Philadelphia's First Dynasty: 100 Years after the A's ruled

Third story in a series

Before there was Babe Ruth and the Yankees, the 1910 Athletics set the standard for which all Philadelphia baseball teams are based. That was the season Connie Mack guided Philadelphia to four trips to the World Series in five years, capturing three championships. In ’10, the A’s rolled over the Cubs in five games, six games over the Giants in ’11, a five-game victory over the Giants in ’13 before it came to an end in four games to the Braves in 1914.

The first dynasty of baseball history came to a crash landing in 1915 when Mack sold off his great players or they jumped to the upstart Federal League as the A’s spent the next seven seasons in last place.

Could you imagine what we would have written and said about Mack in this day and age if he sold Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins and Chief Bender to make a little cash though it meant a decade in the second division? That would be like David Montgomery being told by the Phillies’ partners to dump Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay in order to line the team’s coffers.

Strangely, Mack chose to sell out when his core group of stars were just coming into their primes and it’s not far-fetched to think that the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies could have played in the 1915 World Series. The first two games would have been played at the Baker Bowl on Broad and Huntingdon in North Philly, packed up the gear after the games, and walked down Lehigh for five blocks to Shibe Park.

Forget a subway series; Philadelphia could have hosted the Lehigh Avenue series.

Anyway, over the next few months we will write about the 100 years since Philadelphia started baseball’s first dynasty. Look for some stylings about the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics here over the next few months. We’ll revisit the “Deadball Era” where Frank “Home Run” Baker hit just two homers in 1910, but he led the league the next four straight years with totals of 11, 10, 12 and 9.

So here’s a little slice of the Deadball Era for the Digital Age.

Frank “Home Run” Baker

To just look at the stats, it seems like a joke. A guy with 96 career home runs and a season-high of 12 and they called him, “Home Run,” is like calling a bald guy, “Curly.”

But until Babe Ruth came around, Frank “Home Run” Baker was as big a slugger as any in the game. After all, this was an era where until Ruth hit 29 homers in 1919 (as primarily a pitcher), the single-seasin record for the past 35 years had been 27.

Besides, Baker didn’t get his nickname because he led the American League in homers for four straight seasons, a feat matched only by Ruth and A’s teammate (and Philly city councilman), Harry Davis. He was called “Home Run” because of two homers he hit during the A’s reign atop the baseball world.

First at Shibe Park in Game 2 of the 1911 World Series of Hall of Famer Rube Marquard, followed by another off the great Christy Matthewson at the Polo Grounds in Game 3, Baker’s homers in back-to-back games were the decisive blows in the A’s six-game victory over the New York Giants.

And as far as clutch performers during the Deadball Era, Baker was a veritable Mr. October. In the A’s World Series victories in 1910, 1911 and 1913, Baker batted .409 with three homers and 16 RBIs. Oddly enough, Baker’s on-base percentage in the 1913 World Series was lower than his batting average, but he still had a 1.077 OPS during his first 16 appearances in the Fall Classic, not that anyone in baseball had any inkling about advanced metrics.

Nevertheless, Baker, along with Stuffy McInnis, Eddie Collins, and Jack Barry, formed Connie Mack’s famed, $100,000 infield[1] in which Baker was the oldest of the bunch at 24 in 1910. With a well-paid quartet of ballplayers not quite in their athletic prime, it’s understandable how the A’s won the World Series three times in four seasons and made it to the World Series four times in five years.

If only Mack could have kept them together…

When the upstart Federal League formed in 1915 and attempted to sway major leaguers with high salaries, Baker didn’t jump. Instead, he honored the three-year, $20,000 deal he signed with Mack with a clause that allowed him to quit after the 1914 season. Still, because Baker made $10,000 in the final year of his contract and was due a raise since he was coming off his fourth straight year of leading the league in homers while finishing in the top 10 in runs scored, hits, doubles, total bases, extra-base hits and RBIs. But Mack and the A’s could no longer afford the high salaries of the $100,000 Infield and began selling off players. Before the 1916 season, after sitting out in 1915, Baker was sold to the Yankees.

But Baker really could never quit playing. He never battled Mack over salary because the way he saw it, he got paid more playing baseball than he could from farming. As a result, when Baker “sat out” in 1915, he ended up playing for an amateur team in Upland, Pa. in the Delaware County League. He returned to play for Upland in 1920, skipping the major league season after the death of his first wife.

Regardless, Baker just might be where the stereotype of the slugging third baseman came from. Raised on a farm in Maryland’s eastern shore in a town called Trappe (two hours southeast of Washington, D.C.), Baker was a strong, lefty pull hitter who used a 52-ounce bat. There are mixed reports on his glove work, and he made 35 errors in 146 games during the 1910 season as well as 51 over the next two seasons, but that was overlooked because he batted better than .334 from 1911 to 1914, and led the league in RBIs in two straight seasons beginning in 1912 when he had 130.

As his career wound down in the early 1920s, Baker was a bench player with the Yankees where the home runs were hit by Babe Ruth.

Mostly, Baker was a quiet man and popular with the Philadelphia sports fans. Mack liked him, too, even though he gave him up before the 1916 season. He loved baseball, too, but not more than his farm in Maryland. Though he managed in the minors for a couple of seasons, Baker preferred spending time in Trappe where he could duck hunt near the Chesapeake Bay, work for the local bank and fire company, and tend to his asparagus plants.

He also is credited for “discovering” another eastern shore Hall-of-Famer, Jimmie Foxx, and enjoyed participating in old-timers games and signing autographs. When asked about playing during the time of Ruth instead of the Deadball Era, Baker figured he would have adapted quite well to the newer game.

“I'd say fifty,” he said when asked about how many homers he would hit. “The year I hit twelve, I also hit the right-field fence at Shibe Park thirty-eight times.”

In 1955, Baker was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, and said: “It's better to get a rosebud while you're alive than a whole rose garden after you're gone.”

He lived eight more years, dying at age 77 in 1963.

---

[1] The $100,000 Infield adjusted for inflation would come to approximately $2.2 million in 2010. That’s roughly the average major league salary now.

Philadelphia's First Dynasty: 100 Years after the A's ruled

Second story in a series

Before there was Babe Ruth and the Yankees, the 1910 Athletics set the standard for which all Philadelphia baseball teams are based. That was the season Connie Mack guided Philadelphia to four trips to the World Series in five years, capturing three championships. In ’10, the A’s rolled over the Cubs in five games, six games over the Giants in ’11, a five-game victory over the Giants in ’13 before it came to an end in four games to the Braves in 1914.

The first dynasty of baseball history came to a crash landing in 1915 when Mack sold off his great players or they jumped to the upstart Federal League as the A’s spent the next seven seasons in last place.

Could you imagine what we would have written and said about Mack in this day and age if he sold Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins and Chief Bender to make a little cash though it meant a decade in the second division? That would be like David Montgomery being told by the Phillies’ partners to dump Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay in order to line the team’s coffers.

Strangely, Mack chose to sell out when his core group of stars were just coming into their primes and it’s not far-fetched to think that the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies could have played in the 1915 World Series. The first two games would have been played at the Baker Bowl on Broad and Huntingdon in North Philly, packed up the gear after the games, and walked down Lehigh for five blocks to Shibe Park.

Forget a subway series; Philadelphia could have hosted the Lehigh Avenue series.

Anyway, over the next few months we will write about the 100 years since Philadelphia started baseball’s first dynasty. Look for some stylings about the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics here over the next few months. We’ll revisit the “Deadball Era” where Frank “Home Run” Baker hit just two homers in 1910, but he led the league the next four straight years with totals of 11, 10, 12 and 9.

So here’s a little slice of the Deadball Era for the Digital Age.

Connie Mack

For as synonymous as his name was with baseball during the first half of the last century and for as much as he was as part of Philadelphia like Ben Franklin, W.C. Fields and Grace Kelly, there is a lot we don’t know about Connie Mack. Like Franklin, Mack moved to Philadelphia from Massachusetts and remained for the rest of his life.

But unlike Franklin, it’s difficult to find Mack’s name on much in the city. Sure, there is no way to compare a Founding Father with the most prolific manager in Major League Baseball history, but in a city where sports is treated with so much importance, Philadelphians don’t show much pride that Mack won the World Series five times for his adopted home town.

Truth is, in more than a decade of writing about baseball in Philadelphia, I have heard just one story about Connie Mack and that related to the formation of the Philadelphia Sportswriters Association, which was formed to combat cronyism in the press box.

Of course Mack also lost more games than he won in his 50 years as manager of the Philadelphia A’s, spent the last two decades of his career achieving solid mediocrity in the standings and seemingly popularized the practice of the “fire sale.” Oh yes, even a century ago Mack, also the owner of the A’s, massaged his player payroll the way clubs do now. Ultimately, the Mack family sold the A’s before the 1954 season and just like that, Philadelphia became a one-team town. Two years after the A’s moved to Kansas City, Mack died at age 93 in his home on Anderson Street in Mt. Airy.

So to remember Mack in Philadelphia these days we have a ballpark that was torn down in 1976 and a statue set into its first location in 1957 that now rests in front of its third ballpark. However, a quick bit of research revealed no schools named after Mack, though there is a movement to get him depicted on a stamp.

Perhaps the lack of modern day recognition had something to do with Mack’s reputation as a manager/owner more concerned with the bottom line on the balance sheet instead of the standings. Still, the 1910 team was known for its “$100,000 Infield” with Hall of Famers, Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins, Jack Barry, and Stuffy McInnis.

Home Run Baker hit two homers in 1910.

However, between 1934 and 1950 Philadelphia had two teams that combined for four winning records. Plus, during his 50 seasons with the Athletics, Mack had twice as many 100-loss seasons (10) than he did 100-win seasons (5). Chances are Mack would have never lasted as long as manager of the A’s if he didn’t also own the team, and as such, he was quoted as defining his ownership philosophy thusly:

“The best thing for a team financially is to be in the running and finish second. If you win, the players all expect raises.”

As a manager, historian Bill James, in his Guide to Managers, wrote that Mack: favored a set lineup; did not generally use a platoon approach; preferred young players to veterans; preferred hitters with power who got on base a lot to high-batting-average players; did not often send in a pinch-hitter; did not often use his bench players; did not often employ the sacrifice bunt; believed in "big-inning" offense rather than small ball; and very rarely issued an intentional base on balls.

In other words, he managed similarly to Earl Weaver though their personalities could not have been more different. Mack was elegant with soft eyes and was said to never curse, smoke or drink. In other words, he did not cut the mold for future Philadelphia favorites like Buddy Ryan or Jim Fregosi. Instead, imagine a better-dressed, fitter Andy Reid—at least in a public setting with the press. As a manager, Mack looked for young players with “baseball smarts” and then just let them play without much input.

Nevertheless, Mack put together two of baseball’s first dynasties in two different eras of the game though he didn’t change his style all that much. During the Deadball Era, Mack’s teams routinely led the American League in slugging, on-base percentage and batting average. The 1910 club was led by college grad, Eddie Collins, who paced the team with four homers and a .324 batting average.

Notably, the 1910 A’s did it with pitching. Amazingly, the team won 102 games though they carried just eight pitchers with four of them amassing at least 250 innings. Jack Coombs was the ace with a 31-9 record, 1.30 ERA in 353 innings and 13 shutouts. Five of Mack’s starters combined for 114 complete games.

Compared to 1929 through 1931 with Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons who challenged Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig of the Yankees for the home run crown, the 1910 A’s clubbed just nine homers in 150 games.

But maybe he was called “The Tall Tactician,” because Mack was tall and people like alliteration? Tactically, he set the lineup and let the players go do their thing, though there was one request Mack asked of his players before the 1910 World Series began at Shibe Park on 21^st and Lehigh. That request:

Don’t drink alcohol.

Never one for setting curfews and known for treating his players like adults, Mack asked his players to take a pledge not to drink during the World Series against the Cubs. However, before the clinching game 5, an outfielder named Topsy Hartsel told the manager he needed a drink in order to get through it.

Hartsel got his drink and appeared as the leadoff hitter in Game 5 where he went 1-for-5 with a pair of runs and two stolen bases in his only game of the series. As a result, Connie Mack, born Cornelius McGillicuddy (a name he never legally jettisoned), won his first World Series.

Philadelphia's First Dynasty: 100 Years after the A's ruled

First story in a series

Believe it or not, two of the greatest baseball teams in the history of the game played in Philadelphia. What makes that unbelievable is there has been more lost games from Philadelphia baseball teams than any other. In fact, heading into action on Thursday night, Philadelphia teams in Major League Baseball have lost 14,441 regular-season games and 63 more in the playoffs.

Only a team from Philadelphia could win 99 games and go to the World Series one year and lose 109 games the next season and 117 the year after that. More notably, of the top 10 worst single-season winning percentages in league history, Philadelphia holds 40 percent of the spots. That total increases to 45 percent of the top 20 worst seasons.

Oh, but when things go well in Philly we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Surely the reasons for this are better left for sociologists and trained professionals, so we’ll just leave that type analysis alone. However, when it comes to baseball in Philadelphia there are two eras that are on the top of the list and everything else kind of just filters in behind.

From 1929 to 1931, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics tore through the American League to win three straight pennants with an average of 104 wins per season back when they only played 154 a year. Baseball historians regard the 1929 A’s club as a bit below the ’27 Yankees when ranking the greatest teams of all-time, though the three-year run by the A’s is amongst the greatest ever and had the distinction of ending the Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig dynasty.

But before Babe Ruth, the Yankees or the A’s that knocked them off in three straight seasons, the 1910 Athletics set the standard for which all Philadelphia baseball teams are based. That was the season Connie Mack guided Philadelphia to four trips to the World Series in five years, capturing three championships. In ’10, the A’s rolled over the Cubs in five games, six games over the Giants in ’11, a five-game victory over the Giants in ’13 before it came to an end in four games to the Braves in 1914.

The first dynasty of baseball history came to a crash landing in 1915 when Mack sold off his great players or the jumped to the upstart Federal League and spent the next seven seasons in last place.

Could you imagine what we would have written and said about Mack in this day and age if he sold Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins and Chief Bender to make a little cash though it meant a decade in the second division? That would be like David Montgomery being told by the Phillies’ partners to dump Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay in order to line the team’s coffers.

Strangely, Mack chose to sell out when his core group of stars were just coming into their primes and it’s not far-fetched to think that the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies could have played in the 1915 World Series. The first two games would have been played at the Baker Bowl on Broad and Huntingdon in North Philly, packed up the gear after the games, and walked down Lehigh for five blocks to Shibe Park.

Forget a subway series; Philadelphia could have hosted the Lehigh Avenue series.

Anyway, over the next few months we will write about the 100 years since Philadelphia started baseball’s first dynasty. Look for some stylings about the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics here over the next few months. We’ll revisit the “Deadball Era” where Frank “Home Run” Baker hit just two homers in 1910, but he led the league the next four straight years with totals of 11, 10, 12 and 9.

So here’s a little slice of the Deadball Era for the Digital Age. We’ll start with a little story about my favorite player from those teams:

Charles “Chief” Bender

The Chief, part Chippewa, led Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics to five pennants in the early part of the 20th Century and was a predecessor of Jim Thorpe’s at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Bender was easy-going, but he was not one who didn’t like to get in his subtle digs at those who treated him poorly because of the relevant racism. His teammates were always impressed that Bender withstood the racism of the era with aplomb and patience.

That didn’t mean they didn’t tease him. However, when Bender’s teammates made racist cracks to him, the pitcher called referred to them as “foreigners.” When admiring children crowded around him in the street and sought to ingratiate themselves with war whoops and rain dances, he never lost his patience. He was not unaware of the racism around him, but the easygoing Bender weathered the worst while doing his job, kind of like how Jackie Robinson bore the brunt during his first years in the majors nearly four decades later.

“You ignorant ill-bred foreigners,” Bender used to shout at his tormentors. “If you don't like the way I'm doing things out there, why don't you just pack up and go back to your own countries.”

At that time, as it is even now, teammates, fans, and the media called most players of Native American background “Chief.” In 1910, that was an epithet roughly equivalent to calling an African-American male “boy.” Not to mention, it doesn’t take a whole lot of creativity to call an Indian, “Chief.” But known as Chief to nearly everyone in baseball, Bender didn't complain. However, he always signed autographs “Charles Bender.” Notably, Connie Mack always called him by his middle name, Albert. He also said that if he ever needed one pitcher to win him a game, he would call on “Albert Bender.”

“If I had all the men I've ever handled and they were in their prime and there was one game I wanted to win above all others,” Mack was quoted as saying, “Albert would be my man.”

That was for good reason, too. Bender pitched a four-hit shutout in his first World Series game on Oct. 10, 1905 for a win in Game 2 against John McGraw’s Giants, before dropping the clincher with a five-hitter to the great Christy Mathewson in a 2-0 defeat.

In all, Bender started 10 World Series games and completed nine of them. In the 1911 World Series he started three games, completed them all, and allowed just three runs. In his first seven World Series starts covering 61 2/3 innings, Bender posted a 1.31 ERA and 47 strikeouts to 18 walks.

His best pitch was one he was credited with inventing called the “nickel curve,” which today is known as the slider. According to Baseball Reference, Bender compares to modern pitchers like Bert Blyleven and Greg Maddux.

In 1910, Bender put together his best regular season when he went 23-5 with a 1.58 ERA in 30 games. Perhaps best explaining his dominance in 1910, Bender had a 0.916 WHIP, allowing just 182 hits in 250 innings with a no-hitter against Cleveland on May 12.

During the World Series that season, Bender won the opener with a three-hitter over the Cubs at Shibe Park, but lost in a chance to sweep the series in Game 4 when the Cubs scored with two outs in the 10th inning off him.

Bender played with the A’s until 1914 when he jumped to the Federal League after the World Series. Following a season with Baltimore, Bender returned to pitch in Philadelphia with the Phillies for two seasons. After his playing days, he managed, coached and sometimes pitched with a bunch of minor league teams. Ultimately, he settled back in Philadelphia and lived in the Olney section of town on 12th Street behind the current location of the Albert Einstein Medical Center. Back in Philly, Bender operated a couple of businesses, including a jewelry shop in Conshohocken and a sporting goods store on 13th and A rch Streets in Center City. He also worked at Gimbels in Center City and coached with the A’s beginning in 1945until his death in 1954.

In September of 1953, the veterans committee elected Bender to the Hall of Fame, but eight months later — and three months before his induction at Cooperstown — Bender died of cancer at Graduate Hospital. He was buried at the Hillside Cemetary in Roslyn, Pa.

His legacy, aside from being the ace on the staff of the first dynasty in baseball and inventing the slider, Bender was known for his kindness off the mound and his smarts on it. Ty Cobb claimed Bender was the “braniest” pitcher he faced as well as the era’s “money” pitcher.