Player #128C Part 2: Joseph E. "Joe" Cronin. Shortstop for the Washington Senators in 1928-1934 and the Boston Red Sox in 1935-1945. 2,285 hits and 170 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .390. He was a 7-time All Star. Boston Red Sox #4 retired. Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame. In 1956, he was inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame. His best season was probably 1930 for Washington as he posted a .422 OBP with 127 runs scored and 127 RBIs on 686 plate appearances. He managed the Washington Senators in 1933-1934 and the Boston Red Sox in 1935-1947. He was General Manager of the Boston Red Sox in 1948-1958. He was president of the American League in 1959-1973. When he left the Red Sox in 1959, they were the only MLB team without a black player. He and team owner Tom Yawkey are generally viewed as responsible for this injustice which ended six months after Cronin's departure.
Washington's ace scout (Joe Engel) had been "beating the bushes," looking for a good shortstop the likes of whom the Nats had not had since the departure of Peckinpaugh. As the story goes, the owner of the Kansas City ballclub was entertaining a number of scouts in his brewery one night and proclaimed with discust that a week before, he could have gotten $15,000 for Cronin's contract, but that he'd stupidly turned the offer down. Now, he said, he'd accept $10,000.
Joe Engel, not quite sure he had the authority, nonetheless immediately chimed in with an offer of $7,500. The deal done, he reached Griffith by phone and the old man exploded, wondering very loudly whether Engel had lost it completely by agreeing to pay such a large sum for a minor-league shortstop batting .245. So furious was the old man that Engel thought it best to keep Cronin with him for a week or so while he continued his scouting trip. This seemed far preferable to sending the youngster to Washington right away, and thereby possibly exposing him to Griffith's wrath firsthand.
If Griffith was not smitten with Cronin at first, finding him awkward in the field and with an open stance that showed little likelihood of any power in his batting stroke, he of course came to realize that Joe Engel's purchase had been as good a deal as he'd ever made. Now he'd be making even more money with that investment. Cronin was getting a raise of $2,500 for managing as well as playing in 1933. Griff could thereby pocket the rest of Walter Johnson's $25,000 salary. But what the Old Fox had come to like beyond all else about his perennial all-star shortstop was the man's combativeness. The handsome, square-jowled Irishman had a temper that came to the surface quickly on the field. That was why Clark Griffith made his great shortstop his manager.
A couple of months after being hired, in early December 1932, Joe Cronin arrived in Washington from San Francisco to meet with Griffith and plot strategy for the coming campaign. The owners of the major-league clubs would be meeting the following week in New York for the annual trading sessions. Cronin would come to that meeting with his owner, and he would come prepared. Based on his own experiences as a batter, and on a hunch that the men involved could be acquired by Washington, Cronin announced to Griffith that he had a short list of pitchers that he just had to have. He boldly challenged Griff to get those men for him, emphasizing that from all accounts he'd heard, if there was any baseball man who could make a deal for these men, Clark Griffith was that man. The acclamation may well have helped Cronin's case.
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