Can there be such a thing as too much success? The dynastic Philadelphia Athletics of the Dead Ball Era certainly put that theory to the test. It did not take long for the Athletics to surpass their neighbors, the Philadelphia Phillies – in the win column and at the turnstiles.
By 1902, in just their second season, the Athletics (420,078) outdrew the Phillies (112,066) by a nearly 4:1 ratio. The Mackmen captured their first American League pennant that season while the Phillies sputtered to a seventh place finish. By 1907, buoyed by one of the greatest pennant races of all-time, the Athletics drew an astonishing 625,581 paying customers to cramped Columbia Park – an incredible figure for the era. Thousands more would view games from the roof tops, tree tops, and fence tops that surrounded the wooden enclosure.
President Ben Shibe and manager Connie Mack were making money hand-over-fist now, but soon realized that with every potential customer that they had to turn away, they could be making more – much more. Shibe knew he needed a new ballpark to house all of the patrons that were clamoring to see his product in person.
The Athletics finished in the American League’s first division six of their first seven seasons. As they tailed off in the standings in 1908, their last season in Columbia Park, so did their fortunes at the gate. The drop off was brief – just the one season. The club’s fortunes skyrocketed the following season.
Shibe Park opened on April 12, 1909 to rave reviews from players, fans, rival executives, and architectural critics. The ballpark was a modern marvel built of steel and reinforced concrete with a veneer of red brick and terra cotta trimmings. The lower and upper pavilions of the grandstand featured “retiring rooms” for ladies and gentlemen. Clubhouses were connected to dugouts via a series of tunnels.
There was a restaurant, a team store, executive offices, a parking garage under the right field bleachers, along with a number of other modern features. The official seating capacity was 23,000 with an additional 6,000 in standing room. Ben Shibe built it and the fans came – in droves! 674,915 paid Shibe and Mack for the privilege to watch the White Elephants. Thousands more paid the enterprising homeowners along 20th (right field) and Somerset Streets (left field) to watch the action from their roof tops.
The Mackmen rebounded from a subpar 1908 to finish three and a half games back of the pennant-winning Detroit Tigers in 1909. With a young nucleus of budding stars – Eddie Collins, Frank Baker, Jack Barry and a stable of star veterans – Chief Bender, Eddie Plank, Harry Davis, and Danny Murphy – the franchise was on the verge of a championship.
The Athletics posted their first 100-win season in 1910 (102-48) and easily dispatched the Chicago Cubs in the World Series – for all intents and purposes, ending the Cubs’ dynasty. The novelty of Shibe Park had worn off slightly from its inaugural year, but the product on the field kept the turnstiles clicking.
That on-field success sustained the gate receipts. Attendance remained over half a million per season in 1911, 1912, and 1913. Mr. Mack’s boys would capture the World Series in 1911 and 1913, as well. They would drop to a distant third in 1912 as Smoky Joe Wood and the Speed Boys of the Boston Red Sox swamped the junior circuit on their way to the title.
Once the New York Giants were dispatched in the fifth game of the 1913 World Series, the Athletics were truly on top of the world – the American League’s first dynasty. They had just captured their third World’s Series championship in four years and were in the top three in league attendance every year of their existence except for two – 1901 and 1908. Then, something happened, apathy set in amongst the fandom.
The the club raised another championship flag on April 23, 1914 in front of a meager Opening Day crowd of around 10,000 on a brutally cold day. The weather notwithstanding, the small gathering was a portend for the club’s bottom line that season. The Mackmen didn’t let the lack of enthusiasm hurt their performance on the field. They won 99 games en route to their fourth American League pennant in five seasons.
There were rumblings throughout the course of the season that the upstart Federal League was actively courting many star players, notably pitchers, to jump to the new league for much larger paychecks. The Athletics were not immune as the Feds were targeting aging star hurlers Eddie Plank and Chief Bender. The same day the Athletics barely drew 10,000 fans to their home opener, the new Chicago Federals had drawn an astonishing 30,000 to their inaugural game at the corner of Clark & Addison on Chicago’s North Side. The Federal League was a real threat and organized baseball took notice.
Despite the winning record on the field in 1914, behind the scenes the team was split in half. Advances from the Feds and their fat contracts was too much to ignore. The clubhouse splintered. Many wanted the payday while others were loyal to “Mr. Mack” despite the fact that many of them were underpaid considering their championship pedigree. Mack knew his team as well as many manager in the game, he figured they would put their differences aside and trounce the miracle Boston Braves in the World Series. One last title.
After losing both ends of a Fourth of July double-header to Brooklyn, the Braves, perennial losers in the senior circuit, were in familiar territory. They were dead last with a record of 26-40, trailing the league-leading Giants by 15 games. After a day off to lick their wounds, the Braves swept those same Dodgers during another double-header, thus commencing one of the greatest stretches in modern major league history.
From July 6 through the end of the season, the Miracle Braves went an inexplicable 68-19! They erased the 15 game deficit and copped the pennant by ten and a half games. An incredible turnaround with no clear explanation. The experts, however, gave the Braves no chance against Mack’s machine. Dick Rudolph, the slim right-hander who pitched a gem against Brooklyn way back on July 6, got the ball from manager George Stallings in Game One. He handcuffed the Mackmen – allowing one unearned run on five hits in a complete game masterpiece. The Braves won easily, 7-1. There was no cause for alarm…yet.
For the first time in Shibe Park’s brief history, there were empty seats for a World Series game. There wasn’t a distinct buzz inside of the ballpark or surrounding the team. Instead of putting down a few dollars to enter the park, many fans crowded adjacent roof tops to save some dough. Perhaps, they sensed that something was amiss with the team. Apathy had set in.
Despite the team’s on-field success, attendance had plummeted sharply from the year before, and to its lowest number since the franchise’s inaugural year, 1901. Mack saw the writing on the wall. Some of his stars were getting older. The pitching staff had serious mileage. Future Hall of Famer Eddie Plank was nearing 40. Right-handers Chief Bender and Jack Coombs were now injured more often than not. Sometime during the course of the regular season, Mack had decided that this would be his last hurrah with the current team. The dynasty was coming to an end; it was time to rebuild. Nobody foresaw the stunning end.
Loyalists of the Athletics followed their team closer than any other fan base. Surely, many could feel the end was near; that was reflected in the nose-diving attendance. Mack, fearing a raid on his roster from the outlaw league, and realizing that many of his troops were unhappy, was ready to unload after the World Series – win or lose. Mr. Mack had no tolerance for unhappy players. Unhappy players cause dissent and disrupt team chemistry. Those were headaches for other managers, not Mack.
The second game was a pitchers’ duel between Plank and Bill James, Boston’s unlikely 22-year old hero. During Boston’s miracle 68-19 run to end the season, James went 19-1, with a 1.51 earned run average, en route to a 26-7, 1.90 earned run average season. Plank and James dueled for eight scoreless innings until the Braves pushed across a run in the top of the ninth inning to secure a 1-0 victory and a commanding two-game lead in the series. The Athletics battled valiantly, but the Braves won the next two games at Fenway Park to complete one of the most improbable championship runs in American sports history.
Mack and many of his players knew it was over – this team would never play together again. The house-cleaning began not long after the World Series. Bender, Coombs, Plank, Frank Baker, and Eddie Collins would not be a part of the 1915 squad. The club got younger but much less talented. The Mackmen went from 99 wins and a pennant one season to rock bottom and 109 losses the following season. Attendance cratered. Locals couldn’t be paid to watch the mess on the field.
When rumors began to circulate late during the 1914 season of Mack’s potential plan, many fans stated that they would not attend games at Shibe Park. They kept their word. Apathy had turned to anger. Perhaps, nobody summed up what was transpiring at the corner of 21st and Lehigh better than Washington Senators beat writer Ed Grillo. During his post mortem of the 1914 season, The Washington Star scribe hit the nail on the head:
“Connie Mack is not to be blamed if he has decided to break up his famous pennant-winning aggregation. If a club cannot make money with a team which romps home with the flag, what is the good of having it? The chances are that when Mack starts to rebuild a team with recruits that interest will be revived in the team. Last year it was taken for granted that the Athletics would win. The result was that only a small portion of fans went to the park to see the games, the greater number being satisfied with reading about the game in the papers or watching some downtown scoreboard. The fans simply were tired of seeing the team win, and if next season Mack has some new faces and it becomes a question as to where the team will finish there may be a revival of interest, which is very much needed.”
Winning created apathy. Fans wanted something new and fresh. Some wanted new players, others wanted new leadership. They would get new players; they would have to wait another 36 years for new leadership. Mack would eventually rebuild his machine. Nearly a generation would pass until the mighty Mackmen were on top of the baseball world once again.
[PHOTO: L-R, pitchers Charlie Boardman, Herb Pennock, Weldon Wyckoff, Joe Bush, Bob Shawkey, and outfielder Amos Strunk on April 11, 1914 at Shibe Park, Philadelphia. Colorization courtesy of: @BaseballInColor on Twitter.]
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