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 known: 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.
“As a catcher and manager, Connie Mack deserves much of the credit for writing ‘The Book’ on baseball strategy and the managing of men. How he did it all is told here for the first time.”
—Roland Hemond, three-time winner of Major League Baseball’s Executive of the Year award
“From the early beginnings of baseball into the modern era, no figure dominated the game like Connie Mack. In Norman Macht’s book the legendary patriarch finally gets his deserved recognition from a serious historian. Macht has turned out a book which provides a true insight into baseball and its beginning as the National Pastime.”
—Ernie Harwell, Hall of Fame broadcaster for fifty-four years, the last forty-two for the Detroit Tigers
“No other baseball manager is going to win—or lose—as many games as Connie Mack did in his fifty years managing the Philadelphia Athletics. A biography of Mack cannot help but be a history of baseball in the first half of the twentieth century, and this biography is a feast of interesting facts and judgments.”
—George F. Will, syndicated columnist and author of Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball
"[Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball] is an excellent look into the early years of professional baseball and the setting into his life, both personal and professional."
—Lance Smith, Guy Who Reviews Sports Books
“[A] comprehensive and interesting portrait of one of baseball’s most successful managers. . . . A compelling look at a legend and an era.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A mother lode of data, stories, perceptions about one of the legendary figures in the history of the national pastime. . . . If you are into baseball, get into this tome.”
—Harvey Frommer on Sports
“Richly enjoyable.”
—Roanoke Times
“The tale Macht offers is often riveting.”
—Library Journal
“[Includes] many fascinating details of baseball from the 1880s to 1914.”
—Boston Globe
“Masterful. . . . A must read for all historians of the national pastime, particularly those with an interest in Philadelphia sports.”
—Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography