October 14-20, 2004

city beat

The Ones That Got Away

Witness to history: In his post-Philadelphia days, Al Brancato could call Jackie Robinson a teammate. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Forget the Phils (not that you haven't already). This weekend's all about the Philadelphia A's.

by J.F. Pirro

Al Brancato, a third baseman in the late 1930s and early ’40s for the Philadelphia Athletics, was planning to return to the team as a conditioning coach. Left-handed pitcher Bobby Shantz, who figured he had plenty more good years ahead of him, had bought a house in the suburbs. And Ruth Mack Clark was plenty busy playing caregiver to her famous father, Connie Mack.

The year was 1954 and on Sept. 19, Mack's Athletics played their final home game as 1,715 faithful watched them lose to the New York Yankees at old Shibe Park, the field at 21st and Lehigh that had been renamed Connie Mack Stadium a year earlier.

All season, rumors of a sale had been ricocheting across the city. By November, the A's were sold and relocated to Kansas City before reaching their final destination of Oakland. Still, the shock remains locked in the memories of Philly fans from that era.

"It was a shame because the A's were bigtime in this town, not the Phillies," says Upper Darby's Brancato, now 85, who left South Philadelphia High in 1938 without graduating to join the A's farm system.

He may have a point.

This weekend, the 900-member Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, which since 1996 has honored the famed franchise Mack owned and managed for an unprecedented 50 years, will celebrate the 1954 team, which went a woeful 51-103, at its annual sellout reunion breakfast in Horsham. It comes at a time of year that many had hoped they'd be preparing for a Phillies World Series at the new Citizens Bank Park.

"Now that they haven't [met those expectations], I guess that's why we have to go back [in time]," says Shantz, who has three World Series rings from his post-Philly years with the Yankees. "All us guys are crawling up there in age, though, so this might be the last [reunion]. It's a year-to-year deal now, maybe even day-to-day."

Although Philadelphia was a two-team town for the first half of last century, the Phillies only overshadowed their American League counterparts twice. In 1915, a year after the A's first dynasty ended, they lost to Babe Ruth's Boston Red Sox in the World Series. And in 1950, while Mack, then 87, was stepping aside, the '50 Whiz Kids, who played at Shibe when the A's were on the road, lost the Series to the Yanks.

With the sale of the A's, the City Series between the A's and Phils that began in 1903 also ended. (So, too, did World Series prospects. While the Oakland A's won three in a row in the 1970s and another in 1989, the Phillies have just one in their 122-year history.) Still, the A's stories remain part of the city's sporting history.

"He didn't talk about [his retirement or the sale of the team], and no one talked to him about it because it was too hurtful," says Mack's last living child, Ruth, 90, who was by his side when he died at age 93 in her then-Mt. Airy home.

"There's no way he couldn't have been crushed, and he looked it," says Ruth, who now lives in Lansdale. "It was his life, and the sale itself might have cost him his life."

Brancato made his A's debut as a 5-foot-9 infielder at the end of 1939. Then, he played in '40 and '41 before serving in the U.S. Navy. Once out, he played the last month of the 1945 season before Mack sold him.

"I should have gone against it," he says. "I didn't realize it until later, but [legally] he should have kept me another year because I was returning from the service -- but we didn't have agents."

Back then, players worked odd jobs during the off-season. Until Brancato bought his first car, an Oldsmobile, in 1940, he took the Broad Street Subway, then walked seven blocks to play at Shibe where Mack had already established his reputation as "Mr. Baseball."

"If you had to go see him, he was up in his office in the tower at the park," Brancato remembers. "He'd be sitting in a big high chair; I don't mean the kind a baby sits in, but one with a great high back. He was so tall that when he was sitting, he was taller than me standing."

Later, Brancato played and coached for six years in the Dodgers' system during an era when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and against greats such as Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. He was head coach at St. Joseph's University in the late 1950s and early '60s.

"I'm a little bit part of history, but that's all," he says. "Now, I'm just outlasting everyone else.

In the A's final years, there were only individual accomplishments. Among them, in 1952, Shantz went 24-7 to become the American League's Most Valuable Player for a fifth-place team that went 79-75. At 79, Shantz says it doesn't seem like 50 years have past.

MVP: As the Athletics faltered, Bobby Shantz's arm earned league-wide accolades. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"Twenty maybe," he says. "I know I was sad to go because I just bought a home," in Ambler, where he's remained. The '54 season was a wash for Shantz, who recorded a 6-4 win in the season opener over the Red Sox, but left the game in the sixth inning with a season-ending pulled muscle in his pitching shoulder.

"We all had sore arms, and no one could seem to win any games," he says of a team that finished in last place for the 11th time in 20 seasons.

After graduating from Pottstown High, Shantz was pitching on area sandlots and making 73 cents an hour working in a sawmill in Tacony in 1948 when A's scout Harry O'Donnell approached him.

In his second appearance for the team in 1949, he tossed nine hitless relief innings in a 13-inning 5-4 A's win over the Detroit Tigers, an outing he says kept him in the big leagues.

In the two seasons they spent together, it was no secret Mack was predisposed to tall, lanky pitchers (the "big string beans," Shantz says). Plus, he didn't let Shantz throw his knuckleball.

"I only threw [the knuckleball] when I was ahead of the hitters, but then again I didn't have much control over it," he admits. "Maybe that's why [Mack] didn't like it, but I got a lot of outs with that damn pitch, so I threw it whether he liked it or not."

When Ruth Mack, the third oldest child from Connie Mack's second marriage and the daughter most like him in looks, stature and athletic ability, was born in 1914, it was the end of her father's first championship dynasty.

When she turned 16, she earned her driver's license and chauffeured her father to and from the park each day -- then helped him celebrate his last World Series title.

"I guess it was a good year all-around," she says. "All we did was talk baseball, and that's the summer he taught me how to keep score. Then, I could better understand why the game meant so much to him."

But she also remembers the A's sad end.

"I can remember going to the park and running through the seats that were so empty," she says. "There was hardly anyone there. I mean, you could count them."

Ruth, who claims a fan letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to her father among her most cherished mementos, says she's always asked if she owns a baseball signed by her father.

"In those days, you just didn't ask your father to sign a baseball," she says, "but I do have a ball he signed, "To Katherine from Con,' which was to mother from dad."

Ruth says her father never drank alcohol, even on his 50th wedding anniversary. He had good reason.

"I've never told anyone this," she says, "but long ago he made a vow [with God] that if he never took a drink, one day he'd get another team."

Ruth's a fan of the Mets, Phillies, San Diego Padres and, as of 2000, the Oakland A's, after the franchise named her father its "Manager of the Century," an honor she accepted on his behalf.

"Walking into that park with the big "Athletics' up top just thrilled me to death," she recalls. "I swear I felt dad's presence on the field that day."