To Everything a season, and with change comes memories.
To Everything A Season by Bruce Kuklick is a reminder that the past is created in the moment, and before one knows that it existed, it is gone. That same sentiment is felt deeply for Shibe Park and the troubled life it lived on Twenty-first and Lehigh. The park saw the rise of baseball in the city of Philadelphia; it also factored into the demise of the community and the ball teams that played there. From Connie Mack’s reluctance to pay for a championship contender — after proving he could build a winning roster — to the continued violence as a result of defunding the neighborhood, Shibe Park stood centerstage; serving to the people, as both a safe haven and a reminder of what once was. Yet, still, the park’s existence could not recover from the frugal nature of Mack, the continued underdevelopment of the African American community, and the dangerous streets that resided just outside of its front doors. Leaving in the park’s place, a timid memory of the baseball that was once played there daily.
Mack could build a winning ball club and proved that with the Philadelphia Athletics. Mack had a shrewd sense of business. He loved to tinker with his teams, and often, he sought the best way to build a contender because winning meant money. Baseball is a business, regardless of the era it is played in. This tinkering set up the golden days of baseball at Shibe Park, 1924–32. He secured two stars in Mickey Cochrane and Robert Moses Grove. He supplemented them with Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons. He then balanced the roster with aging stars: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Zack Wheat, Waite Hoyt, and Eddie Collins. Hall of Fame talent littered the field, and the fans came with them. Kuklick describes how the city grew with the team when he writes, “When the team was home, hordes of fans walked up Lehigh, the street alive with the hum of baseball talk”. (Kuklick 55). The city, indelibly linked to the A’s success, hummed when the Mack put together good ball clubs. However, baseball is a business, and his propensity to seek more enjoyment — in terms of fan support — proved to be the biggest vice of the entire operation at Shibe Park.
It would be the businessman in Mack that would bring part of the community surrounding Shibe Park, and fan support, down. Early in his career, Mack recognized the importance of fielding a team that operated to make money; money-making operations took precedent over winning, they always tend to in sports. In turn, this produced teams that were difficult to support. In the name of making money, Mack would sell fan-favorite players and endure losing. Kuklick expands on this when he writes, “In effect, Mack tried to produce good teams if that was the most profitable way of running the business. He endured wretched clubs if he calculated that a winning team was risky or that champions would not make money” (Kuklick 36). Operating a team solely as a business entity harms fan support. Though Mack might have been able to sit through losing teams, the community around Shibe Park could not do the same. Attendance plummeted, and fans grew disenfranchised from their beloved community ballpark. As attendance waned, so did the business that operated around baseball. The blue-collar neighborhood, based on the cottage industry of baseball, struggled as the teams that played at Shibe Park did. The failure in fan support, due to Mack’s business practices, resulted in the eventual departure of the A’s from Philadelphia. Fan’s grew to desperately despise the club for selling players simply to cut corners and make money. Once the Athletics moved out of Philadelphia, it took the business with it too.
A secondary aspect to the diminishment of baseball in urban Philadelphia came in the plight of the African American community and government defunding. As the blue-collar neighborhood turned increasingly Black, the level of care the local government took of the area surrounding Shibe Park dissipated. As more black people moved into the area, local real-estate agents insisted that white individuals should move out due to the projected loss in land value. Kuklick wrote on this when he said, “Many of those whites who moved away were look for other work. The blacks who replaced them found few jobs available connected to baseball” (Kuklick 155). The affluent Black communities that lived around Lehigh Avenue quickly disintegrated in the chaos of the sixties. Racial conflicts within the decade saw an increase in violence and its expediency within the city. Places fell victim to riots and destruction. The games that were played at Shibe Park during the decade weren’t estranged from the racism that took place right outside the park’s doors. As Black people established a foothold in baseball, the games that were played at the park became known for the intense racism players faced at the hands of the fans in Philadelphia.
The violence and crime produced by the elevated state of race relations around Shibe Park led the community, that so dearly loved baseball, to ruin. Those in government, at the time, neglected to rebuild the city, as its previously glorious industrialized zone became effectively a warzone. Urban planners felt as though fixing the state of the city was near impossible. As the city degraded, so did fan support. It became too difficult and too dangerous for fans to attend games. The only team in town, the Phillies, struggled with attendance as it was. Playing in the stadium known to be haunted by the ghost of Connie Mack didn't help. However, the conditions surrounding the park didn’t seek to ease the team’s troubles either.
In the end, Shibe Park was the source of fond memories for those who attended the games held there. However, the failure of Connie Mack to build a consistent winner and the disaster-stricken state of the intentionally forgotten Black community led to the crumbling foundation of baseball at Twenty-first and Lehigh. The lack of jobs for those who would attend games, the lack of safety, and the lack of winning all compiled together to create the perfect storm where baseball could not survive in that area of Philadelphia. Once the storm of change settled, all that remained were precious memories of what once was — and those too will one day fade.
“Memories do not exist in the mind’s isolation but are connected to objects and stored in them,” Kuklick wrote on page 193 of his book. “The destruction of artifacts can thus sever the present from the past and the accumulated significance the past embodies.”
Writers note:
This is an essay I wrote on the fading memory of Shibe Park. The place where the long-gone Philadelphia A’s used to play. The community surrounding the Park was formerly a metropolis. Yet, near the park's end, it all came crashing down. All the games, all the wins, and all the losses came crashing down with it. And on the way down, the failing park took the community, as it battled its racist demons. The demons won. Still, the story of Shibe Park is a beautiful one. It speaks to the good in people. It also speaks to the bad. Thank you to Mr. Kuklick for doing most of the leg work in exploring the park. He made it easier for me to understand what it meant to the community. As always, thanks for reading.
