Connie Mack's '29 Triumph

It has been said that Connie Mack managed only two kinds of teams during his half-century in the City of Brother Love—unbeatable and lousy. His teams collected nine pennants and five World Series titles, balanced by 17 last place finishes. While Mack, an enterprising businessman, had a gift for discovering talented players and molding them into a team, by the time he was well into his sixties, Philadelphians suspected that the A’s skipper had lost his ability. Mack went on to disprove all doubts, however, with a second championship dynasty in 1929 that vindicated the “Tall Tactician.” This work chronicles the rise and fall of the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics and their six-year rivalry with the New York Yankees, 1927 to 1932. Based primarily on newspaper accounts, the book tells the story of the “Grand Old Man of Baseball”—and the 1929 A’s team that is unfairly overlooked in favor of the 1927 Yankees as baseball’s greatest all-around team. This history is packed with photographs, notes and statistical appendices, and includes a foreword by The Sporting News writer Dave Kindred.

SABR member William C. Kashatus is a professional historian at the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He is also a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. A regular contributor to the Philadelphia Daily News, he is also the author of Diamonds in the Coalfields (2002), Mike Schmidt (2000) and One-Armed Wonder (1995).