Washington College Magazine
When Billy Nick Met Connie Mack
William "Swish" Nicholson '36 became one of America's baseball heroes during the 1940s—but not before struggling as a frightened rookie under the tutelage of legendary manager Connie Mack. Nicholson's brief fling with Mack's Philadelphia Athletics is recounted here in an excerpt from the soon-to-be published biography, Swish!! The Bill Nicholson Story.
By Robert A. Greenberg '74
Sixteen-year-old William Beck Nicholson entered Washington College in the fall of 1931, three months out of Chestertown High School. After two and a half years at the College, he departed for a brief sojourn at the Severn School in Annapolis, in preparation for entrance into the United States Naval Academy. Rejected by the academy because of his color blindness, "Billy Nick" returned to Washington College in the fall of 1934 to lead the football team to its first and only undefeated season. He played center field on the 1935 and 1936 baseball teams, which won Maryland Intercollegiate Baseball League (MIBL) championships both years. When he graduated in 1936, Nicholson was widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in Washington College history.
As a major league baseball player, he was a fan favorite with the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies and led the National League in home runs and runs batted in during the 1943 and 1944 four players in major league history to be accorded what has been referred to as "The Supreme Compliment"—being intentionally walked with the bases loaded.
Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years, recognized Nicholson's potential, despite his disappointing rookie performance in 1936. Here, Mack addresses the team at the start of spring training in Mexico City. Nicholson is in the front row, second from right, with his hand draped over another player's shoulder.
Nicholson's achievements with the Cubs and Phillies overshadowed his earlier, shorter and unsuccessful stint with the American League's Philadelphia Athletics, the organization he joined within days of his college graduation. The A's manager was 74-year-old Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as "Connie Mack," who in 1939 became one of the original members of baseball's Hall of Fame.
A special representative of the Gulf Refining Company visited Chestertown on March 2, 1933. His name was Ira Thomas, and he spoke to an assemblage of students and townspeople in the auditorium of William Smith Hall. He regaled his audience with humorous baseball stories and lectured youngsters on the evils of alcohol and tobacco. Besides his employment with Gulf, Ira Thomas had another job—as a scout for the Philadelphia Athletics baseball club. The former catcher had played on four championship teams for Connie Mack in 1910, 1911, 1913 and 1914.
Washington College had no baseball team in 1932 because of the Depression but, in the spring of that year, Nicholson joined an amateur team from Chestertown that played in the local Chesapeake Bay League. Ira Thomas saw Nicholson play there and was impressed with the young outfielder's ability.
Athletic Director Thomas Kibler revived the baseball program in 1933, but only three intercollegiate games augmented a series of contests against local amateur teams. Unable to afford new uniforms, Nicholson and his teammates were clad in castoff jerseys scrounged by Kibler from the International League's Baltimore Orioles.
Although he missed the 1934 baseball season, Nicholson provided batting power for the 1935 team that went 12-2-1 and won the MIBL title game over Mount St. Mary's. The Shoremen also defeated George Washington, Penn State and Maryland during the regular season.
His 1935 performance earned Nicholson All-Maryland baseball honors and rekindled Ira Thomas' interest in the center fielder. At season's end, Thomas convinced Nicholson to sign a contract for the 1936 season.
The 1935 A's were the doormats of the American League. Mack had disbanded his championship club of 1931 for economic reasons. Gone were such stalwarts as Robert "Lefty" Grove, Al Simmons and Mickey Cochrane. Nicholson's boyhood idol Jimmie Foxx, from nearby Sudlersville, would be unloaded at season's end. In their place, Mack signed young unknowns with names like Vallie Eaves, Wedo Martini and Earl Huckleberry.
The team's financial woes were well known; Mack was forced to cash out the equity in his life insurance policy in order to meet the club's payroll in 1934. Nicholson told baseball writer Norman Macht in 1989 that the A's "were the first ones that offered me to sign. A week or two after that Gene McCann, the Yankees scout, came through and he wanted to sign me up for $5,000. I'd signed with Connie Mack for $1,000 so... I had to push him out of the way."
The 1936 Shoremen repeated as league champs. In his final collegiate game against Western Maryland, with major league scouts in attendance, Nicholson homered in an 18-4 romp and finished the season with a batting average of .571. On June 6, he was honored at "Billy Nicholson Day" on Kibler Field, just before the annual varsity vs. alumni baseball game. Graduation exercises for the Class of 1936 were held on Monday, June 8; Nicholson received a bachelor of science degree. Two days later, in the company of Coach Kibler, he was at Philadelphia's Shibe Park taking batting practice with his new teammates. Besides his $1,000 signing bonus, he was to receive a salary of $1,200 for the balance of the 1936 season.
The team was down to 20 players (three under the limit) and needed another outfielder. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nicholson's Shibe Park appearance "was balm to the eye of Connie Mack, who watched him at close range and afterward pronounced him fit to be assigned a locker...."
Bill "Swish" Nicholson fields a fly ball during spring training in 1937. Years later, baseball commentators would call Nicholson the most valuable player of the World War II era.
The local Kent News gushed: "According to Mack himself, the ancient patriarch of Shibe Park, Billy Nick's initial appearance was just about as spectacular as that of any youngster who ever stepped to the plate for the first time in the majors."
Nicholson twisted an ankle before his Wednesday workout and was treated by the team trainer in the morning. For that reason, he did not take fielding practice. At the end of the workout, Bill found accommodations at a rooming house several blocks from the ballpark on Lehigh Avenue.
On Thursday, with his ankle feeling better, he tested his fielding prowess. The Kent News correspondent reported: "Though he was greatly handicapped, the Kent boy snared every ball in his territory and pleased the A's with his performance. He also connected at the plate again and rammed another over the right-field fence."
The A's were mired in seventh place in the American League, above only the woeful St. Louis Browns and were en route to a 53-100 record that would earn them dead last in the standings at season's end. By 1936, game attendance had dropped precipitously. In an effort to prevent fans on 20th Street (behind the right field stands at Shibe Park) from viewing the games from their rooftops, Mack erected what came to be known as the "Spite Fence." It was an ugly, corrugated metal monstrosity that added 38 feet to the top of the original 12-foot wall from right to center field and effectively ended freeloading by neighborhood residents. Some players enjoyed throwing the ball against the "Great Tin Monster" before games just to disturb the locals, as the sound of horsehide striking tin reverberated through the nearly empty stadium.
Mack had been playing or managing professional baseball teams since 1878. The "Tall Tactician," as he was called, was six feet one inches and weighed no more than 150 pounds. He had a kindly, gaunt face topped by thinning white hair, which he parted in the middle. No detail attendant to the game escaped his notice. From the dugout, clad in a dark business suit, starched collar and tie, he would position his fielders with a wave of his rolled-up scorecard. Dignified and even-tempered, he was always in control. Once, he went out to the mound to remove fiery pitcher Grove from the game. As Mack held his hand out for the ball, Grove glared at him. "Go take a s***!," Lefty barked. Mack fixed his eyes on Grove and continued to hold out his hand. "No, Robert, you take a s***," he calmly replied.
By his own admission, Nicholson was frightened at the prospect of competing in the majors. He knew he was overmatched against big league pitching. He recounted his rookie year in an oral history provided to Chestertown's Margaret Fallaw in 1983: "[In 1936] I hit against some right tough pitchers, and I later hit some of them over in the National League, and I saw some of them in spring training after I got to the majors a few years later. I did very well against them, but they were over my head when I first went up there. I hadn't walked up to the plate against guys that threw like they did."
Nicholson's debut came on an unseasonably cool Saturday, June 13, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians, played at Shibe Park. Paid attendance was estimated to be 5,000, but the temperature and misty rain drove all but the hardiest fans from the park by the end of the second game. The A's won the opener 7-3. The second game was a blowout, which the A's eventually lost by a 19-1 count. Philadelphia used five pitchers who surrendered 17 hits, and the Indians scored runs in every inning except the last. Umpire Cal Hubbard mercifully halted the game after the eighth because of darkness.
In the bottom of that inning, with one out and the pitcher scheduled to hit, Mack turned to the newly arrived rookie. "Nicholson... grab a bat! You're hitting for Gumpert." His white flannel uniform damp with mist and perspiration, Bill Nicholson retrieved his bat from the front of the A's dugout, took several practice swings and strode to the plate to face Cleveland's Johnny Allen, a six foot, 180 pound right-hander with a live fastball.
Three of Mack's college rookies in April 1937 (from left) Ace Parker from Duke University, Floyd Yount from Wake Forest University, and Bill Nicholson from Washington College.
Those who did not hear the public address announcement would have no idea as to the pinch hitter's identity; the A's were the only team in the American League without numbers on the back of their jerseys. The Inquirer's James C. Isaminger described Nicholson's maiden at-bat, "In the eighth inning Bill Nicholson, new outfielder from Washington College, at Chestertown, Maryland, had his major league coming out when he batted for the pitcher, but he fell on strikes," one of Allen's five strikeouts for the afternoon.
For the year, Nicholson appeared in 11 games and went to the plate 12 times. On five of those occasions, he struck out; not once did he get a hit. Although his playing time was limited, he had the privilege of learning at the feet of the master Mack.
He told Margaret Fallaw: "I'd sit on the bench and he would talk to me. And then years later when I went with the Cubs, we played in an exhibition game, and I sat in the hotel and talked with him... I liked him very much. He was a shrewd operator I'm sure, and he ran his ball club completely.
He'd set up there in the dugout, and he would move his outfielders and move his infielders, and of course he had coaches who coached his pitching staff and this, that and the other."
From Mack, Nicholson learned how to play the hitters and how to get a jump on fly balls. He shared his fielding strategy with Macht: "Just keep your eye on that hitter. And that hitter's bat tells you where you can get a terrific jump on fly balls. Like a right-hand hitter hitting one clear down in right field where he would ordinarily pull the ball to left field. Hit one down that corner, and I'd catch up with 'em, catch up with all of 'em."
On July 7, Nicholson was optioned to Oklahoma City in the Texas League, where it was hoped he could regain his batting eye. He continued to struggle, playing in 14 games while batting a paltry .167. To add insult to injury, he was returned to the A's a month later because of his lack of production with the minor league club.
On August 15, the A's lost 16-2 to the mighty Yankees, featuring Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig, before 5,000 sweltering spectators at Shibe Park. Bill pinch hit in the ninth and struck out.
John Drebinger of The New York Times wrote the next day that the "woeful Mackmen... stumbled and fumbled their way all over the field." Despite the heat, Connie Mack, according to Drebinger, "seemed to wag [his scorecard] with more fervor than ever," but to no avail.
After the season ended, Nicholson stayed in shape by working on the family farm outside of Chestertown. He was invited to spring training with the A's in Mexico City in February 1937.
Because no major league team had previously trained there, the press devoted extensive coverage to the A's. Mack was pictured in wire service photos uncomfortably wearing a sombrero and serape, under the caption "Connie Mack Goes Latin."
The College's newspaper reported several weeks later on Nicholson's progress: "Down in the land of chile con carne and the Mexican hairless dog, Bill is knocking the boards off the right field fence with bullet-like drives from the big bludgeon he swings from the left side of the plate."
Others were not as sanguine. Sports columnist Red Smith wrote in 1953, upon the occasion of Nicholson's retirement: "[In 1937] [h]e impressed nobody in training camp. Connie Mack sat on the bench watching him in the batting cage. 'Can't understand that fellow,' Connie muttered. 'He broke the fences down in college.'"
There being no other major league teams to play against south of the border, the A's competed against Mexican and Cuban teams virtually every day. On Sundays the games started early to accommodate the bullfights scheduled for the afternoon.
On Sunday, March 28, the A's were scheduled to play the Mexican All Stars in Mexico City. When the All Stars failed to show, a substitute team from Ford Motor Company took their place. The A's easily dispatched them, 13-3. Nicholson hit a home run.
As the team barnstormed north by train in late March, Bill saw playing time with the "B" team and played well against minor league teams in Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee. On April 9, the A's departed from St. Louis and arrived the next day at North Philadelphia Station, just a few blocks from Shibe Park. There, they played several games against the Phillies, in which Nicholson did not appear. The bad news came on April 14, when he learned that he would not begin the season with the parent club; he had been optioned to the minor league Williamsport Grays in the Class B New York-Penn League.
Upon hearing of the young outfielder's demotion, an inquisitive reporter asked Mack: "Think he has a chance to come back?" "Oh, you'd be afraid to let a fellow like that get away from you," was the old man's reply. But the Tall Tactician, to his eternal regret, did let Nicholson get away.
In Williamsport, Nicholson began a minor league odyssey that lasted nearly three years, riding the buses and trains for hours on end, and playing night games in poorly lit ballparks, hoping for the chance to return to Shibe Park. He never found favor with Connie Mack and was eventually released.
When he next appeared in Shibe Park on August 27, 1939, Nicholson wore the uniform of the Chicago Cubs. He last wore a major league uniform in September of 1953, in the same ballpark, as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. The ballpark was no longer called Shibe Park, however; it had been renamed Connie Mack Stadium.
Robert A. Greenberg '74 is a Judge in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. His youngest child, Will, is a freshman on the baseball team at Washington College. Having become an empty-nester, Bob decided it was time to write his first book. The Nicholson biography will be published by McFarland & Co. in 2007.
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