swishnicholson wrote:

Bill McNeal wrote:Inflation adjusted to 2020:
.25 would be 1.92
.55 would be 4.22
.75 would be 5.76

Still can't get a knish at CBP at any price.

And certainly what I miss most about baseball is enjoying an egg salad sandwich in the warm, summer sun.

Here's something you don't ever see: footage of the Phillies at Baker Bowl. That building in the background is still there on Broad & Lehigh.

From somebody's 8mm home movies:

whoa, @2:10, Tommy Joseph just misses hitting one over the Lifebuoy sign...

Bucky wrote:whoa, @2:10, Tommy Joseph just misses hitting one over the Lifebuoy sign...

He even stunk back then

swishnicholson wrote:Timely article on Garry templeton's 1981 suspension

Holy hell.

And who was Templeton traded for after that season? Ozzie Smith.

Thanks for that link swish

50 years ago today...

Uncle Milty wrote:Thanks for that link swish

I waste my time so you can waste more of yours. It's a helluva system.

30 for 30 on the 98 home run race starting now on ESPN.

So, a friend of mine the other day - who is from Baltimore - "discovered" just how bad the Phillies aggregate record is and was texting me to bust my balls. I gave him the 411 on how unimaginably abysmal the franchise was from the landing of US troops at the German front in WW1 (1918) through the last years of the 1940s (1948). I think I posted here before, when everyone was making a big deal about the Pirates breaking the Phillies streak from that period for consecutive losing seasons, that though the Pirates may now hold that record, they don't - and no one ever will - hold a candle to the Phillies of 1918-1948 for being horrible. Outside of a lone season, in 1932, in which they managed to be one win over .500 at 78-76, the Phillies had a losing season every year, and somehow, in an era of the 154 game season, managed to lose 100 games or more 12 times in 31 seasons, including 5 in a row from 1938-1942 (so they can't even blame WWII for that), crowned by the absurd loss totals of 111 and 109 games respectively in 1941 and 1942.

In sharing all of this with my buddy, I was led to the following two observations that I had never thought much about before:

1. After 1948, the Phillies lost 100 games one more time in the era of the 154 game schedule - dropping 107 in 1961, the year of the famous 23 game losing streak. However, since the introduction of the 162 game schedule, in which it is theoretically easier to lose 100 games (since there are 8 more games in which to get the "job" done), the Phillies have never lost 100 again. Curious. Indeed, the Cardinals and Dodgers haven't dropped 100 since 1908, the Yankees since 1912 (when they weren't the Yankees yet), the Angels never have (only around since the debut of 162 game schedule in the AL) and neither have the Rockies in their relatively short history; but every other team has done it in the 162 game schedule except the Phillies, despite the close calls of 1972 (when a strike that cost baseball a few games may or may not have saved them), 1997, 2000, and especially 2015, among others.

2. The Athletics. They were garbage by the time they left town, and the Phillies by that point had the DuPont money through the Carpenters behind them, so the Athletics weren't going to be competitive with the Phillies in Philadelphia with the Macks as owners, and so they got sold. This I knew. What I hadn't really thought about before was this:

The team was first really up for sale in 1953. Somewhere in there, before Arnold Johnson bought the Athletics for $4M and moved them to KC (although I've read somewhere that the price was really more like $3M in terms of cash that changed hands, had to do with Connie Mack Stadium or something, anyway $4M is a bit of an inflated purchase price), there was an attempt to get a Philadelphia group to buy them and keep them here. The group was a hodge podge of like a dozen investors, none of whom had the money to really back an MLB franchise on their own, and the AL understandably was uninterested, the Yankees involvement notwithstanding (which I have also read has been overstated).

But this leads to my question: Philadelphia in 1953-1954 had plenty of very rich people with old and new money. Baseball teams are businesses, sure, but also - especially back then - they kind of aren't. Rich dudes from money would buy them to be "sporting," and treat them like a hobby, a very expensive one - the ultimate toy train set or whatever. Was there really nobody in Philadelphia with the money who would have been interested in owning a major league baseball team, particularly one with a storied history in Philadelphia? Compared to the Phillies, the Athletics, historically, were the great team in town. No singularly rich dude wanted in on that?

It seems odd. Maybe the Athletics were that far gone and the Phillies that well-heeled by that point that people just saw it as a bad investment --- but baseball team purchasing, and sports team purchasing in general, isn't always strictly about investment. Consider: when the USFL began as a start-up from nothing in 1982 and needed an owner in Philadelphia, they had no trouble finding a relatively well-heeled once to roll the dice on a scheme to take on the NFL. But no one wanted to buy the Athletics?

I find it strange that nobody stepped forward, in retrospect. $4M in 1954 would be $38.5M today. Surely somebody in the area could have afforded that, easily. By 1954, the AL was over 50 years old, which meant that for middle-aged businessmen of the time, it had more or less always existed. So the answer can't be, "Well, they didn't grow up with it, so there was nobody with passion for it." And again - look at the example of the USFL. Somebody was willing to step right up and own a franchise and commit all kinds of money to it in a start-up league here in the 1980s. Same thing in the 1970s actually - the Kelly family owned the Philadelphia Bell of the WFL, because, probably, they saw it as a "sporting" thing to be involved in.

Final note: it's also always amused me that the truly moribund Athletics franchise sold for an on-paper amount anyway of $4M in 1954, and 19 years later, the New York Yankees - the New York Fucking Yankees - sold for $7M to Steinbrenner. Adjusting for inflation from 1954 to 1973, the Yankees fetched about $500,000 more than the Athletics.

Baseball done changed a lot since its supposed "golden era" of the 1950s.

Interesting, were teams, even the Yankees, that profitable back then? You think about the revenue streams now, I just don’t know how they made money playing day games during the week and not having TV deals. Advertising wasnt at the same level, I don’t believe there were suites they charged companies huge numbers for, even stuff like merchandising I’m not sure if it was anywhere close to what it is today. Those prices are lower than what I would think but I wonder if it’s because running a pro baseball team was a huge money pit at that point.

MoBettle wrote:Interesting, were teams, even the Yankees, that profitable back then? You think about the revenue streams now, I just don’t know how they made money playing day games during the week and not having TV deals. Advertising wasnt at the same level, I don’t believe there were suites they charged companies huge numbers for, even stuff like merchandising I’m not sure if it was anywhere close to what it is today. Those prices are lower than what I would think but I wonder if it’s because running a pro baseball team was a huge money pit at that point.

That's kind of the point. Look at the Cubs. Wrigley didn't run them or own them for money. He had his gum company for that. He owned them because he liked baseball, and he ran them his way, which was: only decent, family-oriented folks. Only day games. Don't care if they win. I like them the way they are.

Cardinals, same thing. Busch family money, once the Busch family got involved. A business kinda sorta, but also a toy. O'Malley same thing with the Dodgers. The list goes on.

Make no mistake: there was ALWAYS a business aspect and owners cried poor to screw players. The reserve clause more or less guaranteed teams would at least break even if not be profitable. Gate receipts were their main revenue source unlike today, which is why you get absurdities like the fact that the American Association charged a minimum admission price of $0.25 in the 1880s, which is something like $6 today, and last year I got into a Chicago White Sox game for $4.65 (a big bone of contention between the AA and the NL was that the NL charged and insisted upon a minimum admission price of $0.50 back then, $12 or so today!).

But still, today it is different. it's all corporate models and really it's television and cable programming disguised as athletic competition. But back then? Baseball was as much a gentlemen's athletic club, polo for even wealthier people. Kinda like that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns assembles the plant team because he bet a million dollars his plant team would beat the Shelbeyville plant team. What will he do with the money if he wins? "I don't know... throw it on the pile I suppose."

It is also interesting to me how, although MLB was the "national pastime" and lots of people followed it and it was undeniably a cultural touchstone, it was also so "small" compared to what we think of today, and really for a much longer time than I think is often fully appreciated. It was only the rise of the NFL and MLB free agency that belatedly drove anything like what resembles the modern business model in baseball.

Few if any licensing deals and very limited merchandising, very limited television coverage, just small businesses, really through the early 80s in some cases. MLB attendance in the 1970s reflects that. In 1979, the Oakland Athletics drew 306,763 fans for the season. But OK, they were threatening to move to Denver at the time. So how about the New York Mets? In 1979, they drew 788,905. Not accounting for scheduled doubleheaders and whatnot, that's 9,740 fans a game. In New York.

I think locally this smallness is best captured by a story I *think* I heard Chris Wheeler tell about how Dan Stephenson became the Phillies video guy. Today you take it for granted that team videos and commercials and what not are a cornerstone of marketing. At the time, Stephenson, as I recall, was the bartender, or maybe just a patron, of a bar that Wheeler drank at. He got to talking with Stephenson and found out he was into video production. So he brings him one day to the Vet and just starts introducing him to everyone as "our new video guy." And that was it.

Unthinkable today, and that happened in the early 1980s.

swishnicholson wrote:

Bucky wrote:no, but it's pretty easy to infer...the team was crappy, attendance was dwindling and cheap a$$ connie mack was pissed that revenue was going to the 20th streeters and not him. no way was he going to spend all that money for proper bleachers without attendance demand. the corrugated metal fence was a quick, dirty, and cheap 'fix'.

I don't really think the geography would have easily allowed for right field bleachers anyway. 20th to 21st is a shorter block than Lehigh to Columbia The metal wall was right up against 20th street, and the distance to the right field corner was only 329 feet. though I suppose you're right, if there had been enough money it they would have figured out a way, but with attendance on the decline it wouldn't have made sense as an investment at the time.

I think the "spite fence" sometimes gets a bad rap. These weren't knothole gang kids being deprived of the chance to see the game for free. People were literally selling tickets on the sidewalk outside the stadium at prices less than the at the box office for bleacher seats installed on the roof.

As to original question, obviously "park factors" were not as seriously discussed back in the day. I don't remember the opening of the Vet being discussed as a positive or negative for the offense (until they discovered that anything hitting the ground near the warning tack was likely to bounce over the fence). Connie Mack obviously had that wasteland in center field, but the corners and power alleys weren't that different from the new Vet. The high fence in right was obviously a detriment to left handed hitters. Dick sisler, say, seems to be one who was affected by it, though I can't find any discussion of that. His biography is certainly an interesting read anyway

All these years and I never realized, and never bothered to find out, that Dick Sisler was in fact George Sisler's son.

The question I had back in April still stands: why did Shibe/Mack build a spite fence in right field to keep out prying eyes, instead of a spite bleachers to enclose the park and add seats? Would have had the added effect, had they done it that way, of shortening the porch in right, which there was plenty of room for.