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A Founding Father of modern baseball, Cornelius Alexand...)
A Founding Father of modern baseball, Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy started out as a catcher and moved on to become the consummate manager and part owner of the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 to 1950. Better known as Connie Mack, he cut a dashing figure clad in a business suit and straw skimmer. With an even-tempered manner, "Mr. Mack" was regarded as a unique combination of coach and father figure by his players—who included such all-time greats as Ty Cobb, Lefty Grove, and Chief Bender. This engaging autobiography, written with his characteristic warmth and enthusiasm, reads like a history of baseball during the first half of the twentieth century.
Enhanced by seventy photos, Mack walks us through his amazing life—and the highlights of his legendary career. He holds the records for most wins and losses by a manager, he won nine American League pennants, brought the A's to eight World Series and won five of them. Plus, there has never been another man who has managed one sports team for fifty years. Achieving the ultimate recognition, the "Grand Old Man of Baseball" was elected to the National Hall of Fame in 1937, and was the first person chosen for the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Connie Mack was an American baseball manager and club owner.
Background
Connie Mack was born Cornelius McGillicuddy on December 22, 1862, in East Brookfield, Massachusets. He was the son of Michael McGillicuddy and Mary McKillop.
His surname was informally shortened to Mack by his father, a wheelwright, laborer, and Union army veteran who was hard-pressed to support his family.
Education
Mack's education ended with grammar school.
Career
Mack spent his youth working twelve-hour days in a shoe factory. At age twenty-one he was a $15-a-week factory foreman. A skilled catcher, the lanky, six-foot-four-inch Mack played baseball on Sundays with a local amateur champion team in 1883. The following year, he joined the professional Meriden team of the Connecticut State League.
In 1885, he was earning $200 a month playing for Hartford in the Eastern League, and at the end of that season, he was acquired by Washington of the National League. With last-place Washington, Mack was rated as a fair-hitting, good-fielding catcher who was clever at handling pitchers.
In 1890, Mack joined the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players in battling the major-league restrictive reserve clause and salary limitation policies. He became a member of the Buffalo club of the Players' League and invested his life's savings in this losing venture. When the league collapsed that fall, he joined the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League, remaining with that weak team for six seasons, three of them as manager.
After being dismissed as manager in 1896, Mack accepted an offer from President Byron Bancroft Johnson of the Western League to manage the Milwaukee team. During the next four years, he gained valuable experience in administration and led the team to four first-division finishes.
In 1901, when Johnson renamed the circuit the American League and battled the National League for recognition, Mack moved the Milwaukee team to Philadelphia. With the financial support of Benjamin F. Shibe, a sporting-goods manufacturer, Mack as manager and the part owner made the Philadelphia Athletics one of the strongest franchises in the new league.
Over the next half-century, the Athletics won nine league championships and five World Series titles but also a share of infamy for many last-place finishes. In the early years of the American League's struggle for recognition, Mack's team was a bulwark, winning championships in 1902 and 1905 although losing the 1905 World Series to the New York Giants. Mack recruited a powerful young team dominated by collegiate stars like Eddie Plank, Jack Barry, Eddie Collins, and John ("Stuffy") McInnis.
In 1909, the team moved into Shibe Park, a structure capable of seating 33, 000. The following year, with their celebrated "$100, 000 infield, " the Athletics won the league pennant and the World Series, and over the next four years, they added three league titles and two World Series victories.
The two Series wins over the Giants established the American League on a par with the National and enhanced Mack's reputation as a tactician and developer of players. In 1914 falling attendance and rising salary demands brought on by the bid of the interloping Federal League for major-league status hurt Mack badly. Unable to compete in an atmosphere of rising costs and fearing the inroads from World War I, he sold or released his star players, a much-criticized retrenchment policy that consigned his team to the last place for seven straight seasons.
Shibe's death in 1922 enabled Mack to acquire half-ownership and to control club operations. Shibe Park was remodeled, and growing profits were used to acquire young talent, including several players purchased from Jack Dunn, a friend, and owner of the strong minor-league Baltimore franchise. Mack bought pitcher Robert ("Lefty") Grove from Dunn for $100, 600 in 1925.
At the peak of his fame the white-haired Mack, who habitually managed in a business suit and straw hat and positioned his outfielders by waving a scorecard, was acclaimed as the elder statesman of baseball. His Athletics added two more pennants and one World Series title in 1930-1931.
Until 1933, the team remained a pennant contender. Then falling gate receipts brought on by the Great Depression prompted Mack again to sell star players to meet expenses. Although he was criticized for destroying another great team, he argued that the team payroll had been among the highest in the game and that his decision was forced by pressing creditors, falling attendance, and a state ban on Sunday baseball.
In 1937, Mack acquired full control from the Shibe heirs and became president of the Athletics. With the coming of night baseball and with the National League Phillies also using Shibe Park, the financial plight improved. But Mack's teams remained perennial losers, and his reputation, despite his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938 and national acclaim as the "Grand Old Man" of baseball, became that of the pinchpenny who tore down champion teams.
Stubbornly clinging to his management post, Mack became increasingly ineffective. His sons took full control in 1950, Mack retaining the empty title of president. In 1953, Shibe Park was renamed Connie Mack Stadium, a break with tradition that Mack resisted and that portended the end of his baseball career.
The following year his financially pressed sons persuaded Mack to sell the team to Arnold M. Johnson, a Chicago businessman, for $3. 5 million. Mack signed from a sickbed, unaware of Johnson's decision to move the franchise to Kansas City, Mo. When the move took place in 1955, the family was shocked.
Mack survived the sale by fifteen months, dying at his home in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
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A Founding Father of modern baseball, Cornelius Alexand...)
Views
Quotations:
"The game has kept faith with the public, maintaining its old admission price for nearly thirty years while other forms of entertainment have doubled and tripled in price. And it will probably never change. "
"You can't win them all. " ~ Connie Mack
"I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself. "
"No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball. "
"You're born with two strikes against you, so don't take a third one on your own. "
"Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles. This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life. "
Personality
Mack's sixty-six years in the major leagues had shown him to be a brilliant innovator. But his triumphs were blighted by his inability to recognize his fading abilities and his failure to delegate authority to dynamic successors.
For placing his sons Roy, Earle, and Connie, Jr. , in key positions, he was accused of nepotism. By giving the sons half his stock, he embittered his wife. His players accused him of penury for opposing higher salaries.
Connections
On November 2, 1887, Mack married Margaret Hogan. After her death in 1892, their three sons were raised by Mack's mother.
In 1910, he married Katherine Hallahan; they had five children.