"One More Championship"

The visiting team's dressing room in Philadelphia's old Shibe Park was dressed up to look like a banquet hall one day last week. Gay flags hung from the walls, a long table sported baskets of flowers and an icy cake decorated with sugar baseball bats & balls, and about 100 baseball men milled noisily about sipping Scotch & soda. Presently they began to munch chicken patties, crab cutlets, cakes, nuts and mints. Suddenly a tall, gaunt old fellow with bushy white eyebrows and sunken eyes strode in briskly. The guests promptly gave him a spontaneous yell of greeting. The old fellow was Cornelius McGillicuddy ("Connie Mack"), manager, treasurer, president and co-owner of the Philadelphia Athletics. The occasion was his 75th birthday.

Connie Mack remained at his party an hour and a half, delightedly chatting with some of his old players: Jimmy Dykes (now manager of the Chicago White Sox), Herb Pennock, Chief Bender, Rube Waiberg, Howard Ehmke. Then he quietly thanked them all, made a short speech and rode back to his Germantown home to rest for three hours after the excitement. Connie Mack has been in poor health since he was injured by a batted ball during spring training in Mexico last year. During the last six weeks of the season, when he was afflicted with an old gall bladder ailment, his familiar figure, dressed in street clothes, wearing a pre-War high hard collar, brandishing a score card, was absent from the Athletics' dugout. Last week Connie Mack did not eat or drink at his birthday party. He is on a diet of custards, milk and pudding.

For 75 years Connie Mack has celebrated his birthday on Dec. 23. Last summer he visited his birthplace (East Brookfield, Mass.), discovered he was born Dec. 22, 1862, decided it was too late to change and plans to continue observing his nativity on the 23rd. It is characteristic that the Mack legend, greatest in baseball history, should start right off with a myth.

The oldest manager in big-league baseball has won more championships, trained more managers than any other man alive. He started baseball in 1883 as a mittless catcher in the Central Massachusetts League--when catchers caught the ball on first bounce. Three years later he made his major-league debut as a catcher for Washington and in 1894 he landed his first managerial job--with the Pittsburgh Pirates. But it was with Milwaukee (1897-1900) that Connie Mack's metamorphosis from a catcher to a manager was really made. At the end of the 1900 season (the year the American League was formed) he went to Philadelphia, was able to persuade

Benjamin F. Shibe. a manufacturer of baseball equipment, to build a ball park and buy a ball team. The Athletics, with Mack as manager, played their first game in 1901, won their first pennant in 1902, their second in 1905. But Manager Mack's first great team -- with the famed "$100,-ooo infield" of Frank Baker. Jack Barry, Eddie Collins, Stuffy Mclnnis--was not assembled until 1910. In five years they breezed through four American League pennants, three world championships. In 1914 Philip Ball, late owner of the St. Louis Browns, Oilman Harry F. Sinclair and the Ward Baking Co. backed the organization of a third major league, the Federal League, with clubs in Chicago, Indianapolis, Baltimore, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Buffalo, Newark, Brooklyn. With fat salary checks they tried to lure players from the two older leagues. When Mack's dissatisfied players demanded more money, he decided to break up the team, sold his famed infield to clubs in his own league. The Federal League lost so much money it was forced to quit at the end of the 1915 season. Connie Mack had come on evil days, too. For seven years (1915-21) his Athletics finished last in the American League, while he squinted shrewd eyes at 1,000 young men to find the right combination for another winning team.

In 1929 Connie Mack had developed his second great team with Grove, Walberg and Earnshaw pitching, Mickey Cochrane catching. The team won three pennants in a row, was so invincible that Philadelphia fans became bored with it and stayed away from Shibe Park. The Athletics lost money, and, as in 1914, Connie Mack started to sell out. Owner Thomas Yawkey of the Boston Red Sox paid him almost half a million dollars to get Jimmy Foxx, Roger Cramer, Bob Grove, Rube Walberg, Max Bishop. The Chicago White Sox bought Jimmy Dykes, Al Simmons, George Haas, George Earnshaw. Detroit took Mickey Cochrane to manage the Tigers. In 1936 Connie Mack, not looking very different from the way he looked 22 years before (see cut, p. 35), started rebuilding the Athletics at the age of 73.

For a brief period early last season his revamped Athletics rode along in first place, but the hot pace finally told on his rookies and they finished seventh. But despite his ailments and his 75 years, Connie Mack is not disheartened. "I certainly hope to be back waving a score card next spring," he said. "I am putting myself in condition now for the forthcoming campaign. . . . It's such a little time I've been around. I want to have one more championship."

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