Max Flack
Max Flack was no star player during his 12 years in the big leagues, but he was a solid, dependable outfielder—most of the time, at least.
Flack hailed from Belleville, Ill., just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. After knocking around with Peoria of the 3-I League in 1912 and ’13, Flack finally got a chance to play with a big-league outfit in Chicago in ’14—though it was with the outlaw Federal League team. Still, Flack wanted to take every advantage of the opportunity. Even if his new team mangled his name a bit. As the Belleville News-Democrat reported, Flack’s last name was actually Flach, and he was known as Mex at home, not Max. “On scorecards and in the newspaper, Mex’s last name will be distorted to read something like, ‘Flack,’ but Mex … has never taken pains to correct it in his two years of professional baseball,” the paper said.
Whether Mex Flach or Max Flack, he hit just .247 in his first year with Chicago, but boosted that to .314 in 1915, and was the hero of the season when he knocked a winning double in front of a massive crowd in the final game, which won the Chicago club the pennant by one percentage point.
Max Flack leans on a dugout stair. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) When the Chicago Feds were blended into the Cubs after the Federal League quit, Flack was kept aboard, landing in the big leagues through the back door. He was a speedy runner, but Flack was still raw at the plate, batting just .258 and .248 in his first two National League seasons, without much ability to draw walks.
But, in the middle of 1917, Cubs manager Fred Mitchell began to work with Flack on his batting stance. As The Sporting News reported in 1918, “Flack did not show himself to be a good leadoff man until the middle of last season when Manager Mitchell took him in tow and insisted that he change his bat and assume more of a crouching position at the plate. The changes made a remarkable improvement in the little outfielder and during the last two months of the season, he batted more than .300. … He forced the twirlers to pitch and received bases on balls consistently.”
Flack began the 1918 season ill with the flu, which wasn’t very good timing, because the team had liked young outfielder Turner Barber enough to pay $15,000 for him from Baltimore. If Barber was to win a regular spot in the outfield, it would likely be Flack’s right-field post. Fortunately, Flack recovered quickly enough from the flu to reclaim his outfield job and take his spot as leadoff hitter. Showing more patience and drawing more walks, Flack hit only .257, but his crouching stance paid off. He posted an on-base percentage of .343.
More than his hitting, though, Flack was known for his glove and strong arm in right field. When he retired in 1925, his .974 fielding percentage was the best ever for a right fielder. When a Flack error cost the Cubs a game in May, the Tribune wrote the Cubs would have won, “had it not been that Max Flack, who is as sure on a fly ball as any of them, had not dropped one in a most critical spot.”
That fact would make Flack’s performance in the 1918 World Series very curious. Flack did not just play poorly in the series, he was historically bad. He was picked off twice in Game 4 and he remains the only player in World Series history to have that dubious distinction. In the same game, despite being signaled to move back when Boston slugger Babe Ruth came to the plate, Flack stood still. Ruth launched a winning triple over Flack’s head. And in the series finale, it was Flack’s muffed attempt at a catch in the second inning that gave Boston its winning runs.
As The Sporting News said, “Every World’s Series produces a ‘goat’ and Max Flack was it.”
