Fifty-seven seasons have transpired since I saw my first major league
baseball game in Connie Mack Stadium in August 1959. It seems only right then
that my next baseball history book, a retrospective of my years as a Phillies
fan from the perspective of an historian, as well as these occasional thoughts
on baseball, be entitled, “57 Seasons.”
Since my first game was a Phillies-Reds contest at Connie Mack
Stadium, it is also only right and proper that this first story track to the
Grand Old Man of Baseball. Sixty years ago today, Feb. 8, 1956, Connie Mack
passed away in his daughter Ruth’s home in Germantown. Aged 93 years and about
six weeks, Mr. Mack had been in failing physical health for two years, or ever
since two of his other children, Roy and Earle, had sold his team and his
adopted city down the river to Kansas City.
Without going further into Roy and Earle’s perfidy (mostly Roy’s, it
turns out), although we will mention the famous line that Connie Mack’s sons
were senile before he was, more good will be served at this point by reviewing
Mr. Mack’s legacy in Philadelphia, and those who have written about same.
Perhaps the best way to summarize what the Athletics meant to
Philadelphia during the first half of the 20th Century is through a remarkably
revealing statement made some years ago by Bill Giles. THE Bill Giles, the Big
Bopper of the Phillies for many years. Fittingly, this statement was made to
someone who not only met Connie Mack while he was still managing the A’s, but
was also the co-founder of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, the
King of Baseball Cards of Glenside, PA, and a noted baseball author himself. We
speak, of course, of the one-and-only H. R. “Ted” Taylor.
Once upon a time, while walking together in the bowels of Veterans
Stadium, Giles, who of course came from a baseball family of long and storied
tradition, admitted to Taylor that, “the wrong team left town.” Yes, Bill Giles
knew Philadelphia was traditionally an A’s town. Or, to phrase it as another
longtime A’s fan, not coincidentally also named John Shiffert, put it to me,
“when I was growing up, everyone was an A’s fan, no one rooted for the
Phillies.”
Now, if you like, you can link this to the famous saying about
Philadelphia baseball and politics… that Republicans rooted for the A’s and
Democrats rooted for the Phillies. Maybe that’s an over-simplification, but it
is worth noting that the Republican Party ruled Philadelphia for decades, and
that the Democrats only took over when the A’s moved out of town.
Really, Philadelphia WAS an A’s town, not just from the start of the
20th Century, when the Mackmen and the American League came to town, but all the
way back to 1860, when “Athletic” was the first name in Philadelphia, not just
baseball, but sports. There were at least four different organizations to bear
the names of Athletic or Athletics in the 19th Century, and none of them were in
any way related to Mack, who merely appropriated the famous name for his new
team. Clever PR guy, that Cornelius McGillicuddy.
From Opening Day, April 26, 1901 (which also happened to be the exact
day the older John Shiffert’s father – also an A’s fan -- was born) all the way
through to 1950, the A’s owned Philadelphia, and only one of those little
oddities of history led to Mr. Mack’s collapsing when he heard his team had been
moved to Kansas City.
You see, the Phillies had been grossly underfunded from the time of
World War I until after World War II. And then, the filthy-rich Carpenter
family, scions of the DuPont chemical fortune, bought the team at the same time
the Macks were staging an early version of “Family Feud” over the
close-to-prostrate form of their elderly statesmen.
With the Phillies winning the 1950 NL pennant behind an exciting young
team of Whiz Kids, and Connie Mack retiring at the same time, the tables turned,
and it may well have been inevitable that the Philadelphia A’s were doomed.
How important was it that the old man was stepping down at this key
time? Its importance cannot be overestimated, partly because everyone in
Philadelphia knew that Roy and Earle were a couple of scrubs who had fallen far
from the tree. And , since they had bought out their younger, and far more
competent, half-brother Connie, Jr., they were in charge. It’s not too hard to
say that the old man was revered, and the sons reviled.
But, don’t take my word for it. Certainly every book ever written
about the Philadelphia Athletics is about Connie Mack, as well as the three
major biographies that have been written about the Grand Old Man of Baseball.
The first, entitled, “Connie Mack: Grand Old Man of Baseball” was
written by the famous baseball writer Fred Lieb in 1945 as part of the Putnam
team series. Lieb was not only a contemporary of Mack, but knew “the old
gentleman” as he referred to Mack, quite well. While Lieb is famous for not
letting the facts get in the way of a good story – a shortcoming common to
sportswriters in the first two decades of the 20th Century – this is a book
worth reading, and as close to a contemporary account of Mack as there can be.
Kent State University re-printed it four years ago, and yes, it’s on Amazon.
Lieb’s book does have several really good nuggets, including a short
re-cap of previous Athletic teams of the 19th Century and a chapter on the
famous 17-inning tie game at the end of the 1907 season that Mack always said
cost them the AL pennant that year.
On the other hand, not worth your time and trouble is “My 66 Years in
the Big Leagues,” which is supposedly Mack’s autobiography, dating from 1884 and
written in 1950. It’s not. The title isn’t even accurate – Mack hadn’t been in
the big league for 66 years in 1950, since he’d spent the first part of the
1880s and the last part of the 1890s in the minors.)
This one was re-printed by Dover Publications in 2009 and is not what
it claims to be… worse, historian/researcher Rich Westcott, who wrote the new
introduction to the book, utterly fails his readers by not pointing out the
patently obvious – there’s no way the 88-year old Mack wrote this book; he was
just mentally incapable of doing so in 1950, when, as noted, it was well-known
that he was pretty far along into senility. The book was ghost-written, though
no one seems to know exactly who authored the work. (Although Francis Miller,
who wrote the original introduction, is a good guess.) Westcott, who really
should know better, pulls a Lieb by stating the book was written before Mack’s
health deteriorated. Not before his mental health deteriorated, Rich.
So, skip this one – it’s not even organized very well, with chapters
jumping all over the place. No, the Mack bio you must have, if you are truly a
fan of Philadelphia baseball history, is Norman Macht’s recent and encyclopedic
three-volume bio; “Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball,” “Connie Mack:
The Turbulent and Triumphant Years, 1915-1931” and “The Grand Old Man of
Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956.”
One of our most distinguished baseball historians, Macht put virtually
half a lifetime into this work. Indeed, these three books are far too-detailed
and rich for a simple review to do justice to Macht’s masterwork; you just have
to read it for yourself. However, as a brief example, Macht discovered that,
although Roy and Earle Mack are usually given equal blame for the A’s leaving
Philadelphia, in reality Roy double-crossed both his father and his brother in
the deal with Arnold Johnson.
If the Hall of Fame ever makes a place for baseball
authors/historians, as opposed to baseball journalists, this is Macht’s ticket
to Cooperstown.
--
Some years ago Bonnie Raitt recorded a Jackson Browne song entitled,
“My Opening Farewell.” The song doesn’t have anything to do with baseball, or
even writing, but I always thought it was a good generic exit line. So, after 13
years of “19 to 21,” this is my opening farewell.
Having been a sportswriter off-and-on since 1968 or so, I can say I’ve
enjoyed writing “19 to 21” as much as I’ve enjoyed writing anything; naturally,
because it’s about baseball (and there haven’t been any editors around to mess
with the prose – such is one of the joys of the Internet.) However, all good
things must come to an end, and, with two sons approaching college in 2017, and
a daughter returning to college that same year, the time has come to turn to
other literary pursuits that, quite candidly, will pay better.
So, this will be the last installment of “19 to 21.” (Although I may
from time-to-time have something to say on baseball, either in the form of
another book or occasional comments that I will send out to my “19 to 21” list.
To all who have already sent in their subscriptions for 2016, I will be
returning your checks shortly.)
Since it’s my opening farewell, and my column, I’m entitled this one
time to look back at my own history from the 2003 to the 2015 seasons. Without a
doubt, my two favorite years during that time were the first “19 to 21,” the
2003 season that became my first book, “Baseball: 1862 to 2003,” and the 2008
version, which became my most recent book, “The Breaks Even Out and Midnight
Comes Quickly for Cinderella.” Quite understandably, the 2008 book is a favorite
since it also chronicled the season of the Phillies winning the World Series.
Let’s take a trip back to look at what I would consider the highlights
off first the 2003 version of “19 to 21” and then the “2008” version.
I rather liked the very first “19 to 21,” actually dated Dec. 16,
2002, and recognizing the 24th anniversary of Pete Rose signing what was then
the largest free agent contract in history, $3.2 million over four years. The
“hook” was that, while Pete was (and still is, 13 years later) persona non
gratia in MLB, he was a unique player. You could take his career offensive
totals, divide them in half, and still be pretty close to having TWO Hall of
Fame resumes.
In late March 2003, the 101st anniversary of the Chicago National
League team being called the “Cubs” came up, and with it an interesting
statistic; in the years since 1945 (their last appearance in the World Series)
the Cubs at that point had played sub-.500 ball in September 41 times.
Considering that’s a span of 57 years, their relative failures in the home
stretch can’t be a statistical illusion. There’s got to be SOMETHING going on…
maybe that the one thing all those teams had in common was that they played half
of their games in Wrigley Field, and that as result, even now, they play a lot
more day games than any other team. The heat? The odd scheduling? Who knows?
In June 2003, “everyone” was raving about the Rays’ new star, Rocco
Baldelli. However, Rocco wasn’t nearly the star he was thought to be, and would,
indeed, soon flame out. Why was that? Well, the concept of Isolated Power as a
means of measuring a player’s extra base power by subtracting batting average
from slugging percentage was the rage then in terms of a new metric for
measuring offensive performance. But, what about a measurement of plate
discipline? Why not subtract batting average from on base average and call that
Isolated Discipline?” Since no one could tell me not to, I did.
Turns out that Baldelli never met a pitch he didn’t like, and his ID
was a horrible .027, almost historically low, like Shawon Dunston low. In other
words, he wasn’t exactly Max Bishop (.152), Gene Tenace (.150), Eddie Yost
(.141) or Ferris Fain (.135). And, as a result, Rocco never became a great
player. Of course, no one’s ever heard of ID since then, either.
The Red Sox going against what had become an entrenched strategy,
using a single relief pitcher to invariably close out games, was the subject of
a July 2003 column on “platoon closers.” Although a made-up term for a situation
that was, by that time, passe, the idea of having a right-handed AND a
left-handed closer available to make it easier to keep the platoon advantage
late in the game would seem to make sense. Although the Single Closer Theory
(not to be confused with the Single Bullet Theory) was set in stone by the end
of the 1990s, if you just go back to the decade of the 1980s, there were no less
than 41 teams who had both a lefty and a righty closing games.
An albatross that would hang around until 2007, when the good old Mets
blew a seven game lead on the Phillies with 17 games to play, the denouement of
the 1964 season needed to be revisited in September 2003. Without going into an
argument that has been previously been made several times, suffice it to say
that Gene Mauch DID NOT blow the 1964 National League pennant by pitching Jim
Bunning and Chris Short on “short” rest.
Yes, they each did start twice on two days rest during the Phillies
10-game losing streak, but Mauch had no other options. His three and four
starters, Dennis Bennett and Art Mahaffey, were both suffering from arm
injuries. Number five starter Ray Culp was wilder than Ryne Duren on the sauce
and had only made 19 starts all year, and the sixth starter, Rick Wise, was 18
years old. The real problem was, they didn’t have any starting pitching depth,
something that should have been addressed long before mid-September.
Finally, for 2003, was an after-the-season look at great baseball
books. Of course, everyone has their own opinion, but IMHO, the five greatest
baseball books were (and are); “Ball Four,” the “Macmillan Baseball
Encyclopedia,” “The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract,” “The Long Season,”
and “The Great American Novel.” The first four rate because of the broader
meaning of great – each of these broke new ground and/or changed the parameters
for baseball books/reporting. The last is still the best baseball-themed novel,
although “Calico Joe” has given it a run for the money, and there’s no denying
the quality of “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.,” “Shoeless Joe” or “If
I Never Get Back.”
On to 2008, a season that began with a suggestion from Bob Costas in
regards to what to do with the mess PEDs (or rather, their users -- take a bow,
Mr. Bonds) had made of the record book. Costas suggested that the best way to
deal with the mess was to include a preface in the record books noting that
baseball has had a far longer history than any other team sport in the U.S., and
that there have been many changes in the game over the past 150 years, and that
these changes have greatly affected the game’s records. This would be followed
by a listing of said changes, everything from the advent of gloves to
adjustments in the walk/strikeout counts, to the changes in the construction of
the ball, to PEDs. And, finally, that said changes should be taken into account
when reviewing the records.
In other words, provide a guide to baseball history along with the
records, and a cavet emptor to all who would read the records. Of course, this
made too much sense to ever be instituted. This was the Bud.com Era, after all.
Having begun with a whimper, the season picked up steam in Spring
Training, when one fine comedian and baseball fan, Billy Crystal, made the news
by pinch-hitting in a Spring Training game for the Yankees on the day before his
60th birthday. In living out the ultimate fantasy, Crystal brought to mind a few
other instances of non-professionals doing, if not the exactly same thing, at
least joining the ranks of major leaguers.
This sort of thing happened fairly often in the 19th Century, when
rosters were much smaller and the player personnel rules were rather loosely
followed. For instance, the 20-133 Cleveland Spiders recruited 19-year-old Eddie
Koob to pitch their last game in 1899. Eddie worked in the cigar stand in the
Spiders’ hotel, and pitched sort of like a Cigar Store Indian, losing 19-3.
Probably the most famous non-professional to appear in a major league
game (expect for Bill Veeck’s midget Eddie Gaedel with the 1951 Browns) was
Charles Victor Faust, who persuaded the superstitious John McGraw in 1911 that
he was a good luck charm, as per a fortune teller’s prediction. As Fred
Snodgrass told the tale to Larry Ritter in “The Glory of Their Times,” although
Charlie couldn’t pitch to save his life, he stuck with the Giants for a couple
of years, and, indeed, New York did win the NL pennant in both of those seasons.
And, in fact, Faust actually did get into a couple of games at the end of the
1911 season.
In addition to Crystal, there have been several other cases of
celebrities getting into spring games under similar circumstances – Bruce
Hornsby, Tom Selleck, Charlie Pride, and Garth Brooks. Ah, the dreams…
Naturally, the 2008 season generated controversy in the form of the
Hall of Fame elections. Why not, that’s happened every year from 2003 to 2015
(and did so before and will do so after.) To those of us who favor the Hall
actually accurately representing baseball history, the biggest story in 2008 was
one that had come up before, has come up since, and will come up yet again in
2017. Dick Allen. According to Adjusted OPS, and that’s a statistic, not an
opinion, the 19th best hitter in the history of baseball. He wasn’t elected in
2008, he missed by one vote in 2015 and, rest assured my friends, with Mark
“Frog” Carfagno leading a sophisticated PR campaign in Allen’s favor, this
subject will come up again in a couple of years. Be ready.
As the 2008 season progressed, there were various other happenings
with historical connections. Ken Griffey, Jr., hitting his 600th home run.
Asdrubal Cabrera turning an unassisted triple play, notable because he was
playing for the Indians, a team that unassisted triple plays seem to follow
around. Two guys with 500+ homeruns getting traded on the same day (Junior and
Manny). The incredible Jamie Moyer, 45 years old that season, leading a World
Series-winning team in wins and tying Phil Niekro’s record for the most wins at
the age of 45 (and he wasn’t done yet, Moyer would pitch until he was 49.) And
then, finally the big story for all Phillies fans, or as, Chase Utley put it at
the celebration on Halloween, “World’s F’ing Champions.”
From an historical standpoint, the most interesting thing about the
2008 Series wasn’t that the Rays, like most other Cinderella teams, were
destined to turn into pumpkins. (Hence the second half of the title of the
book.) It was that, although the Phillies had won only two of their six World
Series appearances up to that point, they were more the victim of the breaks
going against them in the 1915, 1950, 1983 and 1993 Series, wherein they lost no
less than 10 one-run games.
As is commonly-known, the outcome of one-run games is often a matter
of luck, or the breaks of the game, or the like. In fact, their four losses in
1915 were ALL one-run games. As break here or there in that Series, and the
team’s entire history might well have been different, as in, maybe William Baker
doesn’t give away Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1917, but instead turns the team
over to someone who could actually try to win.
Well, such are the breaks, hence the first part of the book’s title.
In conclusion, I hark back to the greatest baseball book ever written,
“Ball Four,” which also includes Jim Bouton’s summary of baseball, the greatest
single line ever written about baseball, “You see, you spend a good piece of
your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out it was the other way
around all the time.” Yes, that’s it. Maybe I’ll still see you around this
gripping game.
