Today, Yard Work will step aside and introduce today’s Season Preview post from longtime A’s manager Connie Mack with an anecdote from Mack’s Wikipedia page: “Once, when [Mack] visited the mound to remove the notoriously hot-tempered [Lefty] Grove from a game, Grove said, ‘Go take a shit,’ when Mack held out his hand for the ball. Mack looked Grove straight in the eye and calmly said, ‘You go take a shit, Robert.'”
Before I begin in earnest, I must say, from where I sit, I have no idea what in the world is going on down there. I’m certain the fine people of Philadelphia would never stand for this nonsense some pretend is baseball! This William Beaner, he’s supposed to be some sort of savant? Perhaps an idiot savant, I would think! Who would want to watch millionaires — millionaires! — performing what amounts to a basic constitutional when they could very well take in a moving picture show at the local cinema, or quench their thirst with a refreshing sarsaparilla? Where is the panache? Where is the flair? And where, I ask you, is the well-groomed facial hair? These players might be wearing the insignia of the team I am proud to call my own, but looking at what these glorified ruffians and unseemly characters are doing to my fair game, they are no more baseball players than they are speakeasy drunks.
How unseemly of these players to just stand there and watch as the balls sail past their idle bats! And athletes — my word, I shudder to think how these paunchy slouch-ridden so-called “men” can call themselves athletes. The countenance of this Jack Cust, for instance, reminds me of nothing more than a bowl of “Cust”-ard — pun most assuredly intended! — that has sat out in the noonday sun for too long. The same goes for that Eveland character, or this rotund Blanton man that is the team’s defacto “ace”. Given how heavy these lads look, I am thinking Mr. Beaner acquires his hurlers based on bulk rather than talent. And now, to join these molasses-footed individuals, they have acquired a dark-skinned Canadian fellow by the name Francis Thomas — how such a mountainous man can be so massive and powerful and yet so brittle that he cannot play the field is beyond my understanding of what I thought of this sport we call baseball.
I doubt even the most passionate fan of this squad could name four of the nine Oakland starters without a scorecard, even if they were spotted three of the names. Their leading run producer and best hitter both are first-year A’s that, ironically, were castoffs from that dismal Kansas City squad that suits its backwater burgh to a quite cross T. Their best pitcher from the previous year has a losing record in this one, and is still a desired hurler from many teams! And yet, they win! More so, this team is in first place! As God as my witness, it might take me one thousand lifetimes to wrap my head around this quandry. Clearly the entirety of the sport has fallen onto hard times when such a motley misshapen collection of humanity can position themselves for an honest-to-goodness World Championship!
Though I am not one to boast, it is with no false modesty that I make the following claim. I would wager with any betting man that I could employ merely a handful of my former players — Charles Bender, James Foxx, Edward Collins, perhaps even that foul-mouthed Robert Grove character, just to name a few of those I was fortunate to steward during my tenure — and fill any roster vacancies with hopeful young men playing stickball in the streets of Philadelphia or Brooklyn, children that were stout of heart and character. I could take this patchwork squad, and in a series of seven or nine games, or even over the course of the regular season, I would guarantee that my rag-tag squad would soundly trounce those well-funded anonymous upstarts with multiple games to spare!
Of course, it should go without saying that my failure to understand the ways and means of the modern-day Athletics goes hand in hand with my failures to grasp the nuances of the game as it exists in the 21st century. All this unseemly showboating! All the jewelry and wanton bodily mutilation! Narcotics use that is better suited for opium dens and lurid pulp novels than America’s past-time! Those inscrutable Orientals! Oh, I know that the game must change with the times, but my word! I guess my sensibilities are more in tune with the ribald and jovial antics of Michael Joseph Kelly — or, heaven help me, that swill-swallowing wastrel George Ruth! — than the grunts and hand gestures of these players that reminds me of the primitive means of communication utilized by the common African bushman.
But I digress. This elderly man is woefully out of sorts even imagining the advances, technological and societal, that have come and gone in the three score years since I last stood in the dugout at grand old Shibe Park. Clearly I am in no position to speak sensibly of such things, though I have undoubtedly said more than enough for some. No matter — things are what they are, and though the franchise that once took the field beside the Atlantic Ocean now plies its wares beside the Pacific Ocean, and though they play a style of ball that churns my innards with a nauseating vigor, I shall root for her all the same, be they in first place or last place or even no place at all. So go on, you Crosby, you Sweeney, you … you Duchscherer! Do my glorious elephant proud, men!