by Bob Warrington

Introduction

Connie Mack’s biographer, Frederick G. Lieb, had this to say about the Philadelphia Athletics’ 1908 season, “The A’s went into a sharp tailspin.” After a second place finish in 1907 with an 88-57 record, the team dropped to 68-85 in 1908, earning the A’s sixth place at season’s end—the lowest the team had ever finished in the standings since the American League (AL) was formed in 1901.

But 1908 was much more than an off-year for the Athletics. When placed on a continuum of franchise history, 1908 can best be described as a transitional year. Manager Connie Mack used it to start piecing together the team that would blossom into the A’s First Dynasty. A second place finish in 1909 was followed by four AL pennants and three World Series championships from 1910-14.

The transition occurred in four ways: First, players departed who had been with the Athletics when or soon after the franchise was established. Second, players arrived who would become mainstays in the line-up for years to come. Third, players appeared for that proverbial “cup of coffee” with the A’s and then forever disappeared from the big leagues. Fourth, the club bade farewell to its original home in favor of a magnificent new ballpark where the A’s would open the 1909 season.

The Athletics’ Team

The A’s did not do well in 1908 for the same reasons that clubs always fare poorly—shortcomings in pitching and shortfalls in hitting. Connie Mack dealt Rube Waddell—one of the club’s greatest pitchers—after the 1907 season. The Athletics’ manager had tired of Waddell’s antics and eccentricities, but Rube had won 61 games for the club over the preceding three seasons (1905-07), and he would be sorely missed on the pitching staff in 1908.

Compounding Waddell absence, other A’s pitchers had sub-par years in 1908. For the first time since joining the Athletics in 1901, Eddie Plank lost more games than he won, going 14-16. This happened only one other time during Plank’s career, when he went 5-6 in 1917—his last year in the majors. Chief Bender and Jimmy Dygert also struggled, going 8-9 and 11-15, respectively. Of all the A’s pitchers, only Jack Coombs posted a winning record, finishing the season at 7-5.

Rube Vickers achieved the most victories for the Athletics, notching 18 of them while losing 19. He also was the workhorse of the staff—toiling 300 innings—to surpass considerably the innings pitched by any other A’s hurler. With his performance in 1908, Vickers joined the multitude of “one year wonders” that populate baseball’s history. After going 0-3 with Cincinnati in 1902 and 0-1 with Brooklyn in 1903, Vickers dropped out of the majors for several years before resurfacing with the Athletics in 1907 and posting a modest 2-2 record. He had his standout year in 1908 before returning to form in 1909 by repeating his 2-2 record with the A’s and then leaving the majors forever. Years later, Mack lamented Vickers’ fleeting success with the club (quoted in Lieb), “I thought I had a pitcher in Vickers who would help us for a long time, but that was his one big season with us.”

Offense also was a problem for the Athletics in 1908. The team’s combined batting average was .223—good for last in the AL. Harry Davis, Simon Nicholls, Jimmy Collins, Topsy Hartsel, and other A’s regulars saw their batting averages drop by varying amounts from 1907. Runs decreased from 582 in 1907 to 487 in 1908. Hits by the team diminished from 1277 to 1131 over those two years.

Despite the club’s overall poor performance, the Athletics remained competitive early on and even found themselves in first place on a couple of occasions. The team’s weaknesses became manifest as the 1908 season progressed, however, and Mack realized his club would end up somewhere in the second division when it was all over. That being so, as Lieb relates, “Connie devoted the latter part of the season to experimentation,” and a zero-based assessment of what needed to be done to make the A’s a contender once more.

Age was slowing down some of the players on the A’s roster. Right fielder Socks Seybold, who had been with the club since its inception, turned 37 in 1908. He broke his leg early in the season which effectively ended Seybold’s major league career. Jimmy Collins, who filled in at third base for part of the 1907 season and in 1908, now was 38, and his effectiveness at the plate had diminished. He left the Athletics and the majors after the 1908 campaign was over. Other key players were now in their mid-30s. Harry Davis and Topsy Hartsel, each at 34 years old, were beginning to show their age in the field and at the plate. Mack knew their days as regulars in the line-up were coming to an end.

Another player who had his last year with the Athletics in 1908 was catcher Ossee Schreck—Waddell’s battery mate and soul mate. His role on the Athletics had decreased with the great Rube’s departure. Released by Mack near the end of the 1908 season, Schreck latched on for a few games with the White Sox that year and then was out of the big leagues never to return at age 33. Allowing Schreck to leave didn’t drain the A’s talent pool much, but it certainly made the team less colorful.

Fortunately for Mack and his A’s, new talent was waiting in the wings ready to enter on stage. Twenty-two year old Frank Baker joined the A’s in 1908 and played nine games at third base—a sign that Mack was eyeing him as Collins’ heir apparent. Baker would become the regular third baseman for the Athletics in 1909 and remain in the position through the 1914 season on his way to a Hall of Fame career.

Shortstop was an issue that needed to be addressed. Simon Nicholls was adequate defensively, but his batting average had dropped by almost a hundred points between 1907 and 1908. Mack wanted to find a place in the line-up for Eddie Collins’ bat, and shortstop was a prime consideration. Mack later recalled (quoted in Lieb), “Eddie had been a shortstop at Columbia, and I used him in that position in some games (in 1908). However, I never was quite satisfied with his shortstop play, so I tried him at third base, and in a few games, even in right field. I soon had to get him out of there; a couple of fly balls almost hit him on the head.”

Salvation at shortstop came in the form of a 21-year-old youngster who joined the Athletics in 1908 and played 14 games at the position—Jack Barry. He became the club’s regular shortstop in 1909, where he would remain into the 1915 season. Along with Baker, Barry formed half of what would become Mack’s famed “$100,000 infield.” Never an offensive juggernaut, Barry was a defensive wizard in anchoring the A’s infield and had a penchant for getting hits when they counted most—in winning games.

With Barry covering shortstop, where to put Eddie Collins remained a conundrum for Mack, and he came up with an ingenious solution. As he related to Lieb, “I thought, why not put my second baseman, Danny Murphy in right field (as a replacement for Seybold) and see what Eddie could do at second base? Though Danny had been my second baseman since my first pennant in 1902, he never was a really great second baseman. He didn’t pivot too well on double plays, but Danny always was a sweet hitter.”

It proved to be one of the smartest moves in Mack’s career. As Lieb notes, “Collins developed into one of the second base wizards of all time, a hitter who soon was challenging Cobb, and a base runner capable of stealing 81 bags a season.” Collins stayed as the A’s second baseman through the 1914 season.

Putting the final piece (first base) of the “$100,000 infield” in place would have to wait a couple of years. Stuffy McInnis joined the Athletics in 1909 when he was only 18 years old. He became the team’s regular first baseman in 1911—displacing the aging Harry Davis—and remained in that status through the 1917 season.

There was more personnel turnover at the catcher’s position. With Schreck gone, catcher-by-committee was Mack’s solution to finding a replacement. Mike Powers died after playing in only one game for the A’s in 1909, but at 38 years old, he clearly was not part of the A’s future. Ira Thomas and Paddy Livingston shared catching duties that year, with the younger Jack Lapp catching a few games along the way. The Athletics used three primary catchers from 1909-15: Lapp, Thomas and Wally Schang. All played important roles in covering that position during the period.

The outfield situation also was somewhat fluid. Rube Oldring anchored centerfield through the 1915 season, and Danny Murphy—after being switched to right field—stayed there through the 1911 season. The other prominent A’s outfielders who sustained the A’s through the First Dynasty were Eddie Murphy, Bris Lord, Jimmy Walsh and Amos Strunk.

In talking about transition in the Athletics’ outfield beginning in 1908, some mention must be made of a player who wasn’t with the club very long but who blazed his own legendary trail in major league baseball history—Joe Jackson. Mack purchased Jackson for $325 from the Greenville, South Carolina club of the Carolina Association on August 22, 1908. Jackson made his debut with the A’s three days later, getting one hit in four times at bat.

Then, Jackson disappeared. He returned to Greenville, preferring its environment to the big city life of Philadelphia. Mack sent Seybold to fetch him back, but Jackson slipped off the train headed for Philadelphia and yet again went back to Greenville. Finally, the A’s skipper was able to get his wayward player to return to the team where he appeared in five games for the Athletics in 1908—the exact number of games he would also play for the club in 1909. Jackson was traded to Cleveland in July 1910 for Bris Lord, who had previously played for the A’s and was viewed by Mack as offering immediate help in the team’s pennant run that year. Lord’s contributions did help the Athletics win the 1910 AL title (and World Series), while Jackson went on to fashion a Hall of Fame career that became unraveled by the Black Sox scandal.

The nucleus of the Athletics’ pitching staff that would carry the club into the First Dynasty was in place in 1908: Eddie Plank, Chief Bender and Jack Coombs. The rotation was filled out by additional pitchers who contributed importantly to the A’s success during the period, including Jimmy Dygert, Cy Morgan, Harry Krause and Boardwalk Brown. When a pitcher faltered—Coombs, for example, went down with illness in 1913—others stepped in to make up the difference. Duke Houck and Joe Bush each won 14 games for the Athletics that year, compensating for Coombs’ absence from the team. The pitching staff formed the bulwark upon which the A’s First Dynasty was built.

Although this story focuses on transition, some acknowledgement must be made of Eddie Plank and his continuity with the Athletics. Plank is the only player to remain with the club from its first year of existence (1901) to the end of the First Dynasty (1914). This fact isn’t that surprising when you consider Plank is one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game, to which his plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame attests.

But teams have a lot more players that don’t make it to the Hall of Fame than do. As in other years, the 1908 A’s team had its share of players who appeared and disappeared with such rapidity that you might have missed them if you blinked your eyes. Connie Mack was a hard-nosed assessor of talent and far from a sentimentalist when it came to dispatching players judged as not up to snuff. The “experimentation” to which Mack subjected A’s players during the latter half of the 1908 season focused on differentiating between those to keep and those to send on their way.

You won’t find plaques at the Hall of Fame for Jack Fox, Gus Salve, Jack Flater, Al Kellog or Eddie Files. Even a hardcore A’s fan would have trouble recognizing the names. Each entered the major leagues in 1908, played briefly for the A’s that year, and then left the “Show” never to return. Salve appeared in one game, Files in two, and Kellog in three. As noted, if you blinked, you might have missed them.

Mack’s “experimentation” had paid off by the end of the 1908 season. He had put in place some of the key building blocks upon which the First Dynasty period would be based. The stage was set for that run to greatness. But the stage itself also changed, and 1908 marks a key transition in the place the Athletics called home.

The Athletics’ Ballpark

Although built at the dawn of the 20th century (1901), Columbia Park was in all respects a 19th century ballpark. Constructed entirely of wood at a cost of $35,000, it held 9,500 people. The covered grandstand went from behind home plate down to first and third bases. Open bleachers continued down both foul lines. There also was a bleacher section that ran across left field. A small press box sat atop the grandstand behind home plate. Athletics’ players dressed in a clubhouse under the grandstand while visiting players had to change at their hotel before coming to the game. There were no dugouts at Columbia Park. Players sat on wooden benches in front of the grandstand.

Hastily constructed in time to open the 1901 season, Columbia Park served a useful purpose and became a place where much baseball history was made. But, the ballpark’s limited seating capacity doomed it as a short-term venue until something bigger and better was built. There were too many times when Ben Shibe and Connie Mack saw fans turned away because of insufficient seating for Columbia Park to last very long. In 1908, the Athletics broke ground for a new ballpark—called Shibe Park after the club’s president—that would be the team’s home for the rest of its years in Philadelphia.

Ballpark closings have, in recent times, become season-long rituals with much pageantry and ceremony followed by the sale of memorabilia from the structure to eager collectors. Many of those reading this story are familiar with the Phillies’ ostentatious farewell to Veterans Stadium throughout the 2003 season that culminated in the “Final Innings” weekend series against the Atlanta Braves on 26-28 September.

Such extravagant formalities did not exist when Columbia Park closed in 1908. The Athletics finished the at-home portion of their schedule that season with four games against the Boston Red Sox. The first game of the series took place on 1 October 1908, with the A’s prevailing 5-2. Attendance was 367. The second game took place the next day and saw Boston come out on top 8-1. Attendance was 356.

The final major league games ever played at Columbia Park took place on 3 October 1908. A doubleheader was scheduled between the Athletics and Red Sox. The first game was a hitters’ feast and an exciting contest. A’s pitcher Al Kellog—mentioned above as one of those given a brief tryout with the team before being dismissed—never made it out of the first inning, giving up three runs. Jack Flater—in the same category as Kellog—pitched the rest of the way. By the end of the third inning, Boston was ahead 6-2. The A’s chipped away the innings passed, however, and finally took the lead 7-6 after seven innings of play. Boston came back in the top of the ninth to tie the score. The Red Sox may have tallied more runs with one out and a man on third, but Amby McConnell flied out to centerfielder Rube Oldring, and when Doc Gessler tried to score from third on the play, a perfect throw from Oldring nailed him at the plate. The A’s came back in the bottom of the ninth to snare the victory when Harry Davis walked, advanced to third, and scored when Oldring hit a grounder to shortstop Heinie Wagner, who threw wild to catcher Lou Criger in an effort to get Davis out at home. The A’s won, and Jack Flater got his first and only major league victory.

The second game was an all-Boston affair. The Red Sox jumped on Jack Coombs, who gave up four runs in three innings of work. Eddie Files—yet another one of those players who had a now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t tenure with the A’s—succeeded Coombs and held Boston to only one more run over the next three innings. The Athletics, on the other hand, could do nothing against Red Sox pitcher Smokey Joe Wood. They managed a measly single—hit by Coombs—through six innings of play. The game was called on account of darkness at that point, with Boston prevailing by a final score of 5-0.

Attendance at the doubleheader was 1,281. As this figure shows, along with those of the previous two games in this final A’s home stand, there was no outpouring of affection for Columbia Park amongst Philadelphia fans anxious to see one last game there. The Athletics were out of contention and playing out the string. Fans stayed home, unmoved by any thought of bidding farewell to Columbia Park. This attitude stands in sharp contrast to the Phillies’ last series at Veterans Stadium in 2003. All three games against the Braves were sellouts (62,000+ fans in the stands for each game).

There was no ceremony or subsequent ballpark memorabilia sale to mark the end of the Athletics’ residence at Columbia Park. The game ended, the fans left, and the ballpark closed. The “Philadelphia Inquirer,” in its report on the final game, offered the briefest of epitaphs in noting, “Columbia Park, the scene of the Athletics’ triumphs and reverses, became a thing of the past so far as major league base ball is concerned. Next year the Athletics will be installed in the most sumptuous quarters ever dedicated to the presentation of sport in the open.”

One piece of Columbia Park did make the journey to Shibe Park along with the Athletics, however—the sod. It was removed from Columbia Park and transplanted in Shibe Park.

A photograph that accompanies this story shows Connie Mack at Columbia Park in early 1909. Piles of strips of sod are clearly visible in the background as Mack presumably supervises their removal for shipment to Shibe Park. Also in the background are the ballpark’s bleachers and homes located along Columbia Avenue. Fans would pay to watch ballgames from the roofs of those homes, as they would from the roofs of homes along 20th Street once Shibe Park opened. Also note advertising on the outfield wall in the background of the photograph. Although outfield wall advertising was forbidden at Shibe Park (at least until the Phillies took over), it was allowed by the Athletics at Columbia Park.

Epilogue

1908 is not regarded as a noteworthy year in Athletics’ history. The season itself was not memorable in terms of the club’s performance. However, events were underway that could not be fully appreciated at the time, but that would positively affect the A’s for years to come. When viewed in retrospect, 1908 was not about where the team was, but where the team was going.