Why I Feel Nostalgic About the A’s
Still, as a child, I knew who Connie Mack was. I knew he had an impact on the city. But I had never seen a game Connie Mack managed. I had never seen Bobby Shantz throw a single pitch. I had never even seen Jimmy Foxx hit a home run.
There were something romantic about the Athletics. Perhaps it was growing up in the 1970s as a Phillies fan. To this date, I can recite starting lineup of the 1977 Phillies. I turned six in the middle of that season. Richie Hebner, Ted Sizemore, Larry Bowa and Mike Schmidt were the infield that I cut my teeth on.
But even at that young age, I was keenly aware of the Phillies history of futility. The 1964 crash was still a vivid memory in the minds of my parents and grandparents. The franchise stood for over 90 years and still had not yet won a World Championship. And even though the Phillies had great teams from the mid-70s until 1980, they had lost the pennant in three straight National League Championship Series before I turned eight.
While the Phillies seem to be a dismal disappointment from season to season, there was this mythic championship team that played in the very city where I was born in raised, but were no more. When I became aware that the Athletics, now on Oakland, used to play in Philadelphia, I remember asking my dad why they left the city. His answer reflected the notion that the country had grown, and that it was inevitable that the cities with both an American League and a National League team was going to lose one or the other to Western part of our country. I remember my father telling me that there were people in Philadelphia who lamented that the wrong team had left the city.
The feelings are understandable. The Athletics won three World Championships before the Phillies even went to the World Series in 1915. The A’s went on to win two more, before the Phillies returned to the World Series in 1950. The Athletics had the great slugger Jimmy Foxx well before Mike Schmidt slammed his first home run at Veteran Stadium. A’s left-hander Robert Grove struck fear in the hearts of batters long before Steve Carlton won his four Cy Young Awards.
To a child just learning about baseball, the A’s were legendary. For the first half of the 20th century, if you were a baseball fan in Philadelphia, you were an A’s fan.
So why was it I was deprived a chance to know the American League as a youngster? Why had the better team left Philadelphia?
Thirsting to understand this conundrum, I researched the history of the Athletics. I learned about the early teams. I read about Rube Waddell and the $100,000 Infield. Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, Jimmy Foxx, and Frank “Home Run” Baker became my childhood heroes. I romanticized the A’s. If only they had stayed in Philadelphia, I thought, I might have seen a World Championship already.
But while myths may have their basis in history, the truth sometimes ruins a perfect romantic story. Yes, Connie Matt was known as Mr. Baseball in Philadelphia. But Connie Mack also clung on to his management role with the Athletics for far too long. He was slow to adopt minor-league affiliations as other teams had done to develop young players. Forgetful of his current players’ names, he would often shout out the names from the legendary past when trying to direct his team.
And so, the Athletics fell into disarray. While arguably, the 1929 A’s lineup was more intimidating than the greatest of the Yankees lineups, the A’s could barely climb out of the second division after 1931.
The A’s fell into a fit of futility in the 1940s and 1950s. As rumor has it, the all powerful Yankees grew weary of traveling into North Philadelphia to play at the dilapidated Shibe Park. As the Athletics organization fell further and further into debt, due to the team’s inability to draw fans, the Yankees interfered in the internal politics of the Mack family, convincing Connie Mack’s son, Roy, to forgo a bid to sell the team to a group of Philadelphia investors in favor of an offer from the Yankees landlord, Arnold Johnson. Johnson wanted to move the franchise to Kansas City. And so, in 1954, Philadelphia lost the only team in the city that won a World Championship for the city.
As a child, when it seemed that rooting for the Phillies to win World Series seemed pointless, the A’s presented me with a romantic fantasy. It is a romanticism to which I cling to this very day, despite my Phillies having won two World Championships and five National League pennants since 1980. The Phillies are my team, and always will be. But the Philadelphia Athletics will always have a special place in my heart.
William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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