Pettengill on Freedman, 'Connie Mack's First Dynasty: The Philadelphia Athletics, 1910-1914'


Lew Freedman. Connie Mack's First Dynasty: The Philadelphia Athletics, 1910-1914. Jefferson: McFarland, 2017. Illustrations. 224 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7864-9627-3.

Reviewed by Ryan Pettengill (Mountain View College)
Published on H-Pennsylvania (March, 2019)
Commissioned by Jeanine Mazak-Kahne (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53137

Lew Freedman chronicles a comprehensive history of one of the more successful, albeit mostly forgotten, professional baseball franchises, the Philadelphia Athletics, in Connie Mack’s First Dynasty. More specifically Freedman traces the career of player-manager-owner Connie Mack, the powerhouse who dominated the league in the early days of professional baseball. Freedman presents a detailed history of Mack’s rise within the Philadelphia organization, the impressive roster he assembled, and the business side of baseball that he so skillfully navigated over the course of his forty-year career. Natives of Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania and baseball connoisseurs will appreciate the level of detail Freedman applies to this critical period in the development of Major League Baseball. The book’s primary contribution to the field of sports history is its discussion of Mack’s central role in the evolution of the managerial approaches (including business acumen) to running a professional sports franchise and the influence he brought to later generations of managers/owners. Some may note the missed opportunity in this book to link the development of the Athletics to the socioeconomic development of Philadelphia and to provide a social analysis of what professional baseball, and specifically the Athletics, meant to Philadelphians throughout the early twentieth century.

The central strength of Connie Mack’s First Dynasty is undoubtedly the all-inclusive history of the Philadelphia Athletics as well as the cast of characters Mack assembled who comprised one of the most successful organizations in the history of the sport. Freedman begins the study in 1901 when Mack came to manage the team and both the Athletics and the American League were new and unproven commodities. Freedman then launches into the heart of the book, player biographies, complete with the relationship each player had with Mack and the unique skill set each offered to the Athletics organization. In the process, Freedman unearths some forgotten (or unknown) gems that will certainly add to historians’ and baseball fans’ understanding of the early game. This analysis begins with pitchers Rube Waddell and Jack Coombs. Readers learn of not only Waddell’s league-leading strike-out statistics but also his off-the-field antics, which both frustrated Mack and endeared him to the manager. The Coombs chapter is also highly engaging as readers are introduced to the long-forgotten 1906 twenty-four-inning marathon game the Athletics played against the Boston Red Sox. Freedman then moves on to examine featured players like Charles Albert “Chief” Bender, Eddie Collins, Frank “Home Run” Baker, and Eddie Plank, as well as the Athletics’ “$100,000 Infield.” Through these examinations, the readers are introduced not only to the individual personalities but also to the mechanisms that Mack used to lure them to Philadelphia and, in some instances, keep them there.

Much of this study is centered on the critical years of the Athletics’ history, 1910 to 1915. Freedman dedicates chapters to the 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914 World Series. He notes that the Athletics were able to amass three championships in a five-year span (while appearing in an additional World Series, 1914, in which they were swept by the Boston Braves). Additionally, the book demonstrates that these were critical years in which important off-the-field moves were made to ensure Philadelphia’s longevity and dominance in the American League. For instance, Freedman notes that 1912 was especially important for the Athletics as Mack was adept enough to see that his pitching staff needed “new blood” if Philadelphia was going to continue to be relevant in the American League. Accordingly, Mack added pitchers Joe Bush and Stan Coveleski to his staff, proof positive that Mack was as skilled an evaluator of raw talent as he was an effective manager inside the dugout. Freedman notes that Philadelphia was outpaced in the 1912 season but the moves Mack made during that year proved invaluable as the Athletics claimed the next two American League pennants and won another World Series title.

Perhaps one of the most important contributions made by Connie Mack’s First Dynasty is its discussion of the emergence of the Federal League. Baseball historians have long been aware of the development of the American League and the way it challenged the National League for revenue as well as its influence on the modern game. Less known, however, is the 1913 Federal League upstart. As Freedman points out, the Federal League traced its roots to 1913 and for the next two seasons proceeded to embark on a bidding war for baseball talent. Similar to the establishment of football at the University of Chicago, baseball talent of all varieties found their allegiances to be hot commodities as the Federal League sought to steal them away from the American and National Leagues. In the end, the Federal League lasted a mere two years. Still, as Freedman underscores, the Federal League represented a clear and present threat to the way business was done in professional baseball and played an important role in the evolution of the business side of the game. As he notes, this had a profound impact on managers, including Mack.

Although Connie Mack’s First Dynasty unquestionably adds to our understanding of the early days of professional baseball, it also has many limitations. Unlike Roger Kahn’s Rickey and Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball (2014) or Hank Greenberg’s The Story of My Life (1989), Freedman’s book teaches us relatively little about what role race or ethnicity played through the early development of professional baseball. Similarly, the role of the city of Philadelphia is also largely missing. Peter Levine (From Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience [1992]) convincingly demonstrates how the role of sports, especially baseball, helped turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants acculturate to their new homelands. Much like Freedman, Patrick Harrigan (The Detroit Tigers: Cubs and Community [1997]) provides an excellent overview of the history of a Major League Baseball team—the Detroit Tigers—but he also stops at critical moments to connect major events within the city of Detroit (such as the 1967 “urban rebellion”) to the evolution of the franchise.

To be entirely fair, Freedman is a sports journalist and not a historian so these other authors may very well have had different target audiences in mind. That said, Connie Mack’s First Dynasty is a useful resource for inferring the history of the modern game and understanding where such issues as the reserve clause, integration, or unionization came from. It is an excellent addition to any sports historian’s library and will certainly be of interest to Pennsylvanian sports enthusiasts.

Citation: Ryan Pettengill. Review of Freedman, Lew, Connie Mack's First Dynasty: The Philadelphia Athletics, 1910-1914. H-Pennsylvania, H-Net Reviews. March, 2019.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53137

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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