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, covers his experiences as player, manager, and club owner through 1914. Norman L. Macht chronicles Mack's little-known beginnings, recounting 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, as a key figure in the launching of the American League in 1901, Mack 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 and 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 Illustrated with previously unpublished family photographs, it affords unique insight into a colorful personality who helped shape baseball as we know it today.