Player #152A: Montie M. Weaver. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1931-1938. 71 wins and 4 saves in 9 MLB seasons. In 1933 as Washington won the AL pennant, he posted a 10-5 record with a 3.25 ERA in 152.1 innings pitched. He finished his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1939.
Weaver's SABR biography sums him up and then takes us though his 1933 season in Washington: Sportswriters treated pitcher Monte Weaver as a curiosity during his nine seasons with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. He was a college professor, a mathematician, a hypochondriac and – most radically – a vegetarian, according to the sports pages. . . .
. . . In that game (April 19, 1933, against the New York Yankees) Weaver was the beneficiary of what Povich called “the play of the century.” Lou Gehrig reached base on a topped ball that traveled only four feet. Gehrig advanced to second and Dixie Walker was on first when Tony Lazzeri hit a drive to right-center. Gehrig held up until he was sure Goslin couldn’t catch the ball. Then he took off, with the speedy Walker close behind. The relay – Goslin to Cronin to catcher Luke Sewell – cut down Gehrig at the plate, and Sewell spun around to tag Walker for a double play at home. Clark Griffith said, “Forty-eight years in baseball and I’ve never seen the likes of it before.”
The revamped Nats won the 1933 pennant, the last for a Washington team. Weaver pitched even better than in his rookie season – when he was able. He missed more than a month with a sore right shoulder. Without him, the Nats charged into a pennant race with the Yankees. When he recovered, he contributed six wins to the club’s successful stretch drive, two of them over the Yankees.
That summer Povich commented that Weaver was “given to worrying over every ailment, be it hang-nail or toe-nail.” It was the first mention of what would become a familiar criticism. He also acquired a new sports-page nickname: “Brain Truster” Monte Weaver, after the college professors who advised the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Weaver finished with a 10-5 record in 21 starts; his 3.26 ERA was ninth best in the league. Cronin chose him to start the fourth game of the World Series, with Washington trailing the New York Giants two games to one. His opponent was Carl Hubbell, that season’s National League MVP, who had beaten the Nats in game one.
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