Connie Mack Marquee Hall of Fame 1937

He played 724 games between September 1886 and August 1896, 610 of them behind the plate, with 659 hits, 127 stolen bases and a .244 average. He was a catcher of the era when the position was done bare-handed at first and the tricks mattered: he is credited with tipping bats with his glove and imitating the sound of a foul.

Then he managed for fifty-three seasons, more than anyone has, and he holds both ends of the record: 3,731 wins and 3,948 losses, the most of each. He finished first nine times and dead last seventeen, and his 1916 Athletics went 36-117. He ran the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901, and because he owned them nobody could fire him. This archive has him present at Eddie Collins's 3,000th hit in 1925, which happened on his watch.

He wore a business suit and a straw hat on the bench and never a uniform, which is why he could not go onto the field. He was elected in 1937 by the Centennial Commission, nineteen years before he died and thirteen before he stopped working.