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Connie Mack #1
Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball
Connie Mack (1862–1956) was the Grand Old Man of baseball and one of the game’s first true celebrities. This book, spanning the first fifty-two years of Mack’s life, through 1914, covers his experiences as player, manager, and club owner and will stand as the definitive biography of baseball’s most legendary and beloved figure.
Norman L. Macht chronicles Mack’s little-known beginnings. He tells how Mack, a school dropout at fourteen, created strategies for winning baseball and principles for managing men long before there were notions of defining such subjects. And he details how Mack, a key figure in the launching of the American League in 1901, won six of the league’s first fourteen pennants while serving as manager, treasurer, general manager, traveling secretary, and public relations and scouting director (all at the same time) for the Philadelphia Athletics.
This book brings to life the unruly origins of baseball as a sport and a business. It also provides the first complete and accurate picture of a character who was larger than life and yet little the tricky, rule-bending catcher; the peppery field leader and fan favorite; the hot-tempered young manager. Illustrated with family photographs never before published, it affords unique insight into a colorful personality who helped shape baseball as we know it today.
Norman L. Macht chronicles Mack’s little-known beginnings. He tells how Mack, a school dropout at fourteen, created strategies for winning baseball and principles for managing men long before there were notions of defining such subjects. And he details how Mack, a key figure in the launching of the American League in 1901, won six of the league’s first fourteen pennants while serving as manager, treasurer, general manager, traveling secretary, and public relations and scouting director (all at the same time) for the Philadelphia Athletics.
This book brings to life the unruly origins of baseball as a sport and a business. It also provides the first complete and accurate picture of a character who was larger than life and yet little the tricky, rule-bending catcher; the peppery field leader and fan favorite; the hot-tempered young manager. Illustrated with family photographs never before published, it affords unique insight into a colorful personality who helped shape baseball as we know it today.
742 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2007
18 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
Norman L. Macht
53 books4 followersNorman Macht is a freelance baseball historian who has authored numerous books and innumerable articles in publications such as Baseball Digest, The Sporting News, National Sports Daily, Sports Heritage, USA Today Baseball Weekly, The San Francisco Examiner and The National Pastime (plus other SABR publications).
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 10, 2021
Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, was one of the more important figures in the early history of baseball. He is best known as the first manager of the Philadelphia (now Oakland) Athletics, having brining them in as a charter member of the American League. Mack helped form this league along with Ban Johnson, Charles Comiskey and others to form a true competitor to the National League. But there is much more to the story of Connie Mack aside from just being the first owner and manager (for more than 50 years) of the Athletics. His life, in and out of baseball, up to 1915 is chronicled in this excellent volume – which is the first of a three-volume set on Mr. Mack, as he was commonly called.
To cover this much material, the book must be well researched and painstakingly recorded. It took Macht several years to compile this material and several more years to compose it into the three books. As one can imagine, the attention to detail is excellent, almost to the point that it feels like the reader thinks that he or she is living in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. While many have given high praise to Macht for his writing about the Athletics under the helm of Mack, this reader believed that it would not have been as good as it was had he not done an even better job at writing about Connie Mack the catcher, who was usually one of the better players on whichever team that would give him a job, at least when it came to baseball smarts and guile. Mack's prowess as a catcher would benefit him well later when he became a manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League.
When he joined the Milwaukee Brewers of the Western League, which later became the American League, Mack answered the call of Ban Johnson to create a team in Philadelphia and it was there that Mack enjoyed his best success to date, winning five of the first 14 American League championships. Much like Mack's teams, Macht seems to hit everything right when writing about these teams and the colorful characters such as Home Run Baker and Napoleon Lajoie, whom Mack and the Athletics lost in a bitterly contested court case as to whether the player was bound by the contract of his former team.
That part of the book illustrates that no matter what era of baseball one reads about, it has always been a business first and a game second, especially to men like Mack whose livelihood depends on much more than just wins and losses. While this book only takes the reader to 1915 when Mack was still in the dugout for the Athletics into the 1950's, it is an excellent look into the early years of professional baseball and the setting into his life, both personal and professional.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
To cover this much material, the book must be well researched and painstakingly recorded. It took Macht several years to compile this material and several more years to compose it into the three books. As one can imagine, the attention to detail is excellent, almost to the point that it feels like the reader thinks that he or she is living in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. While many have given high praise to Macht for his writing about the Athletics under the helm of Mack, this reader believed that it would not have been as good as it was had he not done an even better job at writing about Connie Mack the catcher, who was usually one of the better players on whichever team that would give him a job, at least when it came to baseball smarts and guile. Mack's prowess as a catcher would benefit him well later when he became a manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League.
When he joined the Milwaukee Brewers of the Western League, which later became the American League, Mack answered the call of Ban Johnson to create a team in Philadelphia and it was there that Mack enjoyed his best success to date, winning five of the first 14 American League championships. Much like Mack's teams, Macht seems to hit everything right when writing about these teams and the colorful characters such as Home Run Baker and Napoleon Lajoie, whom Mack and the Athletics lost in a bitterly contested court case as to whether the player was bound by the contract of his former team.
That part of the book illustrates that no matter what era of baseball one reads about, it has always been a business first and a game second, especially to men like Mack whose livelihood depends on much more than just wins and losses. While this book only takes the reader to 1915 when Mack was still in the dugout for the Athletics into the 1950's, it is an excellent look into the early years of professional baseball and the setting into his life, both personal and professional.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
April 19, 2008
Norman Macht is an eminent baseball reasearcher, and this is his magmum opus. He takes Mack's very long life up to the debacle of the 1914 World Series and is at work on Volume 2.
The book is huge and heavily detailed, but Macht writes clearly and engagingly.
One caveat: the book needs documentation to steer the reader in his or her own research.
May 15, 2018
The first volume of Norman Macht’s trilogy on “The Grand Old Man of Baseball” is tremendously informative, and packed with fascinating tidbits (Mack’s brother was nearly murdered by the park groundskeeper), albeit frustrates with the fact it’s extensive contemporary quotations are not sourced, and a slight tendency towards hagiography. Branch Rickey contrasting John McGraw with Connie Mack: “I understood why [Mack] was so different from McGraw yet masterful in handling men. He was a pedagogue, a kindly instructor. It was his desire that his players should learn from his and then think for themselves on the field of play.” Mack, unlike McGraw was not a shouter. He preferred to avoid lambasting his players in public if he could avoid it. Like McGraw, he liked the educated man-but perhaps his best pitcher (who he mourned as “the best hearted man on the team”) from this segment of his career was strikeout ace Rube Waddell, who would today probably be what we consider developmentally disables (although as Bill James rightly points out, the pitching position is a high skill position so those who think of Waddell as just some country bumpkin are mistaken). He was also polite man in a game filled with harsh characters , addressing Rube by his real name (“George”-he did the same with Chief Bender-“Albert”). He wasn’t always as squeaky clean as his later image indicated, although the author might stretch a bit too far-he was never as nasty or wild as the even that average sort (he was only ever ejected once, and that before he took over in Philadelphia). There are certain ironies to Mack’s journey: he fled to the rebel Player’s League for higher salaries (Mack was a capable defensive catcher-only about eighty or so deal with his playing days but they make for curious reading for anyone interested in old time ball), he built his first pennant winner with the help raiding the NL, yet the effects of raids by the Federal League would encourage him to break up his first great dynasty.
July 9, 2024
Thorough and well-written by a man who loves the game and his subject. Too much perhaps; it borders on hero worship.
But for immersion in the early years of the Philadelphia Athletics, Connie Mack and baseball, Macht is hard to beat.
Connie Mack won five World Series and nine American League pennants. But he was a modest man, always low key, never berating players, rarely raising a fuss about umpires.
Macht touches on Mack’s flaws - he passed on Babe Ruth for goodness sake, he resisted the farm system, he was pretty colorless.
But he managed Hall of Fame players including Rube Waddell; Eddie Collins; Nap Lajoie; Home Run Baker; Gettysburg Eddie Plank; and “Chief” Bender.
Those are just his players in the early years, ending in 1914 when his team lost the World Series. It is that year and that game that marks the end of this book…. But alas, this is just the first in a trilogy about Mack.
I enjoyed this book, and felt Macht giving me a glimpse of early baseball when gloves were flimsy, the balls fragile and home runs rare. It was a learning experience and lots of fun; but I admit: As I got toward the end and the 1914 team, I was baffled about how the author was going to wrap up the rest of Mack’s managerial days and explain how the Athletics are no longer in Philly. Then, abruptly, it ended. Bam.
Only later did I find out that I had just read the first of three books on Connie Mack. I felt a little tricked and, I admit, disappointed. Still, this 673-page book is highly readable for anyone who cares about the early years of baseball.
But for immersion in the early years of the Philadelphia Athletics, Connie Mack and baseball, Macht is hard to beat.
Connie Mack won five World Series and nine American League pennants. But he was a modest man, always low key, never berating players, rarely raising a fuss about umpires.
Macht touches on Mack’s flaws - he passed on Babe Ruth for goodness sake, he resisted the farm system, he was pretty colorless.
But he managed Hall of Fame players including Rube Waddell; Eddie Collins; Nap Lajoie; Home Run Baker; Gettysburg Eddie Plank; and “Chief” Bender.
Those are just his players in the early years, ending in 1914 when his team lost the World Series. It is that year and that game that marks the end of this book…. But alas, this is just the first in a trilogy about Mack.
I enjoyed this book, and felt Macht giving me a glimpse of early baseball when gloves were flimsy, the balls fragile and home runs rare. It was a learning experience and lots of fun; but I admit: As I got toward the end and the 1914 team, I was baffled about how the author was going to wrap up the rest of Mack’s managerial days and explain how the Athletics are no longer in Philly. Then, abruptly, it ended. Bam.
Only later did I find out that I had just read the first of three books on Connie Mack. I felt a little tricked and, I admit, disappointed. Still, this 673-page book is highly readable for anyone who cares about the early years of baseball.
March 31, 2022
I really liked this book - a very well-written, enjoyable read. I learned a lot I didn't already know about Mack and about the early history of baseball in general. My complaint is that the ending is very abrupt. For 700 pages it seems like you're reading a detailed biography of Mack and then suddenly, halfway through his life, it just ends and there's a one-page epilogue that's like "Mack lived 50 more years and reinvented his strategies and did a bunch of other important stuff." Then it was only after I finished reading the book and amidst my confusion about the ending that I did further research and discovered that this is actually the first volume of three written by the author on Mack. So I was a little dismayed, having thought that this reading project was complete, to learn that I have another 1300 pages to go. Unfortunately my nature will not permit me to leave the thing unfinished so I feel I have no choice but to order the subsequent volumes, not without some feeling that I've been had. But again, it was a really good book.
July 18, 2023
This is a magisterial work — and just the first volume! — documenting the life and times of baseball legend Connie Mack. While the narrative follows Mack’s life in great detail, this is less a biography and more a scholarly exploration of how Mack contributed to the development of professional baseball, first as a player, then manager, and finally team owner and impresario. I can away from this book with a much richer understanding of the growth of the American and National Leagues, and the many characters therein.
This is a substantial book in length and dense with well-researched detail, but reading is never a slog. Macht’s lively prose and quick wit make for compelling reading. There are many allusions, turns of phrase, and half-jokes that had me smilingly engaged in the reading.
This is a substantial book in length and dense with well-researched detail, but reading is never a slog. Macht’s lively prose and quick wit make for compelling reading. There are many allusions, turns of phrase, and half-jokes that had me smilingly engaged in the reading.
August 23, 2024
What a wonderful book.
I have long wanted to learn more about Connie Mack. A legend in the history of baseball and yet you do not see books about him lining the shelves at stores the way you do about Casey Stengel or John McGraw, say.
I finally discovered Norman Macht's three-part biography of Mack.
The first book is just over 700 pages and packed with details from Mack's birth in 1862 to the end of the 1914 baseball season. On top of that the font is smaller than average.
But Mr. Macht is an artful writer. The narrative flows with ease. You are taking in a lot of information, getting a lot of details and every minute of this read is enjoyable.
I am very much looking forward to starting the second book.
I have long wanted to learn more about Connie Mack. A legend in the history of baseball and yet you do not see books about him lining the shelves at stores the way you do about Casey Stengel or John McGraw, say.
I finally discovered Norman Macht's three-part biography of Mack.
The first book is just over 700 pages and packed with details from Mack's birth in 1862 to the end of the 1914 baseball season. On top of that the font is smaller than average.
But Mr. Macht is an artful writer. The narrative flows with ease. You are taking in a lot of information, getting a lot of details and every minute of this read is enjoyable.
I am very much looking forward to starting the second book.
February 22, 2022
Prepare yourself for the first titanic volume chronicling Connie Mack’s 66 years in professional baseball, faithfully created by Norman L. Macht. The reader might scoff at such a large set of biographies - with the three totaling over 2,000 pages - and assume that minuscule details will be the focus and stories only vaguely connected to Mr. Mack’s life will be stretched for all they’re worth. This reader was pleasantly surprised with how well this first biography flowed and succinctly told the story of the first 52 years of Connie Mack’s life. I look forward to the remaining volumes, which are both a testament to the life of Mack and the literary devotion of Macht.
May 23, 2023
This is really a dual biography, of Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics, which he created and ran, along with the American League. A book this thorough should not be so wonderfully readable, but it is.
April 19, 2018
Extraordinarily well-researched and thoroughly engrossing.
June 14, 2016
Well that took me a while to get through, but damn.
Comprehensive look at Mack's first 29 years in baseball and only another 36 to go!
I really enjoyed it as far as storytelling goes and Norman Macht deserves kudos for his dedication (obsession?) towards capturing Mack's legacy in a massive three volume tome that spans nearly 2,000 total pages.
But the lack of any kind of footnotes or endnotes makes you dubious about the accuracy of some of the material. You can take it for granted, I suppose, but when Macht himself admits to not always having kept track of when or where he gathered some of the materials for the project, it may give you pause.
In the end, I enjoyed coming back to it every evening this spring as the 2016 baseball season got underway. For the reasons stated above, I read it with a bit of caution and skepticism. But it's still an impressive collection of work. I'll definitely be reading volume 2, just not necessarily right away.
Comprehensive look at Mack's first 29 years in baseball and only another 36 to go!
I really enjoyed it as far as storytelling goes and Norman Macht deserves kudos for his dedication (obsession?) towards capturing Mack's legacy in a massive three volume tome that spans nearly 2,000 total pages.
But the lack of any kind of footnotes or endnotes makes you dubious about the accuracy of some of the material. You can take it for granted, I suppose, but when Macht himself admits to not always having kept track of when or where he gathered some of the materials for the project, it may give you pause.
In the end, I enjoyed coming back to it every evening this spring as the 2016 baseball season got underway. For the reasons stated above, I read it with a bit of caution and skepticism. But it's still an impressive collection of work. I'll definitely be reading volume 2, just not necessarily right away.
May 18, 2008
This was a long book that occasionally dragged, especially in Connie's early years as a baseball player. But once he started managing the Philadelphia Athletics, the action really picked up.
I found the rule changes in the game of baseball particularly interesting. Also, the birth of the American League, the start of World Series play between the upstart American League and the more established National League, and the constancy of the game of baseball up until the era of plane travel were all interesting.
It was also interesting that it took 22 years for Norman Macht to write this book, which ended when Connie was about 50 years old, in 1915. By the author's own admission, it was not an overly scholarly piece of work, but it was nevertheless informative and hopefully accurate.
I found the rule changes in the game of baseball particularly interesting. Also, the birth of the American League, the start of World Series play between the upstart American League and the more established National League, and the constancy of the game of baseball up until the era of plane travel were all interesting.
It was also interesting that it took 22 years for Norman Macht to write this book, which ended when Connie was about 50 years old, in 1915. By the author's own admission, it was not an overly scholarly piece of work, but it was nevertheless informative and hopefully accurate.
February 22, 2009
This one is definitely only for real baseball nerds. It is an impressively detailed tome about the first half of Mack's 50 years in baseball. I really learned a lot about one of the forgotten great teams of baseball, the early-teens Philadelphia A's; however, some of the detailed season accounts dragged a little. I was unaware that the book did not cover his entire life, so that was somewhat disappointing. I imagine the author is working on the second half. Probably the highlight of this book is the discussion of Mack's relationship with the bizarre (crazy?) pitcher Rube Waddell and also Waddell's off-field antics.
June 1, 2013
Any desire to fully understand major league baseball in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and its growth into the hugely popular sport it is today, must lead the reader at some point to Connie Mack; and this definitive biography is an excellent choice for the reader to make that journey. The author poured many years into researching and writing this book, which is actually the first volume of a two-volume set, the second volume having been published also. The reader is taken back to an era that has amazing similarities and differences to now. This book is a must for baseball fans interested in those early years of pro baseball, and of the U.S. itself.
September 8, 2015
If you like baseball history then you'll enjoy this book. It follows Connie Mack's life from his playing days through his first championship teams, ending with the loss to the "Miracle Braves" of 1914. Many of the great names make their appearance; Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Eddie Collins, Eddie Plank, Chief Bender, Home Run Baker, Ty Cobb and the list goes on. It discusses the formation of the American League and the beginning of the World Series, it discusses the reserve clause and how it was controversial even back then, and, to show that some things never change, fans unhappy with the amount of money players were making. A fun read and highly recommended.
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September 17, 2014Cornelius McGillicuddy ... A's god
July 20, 2011
Some interesting stories about the early days of baseball and the American. Told in an old-time style in which the biographer tends to glorify his subject.
January 19, 2012
A great look at early baseball and the first years of the American League. Really brings deadball into perspective.
August 8, 2012
Need to find a copy of the second volume pronto! Connie's lean years are approaching.
April 9, 2016
Great biography of a real gentleman.
March 14, 2020
Massive, incredibly detailed, but engrossing. May need a breather before Vol. 2!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews