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Recap: In the first two installments of this short tall tale (links here — Part 1 and Part 2), the re-animated Philadelphia A’s owner-manager Connie Mack has traveled six feet up and 3,000 miles west to lay claim to his former team. Mr. Mack and his new lawyer (gimmicky billboard class-action guy Howard Gumption) have just dropped some bombshell news on the A’s imminently carpetbagging front office: if they try to move to Vegas, he has the right to buy back his team.

 Part III:

“Go West, Dead Man…”

After a whirlwind meeting, Mr. Mack and his entourage left the building. The current owner of the A’s, Joe Fissure, was presently in mid-fume, grilling his high-priced Ivy League lawyer about how the holy hell a dead guy and a billboard clown had him on the ropes.

“I’m not saying we’re on the defensive, Joe,” said the lawyer. “I’m just saying that if that agreement turns out to be legit, they might have a case to present in court.”

Meanwhile Doyle Cabal, the team president, was googling information about the claims that had been put forth in this room. Fissure groaned: “How the fuck am I getting jammed up by a zombie with a cocktail napkin?! I thought zombies weren’t real! Since when is that a thing? I need to be briefed on the new trends.”

Cabal groaned even louder, and all heads in the conference room whipped his way. He grimaced, reading from his screen. “So, it definitely looks like there were league meetings at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1954 when they were trying to sort out the sale of the A’s. So that part of their story lines up, at least.”

Mack’s eldest sons, Roy and Earle, had been the driving force behind the team’s sale, and, by many accounts, were not the sharpest spikes in the equipment room. Mr. Mack, despite being long revered as an icon of the game, was one of the least financially solvent owners in the majors. He’d retired as manager after the 1950 season (his 50th at the helm), but four years later, at the age of 91, had decided that he needed to cash out, for his wife and children, rather than continue the struggle against decreasing odds of success. The other team in town, the National League’s upstart Phillies, had finally tasted some success and stolen much of the A’s thunder, and Mr. Mack couldn’t afford to run a farm system, which was what all the successful franchises were now doing…

It gutted him that he and his sons couldn’t find qualified local buyers to keep the team in Philadelphia. He was not at all pleased that the team would be moving to Kansas City after its purchase by new owner Arnold Johnson, for he knew that generations of Philadelphia Athletics fans would feel abandoned.

So, unbeknownst to almost the entirety of the outside world until seven decades later, the one concession he got that Fall, during special meetings at the Waldorf-Astoria, was an agreement by league owners and AL President William Harridge that, “If the franchise is ever going to head East again, Mr. Mack alone (and not his heirs) will have the first right of refusal to purchase the team back at fair market value.” This codicil (thought to be merely a symbolic gesture at the time) was written on the hotel napkin, and signed by both the league president and Mr. Mack. The man was 91 at the time. Practically insolvent, if not incontinent. It was a gesture. A courtesy.

The Philadelphia A’s weren’t even sold to Johnson’s group until a month later, but it turned out the napkin lasted longer than anything else in that room.

************

And now, 69 years later, the formerly threadbare wallet of Cornelius McGillicuddy was bursting with well over a billion bucks. The GoFundMe started by Ho Gumption had obliterated all previous online fund-raising records, with posts from George Clooney, Stephen King, Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell stoking public interest to the tune of eight figures of donations. Late night TV host Stephen Colbert even had actor James Cromwell, a Mack doppelganger, on the show, portraying the baseball man and “passing the hat.” (Colbert had initially invited Mack to come on the program and do the solicitation, and the gent was game, but the CBS lawyers kiboshed that plan, leery both of his undead status and the legal implications of soliciting funds. Colbert waggishly said CBS was intentionally spiting its top demographic, “centenarians into boring sports.”)

As you may have noticed, billionaires usually get what they want, so it’s kind of extra fun when two are at odds. Current A’s owner Fissure had the support of MLB Commissar Mangled, some of the other owners and some Vegas movers and shakers, but Mr. Mack had… pretty much everyone else.

Continue reading “”

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PART II:

A Zombie Lawyers Up

Can there be pep in a glacial step? 

The musty corporeal being of 2023 Connie Mack, humming a remix of the 1927 chart-topper “California, Here I Come,” tipped his hat at perplexed receptionist Coco Gentilly on his way out– did old boy just wink at me??– and decamped the Oakland A’s offices, lurching outside. Late morning sunlight perforated the marine murk like buckshot and scattered gaudy coins on the estuary. Mr. Mack’s humming got louder and his stride grew bolder. 

His crumbling jaw was set as he moseyed by tourists and vagrants and contemplated his new goal. This new acquaintance Demetrious Adair was most assuredly right– he would need legal assistance if he was going to make this unlikely transaction happen. Unfortunately, the Philadelphia lawyers he knew were thousands of miles away and presumably six feet under. Reluctantly, the reanimated teetotaler considered that he would do well to find a watering hole and engage the citizenry about his need.

Mr. Mack recalled that the esteemed batsman Lefty O’Doul of the Phillies and other clubs had opened a saloon in his hometown of San Francisco in the last century. And also, Lefty owes me a favor– because he once fleeced me out of $25,000 for a no-hit shortstop. However, a detour across the bay seemed overwhelming at the moment. Despite his recent good fortune in hitch-hiking across the great swath of America– Rube would be so proud of my gamboling spirit–Mr. Mack found that he was down to just a pair of Ben Franklins in his billfold.

Most fortuitously for his present circumstances, he had been buried in Philadelphia’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery on a rainy Sunday in 1956 with 500 dollars and the documents secreted in his suit– and here he was, inexplicably resurrected and somehow on the verge of meeting with the current A’s ownership! The metaphysical mysteries could be investigated later, but right now it was baseball season, and a challenge was before him! But he required a lawyer if this obstacle was to be surmounted. 

The solution to this dilly of a pickle, although obscure, must be under my nose… just like Ehmke, he indulged in a smirk to himself, reveling in a managerial memory from the glory days of 1929.  

The 35-year old journeyman, Howard Ehmke, had been Mr. Mack’s surprise starting pitcher in Game 1 of the World Series. The nation’s sports reporters were flabbergasted by the unlikely selection, but in the end, it was the bats of the mighty Cubs which were most flummoxed. Ehmke twirled a dandy, the A’s won Game 1 and never looked back, rolling on to an impressive championship.

A few strides later, it was the name of the tavern that caused him to stop undead in his tracks. “Heinold’s First and Last Chance.” 

Perfectly poetic. 

Mr. Mack crinkled a grin, ravaged flesh cascading over outpost cheekbones. “Established in 1884,” read a plaque just inside the door, where the dark wood and old framed photos made the visitor feel more in his element.

“That was the last year I had a strong spirit,” Mr. Mack cracked, hooking a long, gnarled finger back toward the plaque as he strode in, traversing the ancient, bowed floor. The bartender nodded stoically, while a few patrons chuckled. When asked if Mr. Heinold was present, the barman informed him that the owner was long extinct. Mr. Mack got straight to the point, removing his hat, clearing his desiccated throat and asking if anyone present happened to be, or know, a well-connected barrister. Silence. Maybe they didn’t know what “barrister” meant?

He then made piercing eye contact with each person in the room, shuffling around in a resolute semi-circle, and an epidemic of goosebumps broke out. “I’m an honest, God-fearing baseball man, and seeing as how I’m back in the game, back on this plane, somehow,” Mr. Mack said, “I see fit to seek some justice for the Oakland A’s.”

Those assembled in Heinold’s First and Last Chance that weekday afternoon may not have been the finest minds of this or any generation, but they knew exactly how to respond to a perfectly calibrated stump speech. Soon, though, the cackles and whoops and cries of “Let’s go A’s!” dimmed down, and after a few more pregnant pauses, it became clear that no helpful answer was forthcoming. 

Once the heady intoxicant of false hope wore off, Mr. Mack’s spirit and spine sagged. He realized with a disquieting jolt that he felt the gravitational pull of his deserted tomb. He was starting to think the “Last Chance” was the more apt half of the bar’s name at this point and planning to turn on his heel and find another public house, a robust potato of a man caressing a vodka and tonic beckoned him over.

As Mr. Mack approached, the human spud, nearly twice his weight and encased in a polo shirt and a cheap windbreaker, dramatically extended his left fist for a bump. Not wise to the social conventions of the day, Mr. Mack regarded the meaty paw, creakily sighed at what he interpreted as a hostile invitation, and, flaring his hat-rack shoulders, squared up into a classic Marquess de Queensbury pose. 

“You’re a bit stout for the job, my good man,” said Mr. Mack, “but I daresay I’ll mop the floor with you if I must.”

“Oh shit!” called out an observant grad student to his friends, who whipped out their phones in tandem. The bartender tilted his head sideways and sighed, then suddenly remembered something in the back office that needed tending to. Continue reading “”

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PART I:

Corpus Connie

Coco Gentilly was about to check “Lost and Found,” because her last good nerve was nowhere to be found. The phone calls today had been more unsettling than usual.

Five years ago, she’d figured that taking the job as front-desk receptionist for a Major League Baseball team, the Oakland A’s, would have been a fairly low-stress environment. Perfect gig for a single mom, raising a rowdy, sports-loving boy with ADD. And for the first few years, it had been. Especially with that pandemic.

But 2023 was different altogether. Oakland, the baseball-loving Oakland anyway, was presently an electric rodeo shitshow of hurt feelings, unwavering corporate greed and legislative pandering. Coco fielded dozens of irate, irrational and unhinged phone calls on the daily; everything from sobbing season-ticket holders and power-hungry wannabes to local celebs and politicians, all desperate to save the day, and maybe somehow fend off another Vegas invasion. After all, those no-good Nevadans had already seduced and stolen the town’s beloved Raiders a few years back. And now the A’s, less treasured but still the last kid left in town, were rumored to be abducted and desert-bound. Gertrude Stein’s infamous Oaklandian summary – “There is no there there” — was sadly becoming a sporting prophecy.

Truth be told, Coco hadn’t given two hollers about baseball when she landed this job, but over time, the underdog nature of the team and its fan base (plus repeated lobby viewings of the movie with that delicious white boy Brad Pitt), had worked its charms on her. As a bonus, her son Miles deemed the gear she brought home, in the team’s green and gold colors, “fresher than fresh.”

Even worse than the plaintive voices were the occasional wackadoo walk-ins. Like this one right now, a truly decrepit gentleman with piercing eyes and paper-thin skin approaching her desk in Heritage Hall, wafting distinct hints of mothballs, mildew and… were those diesel fumes?

Nonetheless, she resumed re-watching her favorite Instagram video of the day: a herd of wild goats on a county road, feasting on a buffet of Reddi-Whip cans disgorged from an overturned semi, all thoughtfully set to the tune of Kelis’ “Milkshake”. The oldster was only about fifteen feet away, but judging from his rickety gait, Coco figured she had an eternity of buffer before she’d need to plaster on that fake smile her bosses insisted upon.

However, BLAM.

The seriously senior citizen dropped a piece of gum or something on her desk. As she looked up, he blushed, while oddly clutching his prominent nose against his lean, weathered face. Coco scrunched her eyes and scanned the counter for the offending item. But the gum or whatever was nowhere to be seen. Weird. There was, however, a significant stench about. Old boy doffed his round straw hat, revealing where the vintage vapors emanated from. Although his dark suit, with the severe white collared shirt, no doubt also kicked up some serious funk.

“Apologies, young lady,” he said. “It’s been quite a journey.”

The old man sighed and looked around the lobby, taking in the World Series trophies, and did a double-take at the myriad pristine A’s jerseys prominently displayed on stands, bearing names like Eckersley, McGwire, Fingers, Jackson. The corners of his wide, friendly mouth tugged upward, and his pale seastorm eyes shone brightly under cloudy brows. “Do they launder the fellas’ pants on different days from the jerseys, I wonder? More cost efficient that way, I suppose?”

Coco, gaping at this dignified yet marginally deranged visitor, decided not to answer that one. As a teen, she’d been involuntarily enlisted to care for an elderly great uncle for a few months at the end of his life. Maybe because of those surreal conversations, she could sense when spoken words were not exactly intended for the outside world, and were more like stray dogs, italicized terriers, wandering from their unkempt yards.

Then the gentleman snapped out of his reverie, patted his lapel as if to reassure himself, and cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is… Might I speak to the owner, please?”

Oh lord here we go again. Coco suppressed a sigh and smiled tightly while calculating how best to send grandpa packing.

“Well sir, he’s a little busy right now,” she said. “What with running the team, the vigilante mobs and protestors and whatnot. Maybe you could leave a message for Mr. Fissure, or come back tomorrow?”

She figured politeness would probably work with this brittle beanpole, seeing as how he’d actually tipped his hat on the way in, like some Charlie Chaplin movie or something. And she’d also clocked that his posture was about 1000% better than Miles’s, so elder-berry was at least raised right.

“I’m afraid that won’t do, my dear. I was overly patient with Roy and Earle at the end, and that’s how we’re all in this fine mess today,” the man said. “No, no, from what I read in the morning edition of today’s paper, the sooner we speak, the better. Unless of course he’s out scouting the bush leagues somewhere, to shore up this lackluster roster of yours.”

The silvery senior winked, and Coco could’ve sworn that his nose shifted ever so slightly on his face when he did so. Like false teeth, only… a nose.

Continue reading “”

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Storied Stuff

by Jim Siergey

I have never been an autograph seeker, but I do have a baseball that is signed by Pete Ward. Ward was a third baseman who played for the White Sox in the mid-60s. He had a couple of productive seasons before injuries shortened his career.

I liked Pete. His uniform number was 8, the same as mine when I played on my grammar school basketball team of which, by the way, I was the entire third string.

A friend of mine who at the time worked in the business of baseball was at a banquet where he found himself seated next to Mr. Ward. Knowing that I was a fan of Pete’s from back in the day, Tim asked him to autograph a ball, which he then presented to me when we once again met up.

Another friend, learning of this, supplied me with a Pete Ward baseball card as well as a wooden stand with plastic encasements for both ball and card. This I still proudly display, although time has not been merciful to Pete’s signature as it has faded away.

It lives on dimly just as does my memory of him scooping up ground balls at third base and occasionally banging one out of the park.

Originally posted on the site Storied Stuff, a show-and-tell for grownups started during the pandemic by our friends Steve and Sharon Fiffer.

 

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Schooling After School

by Stan Klein

my father taught religious school every saturday and sunday morning. i was required to attend every saturday. afterwards, we would go over to my great-uncle’s package liquor store, and he would deliver booze for them.

my brother would lay down on crates reading in the back, while i played pinochle with my great-uncle and two of his hanger-on buddies, my clip-on tie hanging on to my disheveled shirt by a tie tack. while they smoked their unfiltered cigarettes, i chose pretzel rods instead, and life savers rather than real coins.

the ball game played on the radio. the three geezers filled my head with baseball tales and local player lore.

after a couple years i turned ten, and they presented me with an all-star baseball mag as a gift. every picture had a hand-signed autograph. i cherished this prized treasure.

years later it came time to move out of the folks’ house. i rediscovered this prize, only to realize that every third signature possessed the same handwriting.

i laughed and looked up at the sky. ‘you guys got me!’

A proud son of Cleveland, Stan Klein is a fine artist, a gallery manager and an usher for both the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.