Talk'in Baseball - It's That Time of Year, Just Not This Year

Talk’in Baseball

It’s That Time Of Year—Just Not This Year

Baseball Stories

By Jack Coll

3-28-20

Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of baseball articles. With no baseball due to the coronavirus I’m hoping to fill the small hole in the heart of baseball fans everywhere.

I’ve determined that I’ve never spent this many hours in one place in my entire life. This coronavirus has most of us grounded and has some of us counting the strands of material in our living room rug. So with it being baseball season with no baseball I thought I could write, and some of you read a few baseball stories that you might enjoy.

“Ryan Howards hits one deep to left-center field, This Ball Is Outta-Here.” Philadelphia baseball fans are familiar with the call of the late Harry Kalas. Harry was a friend of mine, I just can’t remember the first time I met him. I can remember the first time I saw him in person, I was in the landscaping business back in the early 1970’s, and I was working in the Bob White Farms section of Upper Merion Township. I was about 35 feet up a ladder trimming a tree when a car pulled up in the neighboring driveway of the customer I was working on and out popped Harry Kalas. The customer whose tree I was working on starting chatting to Harry about spring training and the Phillies up-coming season. I was stuck in the tree working while the two men talked and couldn’t get down fast enough to meet Harry.

It wasn’t until nearly two decades later when I started photographing the Philadelphia Phillies from the dugout that I got to meet and became friends with Harry. It should be noted that Harry became friends with everyone he ever met. My son Brian and I used to sit with Harry in the old press cafeteria at Veterans Stadium eating dinner before the start of the game every night.

Back then I was also real good friends with Max Patkin, “The Clown Prince of Baseball.” (A very funny man) and Harry and Max were also good friends. When Max retired Harry Kalas, and myself, a fellow by the name of Max Glance and Larry Bowa planned a retirement celebration to honor Max Patkin for his 50 years as the Clown Prince. I remember the celebration well for the wrong reason. On the morning of the celebration banquet Larry Bowa was informed on the golf course that the Phillies had fired him as manager, and yet Bowa showed up at the banquet and couldn’t have been nicer and kinder to everyone in attendance.

On two occasions Harry and I stopped at a bar on Montgomery Avenue following meetings in preparation for Max’s retirement banquet. Harry had a lot of stories to tell, he was a very funny man, and he never bought a beer in any bar he ever stopped at in the Philadelphia area.

Here’s One For Ya

Sometimes I’ll read a story from some publication and find it interesting and then hold onto it for a long, long time. This story comes from the Philadelphia Daily News dated July 6, 1998. The headlineread: “Old-timer Honored: He made it legal for fans to keep fouls,” WHAT? The story was written by Joe Clark.

It turns out that a Philadelphia man named Bob Cotter, who was 87 years old at the time of the interview back in 1998, recounted an event from July 18, 1922. Back in the early years of major league baseball foul balls hit into the grandstands were returned to the field and handed back to the pitcher. (Not like today’s crybaby ballplayers who want a new ball because they think the ball might have hit the dirt).

So according to Bob Cotter back in the 20’s he along with hundreds of other neighborhood kids would go to the Baker Bowl, the old home of the Phillies at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia. Cotter stated that he would sneak into the games by climbing a rainspout and dropping down over the wall. He always sat in the bleachers just beyond first base. As stated fans were required to return foul balls, but most of the kids back in the day would pocket the ball and run from the ball park before the guards could catch up to them. Then they would wait outside till the game was over and try to sell the ball for a quarter. If they couldn’t sell it, they’d take it home and use it in pickup games.

Cotter explained that he grabbed his share of foul balls and made his fair share of quarters but on July 18, 1922 the 11 year old Cotter was caught red-handed trying to leave the ball park with the ball in his pocket. Cotter spent the night in the House of Correction.
The next day he appeared before a judge who chastised the Phillies organization noting the youngster was following his instincts. It’s something I would have done myself noted the judge.

Shortly afterwards the Phillies instituted a new policy allowing fans to keep foul balls. One by one other teams followed suite.

Cotter never attended another game at the Baker Bowl, but seventy five years later the Phillies got wind of the story and invited Cotter, (in 1998 he was 87 years old) to attend a Phillies game as their guest. Cotter left that game with two baseballs and he didn’t have to run from the guards. One ball was signed by the entire Phillies team and the other was signed by Robin Roberts.

Way to go Bob and every fan since the 1922 season thanks you for the foul balls they caught and were able to take home with them.

Now that story reminds me of another story, one that goes back to the late 1920’s when Connie Mack would bring his Philadelphia A’s to the Santa Marie Country Club located in Spring Mill to play baseball with local teams from Conshohocken and Villanova.

The Blue Laws were in effect throughout the 1920’s in Philadelphia meaning no business of any kind could be transacted including baseball and football games on Sundays. So throughout the decade Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics would put his team on a train once or twice a summer and come to Spring Mill, the site of a Country Club located on the corner of North Lane and Hector Street. It was built as the Spring Mill Country Club and in the early part of the decade was sold and renamed the Santa Marie Country Club.

The Country Club located next to the famed Bubbling Springs was purchased by members of the Santa Maria Council, Knights of Columbus, of Germantown. They took over the country club in early May of 1922 with a high mass celebrated by more than 3,000 Catholics. The Mass was held on the fine trimmed lawn in front of the club house. In July of 1922 Cornelius MacGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, arranged a baseball game with Michael McEnery, President of the Santa Marie Council, Knights of Columbus, of which Connie Mack was a member in good standing.

So for the next eight or nine years Mack agreed to transport his team to Spring Mill to play an exhibition games to the delight of the Conshohocken residents. Back in the 1920’s regular season games were all played during the day when most residents were working and therefor rarely had a chance to actually see the players. One of Mack players on the team in 1922, which the “A’s” won the game at Spring Mill 2-0 was Bing Miller who had a double and a run in the game. Bing had been traded from Washington to the A’s in 1922 and hit 336 with 21 home runs for the team in his first season. Miller went on to have several more successful seasons before retiring from the game and upon his death was buried at Calvary Cemetery in West Conshohocken.

Another one of Connie Mack’s former players may very well have been a spectator that day in Spring Mill named Charles Bender. Charles was known in the baseball world as “Chief Bender” and played for the Connie Mack A’s until 1914. Bender started 10 World Series games for Mack, completing nine of them. In the 1911 World Series Bender started three games and completed all of them allowing a total of three runs. By 1922, Chief Bender had retired from the game and ran several businesses including a Jewelry Store in Conshohocken.

Several years later when the Athletics took the field for pre-game warm-ups, a ball was thrown to third baseman Jimmy Dykes. The throw was high and it skipped off Dyke’s glove and went into the packed grandstand. A local guy picked up the ball but refused to return it to Dykes, that’s when the trouble began. A few of the locals who witnessed the man pick up the ball urged him to return the ball to Dykes, and within seconds the brawl was on. In the end, several members of the crowd had their hair shuffled, and there was a little blood shed on the grass. But the ball was returned to Dykes, and the spectators settled in to enjoy the game. All was well until the ninth inning when another scuffle broke out behind home plate when a man was working the crowd as a pickpocket was caught red-handed. He was pummeled in a short amount of time, and order was restored. It was reported by the Conshohocken Recorder newspaper that following the game, “The streets were jammed with automobiles and pedestrians. It took several minutes before the battery of machines could be straightened out.”

Connie Mack would return several more times in the following years, bringing top-notch players to Spring Mill like Fox, Dykes, Cochran, Lamar, Halp and Ragwell. The games became so popular that the railroad company started running special trains out of the city of Philadelphia to accommodate the thousands of spectators who would travel to Spring Mill for the day to enjoy the ball game. For the Conshohocken residents who walked the distance to the country club to see these players in person it was a magical experience, a field of dreams and days they would talk about until the day they died.