no-hitter in the first game of the NLDS against the Reds, and the Phillies swept the series in three games. The Phils, however, were downed by the San Francisco Giants, four games to two, in the NLCS.

But they were back again in 2011. With Halladay, Hamels, Lee, and Roy Oswalt forming a starting rotation that was labeled “The Four Aces,” the Phillies led the division for all but one day during the regular season and finished the campaign with a team-record 102 wins and a 13-game lead over the Braves. Halladay won 19 and Hunter Pence batted .324 with the Phils after his midseason arrival. The postseason, however, was short as the Phillies lost the NLDS, three games to two, against the Cardinals.

From 2004 through 2011, the Phillies posted a 732–564 (.565) record while finishing second three times in a row, then winning five straight division titles, and appearing in two consecutive World Series, winning one. It was unquestionably the greatest era in Phillies history.  

There would be halt to the run in 2012, when, plagued by injuries to Howard, Utley, and Halladay, the Phillies fell to third place. During the season, they traded away key players Victorino, Pence, and Blanton. Standout hitting by Ruiz and the pitching of Hamels and free-agent signee Jonathan Papelbon were the top performances of the season.        

In 2013, the Phillies took the field with a vastly different team. The starting lineup still featured Rollins, Utley, and Howard, the best players at their positions in the club’s history. Halladay, Hamels, and Lee led a starting rotation that was among the finest in the league on paper. But many changes had been made to the roster, producing a degree of uncertainty. Regardless of the outcome of the season, though, one thing was certain: Now in their 132nd year, the Phillies have been a team with an extraordinary history.  

RICH WESTCOTT is a former newspaper and magazine editor and writer, and is the author of 23 books, including the recently published “Philadelphia’s Top 50 Baseball Players.” Considered the leading authority on Phillies and Philadelphia baseball history, his books include eight on the Phillies, three on Philadelphia’s old ballparks, and a history of Philadelphia sports in the twentieth century. Among his other books are collections of interviews with former baseball players, plus books on no-hitters, 300-game winners, home run hitters, Mickey Vernon, and Eddie Gottlieb. He is the immediate past president of the Philadelphia Sports Writers’ Association.

If you look it up, the record book tells you that Stecher also holds the records for the “most career games by a pitcher who lost all his games (0–10)” and “most career innings by a pitcher with an ERA above 10.00 (68 innings, 10.32).” Not flattering records for any player to hold. But how did Stecher come about this line and these records in his single season in the majors with the 1890 American Association Athletics of Philadelphia? How did he get the opportunity to set the records? And what happened to Stecher after his brief moment in the sun?

Like many players, there is more to this man than his stat line. This article highlights Stecher’s baseball career and his post-career accomplishments, and introduces some of the amateur teams in the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas that Stecher played for and opposed.

William T. Stecher was born in Riverside, New Jersey on October 9, 1869, the fourth of four children of Rudolph and Paulina Stecher. Rudolph had originally come to the US in 1847 from the hot springs town of Baden-Baden and settled in Riverside in 1854. He was one of the organizers of the new township of Delran in 1880 and was to serve as poundkeeper, hotelkeeper, constable, and overseer of the poor (many simultaneously).

Stecher’s Amateur Base Ball Beginnings

There is little record of Stecher’s early years, but he was apparently a good enough athlete at age 17 that in 1887 he was pitching for the local Riverside amateur team, according to the August 7, 1887 Philadelphia Record . He was hit hard (10–1) in the only game that was found, against the Ontario team. His brother, Frank played in the game as well. William also played for the Burlington club later in the year.

In 1888, the Riverton club signed him in early May. In his first game, on May 5, he was opposed by Mike Kilroy, and the game was umpired by Kilroy’s more famous brother, Matt. The May 17, 1888 Philadelphia Record quoted Matt as saying that Stecher “was the most promising youngster he had ever seen.” He had mixed success with Riverton, winning his first game by a score of 20–8 in a six-inning affair versus Richmond, but also later losing to the Young America squad by a 10–2 score.

Stecher with Bordentown

Nineteen-year-old Stecher started the 1889 season with a local amateur team in Bordentown, New Jersey, known as B.A.A. (Bordentown Athletic Association).

He debuted on Saturday, April 20, Opening Day, against the Royal Smyrna club of Philadelphia. He allowed six runs in five innings, while striking out four and walking three, resulting in a 6–4 deficit. He was swapped with “Mickey” McLaughlin, who allowed only one run the rest of the way as the Bordentown club came back to win 9–7.

Stecher pitched in a number of other games for Bordentown:

• May 11: Won, 15–1, versus the Perseverance club of Philadelphia; struck out 11.
• May 16: Pitched the first three innings against the Middle States League Philadelphia Giants, allowing five runs. The game ended up going 15 innings, with McLaughlin swapping positions with Stecher again (Stecher going to center field), and pitched 12 shutout innings. The game lasted three hours!
• May 18: Beat the Rising Sun club of Philadelphia (formerly the “Wunders”), 7–1, allowing only three hits, and walking and striking out six.
• May 22: Played center field in a 9–1 walkover of “The Bristols.”
• May 25: Combined with McLaughlin on a 7–3 win over the Clark’s Pottery team of Trenton. The Clark team wore “bright new uniforms (of) blue trousers, striped shirts, and red hose.” Stecher struck out 12 during his stay on the mound.
• June 8: Combined again with McLaughlin to beat the Kensington club, 11–1.
• June 18: Lost to the Pennington club, 7–6. Pennington is “a village somewhere up in Mercer County.” Stecher struck out 10 in his first documented loss.
• June 22: Played center field in a 9–3 win over the Wynnewood club.
• June 27: Beat Mount Holly, 8–4, striking out nine.
• June 28: Beat Mount Holly again, this time in a 21–0 trouncing. Stecher allowed only four hits and had three of his own while striking out seven.
• July 1: Combined with Plummer (who started in at catcher) in a 14–7 thumping. Stecher rang up seven more strikeouts.
• July 9: Lost, 2-0, to the Cuban Giants of Trenton of the Middle States League.

Stecher’s unofficial record with Bordentown was 7–2 and he established a reputation of striking out large numbers while having some control issues.

Stecher with Harrisburg

Stecher signed with the Middle States League Harrisburg Ponies in mid-February of 1889, but did not start the season with them. His strong amateur showing with Bordentown apparently convinced the Harrisburg club to give Stecher a try. Stecher made his first pro appearance on July 16, 1889, at Norristown. It resulted in a 4–2 win in which he allowed nine hits and three walks in nine innings while striking out five.

He subsequently won a convincing 13–1 game versus York on July 25, recording nine strikeouts. The Harrisburg Patriot noted, “His curves, ups, downs, ins and outs, are very effective.” York returned the favor four days later, knocking him out after five in a 10–4 loss. After two more wins versus Shenandoah in early August, the highlight of Stecher’s baseball career occurred.

On August 9, 1889, he pitched a no-hitter versus the Cuban Giants, issuing five walks and striking out three. Hall of famer Frank Grant was in the lineup for the Giants that day. After the game, Stecher went home to spend time with his mother.

Stecher is found pitching for the Riverton amateur team later in August, beating Rising Sun and losing to Manayuk. Throughout Stecher’s 1889 Harrisburg campaign, he showed control problems—over six walks per nine innings—with occasional strikeout ability, including games of seven, seven, and nine strikeouts.

In 1890, Harrisburg became part of the Eastern Interstate League and Stecher remained on the team. In early April, he pitched in three exhibition games against major-league American Association teams from Rochester and Syracuse, giving him his first taste of that level of competition. After losing his first two games to Rochester, 7–3 and 3–0, Stecher won his final exhibition against Syracuse by a 12–3 score, scoring two runs himself. Once the regular season began, Stecher acquitted himself well, producing an 8–5 record. He continued to show flashes of his good curveball, resulting in games of seven, 10, and 13 strikeouts. But against the stronger competition of the EIL, he also showed his propensity for walks, perhaps due to the more advanced hitters’ ability to lay off his curves. His last game with Harrisburg was on June 26. Stecher is found pitching for Burlington against Bordentown on July 19 and August 10. Even though he was not dominating in the Eastern Interstate League, fortune was about to smile upon him as he had the opportunity to join a team in desperate need of any bodies that could play. Stecher happened to be in the right place when the American Association’s Athletics turned to him for help.

The Association Athletics in 1890

In 1890 there was a great deal of turmoil in baseball, with three major leagues: the existing National League and American Association, and the upstart Players League. This, no doubt, resulted in a great thinning of talent across the leagues, and hit the weak American Association especially hard. New franchises in Rochester, Syracuse, and Toledo replaced teams in Cincinnati (to the NL), Kansas City, and Baltimore. The 1889 Brooklyn Association team also joined the NL and was replaced with a new Brooklyn franchise. The Players League brought competition in eight cities, including Philadelphia (that team also was known as the Athletics). This gave the City of Brotherly Love three major-league teams competing for the crank’s quarter or fifty cents .

The Association Athletics started off fairly well, in spite of losing six regular games to the Player League Athletics. In fact, they led the league as late as July 17 with a 43–27 record. They had solid starters in third baseman Denny Lyons (OPS+ of 193), outfielder Curt Welch (OPS+ of 121), and pitcher Sadie McMahon (29–18). However, things began to fall apart and by the end of August, the team found itself in sixth place at 51–49 after an 8–22 interval.

At the end of August, Denny Lyons was suspended and subsequently sold to the St. Louis Browns, as he had been a nuisance in various ways to manager Bill Sharsig. His replacements—Henry Meyers (.158), Al Sauter (.098), and pitcher/infielder Ed Green (.117) among the main ones standing out near third base—created a huge black hole in order. At the same time, two of their pitchers were let go: Mickey Hughes was given his notice of release and Ed Seward asked to be “laid off” for the rest of the season due to his fatigued arm. This left the Athletics with only McMahon as a starter, and Stecher was one of the new pitchers brought in to fill the void.

In addition, a season-long shift continued at shortstop: Ben Conroy (.171) to start the season, followed by Harry Easterday (.147), Joe Kappel, and finally George Carman (.172).

By mid-September, catcher Wilbert Robinson, first baseman John O’Brien, left fielder Blondie Purcell, center fielder Curt Welch, and right fielder Orator Shafer were released due to the team’s financial shortcomings (they were broke!) and were replaced by a litany of no-names and amateurs, most hitting under .200. The newly reborn Baltimore Orioles were the main recipients of these castoffs, including McMahon.

All of these movements created the opportunity for Stecher and simultaneously doomed him. What follows is a game-by-game summary of his stay with the Athletics.

STECHER WITH PHILADELPHIA

GAME 0: SEPTEMBER 2, 1890—EXHIBITION

• Stecher’s first appearance for Philadelphia was in an exhibition game on September 2, versus the St. Louis Browns in Wilmington, Delaware. Stecher won this game, 3–2, allowing only five hits in an agreed upon eight-inning contest, according to the September 3, 1890 Philadelphia Record.

GAME 1: SEPTEMBER 6, 1890

• Matchup: Athletics vs. Louisville, Jefferson Street Grounds
• Score: 0–7
• Stecher’s Line: 8 innings, 10 hits, 7 runs, 5 earned runs, 5 walks, 4 strikeouts
• Game notes: In his official major-league debut, Stecher gave up four runs in the first two innings, but then “settled down,” scattering five hits with his curves, according to the September 7, 1890 Philadelphia Press. The curve was apparently the calling card that got Stecher to the Athletics. Unfortunately, it would not fool the American Association hitters. Stecher batted eighth in the lineup, as he would a great deal during his stay with Philadelphia. From the September 8, 1890 Philadelphia Public Ledger, came the classic words of every prospective player: “With a little more experience and judicious coaching, he will no doubt develop into a good twirler.” This was not to be.

GAME 2, SEPTEMBER 13, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Baltimore, Oriole Park II (SW corner of 29th & Greenmount)
• Score: 6–18
• Stecher’s Line: 7 innings, 13 hits, 18 runs, 8 walks, 4 strikeouts
• Game Notes: This game was called after seven innings due to darkness. Baltimore scored in each of the seven frames, including a seven spot in the seventh for good measure. Stecher’s control issues continued with eight more walks. According to the account in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, “The way they punish his curves was a caution.” This leads one to wonder if he should not have bothered with his curve at all. The 1890 Baltimore Orioles entry had only recently joined the AA, rejoining the league on August 27 to replace the Brooklyn franchise. Prior to this, the Orioles had a team in the Atlantic Association and ran away with that league’s pennant. A good number of the Atlantic Orioles continued on with the Association Orioles. Baltimore was one of three teams to exist in two leagues (one major league) in the same season, the others being the 1884 Virginia franchise (Eastern League/ American Association) and the 1891 Milwaukee franchise (Western Association/American Association).

GAME 3: SEPTEMBER 20, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Louisville, Eclipse Park I (Elliot Park)
• Score: 0–10
• Stecher’s Line: 8 innings, 15 hits, 10 runs, 3 walks, 1 strikeout
• Game Notes: Louisville was in the midst of their only championship season in major-league ball (AA and NL), sporting an 88–44 record and taking it to the Athletics in the doubleheader on the 20th. To go with the second game woes, Louisville also pasted pitcher Green in a 22–4 beating in game one. Only two of the “original” Athletics went West on the road trip, and each player that did go had to sign an agreement to play for $5 per game and expenses, according to the September 18, 1890 Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

GAME 4: SEPTEMBER 21, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Louisville, Eclipse Park I (Elliot Park)
• Score: 3–16
• Stecher’s Line: 7 innings, 15 hits, 16 runs, 10 walks, 2 strikeouts
• Game Notes: Stecher was brought back a day later to take more abuse at the hands of the powerful Colonels. This resulted in another late-inning pounding, as he allowed six runs in the seventh and final inning before the game was called due to darkness.

GAME 5: SEPTEMBER 26, 1890

• Matchup: Athletics at St. Louis, Sportsman’s Park I (Grand Avenue & St. Louis Avenue)
• Score: 3–7
• Stecher’s Line: 5 innings, 10 hits, 7 runs, 5 walks, 0 strikeouts
• Game Notes: This game and the next were two of Stecher’s “closer” games, but again, a combination of not enough run support and poor pitching led to a shortened game loss. The game was mercifully ended after five innings so that the Athletics could catch a train for Toledo.

GAME 6: SEPTEMBER 28, 1890 (GAME 1)

• Matchup: Athletics at Toledo, Speranza Park
• Score: 9–11
• Stecher’s Line: 4 innings, 6 hits, 7 runs, 6 earned runs, 6 walks, and 3 strikeouts
• Game Notes: Stecher lasted only four innings in game one of the doubleheader at Toledo. This was his closest final score, though it was 7–3 when he departed after four innings. Stecher swapped positions with third baseman Green in the fifth inning.

GAME 7: SEPTEMBER 28, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Toledo, Speranza Park
• Score: 1–15
• Stecher’s Line: 7 innings, 14 hits, 15 runs, 6 earned runs, 6 walks, 0 strikeouts
• Game Notes: With a thin pitching staff, manager Sharsig brought Stecher back for game two, with worse results than game one as Stecher got pounded for 15 runs as a result of 14 hits, six walks, and five team errors in this seven-inning affair.

GAME 8: OCTOBER 1, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Columbus, Recreation Park II
• Score: 0–14
• Stecher’s Line: 9 innings, 14 hits, 14 runs, 12 earned runs, 7 walks, 2 strikeouts
• Game Notes: Another stinker for Stecher, with seven walks, although he did hit a triple in three atbats. He allowed 10 of the runs in the last four innings. Coincidentally, this ball field would host the first home football game of The Ohio State University less than a month later, a 64–0 loss to Wooster on November 1.

GAME 9: OCTOBER 4, 1890 (GAME 2)

• Matchup: Athletics at Syracuse, Star Park II
• Score: 1–6
• Stecher’s Line: 5 innings, 7 hits, 6 runs, 6 earned runs, 3 walks, 0 strikeouts
• Game Notes: Three runs in the first inning by the Stars put this one away as the Athletics continued their non-support of Stecher, scoring just two runs scored in three games. Fewer than 100 people showed up for this dreary doubleheader (Philly won the first game 8–7), that was mercifully called after five innings due to rain and darkness.

GAME 10: OCTOBER 9, 1890

• Matchup: Athletics vs. Rochester, Jefferson Street Grounds
• Score: 4–10
• Stecher’s Line: 8 innings, 7 hits, 10 runs, 7 walks, 2 strikeouts
• Game Notes: Stecher finished out his major-league career with his sixth game of 10 runs or more allowed, although five Athletic errors did not help him. According to the Public Ledger, he “was not hit hard, but was wild in his delivery.” Rochester scored five in the second to take a 5–2 lead, then added three runs in the seventh and two in the eighth.

In the end, Stecher lost all 10 games he pitched, allowing 111 hits, 110 runs, and 60 walks while striking out only 18. He had a grand total of 27 runs of support during his stay (2.7 runs per game). To lend some perspective, the Athletics as a team lost their last 22 games and were 2–26 once Stecher officially joined the “rotation,” allowing 10 or more runs 17 times!

Back to the Amateur Ranks

Stecher went back to his hometown of Riverside in 1891, pitching for the local amateur team. He married Lizzie Kellock in July of that year, and they would go on to have three daughters. He pitched regularly for Riverside through 1894, mostly hitting leadoff and not having the success that he had enjoyed in his earlier amateur days. He was still striking out a lot of hitters, but he was still apparently infected from his Athletic days, as he lost of great deal of the games he started. His travels in the New Jersey amateur ranks took him to such towns and cities as Camden (where he also pitched in 1893 and 1895), Beverly, Media, Millville (Farmer Steelman batted against him), Salem, and even venturing as far as Hagerstown, Maryland. His responsibilities with the Riverside team seemingly exceeded just playing by this time, as there is a notice in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1895 for the team looking for players with W. Stecher listed as the contact.

There is a Stecher that shows up as pitcher in 1897 for Mount Holly, although it does not explicitly identify him as William, it would make sense that it could be. While with Mount Holly, Stecher pitched against such local amateur teams as the Lehigh A.A., the Scholastic A.A., New Egypt, Germantown, and Burlington. It also appears that he may have pitched for Sunbury of the Central Pennsylvania League during the same time.

Stecher was back with the Riverside team in 1898 (he was only 28 at this point), while also serving as the town’s tax assessor.

Post Career: Businessman, Community Servant

Toward the end of his playing days, like his father, Stecher became involved in the local community. He was Riverside’s tax assessor in the late 1890s, and was elected Sheriff of Burlington County (New Jersey) in 1914 after being defeated in 1908 and 1911. He ran a local cigar store and owned and ran several racehorses during this time. He also served as a committeeman, board of education member, director of the Riverside Building and Loan, and township clerk. In his later years, he had a successful real estate business in Riverside.

There is a Stecher road in current-day Riverside, though it is unknown whether this is connected to him, his father, or any of his family. But, based on his family’s strong local political and community roots, there is a good chance that it is associated with his family in some way.

On December 26, 1926, Stecher was killed at a train crossing in Riverside, failing to notice the oncoming train as he crossed in his auto. He was 57. The obituary heralded him as “one of the most popular officials that this (Burlington) county has had.” He was buried in his hometown Riverside Cemetery.

To most baseball fans, William T. Stecher is just a passing entry on Baseball-Reference.com or in a baseball encyclopedia—one who had an inglorious one-year career in which he set records for career futility. But how he got there and his post-baseball life tells a much more textured life of success and service.

JONATHAN FRANKEL, a SABR member since 1979, is a Quality Advisor at FedEx outside of Detroit. In 2010, he completed researching and compiling the missing batter strikeouts for the years 1897-1912, now part of Baseball-Reference.com. In 2012, he also discovered a “new” player, Joe Cross, during some American Association research. He has a blog about various baseball research interests, which he updates every once in awhile, at batterk.blogspot.com.

Author’s note

The game-by-game statistics provided here are from the ICI logs. While researching the games, I discovered several variances in individual statistics from each other as well as ICI, very typical of the era. One other note needs to be made regarding earned runs documented here and those in the “record.” Not all games have “official” earned runs. As Pete Palmer told me, “ICI did not have earned run data for all games, so what they did was take the percentage of runs earned in the games they had and applied it to the games they didn’t. They claimed that have at least 50 percent of the runs accounted for every team, but I am not sure they did. The 1969 Mac had the estimated ERA in italics, but this got lost in future editions.”

Acknowledgements

I wish to give special acknowledgement to Ed Morton for helping pull game accounts and digging other important information from non-Internet based sources. I would also like to thank Alice Smith, president of the Riverside Historical Society for her help.

Sources

Bordentown Register, Philadelphia Inquirer, Harrisburg Patriot, Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Sporting Life, and Seamheads.com article by Cliff Blau on the 1890 Athletics.

Taken on Labor Day in 1902 during a doubleheader between the Phillies and Chicago Orphans, the photo shows the edge of the grandstand and bleachers along the third base line where the collapse would take place less than a year later. (Author’s Collection)

Introduction

“From the lips of a frightened little girl came a cry of terror yesterday afternoon that lured hundreds of panic-stricken men to death and injury at the Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds.” So begins the front-page story in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper describing the deadliest disaster ever to occur at a major league ballpark. On August 8, 1903, part of the top left-field bleacher balcony at the Philadelphia Phillies’ ballpark collapsed, hurling hundreds of people headlong to the pavement below. Twelve people died and 232 were injured. The tragedy, its aftermath, and the far-reaching effects it had on ballpark design and construction are examined in this article.

Toward the Modern Ballpark Era

The Phillies’ first ballpark—Recreation Park—was characteristic of nineteenth century ballparks. Hastily constructed in 1883 after Philadelphia had been awarded a National League franchise, Recreation Park was built entirely of wood and held just 6,500 people.1 Phillies owner Alfred J. Reach quickly became aware of the inadequacies of his ballpark: Wood was susceptible to fire and decay, and the seating capacity of a single-decked wooden ballpark could not accommodate the number of fans eager to attend games.2 “We are having difficulty finding space for all the people who want to pay to see us play,” Reach noted.3 Watching patrons turned away from Recreation Park because they could not be seated, Reach would seek to build a larger and more grandiose facility for the club.

Built at a cost of $101,000 and with a seating capacity of 12,500, Philadelphia Base Ball Park was considered the finest ballpark in the nation when it opened in 1887. Brick was used throughout the structure in place of commonly used wood, and it was the first such facility to offer pavilion seating for customers.4 The massive brick pavilion at the main entrance—dominated on the outside by a central turret 165 feet high and two end turrets 75 feet high—was as revolutionary in ballpark construction as it was medieval in appearance. The double-decked grandstand between first and third bases held 5,000 seats, while 7,500 additional customers could be accommodated in the bleachers that extended down the left- and right-field lines. There were no seats in the outfield.5

The ballpark still contained a great deal of wood in its construction, however, the drawback of which became apparent on August 6, 1894. That morning, the Phillies were preparing for an afternoon game against the Baltimore Orioles when at 10:40 A.M. one of the players noticed a fire in the grandstands. The fire quickly spread and largely consumed the ballpark. Its cause was never determined, although various theories included sparks from a passing locomotive and a torch that a plumber was using to make repairs.6 Although there were no fatalities and only minor injuries, the fire destroyed the ballpark with the exception of part of the outer brick wall that enclosed it.7

“The First Modern Ballpark”

Determined to avoid such catastrophes in the future, Reach planned a new ballpark at the same location that would be elaborate, elegant, and fireproof. Constructed mostly of steel and brick at a cost of $225,000,8 the new structure contained no wood except for the floors and seats of the stands.9 It also was the first ballpark to feature cantilever construction, a radical new architectural technique in ballpark design.10 Using cantilevered concrete supports and iron girders, architects could eliminate most of the columns supporting the upper deck and roof that made for so much “obstructed view seating” at ballparks.11

Christened National League Park 12 when it opened in 1895, and seating 18,800 people, the ballpark’s construction was a defining moment for the future of baseball. 13 According to baseball historian Michael Gershman, Reach “created the first modern ballpark.”14 Seeking to reassure fans that ballpark conflagrations were now a thing of the past, Reach wrote in an invitation to Opening Day, “The new structure is mainly of brick and steel, containing no wood or other inflammable material except the platform and seats.”15

Reach’s foresight and willingness to embrace improved building materials and innovative architectural features in his new ballpark moved baseball decisively away from the small, crowded firetraps that had previously housed ball clubs. Preventing fire from consuming ballparks as it had in the past propelled the dramatic step forward that occurred when National League Park opened its doors. Al Reach’s new structure, moreover, was intended to be a lasting part of Philadelphia’s architectural landscape. Brick and steel endured while wood decayed. Reach had this sense of permanence in mind when he wrote that his new ballpark “adds so novel and unique a structure to the many other ornamental edifices of our beloved city.”16

Reach was right in assuring fans that his new park did not pose the fire hazard previous structures presented. No fires occurred, and the most modern ballpark of its era stood without any major architectural changes for nearly a decade.17 Potential catastrophe was the furthest thing from Phillies’ patrons’ minds when they came to the ballpark to cheer on the hometown crew.

The Deadliest Disaster Ever

Although National League Park had remained essentially unchanged when the 1903 baseball season started, ownership of the Phillies had not. Reach and his partner John Rogers sold the team for $170,000 following the 1902 season to a coterie of “millionaires” from Philadelphia and Cincinnati who together had formed the “Philadelphia Base Ball and Entertainment Company.” James Potter, the chief stockholder, became the club’s president and led the new owners—numbering a remarkable 24 in total. Reach and Rogers, however, retained ownership of the ballpark itself.18 This arrangement would become important in sorting out the torrent of lawsuits, verbal recriminations, and accusations of responsibility and liability that were to follow in the disaster’s wake.

A doubleheader was scheduled between the Phillies and Boston Beaneaters on Saturday, August 8, 1903. A crowd of some 10,000 saw the Braves take the first game in 12 innings, edging the Phillies by a score of 5–4. In the second game, the teams were locked in a 5–5 tie in the fourth inning. At 5:40 P.M., the Braves’ Joe Stanley was at the plate with two outs. However, the attention of fans that had each paid 25 cents for seats in the bleachers down the left-field line was drawn to an incident occurring below on 15th Street outside the ballpark.19

Two drunken men were walking slowly down the street followed by a small group of boys and girls who were teasing them. Suddenly, one of the men turned toward the children and grabbed one of the girls by the hair. In doing so, he stumbled and fell on top of her. The child, who was later identified as 13-year-old Maggie Barry, shrieked in terror as did her companions. They cried, “Help!” and “Murder!” The commotion drew people in the ballpark to the top of the bleachers to see what was happening below.20

They congregated on an overhanging wooden balcony at the top of the outer wall that ran along 15th Street and continued around the corner on Lehigh Avenue. The balcony was seven-to-eight feet wide and protruded beyond the wall by about three feet. It was intended as a footway for people to use for entering and exiting the grandstand and bleachers. The balcony had a handrail but was not independently braced underneath. Instead, the same joists that were used to support the grandstand and bleachers held up the balcony. The joists extended through the top of the wall to provide support. The wall itself was approximately 14 inches thick. According to newspaper accounts of the time, an estimated 300 people jammed onto the balcony to witness the incident that was unfolding approximately 30 feet below on 15th Street. The Philadelphia Inquirer described what happened next in a headline story that ran the following day:

Suddenly, jammed with an immense, vibrating weight, the balcony tore itself loose from the wall, and the crowd was hurled headlong to the pavement. Those who felt themselves falling grasped those behind and they in turn held on to others. Behind were thousands still pushing up to see what was happening. In the twinkling of an eye the street was piled four deep with bleeding, injured, shrieking humanity struggling amid the piling debris.21

The crash was as horrifying as it was deadly. In an instant, 15th Street was piled high with more than 200 “bleeding, injured, and shrieking” individuals. More people continued to fall off the balcony as those still in the bleachers—hearing the noise and screams—pressed forward to see what the commotion was all about. One of the first police officers on the scene, Sergeant Bartle, told reporters:

There must have been one hundred men and boys, and every one of them was covered with blood. Some of them had their clothing almost torn from their bodies, while others were so bespattered with blood and mud as to be almost unrecognizable. Under the debris were the forms of those who were unconscious. You could not tell whether they were dead or alive. Timber, rubbish, and bricks were piled everywhere.22

Policeman Robinson who was on duty outside the ballpark, saw the disaster, and immediately sent out a call for help. Within minutes, patrol wagons and ambulances were rushing to the ballpark, but the extent of the calamity was simply too great for them to handle. Streetcars were emptied of passengers and loaded with the injured. Delivery wagons and automobiles were commandeered by police to rush victims to local hospitals. The injured were taken initially to Samaritan and St. Luke’s Hospitals. When they became overwhelmed, victims were sent to the Jewish Hospital.23

Back at the accident scene, the best and worst of humanity were on display. Neighbors opened their houses to the wounded, Good Samaritans tried to give comfort to the fallen, and doctors rushed to the ballpark when they heard of the disaster. At the same time, pickpockets sought to loot the injured and dying while curiosity-seekers simply looked on without offering any relief to those in need.

The Deadly Toll

The break started along the bleachers about 50 feet from the ballpark’s main entrance at 15th and Huntingdon Streets, continued north along 15th Street, and stopped at the point the stands curved toward Lehigh Avenue—a distance of approximately 150 feet. Once the victims had been removed, ballpark employees were ordered to remove the debris and clear the site. This was done by 7 P.M.27 Even the jagged ends of the timbers that once supported the balcony and still jutted out from the wall were cut off and taken away.28 While the clean-up was in progress, a city building inspector named John H. Kessler—in whose district the ballpark was situated—arrived on the scene, secured pieces of the joists and specimens of the brick and mortar, and took them with him to City Hall. They were impounded as evidence to be used in the inquiry that was sure to follow to determine the cause of the disaster and affix responsibility for it.29

The final count showed that 12 had been killed and 232 injured in the catastrophe, and it remains Major League Baseball’s deadliest disaster. The youngest fatality was William J. Graham, age 24, who lived with his parents. His 18-year-old sister had died of illness in May, and the double blow left the family prostrated by grief. The oldest victim was Edward Williamson, a 63-year-old Civil War veteran who had been wounded at the Battle of Antietam and endured the misery of incarceration at the Confederacy’s notorious Andersonville Prison.30

It was customary during the era for people—adults and children—to wear hats to baseball games, and over a hundred were gathered up and placed in the window of a grocery store on 15th Street waiting for their owners to reclaim them. Some never would.31

What about the drunks? Efforts were made to find them once an investigation into the accident began. There were at least four versions of the drunken-men story circulating, and authorities wanted to talk to the individuals whose actions had started the ruckus that drew the spectators to their fate. Neighbors said that after the accident they saw the two men lying in an alley near 15th Street. The police, however, were so busy tending to the needs of victims that they paid no attention to the drunks. During the excitement the men apparently recovered sufficiently to amble off and disappear into the black hole of history. They were never identified.32

The main entrance of National League Park—informally known as Baker Bowl. An overhanging wooden balcony that fans used to enter and exit the grandstand and bleachers is clearly visible in the photo. The balcony had been redesigned to strengthen its support by the time this photo was taken in 1938, the last year the Phillies would call the ballpark home. (Author’s Collection)

Finger-pointing and Lawsuits Commence

As often happens when disaster strikes, protestations of innocence and accusations of guilt abound amongst those seeking to avoid and affix blame. This calamity was no different.

Phillies Business Manager William Shettsline was in charge of ballpark operations when the disaster struck. In its immediate aftermath, according to newspaper accounts, he “was so badly prostrated by the shock that he could scarcely tell a coherent story.”33 By the next day, Shettsline had recovered sufficiently to issue a statement in which the owners of the club asserted their claim of having no culpability in the matter. While expressing sympathy for the victims, the statement explained:

The accident was in no way due to any lack of proper precautions or neglect on the part of officials of the club… When the present management assumed control of the grounds, the pavilion and stands were in perfect condition, and, for the purposes intended were safe and reliable, but the simultaneous rush of several hundred persons to one concentrated point weakened the structure and precipitated several hundred unfortunate persons to the street below… Over-anxiety on their part resulted in the regrettable accident. 34

Club President Potter was vacationing in Saratoga, New York but returned to Philadelphia quickly when informed of the disaster by telegraph. Accompanied by National League President Harry Pulliam, Potter appeared before the press on August 10 and echoed the defense offered the day before by Shettsline. The statement he read said in part, “I feel that no precaution was omitted on the part of the company to protect the patrons of the ground. It was one of those unfortunate accidents that occur when large numbers of people, actuated by a common impulse, do something they are not expected to do.”35

Colonel John I. Rogers, co-owner of the ballpark along with A. J. Reach, also returned hastily from a vacation in Cape May, New Jersey. He released a lengthy statement to the press in which he recounted the ballpark’s construction and noted that it was inspected each spring by “experienced mechanics” to confirm its soundness and ensure the safety of patrons. Rogers observed:

The inspection usually lasted for weeks, and always entailed a large expenditure for maintenance and replacement. Three years ago we appointed an experienced carpenter as our park superintendent, so that inspections could be daily instead of annually, and we firmly believed that nothing of doubtful strength or fitness escaped his attention. The new club owners who took possession on March 1 followed, as Mr. Shettsline informs me, the same rule last spring and spent a large sum for maintenance and repair before their opening game. One thing is certain, that the mad rush of an excited crowd suddenly jumping to the balcony and pushing everything irresistibly before it, would have crushed any similar structure, no matter how strongly or recently built. It was a football center rush, multiplied indefinitely, that few, if any, walls could have withstood.36

Rogers also commented that R. C. Ballinger & Co. had done the original construction of the ballpark, and he emphasized that “all the details were left to their superior skills and judgment.” He added, in an apparent effort to distance himself and Reach from any blame for the accident, “They submitted outline plans to the Building Inspectors and to us, and went ahead with their tasks and on their own responsibility, just like every other first-class firm.”37

R. C. Ballinger immediately shot back in a comment to newspaper reporters stating, “The fault, if it lies anywhere, is theirs; not mine.” He praised the quality of the original construction but also cautioned that eight years had since passed, and that “the best timber, when subjected, unprotected, for eight years to the effects of the sun, wind, snow and rain may become rotten.” Ballinger declared emphatically, “My responsibility ended when the grounds were opened and the tests made.”38

“Rotten timbers!” was Philadelphia Mayor John Weaver’s opinion of the cause of the balcony crash when he inspected the site along with other city officials two days after the accident. He opined, “I am not a builder, but it looks to me as if the construction of the balcony was faulty.” When asked who was responsible for the rotten timbers, Weaver replied, “The people whose duty it is to keep the stand in repair.” With an eye toward insulating the city from any culpability, Weaver commented that under present law, “Building inspectors were not under obligation to inspect buildings, except theaters, after they had been completed unless some complaint was made.” He further noted that the city did not have enough building inspectors to inspect all such structures regularly.39

Weaver’s observation was echoed by Alexander Colville, Philadelphia’s assistant director of public safety, who offered his own explanation for the collapse:

Waterlogged and decayed timber. The debris found on the pavement showed that the timbers which had projected from the walls and on which the walk was laid which gave way under the weight of the sudden strain by the crowd upon it were rotten. They were built into the wall and had iron braces extending outward but none upward. The wall was about 10 or 15 years old. No such construction could be possible nowadays.40

Charges about the decrepit condition of the balcony’s support structure became common currency in the days following the accident. Reporters at the scene detected the problem at once. One wrote:

A cursory glance at the debris before its removal by the ball park employees showed that much of the timber was in a badly decayed state. While the main body of the wall looked firm, the bricks about the top, where the joists protruded, were loose and some of them looked as though the mortar had been worn out or washed away.41

The efforts by Potter, Rogers, Ballinger, and Weaver to absolve themselves from any fault can be well understood. The first lawsuit filed as a result of the accident was submitted on August 10. Attorney John R. K. Scott, as counsel for Walter Mariner and Harry Quigley—two of the men injured in the collapse—issued summonses from Courts of Common Pleas Nos. 1 and 5, respectively, against the Philadelphia Base Ball Club and Exhibition Company (Potter’s group) to recover damages for the injuries they sustained. It was alleged in the statements of claim “that the defendant company was negligent in maintaining the overhanging promenade in a condition which was unsafe for the patrons of the ballpark.”42

Another lawsuit—the third one filed—asked for $5,000 in damages for James E. Dwyer, who was among the injured.43 The suit alleged that the Philadelphia Base Ball Club and Exhibition Company was negligent in not providing a safe passageway for patrons, and that the company further rendered itself liable by not providing a sufficient number of “special officers” at the ballpark to control the crowds.44

As the days passed, additional lawsuits were initiated, and eventually, more than 80 were filed.45 Later suits were expanded to also include the Philadelphia Base Ball Club, Limited—the company headed by Reach and Rogers—which owned the ballpark and from which Potter’s group leased it for Phillies games. Estimates were made that claims for damages filed in lawsuits could reach $1,000,000.46

Claims and Counterclaims at the Coroner’s Inquest

Coroner Thomas Dugan began his inquest into the accident on August 18.47 It lasted two days and all six members of the jury were builders.48 The first witness called was R. C. Ballinger, whose company had erected the balcony and bleachers at the ballpark. He said the balcony had been constructed only to accommodate those fans passing to and from the bleachers. It was not intended, he explained, to “withstand a mob.” Ballinger noted that the supporting joists were built of the “best yellow pine lumber,” with an average life of seven-to-nine years.49 He also observed, “I can’t see where any one has any reason to blame any one but himself. If an accident of the sort had happened while they were seated, then they might have complained.”50 The foreman in charge of the ballpark’s construction, David S. Lockwood, appeared on the stand and testified that the building materials and construction quality were good, and that the structure had been subjected to extensive testing before the park was opened in 1895.51

Colonel Rogers appeared, as well, and described in great detail the story of the ballpark’s construction. He emphasized that there had been no indication that the timbers extending from the wall to support the balcony—which had been covered in tin for protection when put in place—had rotted.52 Shettsline appeared next and said that the special officers on duty at the ballpark had done their best to control the crowd and return the curious to their seats but had been simply overwhelmed by the mob.53

Finally, James Potter took his place on the witness stand and testified that when his corporation took over the Phillies in February 1903, Colonel Rogers assured him that the stands were the strongest and safest in the world.54 Furthermore, according to Potter, when he inquired if anything needed to be done to improve the conditions in the grandstands, Rogers replied, “You cannot spend a cent in the way of repairs, for no repairs are needed.”55

A newspaper reporter offered this interpretation of the cumulative testimony of the first day’s witnesses: “The impression seemed to prevail that the fatal balcony might have withstood ordinary usage for some time, but the great weight of the mob that rushed upon it on the day of the accident was too much for even an iron-braced balcony.”56

The most sensational commentary during the second and final day of testimony came from Edward Clark, an engineer of the Bureau of Building Inspection who had examined the accident scene. He found that 50 of the wooden support joists in the area where the balcony had collapsed were “rotten and worthless;” 10 were 75 percent bad; and 14 were 50 percent bad. Only two of the joists were in good condition. Disputing Ballinger, Clark said that the lumber used for the joists was hemlock—not pine—and that water seeping through nail holes created when the tin capping was affixed to the joists had rotted the timber over the years.57

The chief of the Bureau of Building Inspection, Robert C. Hill, corroborated Clark’s testimony and pointed out that under current law inspectors had no right to enter a building following the completion of its initial inspection except on complaint. Hill confirmed that since the ballpark’s 1895 opening, it had not been inspected by the bureau.58 He also condemned the use of hemlock in building construction noting, “From what I have seen in the last two weeks, I would not consider an application for a permit for any stand of a permanent character in which hemlock forms the main foundation or its component parts.” 59

The Coroner’s jury deliberated for two-and-a-half hours after the second day’s testimony had concluded and announced three principal findings:

The jury finds that the falling of a balcony on the left field stand on 15th Street which caused the deaths of Joseph Edgar and eleven others at the Philadelphia Base Ball Park was due to the rotten condition of the supporting timbers. We further find that the Philadelphia Base Ball Club, Limited (Rogers and Reach) were responsible in not having a thorough examination made of those timbers throughout the time of their ownership, and in stating at the time of the transfer (to Potter’s group) that the buildings on the grounds were in first-class condition.

We also find it our duty to recommend that the staff of the inspectors for the Bureau of Building Inspection should be increased, and that a number of inspectors should be assigned whose sole duty it should be to inspect all places of amusement, ball parks, race-track pavilions, external fire escapes, etc., and that they should be empowered to enter upon the premises of any place at any and all times to make such inspections as should insure the safety of the patrons or employees thereof; and that a permit be issued and publicly posted stating when the inspection was made and the condition of the place. The jury also recommends that the Bureau of Building Inspection allow no hemlock lumber to be used in the stands of a permanent nature or in buildings where big assemblages congregate.

The jury also recommends that there shall be no seating capacity allowed under any stand of wood construction unless a permit is first secured from the Bureau of Building Inspection.60

Reacting to the findings of the jury and noting the foreman’s declaration that the verdict was “founded on Mr. Potter’s testimony,” Rogers issued a lengthy statement on August 24 in which he disputed Potter’s recollection of their conversation on February 28, 1903—the day the sale of the Phillies was concluded—about the condition of the ballpark. Regarding the statement that “you cannot spend a cent in the way of repairs,” that Potter attributed to Rogers, the latter retorted:

He (Potter) swore, according to his belief, founded on his memory, which, so far as I am concerned, is unreliable. If anyone else used such language it was not I. If such language was used at any time by anyone else connected with the club it could not have been applied to repairs in view of the heavy annual expenditures for that purpose… So Mr. Potter is mistaken, at least, as to anything said by me on this point in dispute.61

Rogers continued that Potter made no inquiries as to the condition of the stands when he purchased the Phillies, and that if he had, “I (Rogers) would have expressed my opinion that to the best of my knowledge and belief they were in good condition.” He also noted that Potter’s corporation became responsible for annual maintenance of National League Park as part of the deal to purchase the Phillies, and that it “had spent many dollars for repairs” to offset “the wear and tear of the winter months” and get the ballpark ready for the 1903 season.62

Stressing the enormous and expensive efforts undertaken every year to keep the ballpark in good condition, Rogers observed, “We certainly, and I—on whom most of the burden fell—particularly, did everything that mortals not gifted with foresight could to do insure the comfort and safety of our patrons during the entire time of our ownership.”63

Rogers took the opportunity to also refute the testimony of Ballinger, whose company built National League Park. He claimed that Ballinger stated that tin covering the joists “would protect indefinitely from moisture and decay the timber resting on the wall.” Dismissing the notion that the timbers should have been inspected to ensure rot had not set in, Rogers commented:

Now it is said that, in addition to care and precautions we did take, we ought to have guessed that under the paint that was meant to preserve the outriggers over the pavement there was a dry rot at the core, and under the tin that was supposed to be a protective roof for that portion of the joists resting on the wall, that the moisture had somehow through nail-holes or otherwise, penetrated and lay there rotting the wood. This, contrary to all rule, all advice, all experience and all reason, we ought to have guessed, and because we didn’t so guess, what none of the jury would in all probability have guessed, we are morally censured because the timbers, which were daily getting weaker, yielded to an irresistible rush of an excited crowd.64

Rogers’ contention about the “irresistible rush of an excited crowd” was a point he would return to repeatedly in denying any responsibility for the collapse. Opining that it probably would “have lasted for years while used for its legitimate purposes,” a crowd of “five times as many people” on the balcony than it was designed to hold created pressure “before which even brick walls and iron doors must fall.”65

By 1948, only the low outer wall of National League Park remained. Taken at the ballpark’s main entrance located at 15th and Huntingdon Streets, the photo shows 15th Street where the dead and injured fell 45 years earlier. (Author’s Collection)

The Disaster’s Legacy

One reporter correctly forecast about the lawsuits, “It may be safely predicted that there will be enough litigation to last all parties in interest a lifetime; and that in the long run nobody will get anything out of it except, perhaps, a few lawyers.”66 The lawsuits wound languidly through the court system for six years, reaching all the way up to the US Supreme Court. The Court largely accepted the defense offered by the owners of National League Park and the Phillies, ruling that an extraordinary number of fans had congregated at a location where many of them should not have been, and consequently, that neither the ball club nor the ballpark’s landlords were responsible for the accident. Both were absolved of all blame and financial responsibility.67

The Phillies’ 1903 season changed abruptly because of the accident. Shettsline attempted to restart games at the ballpark on August 10, saying that the left-field bleachers would be roped off and only the grandstand and right-field bleachers would be used to seat fans. City officials blanched at the proposal until the entire ballpark could be thoroughly inspected. Potter canceled all future games until an inspection could be done and repairs made.68 A conference was held on August 17 between Potter and Ben Shibe, the president of the American League’s Philadelphia Athletics. It was agreed that until the Phillies’ ballpark was ready to reopen, the team would continue its season by playing at the Athletics’ home field—Columbia Park.69 Forebodingly, a continuous rain forced nine straight postponements of Phillies’ games at their temporary location.70 When the team finally did get to play, it posted a 6–9–1 record at Columbia Park before returning to National League Park.71

The legacy of “Black Saturday,” as the 1903 disaster came to be known, included a profound influence on the future of ballpark construction. In its wake appeared the classic American ballparks that would dominate the twentieth century, and their arrival coincided conveniently with the use of reinforced concrete as a building material.72 The first and most notable of these palaces was Shibe Park—the home of the Philadelphia Athletics—which opened in 1909.73 The souvenir program sold at the inaugural Opening Day provided a detailed description of the ballpark’s construction, and the unmistakable influence of the 1903 tragedy was apparent in the text:

In the construction of the seating provisions of previous ballparks the use of wood was general. Several unfortunate accidents called serious attention to the need of something more durable than wood for the safety of the enormous crowds which thronged parks where winning baseball was being played … In the evolution of building construction vast strides have been made, and daring builders experimented with various materials to overcome the corrosive influences of time and the elements. Up to the present time nothing has been contrived which form a more lasting combination than wrought steel and cement. Technically it is known as reinforced concrete… The bleachers and grandstand and walls (at Shibe) are solid beds of concrete.74

Philadelphia’s building inspection laws also were fundamentally affected by the disaster. Taking up the recommendation of the Coroner’s jury, Mayor Weaver called immediately for more rigorous and extensive inspections of buildings in which the public gathered, declaring, “I shall insist that provisions be immediately made that hereafter all places where crowds congregate shall be thoroughly inspected.”75 A newspaper editorialized at the time that Mayor Weaver’s admonitions, coupled with the recommendations of the jury, were “expected to revolutionize the existing laws on building inspection.”76 They did. The staff of inspectors at the Bureau of Building Inspection was increased significantly, and legislation was soon enacted that made those inspections more rigorous, frequent, and intrusive than heretofore had been the case for public buildings in Philadelphia. The most visible evidence of these changes was the requirement that owners of establishments where the public gathered post openly the permits they had received from the inspection bureau attesting to the soundness of the structure and limiting the number of people allowed within it at one time.77

Final Thoughts

Although regarded by baseball historian Gershman as the first modern ballpark, National League Park was more of a transitional structure when it opened in 1895. It symbolized a far-reaching step away from baseball’s wooden structures, but remained short of the modern ballparks that would emerge in the early twentieth century. Concerns over fire, in part, pushed baseball’s owners away from entirely wooden structures, but it was collapse—not conflagration—that provided the final proof of wood’s unsuitability for ballpark construction. From the debris and death on 15th Street emerged Shibe Park, Forbes Field, and other steel-and-concrete palaces.

Progress is often the offspring of disaster, but calamity’s true measure is gauged in human terms. This sad and all-too-obvious point is highlighted in the fate of Joseph Edgar, one of the fatalities at National League Park on that hot August day in 1903. As described in a newspaper account:

Edgar had been in poor health and went to the game at the advice of his physician, who advised open air recreation as a remedy for his ailment. In starting for the base ball park he invited his son Robert, aged 15 years, to accompany him, but the boy had an engagement and did not go. The death of Joseph Edgar leaves a widow and five children destitute.78

ROBERT D. WARRINGTON was born in Philadelphia and works for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a member of Society for American Baseball Research and the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society.

Notes

1. Rich Westcott, Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 11. Westcott’s book provides the finest comprehensive history of Philadelphia’s old ballparks.

The Phillies and their fans hated New York Giants manager John McGraw. This fact must be clearly understood if readers are to truly appreciate the story that follows.

Nicknamed “Muggsy” and “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw was an easy man to detest. Sportswriter Grantland Rice observed, “There were many who hated John McGraw and to many of these he gave reason… He was the leader with the rasping, cutting voice that so often poured sarcasm and invective upon umpires, the enemy and his own players.”1 Others agree. “His personality was indeed that of a ‘Little Napoleon:’ arrogant, abrasive and pugnacious. He outgeneraled his opponents while abusing them verbally and, sometimes, with his fists.”2

A man who ruled his New York Giants with an iron hand, McGraw was quoted as saying, “With my team I am an absolute czar. My men know it. I order plays and they obey. If they don’t I fine them.”3 His rationale for such a tyrannical approach to managing was simple, “Nine mediocre players pulling together under one competent head will do better work than nine individuals of greater ability without unified control.”4

Feuding with the Phillies

McGraw had tempestuous relations with all league opponents, but it was particularly fractious with the Philadelphia Phillies.5 In his book Mack, McGraw and the 1913 Baseball Season, Richard Adler acknowledges, “No love was ever lost between McGraw and the Phillies.”6 Multiple violent encounters punctuated Giants-Phillies games, most of them involving McGraw. During a 1906 game in Philadelphia, for example, McGraw and Phillies infielder Paul Sentell began fighting on the field.7 Both were ejected but resumed fisticuffs under the stands.8 So enraged were fans that they tried to attack Giants players leaving the ballpark to return to their hotel. Punches were thrown and some minor injuries sustained, with one player—Roger Bresnahan—having to barricade himself inside a grocery store until rescued by police.9

Mutual ill will continued to smolder over the years. In 1913, the Giants and Phillies were scheduled to play 22 times—11 games in each other’s city. Opportunities abounded for barely suppressed hostility to erupt into a riot, causing violence on the field, in the stands, and beyond the ballpark. Only a spark was needed.

The First Skirmish

The Giants came to Philadelphia for a four-game series starting June 30, 1913, with the Phillies holding a precarious half-game lead over New York in the standings. The first game was hotly contested as the Phillies jumped on top early, but the Giants came back to take the lead 10–6 after batting in the top of the seventh inning. The Phillies scored three runs in the bottom of that frame and then tied the score in the bottom of the eighth. The Giants, however, managed to squeeze out an 11–10 victory in the 10th.10 As exciting as the game was, what followed would be far more memorable.

“A feeling of bitterness was noticeable during the game today,” wrote one sportswriter who witnessed the affair. “The Philadelphia players and fans say that all the time the New York manager was on the coaching line he was chiding the players on the bench.”11 Another account similarly notes, “McGraw, in the coaches’ box at third, lost no opportunity to exchange ‘greetings’ with the Phillies’ players on the bench.”12

When the game ended, McGraw walked to the clubhouse, which was located in center field at National League Park, with Phillies captain Mike Doolan.13 Just ahead of them was Phillies pitcher Addison “Addie” Brennan, who “took an active part in the stream of repartee with the New York manager” during the game.14 Differing accounts appeared the next day in New York and Philadelphia newspapers as to what then occurred. From the Philadelphia perspective, McGraw pointed at Brennan and said in a loud voice, “That’s the fellow I am after and I am going to get him.”15 Quickening his pace, he approached Brennan and:

Addie, hearing the talk of McGraw, turned around, and seeing Muggsy’s warlike attitude wasted no time, but just waded in and cuffed the Giants’ battlelike leader a smash on the jaw that sent him down on the soft sod. It is likely that McGraw figured that Brennan would pitch today and picked on him with the purpose of getting him rattled ahead of time. But in picking Brennan for his pecking McGraw picked the wrong man and had to take the count.16

The fracas was over in an instant with McGraw on the ground and Phillies player Otto Knabe virtually dragging Brennan toward the clubhouse.17 Fans that saw what happened were eager to join in the fisticuffs and gathered on the street around the clubhouse exit waiting for McGraw and his players to emerge. But police shooed the incensed fans away, and the New Yorkers were able to leave the ballpark without incident.18

Once in the Majestic Hotel where the team was quartered, Giants Road Secretary John B. Foster told the press that McGraw had been knocked unconscious and had a severe cut on the back of his ear. The manager was in his room and under the care of a physician.19 Foster continued:

We intend to investigate this matter fully and demand that the man who attacked Manager McGraw be punished. It is one of the dirtiest things ever pulled … McGraw was walking with Doolan and discussing the game. It certainly looked like a frame-up, for without any warning Brennan rushed at him and hit him.20

McGraw himself declared he had said nothing to justify being attacked. While acknowledging there was a lot “loose talk” between the two teams during the series, McGraw asserted, “I cannot recall a thing that I said to Brennan, except to ask him how many times he was knocked out of the box this season.”21

New York newspapers portrayed McGraw as the innocent victim of an unprovoked attack, noting that the manager was talking with Doolan when he was attacked from behind by multiple assailants who punched and kicked him repeatedly.22 The New York Times initially reported that a mob of fans and Phillies players attacked McGraw, but quickly revised its rendition of the incident by naming Brennan as the only offender.23

The McGraw-Brennan dust-up was a front-page story the next day in Philadelphia and New York newspapers. Although umpires made no mention of the altercation in their report of the game—they probably left the field before it happened—National League President Thomas J. Lynch learned of the matter through newspaper accounts and announced an investigation would be initiated.24

Lynch visited Philadelphia on July 2 and interviewed McGraw, Foster, Doolan, Brennan, and Phillies manager Charlie Dooin.25 Later that same day he announced his decision: McGraw and Brennan would each be suspended five days and Brennan would pay a fine of $100. Lynch reasoned that both men “indulged in personalities during the game, and that the feeling aroused thereby was the direct cause of the happenings when the players were leaving the field.” The suspension would commence on July 4, and both men would be eligible to return on July 9.26

The Phillies and Giants howled over the punishment. Giants President Harry Hempstead telegraphed Lynch to protest McGraw’s suspension, stating that the club’s manager was “the object of an attack by a Philadelphia player, not even being given an opportunity to defend himself.”27 The Phillies’ ire was directed at the fact that Brennan was suspended and fined while McGraw was only suspended. Dooin stated that his pitcher had been provoked and that McGraw was as much to blame for the rumpus as Brennan. Punishment should be the same for both men.28 These objections notwithstanding, McGraw and Brennan served their suspensions and the fine was paid.29

Phillies fans were not prepared to let bygones be bygones, however, and the Giants would return to Philadelphia.

An Umpire’s Controversial Decision

The race between the Phillies and Giants for the 1913 NL pennant was close early in the season. But the Giants had established a considerable lead by the time they returned to Philadelphia in late August. New York’s record stood at 82–36 and the Phillies at 67–45 when the two clubs met for a three-game series beginning on August 28. The Phillies staked their claim as pennant contenders by winning the first two games, 7–2 and 3–2, in 10 innings. Only the third game was left to be played on August 30.30

The Giants jumped out to an early 6–0 lead, pummeling Grover Cleveland Alexander—a rare occurrence in his otherwise brilliant season.31 George Chalmers came on in relief in the fourth inning and held McGraw’s crew scoreless through the eighth. Meanwhile, the Phillies got to Giants starter Christy Mathewson, chipping away at the lead by scoring five runs in the sixth inning, two more in the seventh, and adding one more tally in the eighth to give the hometown crew an 8–6 lead.32

Then, the Giants came to bat in the top of the ninth inning and all hell broke loose.

With Chalmers still pitching for the Phillies, Moose McCormick came up to the plate as a pinch hitter for first baseman Fred Merkle. He grounded a ball to second baseman Otto Knabe who flipped it to first baseman Fred Luderus for the first out. As he was going back to the dugout, McCormick shouted at home plate umpire Bill Brennan (not to be confused with Phillies pitcher “Addie” Brennan) that spectators in the center-field seats had blinded him at the plate while he was batting.33

(As noted earlier, the clubhouse at National League Park was located in center field. Seats were placed in front and on top of the clubhouse, and they were opened to the public only when the rest of the ballpark was sold out. On this day, it was filled to capacity with 22,000 fans.)34

The following sequence of events then took place, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Umpire Brennan walked out to the center-field bleachers and ordered the fans sitting there to vacate the section.35 He was met with a thundering chorus of jeers and catcalls. Brennan walked back to the infield, approached Mickey Doolan, and ordered him to have the fans removed. The Phillies captain laughed and said there was nothing he could do.36

Growing exasperated, Brennan walked over to the Giants’ dugout and conferred with McGraw. The umpire yet again walked to center field and confronted a Philadelphia police officer who was stationed along the outfield wall. Brennan demanded that the officer remove the spectators sitting in center field. He refused and Brennan then asserted, “You are under my orders.” The officer replied, “I’m under no orders except from my sergeant or captain.”37

With the crowd growing increasingly unruly, Brennan’s officiating partner, Mal Eason, suggested to Brennan that the remainder of the game be played under protest. Brennan again journeyed to the Giants’ dugout to confer with McGraw. The New York manager rejected Eason’s suggestion. Brennan walked over to the grandstand area and announced in a loud voice, “The game is forfeited to New York, nine to zero.”38

Philadelphia sportswriters claimed the Giants protested that white shirted-spectators in the stands had prevented them from seeing the ball clearly. They belittled the charge and wondered out loud why New York hadn’t complained about the problem earlier in the game—choosing to do so only after the Phillies had taken the lead.39

McGraw, however, attributed the forfeit to the disruptive conduct of unruly patrons. He claimed, “I took advantage of the occasion to ask to have the crowd removed from the seats in center field because the crowd there was in direct line with the batters, waving their hats and coats and using glasses to reflect the sun’s rays in the eyes of my men.” He put blame for the incident squarely on the Phillies’ shoulders, stating that had the seats been cleared the game could have continued.40

Brennan also attributed the forfeit to the antics of center field fans—not their attire—and wrote in a report to NL President Lynch explaining his decision, “All started to wave papers and coats and it was impossible for me to see a ball that was pitched.41

A Riot Erupts in the Stands…

While differences exist over what prompted the forfeit, there is no dispute over what happened once it was announced. The lead story on the front page of the next day’s Inquirer offered a vivid description of what took place:

Bedlam cut loose at that instant. Screaming in rage the bleacherites by thousands poured over the low rail into the playing field. In the grand stand men rose in wild excitement and hoarsely shouted “Robber. Thief.”

A second later a cushion struck the arbitrator in the face as he was walking toward the exit under the grand stand leading to his dressing room. His walk turned into an undignified run. The bleacher crowd had first tried to stop the New York players who butted their way to safety. Then they turned toward Brennan. He was near the exit then, but they were coming rapidly. The line of police stationed round the bleachers threatened with drawn revolvers in vain.

Over the exit hundreds of grandstand spectators were crowded with any missile they could lay their hands upon. As Brennan got below they cut loose. A cushion seat struck his shoulder; a pop bottle grazed his head.

“Help, they’re killing me,” Brennan shouted, bending low and dodging under the stand.

“Outside to the player’s exit,” came the shout in the crowd. “We’ll head him off there.” A few minutes later the ball park was deserted while a mob raged along Fifteenth Street, Lehigh Avenue, and Broad Street.42

… and Spills Out into the Streets

McGraw, his players, and the umpires faced the daunting challenge of traversing the four blocks between National League Park and the North Philadelphia Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad to catch a train back to New York. The Giants manager and his men were the first to emerge from the ballpark, and as they started their journey, Phillies fans converged upon them hurling objects of various sorts. Philadelphia police officers managed to insert themselves between the ballplayers and the crowd and escorted the Giants to the railroad station. McGraw, however, somehow got ahead of his players during the ruckus, and the crowd got between them and started chasing the manager with vengeance on its mind. “A wild chase” to the railroad station ensued as McGraw sought to evade his pursuers.43

But the fans had not forgotten Brennan. The greatly despised umpire and his partner, Eason, emerged from the ballpark and were immediately set upon by angry fans. A cordon of police escorted them toward the station, but as they crossed the railroad bridge waiting fans unleashed a volley of missiles and spikes; fortunately, none found their mark. But just as Brennan, Eason, and their escort reached the railroad station, police saw McGraw and his players being chased by the angry mob. The officers abandoned the umpires to rescue the manager and his men, which gave fans the opportunity to attack Brennan. “They jumped upon him by the dozens. He was beaten to the ground, rose, was beaten down again, and finally rose again, breaking away and fleeing into the station.”44

Brennan managed to reach the station just as McGraw did. With police, guns drawn, covering their escape, luck was on the side of McGraw and Brennan. An extra-fare express train from Pittsburgh to New York was just leaving the station as the two men entered, and both jumped aboard with the angry mob closing in. The train departed, much to the disappointment of those fans seeking to settle a score with the manager and the umpire.45

What of the Giants players? McGraw, in his ignominious flight to safety, left them behind. They had to huddle in a corner on the platform at the station protected by police for 15 minutes until the regularly scheduled train to New York arrived. The crowd jeered and hurled insults but did not harm them in any way. The players boarded the train and left. Phillies fans milled around for a while, denouncing Brennan’s decision and demanding justice, but they eventually dispersed peacefully.46

Despite the multitude of objects and fists thrown, casualties were slight. Tillie Shafer was struck on the head with a brick but not seriously injured, while fellow infielder Buck Herzog sported a large scratch on his face. Someone snatched catcher Larry McLean’s straw hat off his head and absconded with it.47

The Blame Game

Yet again, Philadelphia and New York newspapers reflected sharply differing perspectives on fixing blame for the melee. Philadelphia sportswriter James Nasium held Brennan and McGraw responsible, accusing them of conspiring to steal a game the Phillies had justly won. He commented caustically, “It marked the most disgraceful feature of a season of disgraceful umpiring and the second time (the June confrontation with Phillies pitcher Brennan being the first) in as many visits to Philadelphia that John McGraw has been a party to initiating a riot on the Broad and Huntingdon streets grounds.”48

Repeating his earlier accusation that center-field fans only became a problem once the Giants fell behind, Nasium castigated Brennan as “a mongrel in the guise of an umpire,” and condemned McGraw for refusing to continue the game under protest (Eason’s suggestion). He concluded his diatribe against the men by asserting:

The mere throwing out of this game or playing it over will not suffice. The game belongs to the Phillies. And even if the game is ultimately decided in favor of the Phillies, nothing can now remove the smirch that Brennan and McGraw’s action has made upon the national sport save the removal of the former and the disciplining of the latter. If this game is to be kept clean, let it be kept clean by those who are at the head of it. You can’t expect a clean house from a filthy tenant.49

New York newspapers were contemptuous of Philadelphia’s outrage, noting glibly, “Naturally, Philadelphia is excited. They get stirred up every so often about baseball, anyway.”50 Phillies fans, furthermore, were accountable for starting the trouble.

The fans made a lot of noise and began to wave handkerchiefs and papers. Most of the men and boys were in their shirtsleeves and they stood up and also waved their arms trying to disconcert the attention of the New York batsmen.51

It was the Phillies’ unwillingness to clear fans from the center-field seats, moreover, that led to the forfeit, not any demands by McGraw or his Giants. “Umpire Brennan forfeited the game to New York after the Philadelphia Club had failed to move from a section in the centre field bleachers spectators who, the New York players claimed, interfered with the vision of the batsmen.”52

President Overrules Umpire

Phillies Manager Charlie Dooin announced following the game that he would protest Brennan’s forfeit decision and aid every effort to have the umpire driven out of organized baseball. Dooin was quoted as saying:

I do not know whether a protest will avail us anything, but we will certainly protest the forfeited game and protest it bitterly. It was sheer robbery and of the rankest sort. I cannot understand how the National League magnates will permit such arbitration of their game.53

Dooin traveled to New York on August 31 “still at white heat with indignation at Umpire Brennan for his asinine decision” to complain personally to the league president.54 Lynch listened and on September 2 reversed Brennan’s decision and awarded an 8–6 victory to the Phillies. In his ruling Lynch declared:

The official report of Umpire Brennan covering the game forfeited to New York in Philadelphia August 30 shows that neither club had complained about existing conditions regarding the spectators, and that the umpire plainly went beyond his authority in declaring a forfeiture, for which action he had neither the protection of the regular playing rules nor of any special ground rule. The umpire was clearly at fault in not having the game played to a finish.55

Board Overrules President

Lynch’s decision was applauded by most. Sporting Life, for example, called Brennan’s decision “outrageous” and “infamous,” and opined that “President Lynch had base ball law on his side and could not have done anything else.”56 But most did not include the New York Giants. The New Yorkers appealed Lynch’s decision to the NL Board of Directors, with club President Hempstead stating:

How Lynch can take that game from us I can’t understand … To throw the game out and order it replayed would have been injustice enough after the umpire awarded us the decision. But to declare us defeated without giving us any chance is, in my opinion, unconstitutional.57

In yet another precedent-setting move, the Board—comprised of Charles H. Ebbets, August Herrmann, and Charles W. Murphy—overruled Lynch on September 15 and ordered that the game be resumed “with the same men on the field and under the same status as existed on the day that Umpire Brennan awarded the game to New York.” Since the Giants would not return to Philadelphia during the season, the Board directed that the game be completed on October 2 when the Phillies were at the Polo Grounds.58

By early October, however, the game had become nothing more than a curiosity. The Giants had staked out a commanding lead for the NL pennant and would finish the season with a comfortable 12 ½-game lead over the Phillies.59 Nevertheless, as instructed by the Board of Directors, the clubs resumed the August 30 game at the exact point at which it had been stopped. With one out, outfielder Red Murray grounded out. Catcher Chief Meyers rapped a single. Eddie Grant came in to run for Meyers. Larry McLean, batting for outfielder Fred Snodgrass, hit a grounder that forced Grant at second. The game was finally officially over with the Phillies victorious by a score of 8–6.60

Revenge of the Philadelphians

Though New York had bested the Phillies by winning the NL title and were heading to the World Series, Philadelphia had the last laugh. The Giants’ opponent in the Fall Classic was none other than the Philadelphia Athletics. Connie Mack’s club was in the midst of its first successful run and had already beaten McGraw’s minions in the 1911 World Series, four games to two. The 1913 World Series would be even sweeter for the A’s as they downed the Giants by the more lopsided outcome of four games to one.61 New York City may have been home of the National League champions in 1913, but Philadelphia was home of the world champions.

ROBERT D. WARRINGTON was born in Philadelphia and works for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a member of Society for American Baseball Research and the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society.

Notes

Back when automobiles were rare and baseball players heroes, Claude and Evalina Gard Kearns raised seven children in the small town of West Union, Illinois: Russell, Forest, Louise, Leona, Jeannette, Nellie, and Roy. Agent-in-charge for the New York Central Line, Claude worked in the depot, where he was also the local Western Union operator. Eva ran the household. “Mom was strict but broad-minded,” Nellie Kearns remembers. “She would cut-up, though. She and Dad went by train to California once. Mom knew everybody in the train by the time they got off, Dad didn’t know a soul. Dad was kind of gruff on the surface, but not inside.”

West Union’s sand prairie and underground water supply nourished wheat, corn, soybeans, and watermelons. Leona and her younger sister Nellie both worked in the fields during harvest. Reflecting on the fragile nature of the fruit, Nellie remembers that kids worked at passing watermelons down the line, but not at packing: That important job was reserved for adults. “There was an art to placing melons in boxcars,” she explains. “They were lined with straw to protect the watermelons.” On weekends West Union’s hard-working farmers and merchants congregated in town to watch baseball games. Before each game townspeople performed Herculean labors grooming the field—games were played in a cow pasture that had to be cleared of cows and manure before the umpire called, “Play ball!”

Born on March 22, 1908, Leona Mae Kearns grew up swimming, skating, and biking. But her real passion was baseball. At 14 she was good enough to pitch and play first base on the men’s town team. “I was never good enough to make the men’s team,” says Nellie, her voice full of pride for Leona. Nellie Monon Kearns, four years younger, was also crazy about baseball. Seventy years later, Nellie, who was her sister’s catcher, can still see Leona’s repertoire. “Fastball and a curve and a drop,” she says without hesitation. “And she threw a knuckleball. You cramp your knuckles around the seams. The thumb and little finger control the ball. It comes in without rotation.”

Leona Kearns was neither the first nor last young woman to pitch for a men’s team—though the six-foot-tall, hard-throwing southpaw was certainly one of the most striking. In 1925 a scout for the Philadelphia Bobbies spotted her and immediately asked to speak to her parents.

A come-lately bloomer girl team, the Bobbies were formed by Mary O’Gara of Philadelphia. From the 1890s through the 1930s, sexually-integrated bloomer teams barnstormed the country, usually fielding six women and three men against men’s teams. By 1911 pitcher Maud Nelson, whose career began in 1897, was touring the Midwest and East with her own team, the Western Bloomer Girls. A short time later Margaret Nabel took over the New York Bloomer Girls and built them to prominence. With Nelson and Nabel touring from Oklahoma to Vermont and Florida to the Maritimes, Mary O’Gara had little elbow room. This may have been what prompted her to take the Philadelphia Bobbies on a tour of Japan in 1925.

In the long story of women as ballplayers, men are always present … sometimes friend, sometimes foe, but often nothing more than promoter. With calamitous results, catcher Eddie Ainsmith entered the life of the Philadelphia Bobbies and Leona Kearns.

Edward Ainsmith wasn’t nourished in the rich prairie of Illinois, where children formed watermelon brigades, passing the large fruits from hand to hand without breaking them, observing how carefully they were packed and shipped by train to big-city destinations. Ainsmith was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he grew up admiring pugilism. But Ainsmith went the opposite direction of another Massachusetts native, Rocky Marciano, who grew up admiring baseball but, failing that, took up boxing (and became one of the most famous heavyweight champions). “I didn’t raise my son to be a catcher,” quipped Marciano’s mother, who presumably saw more nobility and less danger in the boxing ring. Ainsmith’s parents felt otherwise, and it was because they objected to boxing as a career that Eddie pursued baseball. In 1910 the 19-year-old Cambridge native was signed by the Washington Senators. Almost immediately he became the catcher for the immortal Walter Johnson. Ainsmith shouldered the responsibility of catching baseball’s greatest pitcher effortlessly.

Synchronized at pitch and catch, the batterymates were as unalike as can be. Johnson was a Kansas farm boy, soft-spoken, mild-mannered, and wholly dependable. Ready to fight at the drop of a cap, Ainsmith was on more than one occasion suspended by American League president Ban Johnson for throwing dirt on, leaping on, or punching an umpire. Fans, too, were assaulted by Ainsmith, as were citizens outside the ballpark. After Ainsmith and pitcher Joe Engel beat up a motorman, Engel was fined $50 and Ainsmith sentenced to 30 days in jail. Probably through the intervention of Senators owner Clark Griffith, the sentence was suspended.

At 5’11” and 180 pounds, Ainsmith was incredibly powerful. Griffith believed him “the most underrated catcher who ever played baseball…. The toughest and strongest ballplayer who ever lived.” Runners trying to score bounced off the young backstop, and Griffith recalled that when Johnson’s fastball looked like it was going for a wild pitch, “Ainsmith would reach his bare hand up in the air and catch it on the raw flesh without wincing.” Of the 110 shutouts that the Big Train hurled, Ainsmith caught 48 (Gabby Street was next with 17). Johnson once remarked that there was no other Washington catcher who could hold him when he opened up at full speed.

In 1914 a whole crop of the nation’s young ballplayers married, Ainsmith among them. Newspaper accounts joked about which player would be the first to become a father. Eddie became one the following year, but when his wife died several years later, he left his daughter in Texas in the care of her aunt while he played ball. In the early 1920s he married again.

As he traveled through baseball, Ainsmith’s misdeeds—fistfights, fines, late night revels that broke curfew—accumulated like muck in the stables of Augeus. The public tolerated (perhaps even approved of) such immaturity, then as now. But when Ainsmith was drafted for World War I and Griffith successfully appealed the drafting, the public frowned upon the athlete’s special treatment. Griffith soon traded Ainsmith to Detroit, where he played until 1921, when the Tigers traded him to the Cardinals.

Shackled with a .232 batting average and a rowdy reputation, Ainsmith was traded to the Dodgers and then to the New York Giants, managed by feisty autocrat John McGraw. When Ainsmith flouted McGraw’s house rules during the pennant race of 1924, the manager released him. Ironically, the Giants won the pennant but went down to Walter Johnson and the Senators in the World Series. Ainsmith, unwanted in the major leagues, went down to the minors. During the offseason of 1924, he took 28 young men to Japan, where each of them earned $830 playing exhibition baseball. In 1925 Eddie Ainsmith became a promoter of women in baseball when he collaborated with Mary O’Gara to tour Japan with the Philadelphia Bobbies.

Eager to play baseball and see the world, Leona Kearns longed to join the Bobbies and play in Japan, where, she was told, she could earn as much as $500. Claude wanted her to go, Eva did not. Nellie remembers their mother shed copious tears—tears that saturated Leona’s first passport application, making it necessary to fill out a second. Despite her fears, Eva gave in. In the end she wouldn’t stand in the way of her daughter seeing the world and playing baseball.

“I was very envious when I heard about her trip to Japan,” confesses Leona’s best friend, Arlene Tolbert Watt. Afterwards, she felt differently. “There was a lot of discussion. A lot of people blamed Claude because he let her go. You don’t think of the danger of being involved with strangers.”

Is the word danger in a young person’s vocabulary?

“We used to do some real stupid things,” says Arlene. “There was a gravel pit south of where we lived. We used to ride our bikes there and swim. It was a real danger spot, but we were confident that we could swim.” Arlene characterizes Leona as a daredevil who wasn’t afraid of anything. The daredevil, a child of the Roaring Twenties, whistled incessantly. “There was a song popular back then, ‘Doodly Doo,’ one of those odd songs, and Leona was always whistling it. It used to drive her mother mad.” Arlene pauses. “The first time I went to see her mother after, she said, ‘Oh, if I could only hear her whistle ‘Doodly Doo’ one more time.’”

Granted a leave of absence from high school in September 1925, Leona bid goodbye to family and friends and boarded the train to Chicago, where she stayed with her sister Louise until, under the chaperonage of Eddie and Loretta Ainsmith, she left for Seattle. Meanwhile 11 Bobbies and manager Mary O’Gara took a different train from Philadelphia to Seattle.

On experienced bloomer teams, players ranged in age from 14 to 40: Rookies and veterans worked together to forge a skilled entity with strong bonds. On the Bobbies, the players ranged in age from 13 to perhaps 20: There were no veterans and no team leader. Incredibly young (their best player was 13-year-old Edith Houghton, who went on to a long ball-playing career and later became a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies), the Bobbies hadn’t been tempered by time. Unlike Maud Nelson and Margaret Nabel, O’Gara hadn’t, either. She and her charges blithely undertook a jaunt to Japan, trusting they would win baseball games and come home richer.

Not until Ainsmith arrived in Seattle did the Bobbies first meet Leona. Philadelphia player Nettie Gans, perhaps 15 at the time, recorded her first impressions in a diary. “October 4, Sunday. Played a game in Tacoma. It was a good game. Slim pitched. She is from Illinois. Mr. Ainsmith brought her on the trip. She is six feet tall and sixteen years of age, with a wonderful pitching arm.”

Ainsmith also introduced the Bobbies to Earl Hamilton, former pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Hamilton and his wife would travel to Japan on the same ship as the Bobbies. Claude and Eva Kearns had never met Ainsmith. They had trusted the scout and what seemed like a golden opportunity. But when weeks went by without word from their daughter, they became worried. Eva telegrammed the Ainsmiths in Seattle just as a letter from Leona was traveling through the mail, assuring her parents she was having a swell time and that the Ainsmiths are sure fine people…. He made me a present of a $5.50 ball glove while we were in Minnesota…. and he bought us each a sweater that cost $10.00. After receiving her mother’s telegram, Leona wrote again, reporting that the Bobbies won a game in Seattle, 14–13, and won another in Tacoma, with attendance over 2,000. Say Mom, you had ought to meet these people. They are sure nice and sure know how to treat you.

Leona was only 17 years old—young enough to be impressed by Ainsmith, too young to discern the difference between gifts and character. Too young, at first, to discern dissension. Among the sad keepsakes in Eva’s cedar chest is an unsigned typed report, probably written by Nella Shank. According to the report the Bobbies split into two factions in Seattle, with Edith Ruth and Shank (two of the older Bobbies) wanting Ainsmith to manage the team. The younger players, ages 13–17, sided with Mary O’Gara, their manager and chaperone. Disagreements unresolved, bearing new uniforms with “USA” stitched across the shirt and sleeves, the Bobbies boarded the President Jefferson on October 6, traveling first class.

One-way passage had been paid for by the Japanese promoters, who promised large gate receipts, which would take care of the team’s room, board, and passage home— and turn a profit, too. If I make $300, wrote Leona, we will get us a Ford Coup when I get back. We are going to play two games a week and loaf the rest of the time. As she penned these words, Leona had only $2.00 remaining in her pockets.

In literature’s most famous voyage, Odysseus sailed from Greece to battle in Troy. After 10 years of war he set sail for home, only to experience another decade of the world’s deceptions and dangers, from the lures of Circe to the unpleasant options of Scylla or Charybdis. Leona’s voyage was much shorter, though no less fraught with deception and danger. The passage to Japan gave her time to observe her companions and perhaps reflect on what would happen when the team reached Yokohama. Mr. Ainsmith has had me out on deck, giving me a workout, she wrote the day the ship docked. He is getting me ready to pitch in Japan. He got me a swell bat and had his name carved on it. He and I get along just fine but he is having trouble with the rest of them.

According to Leona, the Bobbies flouted Ainsmith’s command, remaining on deck long past curfew. When the shoe was on the other foot, the man who was released from the Giants for flouting McGraw’s restrictions didn’t like it. Far worse than the curfew violations in Leona’s eyes was the lack of talent. In an uncharacteristically critical observation, she wrote: These girls can’t play ball, but they just think that they can. … Dissatisfied with the caliber of her teammates, Leona was at least happy that the hazards of seafaring were over: We have had two storms since we have been on the Pacific and I thought that my time had come. The waves dashed to the top and you couldn’t hardly walk.

After 11 days at sea, the American ballplayers checked into the Marunouchi Hotel, where reporters surrounded them. Stuffed with tea and cakes, the visitors were showered with official dinners and gifts, laden with bouquets of flowers, and transported in rickshaws. One of the Japanese ballplayers gave Leona a string of pearls. “She was bringing them back for my mother,” remembers Nellie. “Mother loved pearls, she wore them all the time.”

In what remained of October after the banquets and sight-seeing, the Bobbies played three ballgames, losing each. If this bothered Leona, she didn’t let on. Say Mother. We’re sure having a swell time on this baseball tour. The young woman who whistled “Doodly Doo” had an impish sense of humor, telling her parents that we girls are not allowed to drink the water here, so we are going to live on beer.

The time was not so swell on the field as the Bobbies traveled from Yokohama to Tokyo and then Osaka, losing game after game. Initially the Japanese reporters and fans wanted to like the Bobbies. When Edith Houghton pulled the hidden-ball trick and gleefully tagged out the runner at second, the crowd rose to its feet in admiration. Leona, too, was respected for her abilities. The pitcher of the Osaka Foreign Language School Team sent her a postcard: “Miss Kearns, I’m glad to have met you. On that day, you were very splendid. You are a good batter. You made nice hits in spite of me. You are the only lady whom I can’t struck out.”

Despite Leona and Houghton—and professionals Hamilton and Ainsmith, who stepped in to serve as pitcher and catcher—the Bobbies were not competitive against the Japanese college men. E.R. Dickover, US Consul at Kobe, assessed that “because the girls could not play a sufficiently strong game to compete with any school team in Japan and as the Japanese would pay only to see a baseball contest and would not turn out simply because one of the teams was composed of girls, the trip was a financial failure from the start, despite all the advertising efforts of the promoters.”

Leona never called the trip a failure. In early November she joked: Say Mother, this trip is sure ruining me. When I get home, I will find myself pressing buttons and ordering my breakfast in bed.

Mixed in with the words of real humor are those of real-life concerns: She reported that she was down to 20 cents in American money. Later she wrote from Kobe to say that the team was going to Korea. I may be home for Christmas, but I doubt it very much. Leona didn’t mail that letter immediately, perhaps she thought it sounded too barren. A second part of the letter is dated November 20: I am now in Korea and am sure having a good time. Just got in from playing a game with the dental college and we won by a score of six to two. This was the last letter from Leona to her family: For the next eight weeks, she did not write home.

Months later Gertrude Rasch, an American living in Japan, would write to Eva Kearns, explaining Leona’s lack of communication. “I think she did not write you much because it was not easy to write and tell Mother that the trip was not successful, and, besides, you know young people always find it so easy to think that if things are not good today, they will be all right tomorrow.”

Two of the Bobbies’ three Japanese promoters had disappeared without paying them a penny, and the third, T. Shima, went bankrupt. The money that Ainsmith and O’Gara spoke of never materialized—not $830, not $500, not $200. In Kobe the disagreements between Ainsmith and O’Gara came to a head. “Unlucky Friday 13th,” Nettie Gans wrote in her diary. “Mary fell, not too bad. Mr. Ainsmith and Mary had a discussion about going to Formosa with the girls. I believe it has something to do with money being paid. She didn’t want us to go without her although Mr. Ainsmith and Mr. Hamilton had their wives with them. The girl he brought from Chicago went with him, Mr. Ainsmith, as did two of our girls.”

Cast adrift by the Japanese promoters and at odds with O’Gara, Eddie Ainsmith faced a situation he couldn’t escape through fisticuffs. Assembling a team of Nella Shank, Edith Ruth, and Leona Kearns, plus himself and Hamilton and four Japanese players, he opted to play his way out of trouble. The nine began their own barnstorming tour in Korea, hoping to rake in the now vitally necessary dollars. Of all this, Leona’s parents knew nothing. Nor did the parents in Philadelphia hear that their daughters were destitute half a world away.

Ainsmith at least sought to help himself through action. Mary O’Gara remained in Kobe, throwing herself on the mercy of others. According to Dickover’s report to the State Department months later, Shima solicited contributions from wealthy Japanese to pay for the Bobbies’ passage back to Philadelphia. In this, as in his baseball promotions, he was unsuccessful. Dickover considered appealing to Americans living in Japan, but his advisors thought it hopeless and he agreed, assessing that “the American community, which is constantly being called upon to repatriate stranded American citizens, would not respond to an appeal and most certainly could not raise the Yen 10,000 or more needed to pay the girls’ living expenses and passage home.”

One lone American did respond. Henry Sanborn, who owned and operated the Pleasanton Hotel in Kobe, fed and housed the Bobbies at his own expense. Using what influence he had, he tried to persuade the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun to publicize a fund-raising campaign, but the paper declined. Just when it looked as if all the efforts of Shima, Dickover, and Sanborn had failed, N.H.N. Mody, a wealthy British-Indian in the banking business who was residing at the Pleasanton, handed Sanborn a check for ¥12,000 (approximately $6,000). Mody let it be known that the money was a gift outright, not a loan, its sole purpose being to pay for the Bobbies’ passage home. Observed Dickover: “The gift is the more admirable in that it is believed that Mr. Mody was not acquainted with any of the baseball party at the time.”

On November 18, while Ainsmith’s group was playing ball in Korea, Mary O’Gara and nine of the Bobbies boarded the Empress of Russia, bound for Vancouver. O’Gara apparently used all of Mody’s ¥12,000 gift. Whether she gave thought to Ainsmith—or to Nella, Edith, and Leona—is not known. On deck, the Bobbies played tennis, jumped rope, and threw basketballs. Nettie Gans reflected on November 26, “Today is Thanksgiving and I think I have quite a bit for which to thank the Lord; in fact, I think all the Bobbies realize this fact, especially that we are going home safely.” From Vancouver the Bobbies took a train to Philadelphia, arriving home on Sunday, December 6.

Back in Illinois Leona’s older brother Russell, who worked for the Clark County Democrat in Marshall, read on the wire services that the Bobbies had returned to Philadelphia. Alarmed, he queried R.W. Bruce, the Chicago General Agent of the Admiral Oriental Line, who responded on December 9: “Altho we have had various postal cards from Mr. and Mrs. Ainsmith, yours is the first intimation that the team was meeting with financial difficulties in Japan…. I am asking our Philadelphia Office to get in touch with Thomas Cook & Sons, Mr. Barth of Philadelphia, thru whom all arrangements were completed…. In the meantime, I feel you may assure the parents of Miss Kearns that the team is in the capable hands of Mr. and Mrs. Ainsmith, whom I know personally and that their safe return to the United States would be assured in any event.”

Hollow assurances: Even as Bruce sent them, Ainsmith had returned to Kobe, where he solicited aid from the US Consul. Although Dickover accompanied Ainsmith and Hamilton to the police, requesting them to secure the “guaranteed” money, the police could do nothing. Again Henry Sanborn tried to help, this time by selling his brasses and other curios. The sale netted only ¥600, insufficient for passage home. Ainsmith then informed Dickover that he could obtain money from the US, but only enough to repatriate himself and Loretta—not enough for Nella, Edith, and Leona. On December 22 Dickover requested assistance from the Department of State. Around this time, Leona mailed a Christmas card home, but she didn’t write. No words in her young life could describe the hopelessness she must have felt in the face of the dissension, incompetence, and irresponsibility encountered on her odyssey.

Two days after Christmas Eddie and Loretta Ainsmith said goodbye to the three young women and sailed away, homeward bound. To his superiors back home (who perhaps rebuked him for letting Ainsmith leave) Dickover explained: “While Mr. Ainsmith was morally bound to care for the girls and should have remained with them until their repatriation, he could not be held legally responsible and so was permitted to leave.” Edith Ruth, Nella Shank, and Leona Kearns moved into Henry Sanborn’s hotel, where, penniless, they stayed at his expense.

With no news from Leona (and never any from O’Gara or Ainsmith), Claude and Eva Kearns grew more worried by the day. Claude appealed to the Great Northern Railway Company in Philadelphia for an explanation of what was happening. On January 4, 1926, the man in charge of passenger travel responded: “I am asking Miss O’Gara today to write you concerning the details of this trip, also the reason for their return home and why Miss Kearns decided to remain in Japan.” But there is no letter from Mary O’Gara in the stack of faded letters and telegrams that Eva saved. A few days later the parents of the three young ballplayers were informed that their children were stranded in Japan and that passage for each would cost $300. Claude Kearns wired the $300 for Leona. “He probably had to borrow it from the bank,” reflects Nellie. Then everybody waited. “We were looking forward to Leona coming home. There was going to be a big reunion.”

Informed by the Department of State that passage had been paid for, Dickover booked Nella, Edith, and Leona for second-class passage aboard the Empress of Asia, due to leave Kobe on January 13. A benefit dance was held, the money used to buy the young women winter coats and dresses for the cold homeward passage.

If ever there was an unlucky ship, the Empress of Asia was it. On its way to Kobe, the vessel rammed and sank a river steamer. After docking in Shanghai for repairs, the Empress finally departed Kobe five days late, at 4 p.m. on Monday, January 18.

Homeward bound at a speed of 16 knots, the Empress encountered frequent snow squalls, winds up to 70 miles per hour, and waves 80–90 feet high. On Friday, January 22, four days out of port, the captain recorded that the waves had finally subsided. When the crew opened the steel storm doors for second-class passengers, Leona ran wild up and down the deck, elated to be going home. At 3:00 p.m. the senior assistant purser warned her that the ship was rolling and that it was dangerous to run around the deck in that manner. She then went below to take tea in the salon with Edith Ruth.

In West Union the day was just beginning. Claude heard the telegraph keys tapping out his code number as he unlocked the stationhouse door. At 7:32 a.m. he took the message. Kobe, Japan. To Kearns, West Union, Ill. Leona washed overboard. Am overcome with grief. Sanborn.

Claude called the dispatcher to cover for him, then walked home. “He was home before 8:00,” recalls Nellie, who was playing in the yard. “I remember Mom was standing in the kitchen door. She saw the telegram in his hand. Mom knew.”

Knowledge and hope pull in opposite directions. Eva and Claude hoped there was some mistake, that their daughter was alive. Claude immediately left for Vancouver, and when Nella Shank and Edith Ruth debarked on January 28, he was waiting for them. “Leona’s father had been in Vancouver to meet us,” says the unsigned report, “and to hear the sad details. He wanted to hear all about it from us, thinking it could hardly be true.”

In finality, the steamship company turned over all of Leona’s possessions. Claude transported them home, where Eva put them in a chest. Shank and Ruth continued their trip by train, reaching Philadelphia on February 3. The next day, Loretta Ainsmith telegrammed the Kearns family: “Frightfully shocked we extend hearty sympathy letter follows. Mrs. E. Ainsmith.” Edith Ruth’s mother penned a letter of condolence. “I was very much grieved to hear of your dear loss…. It was an ill-fated trip from beginning to end. And I really think it was all due to the girls manager here in the city. As there was a disagreement between the two managers from the start.”

Half a world away, Gertrude Rasch felt otherwise. “I do not see how the other two girls can make any excuses for Ainsmith,” she wrote to Eva. “To me, it is a most unpleasant thought that any man and woman could sail away and leave three girls in a strange country.”

When her sister died, Nellie Kearns was 13 years old. She remembers the event vividly, from her father’s walking into the yard that January day to her mother’s packing Leona’s things into the cedar chest. “It’s always there,” she says of the tragedy. Her parents were crushed by the loss. Arlene Watts confirms this. “It took all the life out of her mother. It’s the uncertainty of it that affected the family the most.” Missing a body to confirm the loss, many people find that mourning takes longer—and may never be completed. Arlene herself used to dream that Leona was alive.

Seeking answers, solace, connection of some kind, Eva Kearns felt compelled to speak to the last two people who had seen her daughter alive. Traveling to Philadelphia, she called on Edith Ruth and Nella Shank. Edith did not want to talk about the incident, but Nella did.

Nella, feeling seasick, had been sitting out on the deck of the Empress of Asia the afternoon of January 22. In the salon, Leona finished her tea, then stepped out to join her friend. At that very moment a massive wave rushed toward the ship. Leona must have shouted a warning to Nella, who opened her eyes to witness the mountainous wave hanging over the ship. She saw Leona leap over a bench and run toward the bulkhead door.

The massive wave crashed.

In the tea parlor, Edith Ruth witnessed the event. Racing toward the door, she saw Nella clutch a rail as the receding wave pulled everything with it. Leona was nowhere in sight. Edith’s screams of terror alerted the crew. The captain cut the engines, stopped the ship, and circled the roiling sea for an hour.

No trace was ever found of Leona.

Safe at home, Ainsmith continued his career in baseball, playing for minor-league teams. During the 1930s Walter Johnson hired him as a coach. When coaching proved unsuccessful, Ainsmith unabashedly took up the wearing of the blue, becoming an umpire. Later he became a scout. For a very brief time in 1947, he was hired as manager of the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Baseball League. Eddie Ainsmith lived to be 90 years old. If he ever reflected that he spent his life catching a baseball but dropped the most important pitch, he never told a soul.

BARBARA GREGORICH’S love of idioms, humor, and early readers is reflected in her written storybooks, activity books, and filmstrips for a variety of educational publishers. Her best-known book is “Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball” (Harcourt, 1993). Having lived in Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago and having been a baseball fan from the time she can remember, Barbara has always wanted Cleveland, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Cubs to win the World Series … in her lifetime.

In the annals of baseball history, the New York Yankees are often remembered as being most formidable when they had Babe Ruth batting third and Lou Gehrig right behind him in the cleanup slot. They were the heart of the 1927 Yankees—still mythologized by many as the greatest team ever there was. The 1927 Yankees finished every day of the season in first place, won 110 games, took the pennant by 19 games, outscored their opposition by 376 runs (that’s 2.4 runs a game more than the other team), and were said to so intimidate the Pirates during batting practice before Game 1 in Pittsburgh that their quick sweep in the World Series was a foregone conclusion—or any other words you might choose to connote inevitability. Ruth and Gehrig teamed together for 10 years, 1925–34, but despite power production unmatched in history by any other dynamic duo, they led the Yankees to only four pennants. The Ruth and Gehrig Yankees won three consecutive flags from 1926 to 1928, and a fourth in 1932.

The team that interrupted and short-changed the Ruth-Gehrig Yankee dynasty was the Philadelphia Athletics, who won three consecutive pennants of their own from 1929 to 1931—all in convincing fashion. One would be misguided to think that Ruth and Gehrig should have won more than the four pennants they did together, so great were they and their team, because the rival Philadelphians had their own luminescent stars in baseball’s historical firmament—notably muscular first baseman Jimmie Foxx, left fielder Al Simmons, catcher Mickey Cochrane, and pitching ace Lefty Grove. It was no disgrace for the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees not to win more often when those guys were their contemporaries on the Athletics.

And so the question to be addressed: Is it possible that the Foxx-Simmons-Cochrane-Grove Philadelphia Athletics were actually a better team than the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees? For comparative purposes, this analysis will not focus in on any one iconic year—such as 1927 for the Yankees—or even two (1932 is close to iconic for the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees). Ironically, while the Athletics were the first team in baseball history to have three consecutive 100-win seasons—the Ruth and Gehrig Yankees managed two in 1927 and 1928—their three straight blow-out pennants are anything but iconic; the 1929–31 Philadelphia Athletics are, in fact, largely forgotten in the broad arc of popularized baseball history, except perhaps in the collective historical memory of the City of Brotherly Love. The mark of a great team is its performance over time, and so this comparative analysis will focus on the seven years between 1926 and 1932, which mark the beginning and end of the pennant-winning collaboration of Ruth and Gehrig, but during which Philadelphia owner and manager Connie Mack restored the Athletics to their former measure of greatness. Let us begin with a brief history on how Mr. Mack rebuilt Philadelphia’s foundation for competing with the New York Yankees.

MACK’S ATHLETICS RETURN WITH A VENGEANCE

Connie Mack built one of the first great runs in American League history, winning four pennants in five years between 1910 and 1914, all by comfortable margins—14 1/2 games in 1910, 13 1/2 in 1911, 6 1/2 in 1913, and 8 1/2 in 1914—and the Athletics confirmed their dominance of the baseball world in the World Series by dispatching the Chicago Cubs in five games in 1910, the New York Giants in six in 1911, and the Giants again in five in 1913, before being ignominiously swept by the surprising National League champion Boston Braves in 1914. It is true that the Boston Red Sox intervened with a command performance to take the 1912 pennant by 14 games over Washington and 15 over 90-win Philadelphia, and that the 1914 World Series debacle spoiled the party, but the Athletics appeared primed to be the team to beat for at least the next several years, except that 1914 turned out to mark the end of Mack’s dynasty.

Although undoubtedly embarrassed by his team’s fold against the Braves, it was financial pressures from diminishing attendance and the challenge posed by the start-up Federal League that caused Mack, who was an owner as well as manager of the Philadelphia franchise, to begin disbanding his great team. Taking a page from the American League’s own book, the Federal League (which lasted only two years as a “third major league” in 1914 and 1915, before legal challenges forced its surrender) offered higher salaries to attract the major-league veterans needed to build credibility for the new league (and the Federal League is indeed recognized in baseball’s official records as having been one of the major leagues). This, in turn, contributed to demands for more money from players staying loyal to the American and National Leagues, dollars that Mr. Mack was unable or unwilling to pay.1

Meanwhile, in 1913 and 1914, the US economy was hit with its second recession in four years. Industrial production and real income declined, and in 1914 the number of civilians in the labor force who were unemployed nearly doubled from 1.7 to 3.1 million, according to statistics compiled by the National Bureau of Economic Research, representing about 12 percent of nonfarm workers. These tough economic times undoubtedly contributed to a dramatic 30 percent decline in attendance at major-league baseball games, excluding the Federal League. Notwithstanding the attraction of watching two of the best players of their era—Eddie Collins and Home Run Baker—and the fact that the Athletics won the American League pennant, Mack’s ledgers showed an even greater 39-percent drop in paying customers in 1914. They may have been by far the best team in major-league baseball, but the Philadelphia Athletics were only the fifth-best team in the American League in attendance, and seventh overall, including National League clubs.2 This was not helping Mr. Mack pay his $100,000 infield (whose members, of course, did not collectively earn nearly that much).

It would be wrong to say that Mack broke up the core of his first great team all at once. He did so over three years. But the heart was cut out in 1915. Veteran pitchers Eddie Plank and Chief Bender defected to the Federal League after having been preemptively placed on waivers by Mack, leaving a young pitching staff without experienced and savvy veterans; Collins was sold to the White Sox, and shortstop Jack Barry to the Red Sox.3 Mack did not move Home Run Baker in 1915, but his refusal to meet Baker’s salary demands caused his outstanding third baseman to sit out the season. Indicative of the importance of these players, particularly Collins and Baker, the Athletics plunged into the first of a disheartening wilderness of seven consecutive lastplace finishes, beginning in 1915.

By the early 1920s, Mack was patiently reconstructing another would-be dynasty. Although the Athletics finished dead last in 1920 for the sixth straight year with 106 losses, in 1922, they finally moved out of last place, finishing seventh with 89 losses, having added Bing Miller to the outfield. By 1924, Al Simmons was in the Philadelphia outfield, and the Athletics moved up to fifth place. In the 10 years after 1914, the Athletics had an abysmal .354 winning average (528–963), but with 71 victories in 1924 putting them within five wins of a .500 record, their future was looking bright.

The next year, 1925, proved pivotal as Cochrane, Grove, second baseman Max Bishop, and pitcher Rube Walberg became regulars. Their addition not only propelled the Athletics to their first winning season since 1914, but also landed Philadelphia in second place (second place!), 8 1/2 games behind Washington. The 1925 Athletics even held first place for nearly two full months in May and June, and for nearly another month between July 23 and August 19. But Mack’s budding great team was not yet ready. From August 14, when they led the league by two games, to September 7, the Athletics lost 17 of 20 games, including 12 straight at one point, to fall nine games back and out of contention.

The team lost ground in 1926—the year when Ruth and Gehrig teamed up for their first pennant together— by finishing third with five fewer wins, but ended up only six games behind the Yankees, whom they beat 13 times in 22 games. Any hopes Philadelphia had of closing that gap in 1927 were dashed with the Yankees having their first iconic season. While never in the pennant race, Mack’s men finished strong with 19 wins in their final 27 games, which did nothing more than secure second place, for whatever that honor was worth, 19 games behind New York. By 1928, right-hander George Earnshaw had joined Grove and Walberg in the starting rotation; Foxx was a rookie playing third base on his way to becoming one of the game’s greatest first basemen (moving across the infield the next year); Bing Miller, who had been traded away in 1926, was back in the outfield alongside Simmons; Mule Haas was new in the outfield; and with Cochrane behind the plate, Philadelphia was poised to challenge the Yankees—this time for real. At first it didn’t seem like it would be in 1928, but a surge of 40 wins in 52 games allowed the Athletics to overcome a 12 1/2-game deficit as late as July 18 and bring a half-game lead into Yankee Stadium for a doubleheader showdown with the Bronx Bombers on September 9. Alas, the Yankees swept the twin bill, beat Grove for good measure the next day, and the 1928 Athletics never saw the sunny side of first place again. But they had sent a message to New York, and the next three years were all Philadelphia’s.

ATHLETICS PENNANT WINNERS WERE ARGUABLY MORE DOMINANT

It perhaps comes as a surprise, given the Bronx Bombers’ headliners Ruth and Gehrig, but between 1926 and 1932 the Philadelphia Athletics’ achievements were comparable to those of the New York Yankees. Each won three consecutive pennants, although the Yankees won four American League titles in all. Philadelphia won two World Series, New York won three. The Yankees won 677 games and lost 400 over those seven years for a .629 winning percentage. The Athletics, playing 10 fewer games resulting in a decision (not including games that ended in a tie because of darkness or weather), had a slightly higher .636 winning percentage, with 679 victories against 388 losses. In the five years between 1928 and 1932, including three straight pennants sandwiched by runner-up status to New York, Philadelphia’s .662 winning percentage (505–258) is exceeded only by the 1906–10 Chicago Cubs (530–235, .693, four National League pennants and two World Series championships) for the highest over any five-year period in major-league baseball since 1901. No New York Yankees team over any five-year period— not with Ruth, not with Gehrig, not with DiMaggio, not with Mantle, not with Jeter—ever had as high a winning percentage as the 1928–32 Philadelphia Athletics.

The Athletics won more than 100 games in all three of their consecutive pennant seasons and were never challenged after mid-summer, winning decisively each year. In 1929, the Athletics blew open the pennant race early and inexorably built their lead from 9 1/2 games on July 4, to 10 1/2 games on August 1, to 12 1/2 games going into September, on their way to an 18-game final advantage (with 104 wins) that was nearly the equal of the 1927 Yankees’ 19-game pennant romp. The 1930 Athletics actually trailed the unsuspected Washington Nationals (officially the Nationals, but better known as the “Senators”) by a half-game on July 9 and 10, but were eight games in front by the end of the month and never looked back on their way to 102 wins and an eight-game margin of victory. And 1931 was 1929 all over again in Philadelphia’s complete dominance of the league—12 games up by the end of July and 15 1/2 by the end of August. They wound up taking the pennant by only 13 1/2 games, but with the most wins of any of Connie Mack’s 50 Philadelphia teams, including his great 1910–14 Athletics. Indeed, no team in franchise history—including after the A’s moved to Oakland, via Kansas City—won more games than the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics.

The 1926–32 Yankees also won at least 100 games three times—consecutively in 1927 and 1928, and again in 1932—but cruised to the pennant decisively only twice: in 1927 (by the aforementioned 19 games) when they won 110 games and in 1932 (by 13) over Philadelphia. Their 107 wins in 1932 would remain the second-highest total in the Yankees’ storied history until 1961. In their two other pennant-winning years, the Yankees finished first by just three games over secondplace Cleveland in 1926 and by only 2 1/2 over the latecharging Athletics in 1928, and in both those years, they allowed large leads to fade away.

In 1926, the Yankees had a 10-game lead on August 23, and led by eight as late as September 9, before holding on to win the pennant, possibly only by virtue of the big lead they built up early in the season. The 1926 Yankees had a losing record in the final two months of the season, going 25–29 in August and September. And in 1928, the Yankees were in command by 13 1/2 games on July 1, only to lose the entire lead and find themselves a half game behind Philadelphia on September 9, the start of a fourgame series against the Athletics. As already mentioned, the Yankees took the first three of those games to move into first place for good. And in the three following seasons, when Philadelphia cleaned up on the American League, the Yankees were playing catch up from far behind early on and never challenged for the pennant. In 1930, the Yankees didn’t even finish second; they came in third, behind second-place Washington.

POTENT PHILADELPHIA OFFENSE NO MATCH FOR YANKEES

With Cochrane, Simmons, and Foxx at the heart of the lineup, the Athletics were a dangerous club, particularly once Foxx became a regular in 1928. Thirty-five percent of their 505 victories during the five years from 1928 to 1932 were by blowout margins of five runs or more, but the Athletics did not once lead the league in scoring because, well, they were not the New York Yankees—the Bronx Bombers with their fabled Murderer’s Row. After scoring the second-fewest runs in 1926, Philadelphia was third in scoring the next year, second from 1928 to 1930, third behind New York and Cleveland in 1931—despite setting what remains the franchise record for wins—and second to the Yankees by only 21 runs in 1932.

With Ruth and Gehrig being, well, Ruth and Gehrig, the Yankees dominated all of baseball offensively between 1926 and 1932, leading not just the American League but both major leagues in scoring in six of the seven years.4 Even when the Yankees finished third in runs in 1929— the year Philadelphia displaced New York at the top of the American League—they scored only 27 fewer runs than the Tigers, who led the league despite finishing in sixth place, and only two fewer than the Athletics. In 1930, the Yankees resumed their place as the team scoring more runs than anybody else and, moreover, became the first team in modern baseball history (or the first since the Boston Beaneaters in 1897, if you prefer) to score more than 1,000 runs, when they touched the plate 1,062 times—the first of three consecutive 1,000-run seasons.

In the six years they led the league in scoring between 1926 and 1932, the Yankees did so by an average margin of 92 runs.

The Yankees completely dominated the American League in offensive wins above replacement (WAR), according to data available on Baseball-Reference.com, leading by a substantial margin all seven years between 1926 and 1932.

Appropriately for being the “Bronx Bombers,” the Yankees led the league in home runs every year of this run except 1932, when the Athletics hit 172 to their 160 (Interestingly, the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees from 1925 to 1934 were not perennial major-league leaders in home runs. The National League’s Giants in 1925, Phillies in 1929, and Cubs in 1930 all hit more home runs than the Yankees.) Indicative of their clout, from 1926 to 1932 the Yankees won 38 percent of their total 677 victories by blowout margins—including an astonishing 44 of their 94 victories (47 percent) in 1931, a year in which they finished 13 1/2 games behind the Athletics despite outscoring Philadelphia by 209 runs. And why would that be?

YANKEES PITCHING AND FIELDING NOT IN PHILADELPHIA’S CLASS

Because, the Athletics had far better pitching and fielding than the Yankees. Philadelphia led the league in fewest runs allowed four times (1926, 1928, 1929, and 1931), was second in 1930, third in 1927, and fourth in 1932, when the Athletics finished second in the standings, but far behind the Yankees. In five of those seasons (all except 1927 and 1932), Connie Mack’s pitching staff collectively had the highest WAR for pitchers in the American League. Philadelphia pitchers accounted for 21 percent of the league’s total pitchers’ value from 1926 to 1932, and in all but 1927, the park effects at Shibe Park— the Athletics’ home field—was not favorable for pitchers.5 With Lefty Grove and George Earnshaw, who were first and second in the American League in strikeouts in each of their pennant-winning seasons, the Athletics were also the premier power-pitching team in baseball. The Athletics led the league in strikeouts for six straight years beginning in 1925, before finishing third in 1931 and second in 1932.

The Yankees pitching staff, meanwhile, was in transition from Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock, their ace starters for three consecutive pennants from 1926 to 1928 and two of the best pitchers in the American League those three years, to Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez, who were emerging by the pennant-winning year of 1932 as the foundation of what would prove to be an excellent staff later in the 1930s. In between those years—when the Athletics were winning their three straight—the collective WAR for the Yankee pitching staff was dead last in the league in 1929 and 1930, and next-to-last in 1931. The 1926–32 Yankees led the league in fewest runs allowed only once (in the mythologized year of 1927), surrendered the second fewest in 1928 and 1932, and the third fewest in 1926 and 1931. They were fourth in 1929 and seventh in 1930.

Table 1: Pitching Wins Above Replacement

(#) = pitching WAR ranking among the 8 AL teams
* = won AL pennant

Yankees pitchers had less solid fielding behind them than the Athletics. New York was never better than second in fielding percentage and led the league in defensive efficiency (making outs on balls put into play) only in their historic 1927 season. In five of the seven years—including when they won three of their four pennants—the Yankees were below replacement-level performance in defensive WAR. The Athletics, by contrast, were never worse than third in fielding percentage (only once, in 1928), had the best league’s fielding percentage during each of their three straight pennants and in 1932 besides, and led the league in defensive efficiency in three of the four years between 1928 and 1931 (they were third-best in 1930).

Table 2: Defensive Wins Above Replacement

(#) = defensive WAR ranking among the 8 AL teams
* = won AL pennant

Table 3: Defensive Efficiency Record

(#) = defensive efficiency ranking among the 8 AL teams
* = won AL pennant

Comparing the two teams specifically for the years 1928 to 1932, while the Yankees outscored the Athletics by an average of 81 runs per season, the strength of their pitching and fielding enabled Philadelphia to outpace the Bronx Bombers in outscoring their game opponents by an average of 232 runs annually to the Yankees’ 217-run annual margin. Throw in the 1926 and 1927 seasons, and the 1926–32 Yankees scored an average of 227 runs more than their game opponents, still not quite as productive as the Athletics from 1928 to 1932, but better than the A’s average of outscoring their opponents by 198 runs per season over the entire seven years. The 1928–32 Athletics’ superior defense gave them a better differential between runs scored and runs allowed than the 1926–32 Yankees.

PHILADELPHIA HAD AN ALL-AROUND STRONGER ROSTER

Our analysis so far shows the two teams comparable in terms of achievement between 1926 and 1932. The Yankees have an edge in winning four pennants to the Athletics’ three during those seven years, but Philadelphia had a higher overall winning percentage. Moreover, our analysis suggests the Athletics, especially in the five years from 1928 to 1932, were a marginally more dominant team than the 1926–32 Yankees—despite the Bronx Bombers’ overwhelmingly superior offensive WAR—because of their three blowout pennants and much better pitching and fielding. Nonetheless, while the names Ruth and Gehrig (and their long-ball exploits) have kept the Yankees of those years alive in historical memory, the Philadelphia Athletics—despite their own great players and string of championships—are largely a historical afterthought.

Taking account of the teams’ core players—position regulars, starting pitchers, or oft-relied upon relievers for at least four seasons between 1926 and 1932, or on either of the three-straight pennant winners for all three years—the Yankees would seem to have a huge advantage with seven of their own enshrined in Baseball’s Hall of Fame, compared to only four for the Athletics. And for the Yankees, that does not even include Hall of Fame pitchers Ruffing and Gomez. Red Ruffing did not don Yankee pinstripes until 1930, was on only one pennantwinner as a teammate of Gehrig and Ruth, and sealed his Hall of Fame legacy later in the decade with the Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio Yankees. Lefty Gomez made his debut with the Yankees in 1930, pitched badly and was sent to St. Paul in the second half of the season, then became a fixture on Manager Joe McCarthy’s pitching staff in 1931, winning 21 that year and 24 the next— accounting for exactly half of the four 20-win seasons he put together in his career.

Three core regulars of the 1926–32 Yankees were the best in the American League at their position during all or most of this seven-year run—Gehrig at first base, Tony Lazzeri (even better than Charlie Gehringer for most of these years) at second, and Ruth as one of three outfielders. And those three, plus center fielder Earle Combs, were among the AL’s 10 best position players between 1926 and 1932, based primarily on the WAR metric. In 1929, the Yankees introduced catcher Bill Dickey to the equation. While he immediately established himself as one of the best catchers in baseball, it would not be until the mid- 1930s that he supplanted Mickey Cochrane as the best catcher in the league.

The Athletics had four of their core regulars among the league’s 10 best position players during those years—Foxx, Simmons, Cochrane, and Bishop. In fact, Cochrane behind the plate and Simmons as one of three outfielders were the best at their positions for all or the majority of these seasons.6 Jimmie Foxx was such a great player in his own right, beginning in 1929, that it would be unreasonable not to consider him 1B to Gehrig’s 1A as the best first baseman in baseball during this time. Coincidentally, neither the Yankees nor the Athletics had a particularly strong left side of the infield.

Two Philadelphia pitchers—Grove and Walberg— count among the five best in the American League between 1926 and 1932, based primarily on the WAR metric for pitchers. From 1928 to 1932, Grove made a strong case for having the best five-year stretch of any pitcher ever by winning 128 games while losing only 33 (that’s a .795 winning percentage) and leading the league in earned run average the last four of those years, in strikeouts the first four, and this in the peak years of the hitters’ era.7 Grove also led the league in ERA in 1926 and in strikeouts for seven consecutive years— beginning in his rookie season of 1925—before the Yankees’ Red Ruffing took the K crown with two more than the Philadelphia Lefty in 1932. Walberg, another lefty, ever reliable, had his best seasons in 1929 (18–11) and 1931 (20–12). Earnshaw, meanwhile, was 67–28 in the Athletics’ three pennant-winning seasons (for a .705 winning percentage), before beginning a relatively quick burnout at age 32 in 1932 when he went 19–13. Although the concept of dedicated relief pitchers was in its infancy at the time, the Athletics had Eddie Rommel (himself a formidable starter for most of the 1920s) pitching very well, mostly in relief during these years, although it was ace-starter Lefty Grove who more often than not was the “closer”—a term still about a half-century away from being coined.

None of the Yankees pitchers were among the five best in the league for the majority of the seven years between 1926 and 1932, although both Hoyt and Pennock had been from the early 1920s through the three consecutive pennants New York won from 1926 to 1928. The southpaw Pennock was 23–11, 19–8, and 17–6 those three years, and right-hander Hoyt went 22–7 and 23–7 in 1927 and 1928. Those, however, were the last of the best seasons by either in a Yankee uniform.

Table 4: Core regulars on 1926-32 Yankees and Athletics

MPR = multi-position regular (no set position from one year to the next)
Note: Bold players were the AL’s best at their position for the majority of these years or among the AL’s 10 best position players, five best starting pitchers, or best dedicated reliever between 1926 and 1932, based on the wins above replacement (WAR) metric and playing at least four years.

All told, while the Yankees were a very impressive team, Ruth and Gehrig were the only players who had historically great years between 1926 and 1932. The Philadelphia Athletics, by contrast, had four core players in their prime with historically great years—Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Mickey Cochrane—even if none of the four measured up to Ruth and Gehrig.8 It may seem a heretical notion because the 1927 Yankees are an iconic team, but with four such all-time greats at the peak of their career and accomplishing what they did—three straight pennants, all by decisive margins—against the Bronx Bombers as their principal rival, the Philadelphia Athletics from 1926 to 1932 were probably the better team in context, notwithstanding Ruth and Gehrig (not to mention Lazzeri, Combs, and Dickey).

Table 5: Best players in the American League, 1926-32

Based on average annual wins above replacement (WAR) value, consistency from year to year, and playing at least four years.

BREAKING UP THE COMPETITION: THE END OF THE ATHLETICS IN PHILADELPHIA

Just as he dismantled the 1910–14 Philadelphia Athletics for economic reasons in the midst of a grave recession, so did the Great Depression compel Connie Mack to break up his even better 1926–32 team in what would be the beginning of a very long end—more than two decades—for American League baseball in the City of Brotherly Love. This time, however, the breakup was less precipitous, and also less immediately calamitous. Of the four Hall of Famers who were the centerpiece of th team, Simmons was gone by 1933, Cochrane and Grove by 1934, and Foxx remained three more years before leaving Philadelphia in 1936. Of the other core regulars, Jimmy Dykes and Mule Haas were gone by 1933; Bishop, Earnshaw, and Walberg by 1934; and Bing Miller by 1935. (Bishop and Walberg were part of the deal that sent Grove to Boston). Philadelphia dropped to third in 1933 and fifth in 1934 before finding a home in the American League basement for seven of the next nine years.

Unlike the core players of the 1910–14 Athletics, most whom were still in their prime, the foundation players on Philadelphia’s last great American League team were all on, or very close to, the downside of their career when Connie Mack said to them good-bye and good luck. Grove and Foxx played for eight and six years with the Boston Red Sox after they were traded away for bit players and (primarily) big money, and both had some excellent years with their new team, but no stretch of five consecutive seasons that would have given them the historical legacies (and Hall of Fame credentials) they earned in their time with the Philadelphia Athletics.

The New York Yankees, meanwhile, were financially on a more sound footing throughout the Depression years, shedding only those players they no longer needed or wanted. By 1935, that included the Babe himself, despite his iconic status in New York City. With excellent scouts, one of baseball’s premier minor-league systems, and a trademark commitment to excellence, the Yankees were on the threshold of being the best they ever were. And when the team that still had Gehrig, Lazzeri, Dickey, Ruffing, and Gomez in pinstripes added Joe DiMaggio in 1936, it wasn’t long before the New York Yankees— winning six pennants and five World Series in seven years from 1936 to 1942, before World War II claimed Mr. DiMaggio for the service, and another pennant and World Series without him in 1943—would eclipse the 1928–32 Philadelphia Athletics, with three straight pennants in the middle of those five years, as the best team in American League history through the first half of the twentieth century.

This time, unlike after he dismantled his first great team, Connie Mack did not invest in trying to rebuild a championship-caliber club. The ultimate question, of course, is: Could he have, if he wanted to, as the Great Depression ran its course? At the time, Philadelphia was one of five American cities with two major-league teams, one in each league. Of the five cities, only New York (which actually had three teams, if you include Brooklyn) and Chicago historically were consistently able to support two major-league teams with strong attendance for each relative to other teams in their league. In Philadelphia, on the other hand (as well as in Boston and St. Louis), attendance in most years was typically heavily skewed in favor of the city’s more successful team at the time, with the other team at or near the bottom of its league’s attendance and usually in financial straits. But at least until the Depression, the return on investment for putting together a competitive team—much easier said than done, of course—could turn around a financially troubled franchise, even with in-market competition from the other franchise, and all three cities had years where both teams had good attendance records.9

With 16 teams in 10 cities, an equal distribution of attendance per team would have been slightly more than 6 percent of the major-league total. For the five cities with two big-league teams, drawing a combined 10 percent of total attendance would seem to have been a reasonable threshold below which the city’s capacity to support two teams would have to be considered problematic. For most of the first third of the twentieth century, this was never a problem for New York City and Chicago, and it wasn’t for Philadelphia either. Except for the first half of the 1920s, when both the Athletics and the Phillies were in the dumps with very bad teams, the two franchises in most years combined for about 12 percent, and sometimes as much as 15 percent, of total major-league attendance, equaling or exceeding a notional equal distribution for two teams. The good citizens of Philadelphia might flock overwhelmingly to the ballpark of the better team, but the City of Brotherly Love was a large enough market for both when both the Athletics and Phillies had competitive teams.

With the Great Depression, the dynamic in Philadelphia changed for the worse. Most years from 1933 until 1945, the two Philadelphia teams combined for only about 7 percent of total attendance—barely above what one team alone should have drawn if attendance was equally distributed among the 16 teams. This clearly was not sufficient for a two-team market. And after the war ended and major-league attendance nearly doubled between 1945 and 1948, Philadelphia’s combined share remained below 10 percent, hovering between 8–9 percent. The Athletics and Phillies were nearly an equal draw in 1947 and 1949, but it probably seemed apparent to owner Connie Mack that Philadelphia was not a sustainable market for two major-league teams in the long run.

BRYAN SODERHOLM-DIFATTE is devoted to the study of baseball history. He is author of the online manuscript, www.thebestbaseballteams.com, which identifies the best teams of the twentieth century in each league using a structured methodological approach for analysis, and writes the baseball historical insight blog at brysholm.blogspot.com. Bryan is also a frequent contributor to “The Baseball Research Journal.”

Notes

1. Norman L. Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 650–670.

2. Attendance figures from www.baseball-reference.com.

3. Macht, 650-652. In his comprehensive biography of Connie Mack, Norman L. Macht states that, economic issues aside, Mack was not inclined to stick with Plank and Bender because both were aging veteran pitchers whose best years he assessed were behind them.

4. The Yankees also led the league in scoring in 1933, although they finished second in the standings to Washington, seven games off the pace. Third-place Philadelphia was second in scoring.

5. Park factor values are included annually for each team’s home ballpark at www.baseball-reference.com.

6. The author’s identification of the American League’s 10 best position players and five best pitchers between 1926 and 1932, based on playing at least four of those years, are derived from the wins above replacement (WAR) metric used by www.baseball-reference.com, but are not determined by highest cumulative or average annual WAR. The author instead rated players according to consistency of high-level performance. Heinie Manush, for example, had a higher cumulative and average WAR for 1926–32, but with two seasons (1927 and 1931) with a player value of 1.6 wins above replacement, he did not maintain as high a level of consistency as Max Bishop, who had only one season (1929, with credited with 1.7 wins above replacement), with such a low player value.

7. The pitcher most often compared to Grove for best five-year stretch was Sandy Koufax, who from 1962 to 1966 won 111 and lost 34 for a .766 winning percentage, led the National League in ERA all five years, in strikeouts three of the five years— failing to do so in 1962 and 1964 when arm problems limited him to 26 and 28 starts—and averaged 9.4 strikeouts per nine innings, with 1,444 strikeouts in 1,377 innings pitched.

8. In The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (The Free Press, 2001), baseball historian and godfather of sabermetric analysis, Bill James, ranked Grove (number 19), Foxx (29), Simmons (71), and Cochrane (72) in the top 100 players of all-time based on his win shares methodology. Ruth (number 1) and Gehrig (14) were the only players on the Yankees between 1926 and 1932 who made James’s best 100 list.

9. As Connie Mack steadily improved his team during the 1920s, average per-game attendance at Shibe Park soared from among the worst in the AL to consistently second behind the Yankees beginning in 1925 (when the Athletics actually led the league). Winning the 1929 pennant resulted in a 22 percent increase in home attendance for the Athletics, but the beginning years of the Depression resulted in a 14 percent decline when Philadelphia repeated as AL champions in 1930, another 13 percent drop when Mack’s men won their three-peat in 1931, and a far more precipitate 35 percent decline in 1932 (third-best in the league), when the Athletics were still a baseball power but could not keep pace with the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees. Perhaps more to the point, pergame home attendance decreased from about 38 percent of Shibe Park’s capacity in 1929 to only 16 percent of capacity in 1932—the Athletics’ lowest level since 1919, when Mack’s last-place team with its atrocious 36–104 record was the worst draw in the American League. (Data on attendance capacity at Shibe Park can be found in “Shibe Park Historical Analysis” on www.baseball-almanac.com. Annual and per-game attendance figures can be found for each team, each year in www.baseball-reference.com.)

Sources

www.baseballreference.com, 11/25/2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org, 11/22/2012.

http://retrosheet.org, accessed 11/05/2012.

William Kashatus, Connie Mack’s 1929 Triumph (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1999).

Ted Davis, Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball (Indiana: Iuniverse Inc, 2011).

Eric Enders, Ballparks Then and Now (Michigan: Thunder Bay Press, 2007).

Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide, 1930.

http://phillysportshistory.com, accessed 11/25/2102.

Baltimore Sun

Chicago Tribune

Evening Independent

Lewiston Evening Journal

Milwaukee Sentinel

Philadelphia Inquirer

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Spokesman Review

St. Petersburg Times

Philadelphia’s baseball fans hoped to see fortunes improve, too. But they were aware that their Phillies were not improving—the club had just traded away its big star, Chuck Klein—and their Athletics seemed to be declining from their championship stature of a couple of seasons back. The fans followed the news to see what else was going on around town.

On the fifth of the month, at exactly 5:32 p.m. Eastern Time, Prohibition had come to an end, as Utah officially ratified the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. Of course, the headline in the December 6 Philadelphia Inquirer read “PRICES HIGH, SUPPLY LOW IN PHILA.” There was an inevitable hassle, as the newly created State Liquor Control Board granted only 10 of the 231 new liquor stores in the state to Philadelphia. The squawks to Harrisburg were loud enough that the next day the state’s largest city was awarded nine more stores.1

On December 10, 53-year-old Bill Roper, an Independent Republican city councilman and the legendary former football coach at Princeton, died of a blood infection at his home. Roper had been instrumental in passage of the recent legislation legalizing Sunday sports in Pennsylvania, which the city’s voters had approved in a referendum a month earlier.

The movie theatres in town were featuring shows like “One Sunday Afternoon,” with Gary Cooper and Fay Wray at the Rialto in Germantown; Constance Bennett in “After Tonight” at the Earle; and the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup” at the Stanley. The comic strips in the local newspapers included “Winnie Winkle,” “Bringing Up Father,” “Mutt and Jeff,” “Tillie the Toiler,” “Blondie,” and “Moon Mullins.” So there were things available for folks to take their minds off the state of the economy.

Another major outlet for Philadelphians was baseball. Through the early 1920s, both of the city’s ballclubs, the Phillies and Connie Mack’s Athletics, were pretty bad. In the middle of the decade, Mack rebuilt his team so successfully that the 1929 A’s, winners of the World Series over the Chicago Cubs, are often considered the best baseball team of all time. In 1930, the A’s repeated their World Series triumph, and in 1931, after winning their third straight pennant, they came very close to a third Series win in a row, losing to St. Louis, four games to three.

In 1932, the team won 94 games, but finished second in the AL behind a rejuvenated New York Yankee squad. Slugging star Jimmie Foxx belted 58 home runs and was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player. With attendance dropping, though, due as much to the Depression as anything, Mack saw the red ink piling up on his ledgers, and traded off some star players—Al Simmons, Mule Haas, and Jimmy Dykes—for cash.

The A’s of 1933 dropped off a bit more, finishing third, with attendance down some more, though Foxx did win the Triple Crown, leading the AL in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, on the way to a second MVP Award. The club still had the best pitcher around, Robert “Lefty” Grove, who won 24 in 1933, the best catcher in the game in Mickey Cochrane, and some good-looking additions in Mike Higgins, Bob Johnson, and Doc Cramer. With the coming of Sunday baseball, A’s fans looked ahead to more successful seasons.

1933 even brought some good feelings to Phillies fans. Though the club finished a distant seventh in the National League, it too featured a Triple Crown winner in outfielder Chuck Klein, who not only led the circuit in batting average, homers, and RBIs, but also in hits, slugging percentage, and total bases. Klein had been the league MVP in 1932, but somehow his Triple Crown honors could not win him a repeat in ’33, with the Giants’ Carl Hubbell winning that prize.

While Philadelphians were going about their usual business—a police raid on the headquarters of a West Philadelphia bookmaking ring, the annual Temple University music department concert, and the election of officers of the Union League—the leaders of baseball were gathering in Chicago for the annual meetings.

One leader not there was Thomas S. Shibe, president of the Athletics and a director of the American League. Shibe, as James Isaminger of the Inquirer reported it, was in St. Agnes Hospital for an operation on a head infection. While the procedure was not considered serious, Shibe did not go to the league meeting.2

There was much talk in Chicago about the Philadelphia clubs and their money problems. The A’s attendance in 1933 was 297,138, down from a high of 839,176 in 1929, and the club was still paying some high salaries. The Phillies’ gate in 1933 was only 156,421, but they were more used to such low numbers. And on November 21, the Phillies, as mentioned, had shipped Klein off to the Cubs for three inconsequential players and cash.

Early on December 12, Cy Peterman of the Evening Bulletin described what was going on in Chicago: “The tall and angular figure of Connie Mack, nearing his 71st birthday as he approaches this annual meeting of leaders in the game to which he has devoted most of his life, took on colossal proportions as he reached Chicago today. Arriving in Chicago at 8:20 Manager Mack delayed the suspense further when he said he would have nothing to announce until 6 o’clock this evening, which would be 7 o’clock in Philadelphia. He gave no further hint of what his announcement would be.”3

There were plenty of rumors floating around the Palmer House as Mack arrived. Everyone in the American League was familiar with the A’s money problems, and it was assumed that Mack, “the Tall Tactician,” would have to do something. There had been reports of Cochrane going to Detroit to become the Tigers’ new manager, but whether that would come to pass or not would have to await Mack’s announcement. There was talk, too, of George Earnshaw and Rube Walberg, pitching stalwarts for some years, being on the market, and even the possibility of Grove being sold, but that looked unlikely.

Isaminger wrote sourly that “to lose Grove, Walberg and Earnshaw at one meeting would cost the Athletics nearly all of their seasoned pitching material and Mack would have to start the 1934 playing season with a more or less green staff.”4

Late in the day, Connie Mack told a group of Philadelphia scribes what had happened. “We sold Grove and Walberg and Bishop to the Boston Red Sox,” he said, “and they give us Kline and Warstler.” He went on, “We sold Cochrane to Detroit and got Pasek in return. We sent Earnshaw to Chicago, with Pasek, and get catcher Berry from them. That’s all.”

“But what about the cash?” he was asked.

“That’s all I have to say,” he repeated, his face tightening as he turned away.

The reporters checked with the other teams involved, checked with each other, assessed what Mack had told them, and were finally able to put it all together for the next day’s papers.

“In a series of spectacular deals,” reported the Inquirer the next day, “the Athletics tonight officially announced transfers of five of their most valuable players that brings to them virtually a quarter of a million dollars and at the same time weakens the team in three departments.”

Three players—Lefty Grove, Rube Walberg, and veteran second baseman Max Bishop—were sent to the Boston Red Sox for cash, right-handed pitcher Bob Kline, and infielder Harold “Rabbit” Warstler. Warstler had batted .211 and .217 the prior two seasons, and Kline was 7–8 with a 4.54 ERA in 1933, so clearly the deal was made for the cash.

Cochrane went to the Tigers, who promptly signed him to a two-year contract to manage and catch. In return, the A’s received $100,000 and a catcher named Johnny Pasek, who had caught in only 28 games for Detroit and was quickly included in the next deal. And that was George Earnshaw and Pasek to the White Sox for $15,000 and catcher Charlie Berry.

A Philadelphia baseball writer watched what he called “Connie Mack’s bitterest hour.” He entered the room where the reporters waited, invited by Eddie Collins, once Mack’s star infielder, now the general manager of the Red Sox. Mack was “pale, so pale and gray and old, that even for old Connie he looked frail and wasted.” He had “just announced the greatest disposal of stars that baseball ever saw. More than a quarter million dollars worth of baseball aces whose deeds will ring through the years, once his, all now no longer his. His voice shook and his hand trembled so that the papers within it quivered, rustling slightly.” The writer summed it up: “Connie had no further words.… In a hurried half-whispered sentence he said he had sold out.” Then the old man walked away.5

The banner headline across the December 13 Inquirer, “COCHRANE, GROVE SOLD IN $250,000 DEAL,” greeted Philadelphia’s baseball fans, as they and the writers who covered the team tried to assess what it was all going to mean. Mack declined to make any more comments on the deals and said he would have nothing to say until he returned to Philadelphia.

The first thing, of course, was that Mack and the Shibes were going to pay off that $225,000 bank indebtedness. That was the best part of things for the Athletics. The rest of it looked pretty bad. The club still had Foxx and Johnson and Higgins, but it had little pitching remaining. As one writer put it, “Grove gone. Cochrane gone. Walberg, Bishop, Earnshaw gone. Simmons gone. Haas and Dykes. Since 1925 those names were as much of Mack and his plans as the scorecard upon which he wrote them.”6

Lefty Grove, contacted by phone after the trade was announced, said, “Well, that’s great and I’m sure tickled to hear it.” He continued, “I expect I’ll have many more years of pitching without losing any stuff.” George Earnshaw said, “I am now content … I don’t like the idea of leaving the Athletics, but you must go where they send you in baseball.” Max Bishop commented, “It’s all in the game and if Connie sold me to Boston well and good.”7

Mickey Cochrane, after he had signed his contract with Detroit, even approached Mack to see if he could secure a trade for Mike Higgins, but the A’s owner quickly refused: “I would break up my team,” he said, somewhat ironically, “if I let Higgins, the best third baseman in baseball, go.”8

The fans in Philadelphia were stunned by the trades. They had heard some of the rumors that something was coming, but they hardly imagined the wholesale liquidation of star players that happened. Their team had quickly gone from a first-division contender to a sure also-ran. “Scattered to the four winds, the once proud Athletics,” wrote Cy Peterman. “That is the tragic finish of the last great baseball machine molded by Cornelius McGillicuddy.”9

In an editorial, the Inquirer stated that “the announcement that he (Mack) has made a series of spectacular deals by which he gives up five of his stars in return for about a quarter of a million dollars and several players will cause moaning and groaning from thousands of the patrons of the game in Philadelphia.”10

The moaning and groaning was loud and persistent, and with good reason. For the followers of the Philadelphia Athletics, 1934 developed as they feared it would. Attendance actually increased by about 8,000, but this increase was generally attributed to Sunday baseball. The team fell into the second division, finishing in a distant fifth place with a record of 68–82. Foxx hit .334 with 44 home runs, and Higgins, Cramer, and Bob Johnson all hit well over .300. It was the pitching staff that did them in: No one won more than 14 games and none had an earned run average below 4.41. Grove, Earnshaw, and Walberg were gone, replaced by the likes of John Marcum, Joe Cascarella, Bill Dietrich, and Sugar Cain.

In 1935, the A’s collapsed into the AL cellar, with a record of 58–91, five and a half games behind the seventhplace Browns. Jimmie Foxx led the league with 36 home runs and hit .346, but the pitching was once again poor.

Last place became a bad habit for Connie Mack’s Athletics. In the next eight years, the Mackmen finished last six times, and seventh the other two seasons. Mack managed for 17 more years, and finished 10 of them in last place. The club remained in the city through 1954, but did not win an American League pennant after 1933. This tumble into the nether regions of the American League had commenced on “Black Tuesday,” December 12, 1933.

DAVID JORDAN, for twelve years president/chairman of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, is a retired lawyer who has published books on the Philadelphia A’s, Phillies, Hal Newhouser, Pete Rose, and classic ballparks.

Notes

1 Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 6, 7, 8, 1933.

2 Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 10, 1933.

3 Evening Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1933.

4 Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 12, 1933.

5 Cy Peterman, Evening Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1933.

6 Cy Peterman, Evening Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1933.

7 Cy Peterman, Evening Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1933.

8 Philadelphia Inquirer, December 13, 1933.

9 Evening Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1933.

10 Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 14, 1933.