"The Rotation': Baseball's ups and downs

"Dad, I guess this is what it was like when you were growing up," my teenage son remarked the other day after a summer of disheartening Phillies baseball games.

He was referring to the many years when the Philadelphia Phils were losers.

But he's wrong. What's happening now is nothing like what my contemporaries experienced. We grew up knowing, with certainty, that both of our town's baseball teams, the Phillies and the Athletics, were going to lose most of their games.

Between 1935 and 1954— a time when each league had only eight teams— the Athletics finished eighth in every season but one. Then they moved to Kansas City (and later to Oakland). The Phillies were dreadful as well, and for a longer period: from 1918 to 1948 they only had one winning season. They finished eighth in 16 of those seasons and seventh in nine seasons.

This pattern generated an odd form of serenity. You might say it was the sports equivalent of Lincoln Steffens's famous 1902 remark in The Shame of the Cities: that Philadelphia was "corrupt and contented." In sports, Philadelphia then was inept and contented.

Visiting stars

As a kid in the 1940s, I bought tickets to baseball games just for the pleasure of seeing the game played. I never anticipated a victory. No fan of the Phillies or A's was that naÓ¯ve.

After World War II ended, we derived our biggest thrills from watching visiting players like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg and Stan Musial. I followed the A's rather than the Phillies largely because there were more celebrities in the American League.

I sat behind home plate in cavernous, echoing stands for weekday afternoon games that sometimes were attended by fewer than 1,000 people. Once, my classmate Lionel Savadove recalls, Shibe Park was so empty that he was able to leave his seat and walk, not run, 14 rows to retrieve a foul ball because no one was any closer to it.

This season, fans scoff at the nonentities who rotate through the Phillies lineup. But during World War II, the nobodies at least remained in the lineup throughout the season, so we got to feel comfortable with folks like the Phillies outfielder Coaker Triplett and the Athletics' Bobby Estalella, one of the first Latino major league players.

Harvard grad

I remember the A's mediocre pitching rotation of Russ Christopher, Jesse Flores, Lum Harris and Bobo Newsom, as well as the Phillies' Ken Raffensberger, Boom-Boom Beck, Al Gerheauser and Lynwood "Schoolboy" Rowe. Raffensberger had one of the widest ranges of pitches in baseball, from underhand to sidearm. Rowe was an eccentric who conducted conversations with the baseballs he was holding.

The Phillies had an unusual infielder named Ulysses "Tony" Lupien, a Harvard graduate who wrote a book: The Imperfect Diamond. Their manager was "Fat Freddie" Fitzsimmons, who actually pitched in one game.

The A's manager (every year since 1901) was the team's owner (also since 1901): Connie Mack. He sat in the dugout wearing a black suit until he retired in 1950 at age 87, while the A's lost more than 100 games year after year. After all, who could fire him?

Two great downfalls

Twice the Athletics plunged from greatness to mediocrity, albeit much more dramatically than what Phillies fans are experiencing now. Between 1910 and 1914 the A's won four pennants and three World Series. But before the 1915 season, Mack responded to his stars' demands for more money by selling most of them, and the team fell to last place and remained there for seven years.

In 1929, '30 and '31 the rebuilt Athletics again dominated the American League, winning three pennants and two World Series. In 1931 Al Simmons batted .390 and Lefty Grove achieved 31 wins and an incredible 2.06 ERA as the A's won 107 games and lost only 45— even better than the Phillies' record in 2011. But over the next four years Mack, claiming financial hardship because of the Depression, sold most of his starting lineup, and the team descended to last place in 1935.

The Fab Four

The Rotation memorializes the convergence of four awesome pitchers— Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels— on the Phillies roster in 2011. Authors Jim Salisbury and Todd Zolecki, reporters for ESPN and Major League Baseball respectively, skillfully tell colorful stories about the so-called Four Aces.

Phillies fans and management assumed that assembling such awesome pitching talent on a single team would translate into a World Series championship. As Salisbury and Zolecki demonstrate through conversations with the Fab Four, the pitchers themselves believed their association with Philadelphia would be the peak of their own careers.

Who could have guessed that, one year later, Oswalt would be gone and two others would be suffering through mediocre seasons? And who would have imagined that the winningest team in baseball in 2011 would have a losing record in 2012 and even face the possibility of finishing in last place in its division?

This year the Phils' hitting has been erratic and, most puzzling, the ace pitchers have been undependable. So this book, whatever its original other intentions, provides a glimpse into what may turn out to be an aberration rather than the birth of a dynasty.

Why Cliff Lee moved

Stories such as Cliff Lee's are revealing. In 2010 Lee was the star pitcher for the Texas Rangers, a team that had just played in a World Series and was located near Lee's hometown in Arkansas. But Lee's wife, Kristen, liked the idea of living in Center City Philadelphia rather than Texas, so she pressed Cliff to sign with the Phils. Ultimately he came to Philadelphia for less money than the Rangers offered him. The deciding factor wasn't the money; it was his preference (and his wife's) for the city and its fans.

The other day, a headline on the Fox Sports website noted, "Phillies' Lee Approaching One-Year Anniversary Of Last Home Win." He hasn't won a home game all season. When asked if he could recall his last victory at Citizens Bank Park, Lee replied, "I barely remember yesterday."

Maybe it was better in the old days when winning wasn't the most important thing.