The 1913 World Champion Athletics
– Part I
By Bob Warrington
Introduction
 1912
was a bad year for the Philadelphia Athletics. With back-to-back
world championships in 1910-11, most baseball observers thought
the A’s were odds-on favorites to win their third title in
a row. Connie Mack certainly believed his team would repeat as champions,
and so did his A’s players. Instead, the Athletics got their
comeuppance. Playing lethargically with a “We’ll win
when we have to,” mentality, the A’s got off to a slow
start and never got on track. Mack would later call the 1912 Athletics
his “greatest team ever,” but also note sadly about
it, “If ever a club suffered from overconfidence, it was my
1912 team.”
Writing in his autobiography, “My 66 Years in the Big Leagues,”
almost 40 years later, Mack lamented, “My first great disappointment
came in 1912. Two straight pennants and two World Series victories
made my boys feel they couldn’t lose...This gave our boys
a feeling of cocksureness that invariably results in a tumble. Maybe
I, too, was too complacent, and thought the boys would step up the
pace.” But, the months passed and the surge toward victory
never materialized. The A’s still won 90 games in 1912, but
finished in third place, a full 15 games behind the Boston Red Sox.
Mack took the lesson of 1912 to heart. He realized it wasn’t
a lack of talent that had cost the A’s the pennant; it was
succumbing to the temptations of complacency and overconfidence.
Mack would not allow another Athletics team to lose because its
players could not arouse themselves enough to win. Things would
be different in 1913.
All the Team’s Men
The 1913 Athletics team reflected both continuity and change. The
“$100,000 infield” of Stuffy McInnis, Eddie Collins,
Jack Barry, and Frank Baker remained intact from the 1910-11 championships.
The $100,000 figure signified that the combined talents of the A’s
infielders were “beyond value.” The Athletics outfield,
by contrast, had evolved. Rube Oldring still anchored centerfield,
but Bris Lord had left the club after the 1912 season and Danny
Murphy--nearing the end of his playing days—appeared in just
40 games. Eddie Murphy and Jimmy Walsh flanked Oldring as regular
outfielders in 1913. Amos Strunk continued to play an important
part as a reserve outfielder, toiling for the team in 80 games.
If there was a question mark for the Athletics in 1913, it was in
their pitching. The veteran duo of Eddie Plank and Chief Bender
formed the foundation of the staff. Jack Coombs, however, contracted
typhoid fever at spring training and was lost for the season. Another
veteran, Cy Morgan, had dropped to a record of 3-8 in 1912 after
several productive seasons as a pitcher with the A’s. He would
not be with the club in 1913. The bulk of the pitching chores would
rest on the shoulders of a cadre of younger pitchers, all of whom
were relative newcomers to major league baseball. Two of them, Carroll
“Boardwalk” Brown and Byron “Duke” Houck
had pitched respectably for Mack in 1912, compiling 13-11 and 8-8
records, respectively. Three other pitchers who saw limited action
in 1912—Stan Coveleski, “Bullet” Joe Bush, and
Herb Pennock—would be back to toil on the mound for the A’s.
In addition, pitcher Bob Shawkey, acquired from the minor league
Baltimore Orioles franchise in mid-season, would make a valuable
contribution during his time with the club.
A transition behind the plate also was underway for the A’s.
Dependable Jack Lapp handled most of the catching chores in 1913,
as he had in 1912. However, 1913 marked the debut of Wally Schang
for the Athletics, and he wound up catching almost as many games
as Lapp did that year. Schang would develop into a first-rate player,
take over as the team’s regular catcher in 1914, and remain
with the club in that capacity through the 1917 season. Many regard
Schang as Mack’s greatest catching discovery, next to Hall
of Famer Mickey Cochrane, of course.
Then, there was Connie Mack himself. After the 1912 season, Mack
bought the shares of Frank Hough and Sam Jones—two sportswriters
who had owned 25 percent of the Athletics’ stock since the
club’s establishment. With these additional shares, Mack owned
50 percent of the club and the ballpark, guaranteeing his continued
allegiance to the Athletics. This pleased Ben Shibe, principal owner
and club president, who wanted to ensure that his manager would
not be lured away to take the helm of another team. In 1913, Connie
Mack could begin to cash in on his increased investment in the Philadelphia
Athletics.
Spring Training
The Athletics held their spring training camp in San Antonio, Texas
in 1913. A new psychology permeated the camp as Mack worked his
players harder than he had in the past and reminded them incessantly
that lackadaisical play and smug attitudes had cost the A’s
the pennant the previous year.
The 1913 Season
Connie Mack adopted a new pitching system for the A’s that
would prove crucial to success in 1913. In addition to starting
Eddie Plank and Chief Bender, he often used them as relievers in
games in which younger starters held the lead but were beginning
to tire. This was a calculated gamble on Mack’s part since
both Plank and Bender had been pitching for the Athletics for over
a decade and were, by 1913, on the downhill side of their illustrious
careers. Mack acknowledged the risk when he wrote later in his autobiography,
“Bender and Plank I used oftener than any manager had ever
used two pitchers. I would put one of my youngsters in the box to
start a game and then I would send Bender or Plank in to save it.”
With reliever’s duties added to his starting pitcher’s
role, the number of games in which Bender appeared jumped from 27
to 48 between 1912 and 1913. Plank—always a workhorse on the
A’s staff—climbed more modestly, from 37 to 41.
The system worked splendidly. The Chief won 21 games in 1913, six
of which were gained in relief, while Plank brought home 18 victories
for the Mackmen, four of which were earned as a reliever. Writing
in the “Sporting News,” Billy Weart praised Mack’s
strategy. He commented, “To this writer’s way of thinking,
Connie never performed a greater achievement than he has this season
(1913), when he has his team leading the race from the start with
only two veteran pitchers, Plank and Bender, and a number of youngsters
who have been taken off the rubber more frequently than they have
been able to go through an entire contest.”
The 1913 pennant race was not much of a race after all. The Athletics
squelched any suspense in the American League chase by moving into
first place in late April and never relinquishing the position.
A 15-game winning streak during the season helped the Athletics
maintain the lead. The “$100,000 infield” performed
superbly, with McInnis, Collins, and Baker all hitting over .300,
and Baker leading the league in home runs (12) and RBIs (117). The
three regular outfielders all hit respectably—Murphy at .295,
Oldring at .283, and Walsh at .254. As a reserve outfielder, Strunk
batted a commendable .305. Leading the pitching staff was Bender
with 21 wins, followed by Plank (18), Brown (17), Houck (14), Bush
(14), and Shawkey (8). Pennock won only two games for the Athletics
in 1913. His Hall of Fame pitching career lay in the future with
another team.
Cleveland, behind the prolific bat of ex-A’s player Joe Jackson,
stayed close to the Athletics for the first three months of the
season. The Indians could never quite catch the A’s, however,
and eventually wound up in third place. The Washington Senators
landed in second at season’s end, largely on the magnificent
performance of Walter Johnson, who went 36-7. Nevertheless, the
Athletics’ 96-57 record gave them a comfortable six-and-a-half-game
lead over Washington when the regular season concluded.
Awaiting the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1913 World Series was
their old nemesis—John McGraw and his New York Giants.
The 1913 World Champion Athletics – Part II
By Bob Warrington
The Triumph of the White Elephant!
1913 was the rubber game of the match between the A’s and
Giants. The Giants had outdistanced the Athletics four games to
one in the 1905 World Series, and the A’s got the best of
the Giants four games to two in the 1911 Fall Classic. Mack, as
he had in the 1905 and 1911 World Series, gave the ball to Chief
Bender for the first game. While the Chief wasn’t as effective
as he had been in previous World Series appearances, giving up eleven
hits and four runs, it was still enough to best Rube Marquard and
the Giants. Frank Baker hit a home run with Collins on base and
Schang inserted a timely triple. The A’s knocked Marquard
out of the box in the fifth inning on their way to a 6-4 victory.
The second game featured Eddie Plank against the Athletics’
post-season bete noire—Christy Mathewson. It was Mathewson
who pitched three shutouts in six days against the A’s in
the 1905 World Series. The Mackmen, however, exacted some revenge
against Mathewson in the 1911 Fall Classic—beating him two
out of three games. Plank was a hard luck pitcher in the World Series,
winding up with an overall 2-5 record during his time with the A’s.
The second game of the 1913 World Series was indicative of Plank’s
misfortune. For eight and one-half innings Plank and Mathewson fought
each other to a scoreless draw. In the bottom of the ninth, the
Athletics had men on second (Barry) and third (Strunk) with no one
out. Mack thought the game was a good as won. Two successive grounders
to first base, however, resulted in Strunk and then Barry being
thrown out at home plate. A grounder back to Mathewson ended the
A’s aspirations and sent the game into extra innings. It didn't
last long. The Giants got to Plank for three runs in the top of
the tenth and won 3-0. For Plank, it was his third World Series
shutout suffered at the hands of the Giants and the second by that
score to Mathewson.
The third game of the World Series saw the Athletics’ bats
come alive. Mack started one of the youngsters—Joe Bush—who
held New York to five hits and two runs. The A’s, meanwhile,
scored eight runs as Collins and Baker made five hits between them
and Schang unloaded a mighty home run.
Game Four again saw Chief Bender at less than his best, but just
good enough to win. The A’s spotted him a 6-0 lead at the
end of five innings, but the Giants came back to threaten in the
sixth. With two men on base, McGraw called on Moose McCormick to
pinch hit. McCormick hit a sinking liner to centerfield, and in
what Connie Mack later called “the greatest catch I ever saw
in a World Series,” Rube Oldring came in fast and snared the
ball in a diving, tumbling catch just when it was about to touch
the ground. The significance of the catch became more apparent when
the Giants scored five runs in the seventh and eighth innings to
come within one of the Athletics. Bender, however, ended the game
convincingly by setting down New York in order in the ninth. Mack,
in a classic understatement, noted to the Chief when the game was
over, “Albert, you surely had me on pins and needles for a
while.”
Game Five offered a reprise of the Plank-Mathewson match-up. In
a rare development, the Athletics got to Mathewson early, going
up 3-0 by the end of three. Plank, pitching a masterful game, allowed
the Giants only a solitary run in the fifth, as the Mackmen glided
to a 3-1 win and the World Series title. Plank had gained his measure
of satisfaction in the last World Series game ever played between
the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Giants.
Aftermath
A celebration was held in Philadelphia that included a parade in
which the A’s made the three-mile trip from Shibe Park to
the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel with the public lining the streets
to cheer on their heroes. All seemed well for Connie Mack and his
World Champion Philadelphia Athletics. But, it wasn’t. At
the end of the 1913 season, the Federal League, an independent minor
league circuit, announced that it was expanding to major league
status and would fill its ranks by raiding the rosters of American
and National League clubs. Not surprisingly, the A’s would
be a prime target of the raiders. The move would bring Mack’s
First Dynasty to an end, lead to the dismantling of the A’s
team, and ensnare the club in controversy that remains to this day.
1912 may have been Mack’s greatest disappointment,”
but 1914 would be his bitterest.
Photo taken at Polo Grounds in
New York during the 1913 World Series
A's players shown in the photo are (from left): Ira Thomas, Bullet
Joe Bush, Stuffy McInnis, Jack Lapp, Eddie Plank, Chief Bender,
Jimmy Walsh, Eddie Murphy, Eddie Collins, Jack Barry, Rube Oldring,
and Amos Strunk.
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