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The Story Behind the Formation of a Successful Society
In 1975, two former high school classmates formed the Eastern Pennsylvania Sports Collectors Club (EPSCC), in a joint venture to promote the collection of baseball cards and other sports memorabilia in our area. Twenty-one years later, this move would lead to the birth of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, in a heartwarming display of fan loyalty and remembrance.
Many friendships that remain to this day developed during these twice a year conventions held in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. It was common to see baseball fans from all over the country in attendance. A bond was built among those lovers of the game that allowed middle-aged men and women to relive their youth and reminisce about the team that was taken from them in the fall of 1954, the Philadelphia Athletics.
This bond continued to grow through the decade of the 1980’s. In March 1990, EPSCC management invited former A’s great Eddie Joost as its celebrity autograph guest. Joost, one of the most popular Athletics of modern times, had twice (1947 and 1951) been voted Philadelphia’s most valuable major league player by local fans. The great turnout of autograph seekers created by Joost’s appearance showed clearly that there was a solid base of Athletics fans living in and around Philadelphia-fans who wanted more than just an occasional visit as a reminder of their lost youth.
Hearing of Joost’s ambition to be inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in his San Francisco hometown, a small group of Athletics fans initiated a course of action that would have several surprising conclusions. In the summer of 1990, this group , consisting at first of Jack Boyett, Bob Burns, Carl Goldberg, Jack Laufer, Max Silberman, Tom Saboy, myself, and later Joe Dugan, Bill Doonin, Clara McGonigal, Chuck Pizagno, Tony Risi, and Bob Tangi, went to work. We began the first of two separate campaigns that would have an unexpected but lasting effect on the Philadelphia sports scene.
Local sports columnist Ted Taylor, learning of this effort through copies of correspondence sent to him by the Joost effort committee, wrote in August 1993 about the first Joost campaign in his weekly Philadelphia Daily News column. This publicity brought other fans into the campaign. After a five year non-stop letter writing effort, and with the assistance from Joost’s West Coast fans, Joost was finally inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame on February 15, 1995 in ceremonies held at The Westin St.Francis Hotel in San Francisco, California. Other inductees in this, BASHOF’s 16th annual event, included Vida Blue, Lee Evans and Curt Flood.
Contemporaneously with the BASHOF effort, the committee in 1993 had also begun a campaign to have Joost placed on Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium Wall of Fame, an honor accorded to one Phillie and one Athletic each year. Once again, aided by the publicity of Taylor’s column in 1993 and 1994, success was attained and Joost was selected for the honor in the fall of 1995.
Eddie Joost’s plaque went up on the Veterans Stadium Wall on April 1, 1996. To coincide with this occasion, local sports card show promoter Jim Lutz organized the first Philadelphia Athletics Reunion that weekend at the Holiday Inn in Fort Washington. Thirteen former members of Connie Mack’s A’s were invited.
Ted Taylor’s coverage of this historic event, appearing in the Daily News and Sports Collectors Digest, was met with such enthusiasm that Taylor, along with myself, formed the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society in September 1996. Much credit is also due to Californian, David Stephan for relentlessly pushing Taylor and myself to organize the Society. The rest is history.
We are currently accepting new members. If you have a love of the game of baseball as it used to be, when players wore flannel uniforms and received salaries comparable to the rest of society, when there were Philadelphia A’s and Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns, we will be happy to have you become a part of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society.
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