Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Fabulous picture Val! Early "Ken Rosenthal" look being sported by Walter and Bucky.

. . . The Senators were to end the season on the road, with a three-week road trip starting September 8. Walter Johnson won 8-4 that day in Philadelphia, his tenth win in a row and 20th of the year. Taking three of four in Philly, the Nationals moved on to Detroit, where Johnson decisioned rookie Earl Whitehill, a future Washington player. The victory was coupled in the newspapers the following day with news that Barney had been named the league's most valuable player for 1924, getting 55 of a possible 64 votes. The Nats, however, lost the last two games of the Detroit series and were now only three games up on the Tigers. Worse still, the feared Yankees had now caught up with them, with both teams at 82-59.

The Senators swept three games at Cleveland, where they had lost seven of eight games in their first two visits. Fans cheered wildly for Walter Johnson when he took the middle game 3-2 on September 17. On the 19th, the Nats ran the score up to 9-0 before the Browns even got up to bat in stifling St. Louis heat. But the Yankees were keeping pace, and Bucky Harris decided to call upon his 36-year-old ironman on just two days rest. The strategy didn't work, and Johnson was kayoed in the first inning. Five pitchers gave up 18 hits, but the Nats managed 18 safeties of their own and nearly pulled it out. Goose Goslin homered in the top of the tenth inning, his second of the day, but Washington blew the lead in the bottom of the inning and lost 15-14 when Firpo Marberry, who could have opted for an easy play at the plate, threw wildly past second base instead.

On September 21, the Senators won when the game was called in the seventh because of rain, and with the Yankees having lost two straight in Detroit, the Nats were now two ahead. A three-game series began against the hated Chisox the next day. With Harris urging his Nats to insult the White Sox and THEN beat them, Walter Johnson won his 13th consecutive game, his 23rd victory of the season. Playing 20 games over .500 during the last month of the season, the sizzling Nationals swept Chicago. But the Yankees, champions of the world and winners of the pennant by 16 games in 1923, could not be shaken off. While the Nats were sweeping Chicago, the Bombers were doing the same to Cleveland, so Washington could do no better than to hang on to its slim lead. Everything would be decided back east after all.

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