Mann was the head basketball coach at Rice Institute (1919–1920), Indiana University (1922–1924), and Springfield College (1924–1926). He compiled a career record of 43–30 in five seasons as a head basketball coach.
Early years
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mann attended the Y.M.C.A. College in Springfield, Massachusetts.[1] He played both football and basketball at Springfield and was regarded as "one of the best football players the training school ever had."[2]
Mann jumped to the rival Federal League in 1915, signing with the Chicago Whales. The short lived league was in its final season, but Mann recorded his best season as a professional, batting .306 and leading the league with 19 triples as the Whales won the pennant.
Mann served mostly as a platoon player from 1919 onward. Although he'd bat over .300 in several season over the final part of his career, Mann did do so falling well short of the necessary plate appearances to qualify for a batting title.
Mann had a reputation as a "clean" player, who disapproved of vices like drinking and gambling in the clubhouse. While he was with the Cardinals in 1922, he received a letter from Giants pitcher Phil Douglas. Douglas, at odds with Giants manager John McGraw, suggested that he would be willing to jump ship, effectively tipping the pennant race to the Cardinals. Mann advised manager Branch Rickey, who passed the letter to Baseball CommissionerKenesaw Mountain Landis, who banned Douglas from baseball for life.
Coaching career
Mann also worked for many years as a college football and basketball coach. From 1914 to 1916, he was a basketball coach at Amherst College.[1][2][4][5]
Starting in 1924, Mann was hired as the head basketball coach and assistant football coach at his alma mater, which by then had become Springfield College.[8]
After retiring as a player and coach, Mann became an advocate for baseball as an international sport, founding the U.S.A. Baseball Congress. He organized a 12-game tour of Japan in 1935, with an American amateur team taking eight games and dropping four against Japanese opponents.[9]
Mann fought to include baseball at the Summer Olympics. He petitioned the US Olympic Committee to include baseball as a demonstration sport at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, but the committee chose football and lacrosse instead.[10] Baseball's inclusion in the Olympics was opposed by powerful figures like Avery Brundage, head of the USOC (and future president of the International Olympic Committee), who was "a firm believer in the idea that there was no such thing as an amateur baseball player."[11] Nevertheless, Mann's efforts to promote the sport got baseball was selected as a demonstration sport in the 1936 Summer Olympics played in Berlin. Originally, the United States team was scheduled to play a Japanese team, but the Japanese withdrew. The American team was separated into two squads who competed against each other in a single game. The "World Champions" lineup beat the "U. S. Olympics" lineup by a score of 6–5 before a crowd of 100,000 people on August 12, 1936.[12]
World War II brought Mann's efforts to an end.[13] His plans for the 1940 Olympic Games in Tokyo – where baseball had already been approved as a demonstration sport – were scuttled after Japan forfeited the games. Mann also had hopes to establish Olympic baseball at the 1944 Games in London, but those too were canceled due to the outbreak of war.[10]
Mann also arranged a 33-game tour of South Africa and Rhodesia between November 1955 and February 1956.[14]
National championPostseason invitational champion Conference regular season championConference regular season and conference tournament champion
Division regular season champion
Division regular season and conference tournament champion
Conference tournament champion
↑Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu (2012). Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War. UNC Chapel Hill. p.168.
