Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #54L: Walter P. "Barney" Johnson Part 1. "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.

Deveaux takes us through Waler's 1923 season: Walter Johnson hurt his left knee while striding, on May 20, in St. Louis. The incident eventually led to the dismissal of coach George Gibson. It had been Gibson's idea that the way to get the kinks out of Walter's leg was to have him chase fungoes every day. When the strategy backfired, Gibson was replaced with the old pitching great, Jack Chesbro. Chesbro wasn't around long, replaced as third-base coach before the beginning of the next season by Al Schacht, the ex-pitcher and funnyman with the hangdog look.

Schacht had called Clark Griffith on a promise the Old Fox had made three years earlier on the occasion of another Walter Johnson injury. Back on July 5, 1920, when Barney was to have started one of the games of a doubleheader at home versus the Yankees but had been unable to come out, Schacht had saved the day, as mentioned (see entry for Schacht in the 1920 portion of our thread) before a large crowd that the owner would have been loath to disappoint. When he volunteered, Griff had promised Schacht a job forever if he went out and won the crowd over, and of course, he did. There was no question that the Clown Prince of Baseball was no clown when it came to baseball know-how, and now he would be reaping his reward on the coaching lines. (We will return to this account in Part 2 of Walter's entry, but first a diversion to introduce a noteworthy MLB player despite his unfortunate role in Walter's 1923 season.)

(Quick aside: As a team collector, I am generally denied the joys of collecting hall of fame and other famous players, unless their careers included time in Washington. A key exception occurs when they are found sharing a card with a Washington player. Here we find a three-card panel with Walter Johnson and, as a bonus, the circumstantially famous, Wally Pipp.)

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