Player #54D (Part 2): Walter P. "Barney" Johnson. "The Big Train". Pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1907-1927. 417 wins and 34 saves in 21 MLB seasons. 1924 World Series champion. 1913 and 1924 AL Most Valuable Player. 3-time triple crown. 6-time AL wins leader. 5-time AL ERA leader. 12-time AL strikeout leader. He had a career ERA of 2.17 in 5,914.1 innings pitched. He pitched a no-hitter in 1920. He holds the MLB record with 110 career shutouts. MLB All-Time Team. Inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1936. One of his best seasons was 1913 as he posted a record of 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA in 346 innings pitched.
We stick with Deveaux: One of the strangest games in baseball history took place on October 4 (1913). With nothing at stake, Clark Griffith, nearing his 44th birthday, decided to pitch an inning. The game was a farce, the players padding their averages and the umpires allowing four outs in one inning. Walter Johnson, who'd pitched his 12th shutout five days earlier for his 36th victory, played center field, but relieved in the ninth and permitted a double and a triple, and two runs.
Those final two runs account for the difference in Walter's final reported earned run average for the season. For more than 70 years, his ERA for 1913 stood at 1.09. When it was discovered that the results of the 1913 travesty had been left out, history was rewritten and Barney's ERA was bumped to 1.14. As a result, when Bob Gibson came along 55 years later and posted a 1.12 ERA, he passed Johnson's record, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, for the best ever ERA in a single season. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)
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