Except for a fifth-place finish in 1944, they finished in last or next-to-last place every year from 1935 to 1946.
By the mid-1940s, as Mack passed his 80th birthday, he was showing unmistakable signs of mental decline, almost to the point of senility. He would frequently sleep through innings, make bad calls that his coaches would simply ignore, have inexplicable fits of anger, or call players from decades earlier to pinch-hit. Mack also never installed a telephone in the dugout and instead would use a series of obtuse hand signs to signal his coaches on the field. According to infielder
Ferris Fain, "He'd fall asleep for much of the game waving his score card, but he still had a few working nerve endings left in his big ol' neck waddle. Anyone who dared wake him up was subjected to a hasty trial by the team's kangaroo court."
During this time, Shibe Park was also becoming an increasing liability. While the facility had been state of the art when it opened in 1909, by the late 1940s, it had not been well maintained in some time. It was also not suited to automobile traffic, having been designed before the
Ford Model T was introduced.