Frank Fitzpatrick
Marvin Miller died yesterday at 95. Baseball owners ought to hang their heads in shame.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
2010
When retired Navy aviator Thomas J. Hudner Jr. walks toward midfield at Lincoln Financial Field Saturday afternoon for the coin toss to start the 111th Army-Navy game, the 2010 Navy cocaptains accompanying him will both be African Americans.
Wyatt Middleton and Ricky Dobbs will make a fitting honor guard for Hudner, an 86-year-old Medal of Honor recipient whose remarkable life has intersected on at least two historic occasions with black pioneers of the U.S. Navy.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
|(Tonight the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame inducts its ninth class. Here's a 2000 look at one of the most interesting new members.)
By Frank Fitzpatrick
On peasant Sunday afternoons in the decades after World War II, two old women would drive their big car up to the pro shop at Philadelphia Country Club, or St. David's, or Merion. From the rear seat would emerge a tiny elderly man, dressed in a dated wool suit even on the hottest summer days, and wearing a look that was a bittersweet combination of confusion and recollection.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
By Frank Fitzpatrick
Inquirer Staff Writer
So Philadelphia plans to erect a statue in honor of Joe Frazier.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
By Frank Fitzpatrick
Inquirer Staff Writer
So Philadelphia plans to erect a statue in honor of Joe Frazier.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
(Bill Ingraham/AP file photo)
The following article by Frank Fitzpatrick was originally published on April 17, 2003, as part of an Inquirer series commemorating the final year of Veterans Stadium.
This coming Friday, August 13, the Phillies will honor the 40th anniversary of Karl Wallenda's tightrope walk across Veterans Stadium. Karl's grandson, Nik Wallenda - who has continued the family tradition of daredevil stunts - will be on hand for the celebration.
In advance of the festivities, here's a look back at what went into one of the most famous days in the Vet's storied history.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
CLEVELAND - The Indians sat in first place when, on the cool and pleasant evening of June 20, they opened a series with the Colorado Rockies at Progressive Field.
Despite the good record and weather, and even though interleague play typically produces a crowd bump, Northern Ohio's tortured sports fans were unmoved. The Indians, then last in baseball attendance, drew just 15,224 spectators to the 8-7 loss.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
The Cubs? Or the Indians?
Which model will the fallen Phillies follow?
Let's assume that what we've watched from the Phillies these first 108 games of 2012 is no aberration and that the entertaining, successful and profitable mini-dynasty we've all watched these last six seasons is at an end.
How will the aftermath play out among what is a much larger but also, one suspects, much more shallow fan base than ever before?
It's hard to say right now how many will abandon the bandwagon. A younger generation of Philadelphians -- seemingly more willing than their ancestors to measure their ballpark satisfaction by something other than wins and losses -- is heavily invested, literally and figuratively, in Phillies baseball.
For these merchandise-wearing throngs, it appears, a Phillies game is a social outing, more akin to a night at the movies or the bar than an occasion for traditional sports spectating. As long as there are tailgate parties, drinking games and Ashburn Alley, who cares if the bullpen blows another lead? They're not likely to jump ship any time soon.
What happened when the Phillies declined in the past? Well, the only other time the franchise enjoyed a sustained run of success like this, from 1976 through 1984, they drew an average of nearly 2.5 million a season to cavernous Veterans Stadium.
Between 1985 and their next postseason appearance in 1993, their yearly attendance fell off, but not as dramatically as we might want to believe. The Phils never drew fewer than 1.8 million in those eight seasons and topped the 2 million mark three times, in 1987, 1989 and 1991. The average attendance for those years was 1.9 million
After the pennant-winning Phils attracted a Vet-record 3.1 million in '93, the dropoff was more profound. By 1997, when Terry Francona's last-place Phils lost 94 games, attendance had dipped to 1.4 million, the lowest total since the multi-purpose stadium's second season, 1972. Attendance stayed below 2 million until 2003, when the Vet's final year and a decent Phillies team (86-76) combined to bump it up to 2.2 million.
Then came Citizens Bank Park and the formula and expectations for attendance success changed forever.
But if the Phils should remain out of contention next year and beyond, what happens?
Remember, Manuel's old team, the Cleveland Indians, once sold out 454 games in a row -- the Phils current sttreak is at xxx. They moved into new Jacobs Field in 1994 and from June of 1995 and April of 2001 there were no empty seats.
The two situations, however, might not be as similar as they appear. The Indians, after all, had never drawn as consistently well as the Phillies during bad years. Between 1950 and 1993, their last season at old Municipal Stadium, Cleveland never once drew 2 million fans, never even reached 1.5 million.
So maybe the Phils will go the way of the Cubs, a team that, for a variety of reasons that aren't all related to baseball, maintains strong attendance even in dismal seasons like this one.
The Cubs have drawn 3 million plus to Wrigley Field every year since 2003, even though only two ended with a postseason appearance.
Granted, Citizens Bank Park isn't Wrigley, but then again it's not the Vet either.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
So the 2012 Phillies have conceded that the greatest sustained era in their otherwise futile history is over.
But as tough as it is to see Shane Victorino, Hunter Pence and maybe others depart, the sell-off can't compare to the breakup of the only Philadelphia baseball dynasty comparable to this one -- the 1929-32 Philadelphia A's. If this is a fire sale, then the one Connie Mack conducted back then was a raging inferno.
Following the 1932 season, when the A's run of three consecutive World Series (they won the first two, lost the third in seven games) ended with a 94-win, second-place finish, Mack began to sell -- literally sell -- his entire team, including its four, still-in-their-prime Hall-of-Famers.
The first to go was rightfielder Al Simmons, a future Cooperstown resident who was sent to the White Sox with Jimmy Dykes and Mule Haas, for $100,000.
The Athletics wound up third in 1933, which prompted Mack to unload his Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane to Detroit for a journeyman and $100,000). Then he sent his best pitcher, Hall-of-Famer Lefty Grove, infielder Max Bishop and pitcher Rube Walberg to the Red Sox for two nobodies and $125,000. Finally, the second best pitcher, George Earnshaw, went to the White Sox for $20,000.
After the '35 season, by which time the once-mighty A's were firmly established in last place, Mack sent Jimmie Foxx to the Red Sox for a third-rate pitcher, a minor-leaguer who never made it and, most importantly, $150,000.
That same offseason two outfielders from the championship teams followed. Doc Cramer was sold for $75,000 and Bing Miller was released.
So what good did that $570,000 -- the equivalent of nearly $10 million today and a fortune in Depression-era America -- bring Mack and his A's? Not much. In their remaining two decades in Philadelphia, they never made it back to a World Series and were, except for a season or two after World War II, a baseball laughingstock.
Clearly, economics had a lot to do with Mack's moves. Between 1933 and 1935, the Athletics averaged fewer than 4,000 fans a game at Shibe Park. (Of course, even in those glory years, the club only averaged more than 10,000 once.) More interestingly, though, he apparently recognized that his team had been afflicted by the kind of malaise that seems to have descended on the suddenly pathetic 2012 Phillies.
"The bitter truth," Dykes would say later in words that could easily apply to these Phils, "was that we no longer had it. We no longer believed we were invincible. Our faith inourselves was no longer there and he [Mack] knew it too."
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
The ongoing Freeh investigation at Penn State has moved beyond the university's handling -- or mishandling -- of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. According to a reprot in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the investigators are focusing on how former president Graham Spanier and the university's general counsel Wendell Courtney may have interefered in disciplinary actions aginst players on Joe Paterno's football teams.
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About this blog
Frank Fitzpatrick has worked in the Inquirer Sports Department since 1980. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2001 and has won numerous state and national awards. He is the author of several books including the recently published, "The Lion in Autumn: A Season with Joe Paterno and Penn State Football." He and his wife live in West Chester, Pa., and they are the parents of four children.
Frank Fitzpatrick
Inquirer Sports Columnist
E-mail Frank here or follow him on Twitter. Reach Frank at ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com.
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