Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (review)

During his heyday in Philadelphia, Connie Mack was known to the baseball world and beyond as the “Grand Old Man,” and in this well-researched, detailed, and entertaining account of Mack’s life and times, Norman Macht tells us exactly why.

With Mack’s career as a player, manager, and team executive as the central theme, the author traces the development of baseball as a professional sport and business enterprise. The book covers the period from Mack’s birth in 1862 through the 1914 World Series. While Mack was to soldier on in baseball for another forty years, there is enough of the game’s history packed into these pages to satisfy the most demanding baseball buff.

We are treated to interesting and often humorous accounts of the many players, managers, and business executives who came together to form the various teams and, ultimately, in 1901, the American League as a successful rival to the well-established National League. Mack was to soon turn up as manager and part-owner of the AL’s Philadelphia franchise, and when rival manager John McGraw opined that the Philadelphia Athletics team was nothing more than a “white elephant,” Mack seized upon the comment to create the team’s enduring symbol.

The battle between the competing leagues for players, often resulting in lawsuits and pay disputes with contracts signed one minute and discarded the next, was part of baseball’s struggle to find its balance and footing on the American stage. Numerous rule changes were also occurring at the time, giving us what was to emerge as the modern game. One particularly intriguing rule permitted the third base coach to run as a blocker in advance of a player attempting to score (staying outside the foul line, of course).

Through all the changes, rivalries, and managerial machinations of the era, what emerges is Mack’s rise from player and manager, described in his early career as “sly and tricky,” to the respected and admired position that marked his later career. This is the image that has remained. The author takes pains to explain that it was Mack’s universal fairness in his dealings with players, umpires, and others in and out of baseball that led to his preeminent position in the sports world. That he was able to field World Series champions during his tenure only added to his stature.

By his perseverance, dedication, and commitment to a life in baseball, Connie Mack is central to the game’s history. Will his stature and legacy as an early baseball pioneer and champion of the game endure? This book not only goes the distance to ensure that end but also reminds us, once again, why on the sleeve of the Oakland Athletics uniform today the white elephant still dances.