The Philadelphia Athletics dominated the first fourteen years of the American League, winning six pennants through 1914 under the leadership of their founder and manager, Connie Mack. But beginning in 1915, where volume 2 in Norman L. Macht's biography picks up the story, Mack's teams fell from pennant winners to last place and, in an unprecedented reversal of fortunes, stayed there for seven years. World War I robbed baseball of young players, and Mack's rebuilding efforts using green youngsters of limited ability made his teams the objects of public ridicule.
At the age of fifty-nine and in the face of widespread skepticism and seemingly insurmountable odds, Connie Mack reasserted his genius, remade the A's, and rose again to the top, even surpassing his earlier success. Baseball biographer and historian Macht recreates what may be the most remarkable chapter in this larger-than-life story. He shows us the man and his time and the game of baseball in all its nitty-gritty glory of the 1920s, and how Connie Mack built the 1929-1931 champions of Foxx, Simmons, Cochrane, Grove, Earnshaw, Miller, Haas, Bishop, Dykes-a team many consider baseball's greatest ever.
Norman L. Macht is the author of more than thirty books, including Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (available in a Nebraska Paperback).
Norman L. Macht is the author of more than thirty books, including Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (available in a Nebraska Paperback).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 000 Introduction 000 1. The Federal League Goes to Court 000 2. Battle of the Bullheads 000 3. Starting Over 000 4. Courage and Convictions 000 5. The McGillicuddys at Home 000 6. A Different Kind of War 000 7. Cutting Back 000 8. 1918 000 9. The Soldiers' Return 000 10. Big Business--Big Fight 000 11. The Babe Ruth Era Begins 000 12. Judge Landis Presiding 000 13. The Twenties' Curtain Goes Up 000 14. Out of the Basement 000 15. On the Rise 000 16. "Hey, Big Spender" 000 17. Johnson v. Landis 000 18. Fort Myers 000 19. In the Race Again 000 20. Here Come the Yankees 000 21. Mr. Speaker and Mr. Cobb 000 22. Struck by Lightning 000 23. The Good Fight 000 24. Back on Top 000 25. World Champions 000 26. Shibe Park and the Neighborhood 000 27. A's Win; World Loses 000 28. 1930 World Series 000 29. Baseball's Greatest Team? 000 30. 1931 World Series 000 31. Mr. Mack 000 Acknowledgments 000 Index 000
