Born during the Civil War, Connie Mack (nee Cornelius McGillicuddy) had an 11-year career as a journeyman National League catcher, two of them as a player-manager in Pittsburgh. At one time a strong advocate of players' rights, he became part-owner and manager of the Western League's Milwaukee franchise just in time to move it to Philadelphia in the brand new American League in 1901. .
Pioneering in the Junior Major League
Mack led the Athletics to their first of nine league pennants in 1902 with a hard-hitting team featuring six with batting averages above .300. Perhaps even more important, he had two twenty-game-plus pitchers in Eddie Plank and Rube Waddell. When they won again in 1905, they played for the first time in the World Series, which had been instituted in 1903 to match the champions of the two major leagues. The A's lost in five games to the New York Giants in an unparalleled Series in which each game was a shutout, three by Giants immortal Christy Mathewson. The Athletics would rebound by beating the Giants in both 1911 and 1913.
With a world championship in 1910 as well, Mack's team had clearly become the class of baseball. However, after the A's were upset in four games by the Boston Braves in the 1914 World Series, the manager and part-owner sold off several of his star players. One of the reasons was financial: a new Federal League was raiding the two established majors, resulting in inflated salary demands which Mack was unwilling to meet. He was also said to suspect that his heretofore great team had not given its best in the losing 1914 World Series effort. At any rate, the Philadelphia club became a conspicuous loser for the next decade, returning to respectable winning form only in 1925.
The Second Dynasty
By the late 1920's, Mack had rebuilt the team and they went on to three consecutive pennants in 1929, 1930, and 1931, with world championships in the first two of those years. The offense was now led by future Hall of Famers Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, and Al Simmons, and the pitching by Lefty Grove and George Earnshaw. Mack burnished his managerial reputation in the 1929 World Series by starting Howard Ehmke, who had pitched in only 11 games that year. The A's tactician had sent Ehmke to unobtrusively scout the opposing Chicago Cubs during the last weeks of the regular season. Ehmke rose to the occasion by striking out a then-record thirteen batters and starting the A's on an easy five-game win.
Downhill the Rest of the Way
But by the time the A's had been dethroned in the 1931 World Series, the Great Depression was well under way. Mack again sold off the team's best players and, from 1934 on, the club plummeted to the bottom of the standings, losing as many as 105 games in a season twice. In 1947, they edged above .500 for the first time in over a decade, and in 1948, actually contended for the pennant for most of the year, finishing in fourth place with 84 wins.
That was Mack's "last hurrah." A 102-loss campaign in 1950 convinced him, at 88, to close his unique managerial career by firing himself. The club was sold and moved to Kansas City in 1955, later moving to Oakland where two more dynasties arose.
References: Baseball-Reference
Biography Base
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