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Originally Posted by BaseballMan
Not sure about that.
The A's had more success in a couple of short spurts but they were pretty awful most of the time.
I think Connie Mack said it was better for his team to be competitive during the season and not make the playoffs.
So he didn't have to pay higher wages.
Problem for him was that he was fighting his great eye for talent.
Wonder what would have happened if Mack had ever though of how much more revenue winning would bring to his team.
Anyway if you cant keep your best players then i'm not sure what that says about a team's chances of staying in a city.
Then again the Pirates are still in Pittsburgh.
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Nah, the Phillies were absolutely moribund prior to the 40s. Their home stadium into the 30s was a horrifically bad stadium, the Baker Bowl, which I know is now fondly remembered for its goofy dimensions but at the time was widely and correctly viewed as a terrible park that was shaped a certain way to fit into a city park in a bad part of town. They finally gave, dumped that old piece of trash, paid rent to the A’s for Shibe Park, and were essentially the Clippers for another 15 or so years. Then the A’s got extremely cheap as Connie Mack got very old and the team was basically run by his not-in-there-for-his-talent son Earle Mack, and by the 50s, when the league was just plain getting too large for 16 teams in 10 cities, yes, the Phillies were the team.
But lest we forget, as late as World War II Bill Veeck almost bought them; his thing even then was that he didn’t actually have much money and so he tended to do promotions and gimmicks to keep teams afloat (everyone remembers Eddie Gaedel in St Louis but he was very very much that kind of “trader Bob” kind of guy in Cleveland too). Veeck claimed his plan was to fill the roster with Negro Leaguers, which a. seems unlikely and b. if true would have been a huge reason why the league and the old racist Kennesaw Mountain Landis put the kibosh on the deal, but on the other hand I wouldn’t put it past him (and he was the guy who integrated the AL so there is that).