Sport: One More Championship

The visiting team's dressing room in Philadelphia's old Shibe Park was dressed up to look like a banquet hall one day last week. Gay flags hung from the walls, a long table sported baskets of flowers and an icy cake decorated with sugar baseball bats & balls, and about 100 baseball men milled noisily about sipping Scotch & soda. Presently they began to munch chicken patties, crab cutlets, cakes, nuts and mints. Suddenly a tall, gaunt old fellow with bushy white eyebrows and sunken eyes strode in briskly. The guests promptly gave him a spontaneous yell of greeting. The old fellow was Cornelius McGillicuddy ("Connie Mack"), manager, treasurer, president and co-owner of the Philadelphia Athletics. The occasion was his 75th birthday.

Connie Mack remained at his party an hour and a half, delightedly chatting with some of his old players: Jimmy Dykes (now manager of the Chicago White Sox), Herb Pennock, Chief Bender, Rube Waiberg, Howard Ehmke. Then he quietly thanked them all, made a short speech and rode back to his Germantown home to rest for three hours after the excitement. Connie Mack has been in poor health since he was injured by a batted ball during spring training in Mexico last year. During the last six weeks of the season, when he was afflicted with an old gall bladder ailment, his familiar figure, dressed in street clothes, wearing a pre-War high hard collar, brandishing a score card, was absent from the Athletics' dugout. Last week Connie Mack did not eat or drink at his birthday party. He is on a diet of custards, milk and pudding.

For 75 years Connie Mack has celebrated his birthday on Dec. 23. Last summer he visited his birthplace (East Brookfield, Mass.), discovered he was born Dec. 22, 1862, decided it was too late to change and plans to continue observing his nativity on the 23rd. It is characteristic that the Mack legend, greatest in baseball history, should start right off with a myth.

The oldest manager in big-league baseball has won more championships, trained more managers than any other man alive. He started baseball in 1883 as a mittless catcher in the Central Massachusetts League—when catchers caught the ball on first bounce. Three years later he made his major-league debut as a catcher for Washington and in 1894 he landed his first managerial job—with the Pittsburgh Pirates. But it was with Milwaukee (1897-1900) that Connie Mack's metamorphosis from a catcher to a manager was really made. At the end of the 1900 season (the year the American League was formed) he went to Philadelphia, was able to persuade