Mack was pleasantly surprised when more than nine hundred people paid their way in on a cold

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Nap Lajoie reported in midseason condition after a month of http://www.fifa15sale.com playing handball. Catcher Harry Smith and pitcher Bill Milligan were ill with the grippe. First baseman Pat Crisham had a sick child at home and didn’t report. Chick Fraser was in Hot Springs and wouldn’t arrive for another three weeks. Lave Cross, a bigwig in the Democratic Party in Ohio, had been given leave to wait until after the election in Cleveland, in which his man, Tom Robinson, was elected mayor. He showed up on the fourth.

It was April cold and wet during the first week. Little practice took place. Connie Mack spent the mornings in his office, occupied with paperwork. In the afternoons he inspected the work being done, checking every detail: the chairs in the boxes and grandstand; the women’s “retiring room,” which would be staffed with attendants; the installation of a public telephone; the refreshment stands; the small open press box on the roof; the home team’s dressing room, fitted with shower baths and “other conveniences”; the placement of the turnstile at the grandstand entrance.

On Friday, April 5, about six hundred desperate cranks, suffering from the diamond deprivations of winter, showed up to watch the now rou- tinely tabbed “Athletics” work out. Except for the few players they recog- nized from the Phillies, it was difficult to identify anyone. The players wore an assortment of uniforms. One had a Milwaukee shirt, another a shirt with an “I” in the middle of it, probably from Indianapolis.

Mack was pleasantly surprised when more than nine hundred people paid their way in on a cold, wet Easter Monday to watch a practice game against a local pickup team, Moss’s Professionals. Moss’s included two forty-year-old former players, Arlie Latham and Cub Stricker. The neigh- borhood saloonkeeper, Matt Kilroy, did the pitching. The gates opened early to allow the customers to look over the new facilities. Ladies wearing furs admired the comforts and conveniences.

Latham was the first batter; Bill Bernhard threw the first pitch for the new Athletics, and the fans cheered lustily at the called strike. It was all very informal. Joe Sugden, a local resident who had played for Mack in Pittsburgh and jumped to the White Sox, caught a few innings. Wiley Piatt pitched the last three innings of the Athletics’ 8–1 win and “struck out enough to keep fans from succumbing to coma preceding death from frostbite,” quipped Charles Dryden of the North American. (Philadelphia fans had the pleasure of reading the wittiest, most inventive baseball writ- ing east of Ring Lardner for the few years before Dryden joined Lardner in Chicago.)