Rube Waddell: A Real Piece of Work

By: C.G. Morelli

Charles Edward Waddell was a small town Pennsylvania farm boy when minor league scouts recognized his ability to throw lightning. Before long, he’d attracted a nickname (“the Rube”) and he was hurling fastballs in the minors. He found immediate success and, by 1902, he was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform.

In Pittsburgh, however, the Rube found success a little more fleeting. Sure, the kid had great stuff.  But he also had a bit of a strange side to him to say the least. Waddell quickly gained more notoriety for his wild antics than for his ball playing. The man was known to actually leave the playing field during games to chase fire engines, and his unpredictable drinking binges caused him to be chronically and excessively late to games and practices.  Frustrated with his odd behavior, the Pirates cut him loose…and who was there to scoop him up but the old baseball gentleman himself, Connie Mack.

Mack signed Waddell in 1902 to compliment his already burgeoning roster of solid players. Waddell joined the likes of Eddie Plank, Lave Cross, and Nap Lajoie. But the Rube immediately shot to the top of the list, leading the league in strikeouts every year from 1902 through 1907. He led the Athletics in team ERA four times during this span.

For a while, with Mack acting as his surrogate father, Waddell kept his strange behavior at bay, and when he couldn’t restrain himself the citizens of Philadelphia ate him up anyway. Fans especially loved him because he would hang out at local bars in Philly and end up bartending by closing time. He was also known for playing random pickup games in the streets with local kids and for volunteering his services to the fire department.

But eventually, Rube lost his way once more and his erratic, sometimes personally endangering, behavior began to wear on Papa Mack. Waddell was beginning to wear out his welcome. A breaking point appeared to have occurred at the conclusion of the 1905 season. He had led the Athletics to the World Series that year, but couldn’t pitch against the Giants because he’d supposedly injured his elbow in a bizarre incident that culminated in a barroom brawl. It didn’t take long for the public to suspect gamblers were pulling Rube’s strings and rumors began to fly. Nothing was ever proven, but the scandal haunted the Pennsylvania hayseed for the rest of his career.

The scandal, his increasingly flaky attitude towards the game, and his strong taste for drinking, led Mack (who was at the end of his rope) to sell Waddell to the hapless St. Louis Cardinals for $5,000 before the start of the 1908 season. Mack’s Athletics, who had finished a hopeful 2^nd with an 88-57 record the season before, could not recover. Without Rube’s services they skidded through the 1908 season, finishing a pitiful and disappointing 6^th in the American League with a 68-85 record.

Many Philadelphians, who had almost unilaterally exalted the venerable Connie Mack, lost some respect for their beloved manager who, in the end, could not control his wayward “son.”  The city eventually learned to live without their loveable idiot, but it never found anyone unique enough to replace him in their hearts.

The Tall Tactician

By: C.G. Morelli

Connie Mack said a lot of things during his career. Of course, it’s easy to say a lot when your career as manager spans half a century. He once said, “Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles.  This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life.” This perhaps recalls the image of the Tall Tactician, a man whose impeccable values and fatherly overtones produced much veneration for him from his arrival in Philadelphia in 1900 until his departure in 1950.

When all was said and done, Mack had compiled 3,731 wins with the Athletics, the most for a manager in baseball history, besting John McGraw by over 1,000 wins. His teams won the World Series five times in that span, and the AL title nine times. Ironically, Mack also racked up 3,948 losses during his tenure as the A’s manager. This total is also, far and away, the worst in baseball history. Mack actually finished in last place 17 times while at the helm of the Athletics. So, I guess it’s fitting that the most successful losing manager of all time would also coin the phrase, “You can’t win ‘em all.”

In fact, even with his staggering total of victories and irreplaceable impact on the game, Mack would humbly tell you that he wasn’t the quintessential baseball skipper. For that title, he’d have to tab one of his contemporaries during the early part of the century.  “There has only ever been one manager,” he said, “And his name is John McGraw.”

But, in Philly, he was more than quintessential. He was the Philadelphia Athletics.

Even after a dismal farewell season in ‘50, where his team finished an embarrassing 52-102 to claim last place for the 10^th time in 16 seasons, he was still considered the man.

After all, we’re talking about the first manager in history to win three World Series titles, and the only manager ever to win the series back to back on two separate occasions (1910-11, 1929-30). Last time I checked, people in Philly don’t forget stuff like that too quickly, which is probably why Mack could walk down the narrowest, most remote alleyway in the city and still be recognized as the father of Philadelphia baseball even by the stray cats.

But it was because of this prominence, this ultimate feeling of comfort which Mack exuded upon the fans, that his departure spelled the beginning of the end for the A’s in Philly.

The loveable fan favorite, Jimmy Dykes, took Mack’s role and improved the team to a 6^th place finish the following season. Even so, attendance plummeted drastically and continued to do so for the next few years. Things just weren’t the same without the Grand Old Man of Baseball staking his post on the dugout steps.

“Any minute, any day, some player may break a long standing record,” he said, “That’s one of the fascinations about the game, the unexpected surprises.”

Perhaps Mack’s departure was one of those unexpected surprises the Philadelphia Athletics were never prepared to face. Or maybe it was the fascination for the game that suddenly left the hearts of the fans and the organization once the venerable leader had fled the battlefield.

Whatever the factor, the A’s would never find a way to recover within the confines of their own backyard. They were sent packing to Kansas City in 1954. Mack died two years later, having spent 66 years in baseball as a player and manager.

After a lifetime of service to the game it’s no wonder Mack once said, “No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball.” Somewhere, I’d like to think, Mr. Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy is having a little chat about baseball right now.

'Lord, Baseball is a Worryin' Thing'

By: C.G. Morelli

As a 14 year old boy breaking his back in the Pennsylvania coal mines for just 60 cents a day, Stan Coveleski sure came a long way. The Polish Prince was such a hard worker and worked such long hours that he once said, “I got to thinking the sun only came out on Sundays.”

But the eventual Hall of Famer wouldn’t be spending much more of his life in the dark. By the time he was 17, Stan had taken a page out of the scripts of his five brothers, four of whom were involved in professional baseball at some level.

Coveleski started playing for a local team in Shamokin, PA and he quickly found his calling as a pitcher with pin point control. That the fresh faced kid they called “Covey” was so accurate on the mound was a surprise to no one. After all, he’d spent every morning of his childhood setting up tin cans on a fence post and systematically knocking them down with the fluid toss of a few stray stones.

“The plate’s a lot bigger than a tin can to throw at,” he said, “When it came to throwing a baseball, why, it was easy to pitch.”

The Polish Prince pitched only five games for the little team from Shamokin. That’s all it took for minor league scouts from the Lancaster club of the Tri State League to notice the kid’s talent. And without so much as a moment’s hesitation, Covey signed a contract that would save him from the inside of a pitch black coal mine forever.

After just two and half seasons with the club from Lancaster, Coveleski was scooped up by Connie Mack, who watched the young rookie make his first major league start in a Philadelphia Athletics uniform in 1912. The result? A three-hit shutout and the youngster’s first-ever victory. But success wouldn’t last long for young Stan.

He endured a few up and down seasons in Philadelphia and became more well known as the brother of “Giant Killer” Harry Coveleski (who had beaten the NY Giants three times in one week during the 1908 season to stifle their attempt at a pennant) than for his own performance on the mound. Stanley found himself bouncing from club to club, even back down to the minors in the Pacific Coast League. But he eventually found a home in Cleveland in 1915, and his time in the PCL would prove to be his greatest asset.

It was during his time in the PCL that Covey first witnessed a pitch that would change his career. It was the spit ball. He began developing his ability to control the pitch, and once he had it mastered, there wasn’t a thing he couldn’t make a baseball do once it left his famous right hand.

From 1915-1928, Coveleski and his devastating spitter were utterly dominant on the mound. He won 216 games, struck out 972 batters, and recorded a lifetime 2.89 ERA.

In 1920, Covey registered one of the greatest World Series performances of all time. He led the Indians to a World Championship by pitching in and winning three games. He allowed the Brooklyn Dodgers only two runs in 27 innings of work and posted a 0.67 World Series ERA, a record that still stands today.

Coveleski endured even after Major League Baseball banned the use of the spitball after the 1920 season. He and 16 other established spitball pitchers were grandfathered in as having permission to continue throwing the pitch. This designation was pivotal in Covey’s career, allowing him to continue his dominance for another eight seasons, five of which he recorded 20 wins or more.

Stan Coveleski was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969 by the veteran’s committee. Even after an illustrious career, he never lost sight of the dark mornings he spent tossing stones at tin cans and enjoying the relative simplicity of a coal miner’s life that contrasted starkly with the every day pressures of playing professional baseball.

“It’s tomorrow that counts (in baseball),” he said after retirement, “So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing.”

The Tall Tactician

By: C.G. Morelli

Connie Mack said a lot of things during his career. Of course, it’s easy to say a lot when your career as manager spans half a century. He once said, “Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles.  This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life.” This perhaps recalls the image of the Tall Tactician, a man whose impeccable values and fatherly overtones produced much veneration for him from his arrival in Philadelphia in 1900 until his departure in 1950.

When all was said and done, Mack had compiled 3,731 wins with the Athletics, the most for a manager in baseball history, besting John McGraw by over 1,000 wins. His teams won the World Series five times in that span, and the AL title nine times. Ironically, Mack also racked up 3,948 losses during his tenure as the A’s manager. This total is also, far and away, the worst in baseball history. Mack actually finished in last place 17 times while at the helm of the Athletics. So, I guess it’s fitting that the most successful losing manager of all time would also coin the phrase, “You can’t win ‘em all.”

In fact, even with his staggering total of victories and irreplaceable impact on the game, Mack would humbly tell you that he wasn’t the quintessential baseball skipper. For that title, he’d have to tab one of his contemporaries during the early part of the century.  “There has only ever been one manager,” he said, “And his name is John McGraw.”

But, in Philly, he was more than quintessential. He was the Philadelphia Athletics.

Even after a dismal farewell season in ‘50, where his team finished an embarrassing 52-102 to claim last place for the 10^th time in 16 seasons, he was still considered the man.

After all, we’re talking about the first manager in history to win three World Series titles, and the only manager ever to win the series back to back on two separate occasions (1910-11, 1929-30). Last time I checked, people in Philly don’t forget stuff like that too quickly, which is probably why Mack could walk down the narrowest, most remote alleyway in the city and still be recognized as the father of Philadelphia baseball even by the stray cats.

But it was because of this prominence, this ultimate feeling of comfort which Mack exuded upon the fans, that his departure spelled the beginning of the end for the A’s in Philly.

The loveable fan favorite, Jimmy Dykes, took Mack’s role and improved the team to a 6^th place finish the following season. Even so, attendance plummeted drastically and continued to do so for the next few years. Things just weren’t the same without the Grand Old Man of Baseball staking his post on the dugout steps.

“Any minute, any day, some player may break a long standing record,” he said, “That’s one of the fascinations about the game, the unexpected surprises.”

Perhaps Mack’s departure was one of those unexpected surprises the Philadelphia Athletics were never prepared to face. Or maybe it was the fascination for the game that suddenly left the hearts of the fans and the organization once the venerable leader had fled the battlefield.

Whatever the factor, the A’s would never find a way to recover within the confines of their own backyard. They were sent packing to Kansas City in 1954. Mack died two years later, having spent 66 years in baseball as a player and manager.

After a lifetime of service to the game it’s no wonder Mack once said, “No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball.” Somewhere, I’d like to think, Mr. Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy is having a little chat about baseball as we speak.