With the upcoming playoff
between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles, New York papers have
been writing about the long time sports rivalry between Philadelphia and New
York across every sport and franchise. This rivalry is founded on mutual
loathing which on the New York side has less to do with the teams involved and
more to do with the Philadelphia fan.
And let’s not kid ourselves.
The Philadelphia sports fans utterly loathe and detest all New York teams…and
all Chicago teams…Detroit teams...Boston teams…I think you get the point.
Hating the opposition is a tried and true tactic of all sports fans. What makes
the Philadelphia fan infinitely more loathsome is that they will just as often
show their vituperation to their own teams. No matter what the circumstances.
In perhaps one of the most notorious audience behavior of all time,
Philadelphia outfielder Gus Zernial was booed by the home fans when he broke
his leg while making a play. For any other city that would be the nadir of fan
behavior. For Philadelphia, it’s a typical day at the ballpark.
Trying to analyze why the Philadelphia
fan is something that would take a great deal of psychoanalysis. But if I had
to make a guess, I think much of it has to do with the history of Philadelphia
baseball. Because no matter how you look at, the baseball history of
Philadelphia is probably worse than any city that has more than one team. Much
of this must be laid at the feet of the Phillies, to be sure (we’ll get to them
in the next part) but I think we do have to put at least some of the blame on
the team that shared their city and for a long time, their ballpark: the
Philadelphia Athletics. To do that, we have to go back in time.
In the 1950s, with
attendance dangerously low for all teams because of television and much of the
country’s westward migration, many long time teams left their cities. While the
most notorious examples are the Giants and the Dodgers, the migration had begun
well before that. In 1952, the Boston Braves left their city for Milwaukee and
a period of commercial success and immense improvement in the standings. In 1953,
the St. Louis Browns moved east to Baltimore and became the Orioles. Initially they would have similar commercial
success and over the next decade become one of the great powerhouses in the
American League.
No one in either city
raised much of an objection when either team left because in each case, the
team in question had been their city’s poor cousin. The Braves had won two
pennants and one world championship in the entire twentieth century and the
Browns had won only a single pennant in their entire existence (and that one
had occurred in 1944, when all the best players were at war.) The Red Sox might
be perennial loser in that same period, but they had a tradition of winning (the
‘Curse’ wasn’t in anyone’s head) and the Cardinals had been the dominant
national league team for the past twenty-five years.
But when the Athletics left
Philadelphia in 1954, it should have caused as much outrage as the Giants and
Dodger’s departure did. Because the Phillies had been around for much longer
than the A’s and had achieved far less. Their entire post-season history was two
World Series appearances and one World Series win. Admittedly, they had won a pennant in 1950
but that would be an aberration and by the end of the decade they would be back
at the bottom of the standings.
The Athletics, by contrast,
had one of the most storied traditions of any team in the American League –
indeed, baseball. Before the rise of the Yankees (and as we shall see, even
afterwards) they had been the most dominant franchise in the A.L. In the first
thirty years of their existence, they had won nine American League pennants and
five World championships. They had been the foundation of two of the greatest baseballs
dynasties in history with some of the greatest players of all time in each of
them. And even though they had not won a
pennant in 1931 as recently as 1948 they had been a serious pennant contender
and were still capable of producing great players. So why did the A’s leave and
the Phillies stay?
The answer is the man who
was the face of the team for half a century: Connie Mack. The owner and manager of the team, his records
of games managed, games won, and games lost will almost certainly never be
equaled, considering he managed the A’s for fifty years and more than 7500
games. One of the most famous names and
faces in baseball almost since the game became a business, he is now virtually
forgotten today, mostly because his team has since moved all the way across the
country. Mack deserves all the credit for creating two of the greatest teams of
all time. But he must also take most of the blame for why his team collapsed
and why it had to leave Philadelphia. To explain this, we must go back even
further in time.
Mack was part of baseball
for so long that one sportswriter referred to him as ‘a tree from the Garden of
Eden’. His career began in the 1880s, not long after the National League was
officially founded. He played every position except pitcher with little
distinction for eleven years and managed briefly with even less. It is likely
that his career would have ended would have ended then had it not been for the
tumult surrounding the game.
By the turn of the century,
the National League was in trouble. Attendance was low for almost every team
and the bad behavior in the fields and in the grounds was turning many people
away. Then in 1901, Ban Johnson who ran a successful minor league wanted to
challenge the majors. The National League dropped four of its poorest
performers and Johnson snatched the teams up. He raided other teams with higher
salaries, drawing away many of the game stars. He founded teams in cities that
already had National League franchises: Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Boston…and
Philadelphia. And in order to offer prestige to many of these franchises, he offered
ownership to many former players. The most significant ones who became owners
were Charles Comiskey, who took over the White Sox, Clark Griffith, who would
take over the newly founded Washington Senators, and Mack who took over the Philadelphia
Athletics. Comiskey and Griffith had managerial experience but would stay in
the front office. Mack named himself manager and held that position for half a
century.
Johnson wanted to show that
the American League was more ‘civilized’ than the National League, and Mack was
the best example of that. He would manage in a coat and tie for his entire
career, he instructed his players to be on their best behavior on the field and
off, and in an era where few athletes even managed to get through high school,
Mack went out of his way to recruit athletes from college campuses. This did
not mean he didn’t make exceptions for special talent: one of his greatest pitchers
was Rube Waddell, whose exploits off the field would fill a book of their own,
much less a column. His players loved and respected him in a way that few
players then or now did their managers, and certainly not their owners.
Mack achieved success on the
field quickly, winning his first pennant in 1902. Three years later, his Athletics
won the pennant again and participated in the second ever World Series against
John McGraw’s New York Giants. It was a series with an outcome that will never
happen again: all five games were complete game shutouts, and the Giants ended
up winning thanks to Christy Mathewson pitching three of them in six days. Small wonder years Mack would say ruefully: “Mathewson
was the greatest pitcher who ever lived. It was wonderful to watch him pitch…when
he wasn’t pitching against you.”
Mack spent the rest of the
decade slowly building up a great team and in 1910 began the first great dynasty
of the American League. The Philadelphia Athletics won four pennants and three
World Series in five years with four of their players eventually going into the
Hall of Fame.
Eddie Plank was one of the
greatest pitchers of all time winning 324 games, which would be the record for
a left-handed pitcher until Warren Spahn broke it. He threw 66 shutouts and has a lifetime ERA
of 2.35, yet curiously his reputation was never as respected as Mathewson or
Walter Johnson, his contemporaries.
Chief Bender was one of
Connie’s most reliable pitchers for this era, though his record was nowhere
near as good as Plank’s, winning ‘only’ 212 games and was washed up sooner than
Plank. Perhaps it was because of his World Series record of 5 and 2 that he had
a better reputation among his peers. (And yes, Bender was a Chippewa
aboriginal. Nicknames back then were very racist.)
Mack’s infield was called
the $100,000 infield and may very well have been the greatest in history. Eddie
Collins has to be on the shortlist for the greatest second basemen of all time:
he batted .328 lifetime, stole over 700 bases, and would eventually play on six
American League pennant winners, none of whom were Yankee teams. Frank ‘Home Run’ Baker was one of the more
distinguished ‘power hitters’ of time, leading the American League four
consecutive years (though never with more than 12). Still he was a great hitter
and a superb third baseman. Shortstop
Jack Barry’s reputation was more for defense than anything else, but 1st
baseman Stuffy McInnis has a hall of fame worthy career: he played for more
than twenty years and has a lifetime batting average of .310, most of it in the
deadball era.
It was one of the greatest
teams ever assembled. But in 1915, the A’s finished dead last with 43 wins and
109 losses. They would stay there for the next six years. How did this happen?
Not long after the 1914 season ended, Mack began to dismantle his championship
team, most famously selling off Eddie Collins to the White Sox for $50,000 –
the largest cash transaction to that point.
Mack’s reasoning for this
selling has never been fully explained. In his autobiography, Mack blamed the rise
of the Federal League, another league meant to take on the two major league.
Many stars abandoned the American League, among them Eddie Plank and Chief
Bender. Mack argued that these departures in 1915 led to disloyalty among his
players and a decline in their fighting spirit. So rather than try to compete
with the good players he had left, he sold all of them off.
This argument has never
held much water. For one thing other, less successful teams were more than
willing to (at least temporarily) raise salaries to keep their stars on their
teams. For another, even after the Federal League dissolved (and they were dead
by the start of the 1916 season) Mack kept selling off anyone on his team that
had talent. (In one of those ironies that plague baseball, Harry Frazee the man
known for selling off Babe Ruth, spent the first years of ownership basically buying
any player on the A’s that Mack would offer. What comes around goes around, I
guess.)
Understandably, attendance
dwindled away for the A’s. Mack spent the better part of the 1920’s slowly but
surely rebuilding. It was an incremental process: in 1921, they finished eighth.
In 1922, seventh. In 1923, sixth. 1924, fifth. In 1925, with the Yankees in
chaos, Mack’s A actually made into first place for the first time in eleven
years. It would be temporary, they finished eight games behind the Senators,
but the fire was back in the A’s fans.
By 1927, Mack’s A’s were
the favorite to win the American League pennant. Well, that didn’t work out. 1928
was a different story. In July, the Yankees had a fourteen game lead over the A’s.
Mack’s team, whose stars I shall get to in a moment, slowly but surely eroded
the Yankee lead until mid-September that caught and passed them. A late
September series would give the Yankees the edge again, but the A’s had still
won 97 games and just finished 2 and a half games out. It was a prelude for
what was to come.
The 1927 Yankees are
considered the greatest team of all time. Some, however, have considered the
1929-1931 A’s deserving of the title. And when you look at who was on their
team and their track record, it’s hard to argue it. Because while the only
players on the Yankees during this era who are completely qualified Hall of Famers
are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, the A’s of this era had four that have to be
considered among the greatest of all time.
Lefty Grove was once
considered by Bill James to be the greatest pitcher who ever lived, even though
he ‘only’ won 300 games. Grove led the American League in ERA nine times, wins
seven times and winning percentage five times, more than any other pitcher in
history. And during his three years with the A’s he may have been the most dominant
pitcher of any era: he won 79 and lost just 15. In 1931 alone, he went 31-4 and
was named the American League MVP.
Mickey Cochrane was the
first truly great catcher as we define it in terms of both defense and hitting.
Not as much of a power hitter as those to come, his lifetime batting average of
.320 remains the highest of any player who spent his career as a catcher.
Al Simmons famously said
that he hated pitchers. I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual considering how
much devastation he laid upon them. He drove in 100 runs or more eleven straight
seasons, and in this period batted over .390 twice. Near the middle of his career, his average
dropped tremendously: he still finished with a lifetime average of .334.
But few hitters struck more
fear into pitchers then Jimmie Foxx. At one point, Foxx was second all time to
Babe Ruth in home runs, and he was for years considered the greatest
right-handed home run hitter of all-time. Twice he hit fifty home runs, and in
1932 he hit 58, just five years after Ruth had hit sixty. He won the triple
crown in 1933 and was three times the American League MVP.
The Athletics won three
consecutive pennants from 1929-1931 and two world championships. If you had
asked a Philadelphia fan in 1931 if twenty five years later one of their teams
would leave the city, and then asked which one it would be, I guarantee you no
one would have said the Athletics. So what happened?
Well, Mack dismantled his
team beginning in 1933, though this time he had a much better reason than before:
there was a Great Depression going on and like everyone else, baseball was
struggling to survive. Many teams did so by selling off their best players. In
the aftermath, the Yankees would manage to resume their dominance over baseball
which they would hold on to until 1964 while the Athletics went into the cellar
and basically stayed there rarely emerging higher than fourth the rest of the
way. The larger question is, why did things grow so dire for the A’s? Sadly
that was Mack’s fault.
The times in baseball were
beginning to change even as Mack’s second dynasty was beginning. More teams
were building farm systems to grow their own players. Mack never truly did
that, continuing to scout the minor leagues. Meanwhile, many of his closest associates
like him were growing older and dying off.
But the biggest problem was Mack himself.
At some point, Mack should
have seriously considered retirement from one or both of his positions and started
looking for a successor. The older he got it became increasingly clear that it
was harder for him to keep track of what was happening on the field: by the
1940s, it was rumored that his son Earle (called a ‘coach’) was managing the
team and that Connie was basically a figurehead. More
than that, because Mack had been around for so long, no one was able to tell
him the things he should be hearing or to relinquish ownership. Mack said in an
article in 1948: “that if he lost the team, he’d be dead in two weeks.” This
was an eerily prescient comment – Mack ended up dying not long after the A’s
left Philadelphia – but the fact remains the team probably could have been
saved had he been willing to give up some of his responsibilities.
But too many people were
interested in celebrating Mack than helping the A’s. In 1951, not long after commemorating his
fifty years in baseball, Mack finally resigned from both managing and ownership. By that point, while the A’s were not a terrible
team - they would finish fourth the next season and still had many good players
– mismanagement and blundering on many levels led to the A's being sold in 1953
and moving to Kansas City in 1954.
Perhaps its an exaggeration
to say Philadelphia was never the same after the A’s left – they hadn’t
contended in a very long time and their attendance had been miserable – but it’s
hard not to imagine a similar sense of betrayal that Giants and Dodgers fan felt
a few years later. A team that in the minds of many adults that was known for
greatness and one of the most distinguished fixtures in baseball had abandoned
its home, leaving Philadelphia fans forced to root for a team whose entire
history, as we shall see, was just losing. I would feel enormous animosity towards
baseball and maybe every other sport.
The A’s have never
recovered. In the nearly seventy years
since they went west, they’ve effectively become the nomad of baseball, playing
in Kansas City and then Oakland to stadiums that have been notoriously empty
even when times are good. There’s also
an argument that the dignity that Mack imbued his franchise with for fifty years
left the minute the A’s left Philadelphia. During their tenure in Kansas City,
they were best known for trading away their best players to the Yankees and
getting has-beens in returns. Charles Finley took over the team in 1961 and
almost immediately became the gadfly and monster of ownership for the entirety
of his tenure, treating the establishment, the fans, his management and his
players with utter disdain and contempt, with his reputation utterly
overpowering the brilliant team he would eventually build up. Even his own
dynasty in the 1970s -with five consecutive division titles and three consecutive
World championships - was always being
overshadowed by Finley’s treatment of the players and fans in Oakland. The ballpark they played in was a horror
show, and the A’s frequently had the lowest attendance in baseball even when
they were winning.
Even when Finley left, the
A’s would never become dignified when they won: their dynasty in the 1980s was
built around self-proclaimed bad boys who in the cases of Jose Canseco and Mark
McGwire issued in the era of steroids that afflicted the game for more than
fifteen years. Periods of contention and momentary greatness under Billy Beane
has always been overshadowed by the fact that the A’s are now a small-market,
cash-poor team. For the past quarter of a century, the A’s have almost always
been under discussion as likely to leave Oakland, no matter how well they do in
the standings. Perhaps some day it will finally happen.
I have read a lot, as this article no doubt makes
clear, about the A’s and Connie Mack. And I don’t think he was the kind of
person who even in death was capable of deep abiding bitterness. Nevertheless,
I can not help but look at the fate of the A’s since leaving Philadelphia as a
deathbed curse: condemned to wander the country, unloved, unappreciated for
reasons that are lost to history and unlike all other sports curses, never to
be redeemed even after victory.
This article sums up the
tragedy of Philadelphia baseball. The conclusion deals with farce, which if you
know even the bare minimum about the Phillies seems to be treating it too lightly
and too seriously at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment