Washington DC Baseball

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Player #74O: Edgar C. "Sam" Rice. Outfielder for the Washington Senators in 1915-1933. 2,987 hits and 34 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. 1924 World Series champion. 1920 AL stolen base leader. He was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame in 1963. Led the Senators to three AL pennants (1924,1925, and 1933). Best known for controversial "over the fence" catch in the 1925 World Series. He had many excellent seasons, but one of his best was 1930 as he posted a .407 OBP with 121 runs scored in 669 plate appearances. He had 63 stolen bases in 1920. He last played in 1934 with the Cleveland Indians. His early life was marred by tragedy when his wife, two daughters, parents, and two sisters were all killed by a tornado in Indiana.

Carroll highlights Rice's 1931 season: As he had every other time he had contemplated retirement, however, Rice did return. And as the 1931 season dawned, he remained the Senators' regular right-fielder, at least temporarily.

But just a few games into the season, that status already seemed precarious, particularly in light of the concerns (manager Walter) Johnson had expressed the previous fall about Rice's age (Johnson had acknowledged that Rice -- and teammate Joe Judge -- had reached the age that required the roster to include players who could step in should they start to slip). In late April, Rice and Judge were both mired in slumps, though Johnson tried to dress it up as best he could, explaining that both were hitting the ball hard, but just right at people.

. . . In June of 1931, Judge missed several games after undergoing an appendectomy. And by the end of the month, both he and Rice were in serious danger of losing their everyday status.

"Scribes have been singing the swan song of both for some time," the Washington Post wrote, "and had been proven wrong so many times that they finally had forgotten both words and music, but they are now seeking the copyright owners with a view toward popularizing the song again." . . .

. . . Rice played in 120 games in 1931, by far the lowest total since the season he had lost thirteen years before while serving in World War I. He batted a respectable .310. He spent most of his time in right field, but even played some of the first few games of his career in left field as Johnson tried to use him as much as he could without sacrificing (Dave) Harris's time. The Senators won ninety-two games, including twelve in a row at one point, but it wasn't enough in a tough American League, as they still finished in third place and well, well behind the pennant-winning Philadelphia Athletics.

In no time after the season's conclusion, Rice had returned to his beloved golf links, playing competitive tournaments while the World Series was still going on. Later in the month, he unsuccessfully tried to defend his District of Columbia left-handed title at Indian Spring.

(I had to include that last item because I was a member of Indian Spring CC from 1980 until it closed in 2006. The club relocated in the 1960's, so I never played the course Sam did. But still.)

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Player #88B: Alexander "Al" Schacht. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1919-1921. 14 wins and 3 saves in 3 MLB seasons. Was highly-regarded as a third base coach in Washington (1924-1934) and Boston (1935-1936). Performed player mimicry and comedy routines with fellow Washington coach Nick Altrock earning the nickname of "The Clown Prince of Baseball". After leaving coaching he continued comedy but settled in as a restauranteur.

Schacht's SABR biography fills us in on some of his mid-career highlights: In 1928, Schacht became desperately ill. His weight dropped to 126, sharp pains gnawed at his stomach, and he had a bad case of dysentery. Schacht went to several doctors, who were puzzled by his illness. Finally he went to a Dr. Norman, who found the problem-bleeding ulcers. The doctor, seeing that Schacht was about to have an internal hemorrhage, irrigated them immediately. After the irrigation Schacht went to a sanitarium in Washington, where he followed the doctor’s orders, a special diet that resulted in the curing of his ulcers.

Schacht managed the Senators for a month in 1934. Player-manager Joe Cronin had broken his wrist and just gotten married, to Griffith’s adopted daughter Mildred Robertson. Griffith gave Cronin the rest of the year off and told Joe to go on a long honeymoon. The Senator team was in poor shape with mounting injuries and finished seventh. Schacht’s short managing career ended. Schacht never desired to be a manager and was glad it was over. After the 1934 season Schacht and Joe Cronin were traded to the Red Sox. That was the end of the partnership between Schacht and Altrock.

Now that Schacht and Altrock had split for good, Al was on his own as a clown and became the Clown Prince of Baseball. He entertained at World Series games, at All-Star games, and at every park in the majors.

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Player #141: Roy H. Spencer. Catcher with the Washington Senators in 1929-1932. 448 hits and 3 home runs in 12 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1925-1927. His most productive season was 1931 with Washington as he posted a .327 OBP with 60 RBIs in 528 plate appearances. He last played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937-1938.

Roy Spencer played parts of 12 MLB seasons for five different teams. In all, he had almost 2,000 plate appearances and appeared in 636 games. He was part of the Pittsburgh team that won the 1925 World Series, although he did not appear in the World Series.

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Player #122B: Samuel F. "Sam" West. Outfielder with the Washington Senators in 1927-1932 and 1938-1941. 1,838 hits and 75 home runs in 16 MLB seasons. 4-time All-Star. His career OBP was .371. In 1931 for Washington, he posted an OBP of .369 with 91 RBIs in 559 plate appearances. In 1934 for the St. Louis Browns, he posted an OBP of .403 with 91 runs scored in 554 plate appearances. His last season was 1942 with the Chicago White Sox.

Now the Senators’ everyday center fielder, West batted just .267 in 1929, mostly due to an inability to step in against left-handers. Since that rainy July day in 1926 (when West was hit in the head by a pitch), West had consistently taken a weak swing against left-handers while striding out of the box. After the season, a disappointed Walter Johnson said of West, “There is no question that ‘Sam of Birmingham’ is one of the best fielders in the majors today. But for a team that is looking for his big batting punch to be furnished, West has been unable to show us this.” . . .

. . . The 1930 Senators, according to the sportswriters, were expected to finish seventh, but they shocked the baseball world by winning 94 games and contending for the American League pennant. They finished in second place, eight games behind the Philadelphia Athletics. West contributed with clutch hitting and a .327 batting average while playing against just right-handed pitching, but the Senators ran out of patience with his weakness against left-handers. At the Del Prado Hotel in Chicago on the morning of July 27, West was summoned to Clark Griffith’s room. The longtime president of the Senators informed the 25-year-old outfielder that George Loepp (who had been platooning with West) had been sold, meaning that West would now play center field every day, regardless who was hurling for the opposition. Griffith bluntly told West that if he couldn’t learn to hit left-handers, he would be replaced.

The message was heard. Later that day West banged out a pair of hits against Chicago left-hander Dutch Henry. The next week he smashed two hits off Herb Pennock, one of the best lefties in the league. A few weeks later he tagged Pennock for three hits in a game.

West continued his batting rampage. Now able to hit lefties was well as right-handers, he was batting .362 on June 21, and was moved to the number three spot in the Washington batting order. He finished the season with a .333 batting average, good for eighth in the American League, and drove in 91 runs. In the field he made over 400 putouts, and his 15 assists proved his arm was fine. But a full season of wear did damage that required surgery before the 1932 season. . . .

. . . In 1932 West hit .287 and drove in 83 runs. In the field he made 450 putouts and had 15 assists. The Senators finished in third place for the second straight season, and Walter Johnson lost his job. “He was just a little too nice” was West’s explanation to why the Senators fell short of winning the pennant under Johnson’s direction.

In December 1932 new manager Joe Cronin and Griffith attended the baseball winter meetings in New York City with the intention of strengthening their team by acquiring veteran talent. They made a trade with the St. Louis Browns that brought Goose Goslin back to the Senators. However, with Goslin in the Washington lineup, there was an unbalanced batting order of five left-handers and three right-handers. With that in mind, Cronin and Griffith made a trade they did not want to make but felt was necessary: a swap of center fielders with the Browns. Sam West was traded for Fred Schulte, a right-handed hitter. (It all was considered one trade: West, pitcher Lloyd Brown and outfielder Carl Reynolds to the Browns for Goslin, Schulte and pitcher Lefty Stewart.)

“You are always unhappy when you leave all your friends,” West said of the trade. “We were all one big happy family over in Washington.” (We will see West again with Washington.)

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The 1932 Washington Senators won 93 games, lost 61, and finished in third place in the American League. They were managed by Walter Johnson and played home games at Griffith Stadium.

The 1932 Season Part 1. We let Deveaux provide highlights from 1932: The Senators were in the running for second until the last weekend (of the 1931 season), when they were edged out by the Yankees and settled in third, a full 16 games behind the Athletics. Despite having dropped a rung in the standings, Clark Griffith still felt that the eight men he could put on the field could match the more powerful lineups in the league, namely New York and Philadelphia. Griff decide not to do much tinkering with his ballclub for 1932, a year which would prove to be another exciting one for his team. The Nats had, above all, a terrific infield. Joe Cronin drove in 116 runs, batted .318, and led the league's shortstops in put-outs, assists, double plays, and fielding average. The Senators as a team were once again at the top of the league in fielding in 1932, in a virtual tie for the top spot with the A's.

Offensively, Joe Kuhel improved to .291 in his second full year, although he shared- first base with Joe Judge, who hit .258 in his 18th and final season in Washington. Third baseman Ossie Bluege hit .258, and his production returned to normal, with 64 ribbies, compared to his anomalous 98 RBIs the previous year. Buddy Myer dropped to .279, the second-lowest mark of his career, but, ironically, scored a career-high 120 runs.

Preparing the outfield for the '32 campaign presented a bit more of a challenge to Griffith, who decided to trade for outfielder Carl Reynolds of the Chicago White Sox. Reynolds, solidly built but viewed as temperamental by Chicago manager Donie Bush, had slipped to .290 in 1931 after finishing third in the batting race in 1930 with .359. That season, during which he bashed three homers in consecutive at-bats in a game at Yankee Stadium, Reynolds accumulated 22 homers and 100 RBIs, but those figures dipped to 6-77 in '31.

Griffith figured the righthanded Reynolds would counterbalance the lefty-hitting Sammy West and Heinie Manush. Manush hit a resounding .342, fourth-best in the league, and exactly matched Cronin's RBI output of 116. West slipped to .287 from .333, but had 15 outfield assists, just one short of the tally of the league leader in that department, Goose Goslin of the Browns.

Photograph by Brown Brothers capturing President Herbert Hoover as he prepares to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the season on opening day, April 11, 1932, at Washington's Griffith Stadium:

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The 1932 Season Part 2. Griffith 's plan (for the outfield in 1932) worked well, as Reynolds, who would end up hitting .302 for his career, was having a great season until Independence Day, 1932, when he crashed into Yankee catcher Bill Dickey in a close play at the plate. This triggered one of the rowdiest incidents in Griffith Stadium history. Dickey, a tough 25-year-old already on his way to the Hall of Fame, was incensed by the way Reynolds barged into him, which had caused him to drop the ball. Unbeknownst to anyone but the Yankee players, the same thing had happened to Dickey a few days before in Boston. Furthermore, Reynolds, a 200-pounder, was known for being one of those players who slid particularly hard, which may endear a player to his manager, but not to enemy fielders.

As Reynolds trotted toward the dugout following the collision, Dickey came running from behind, got in front of him, and socked him in the mouth, breaking his jaw in two places. Dickey was suspended for 30 days and fined $1,000 for his one-punch decision. Carl Reynolds, who had been hitting for the Nats like he had for Chicago during his great season in '30, did not regain his batting eye when he returned following a six-week layoff. Underweight after having his jaw wired during the convalescence, his average slumped over 50 points to .305 for the season.

It must be said that Sam Rice, at 42 years of age, performed admirably while Reynolds was absent, managing .323 in 106 games. Rice, who would have to wait until age 73 to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, was performing at a high level at an age when most Hall of Famers were either on the coaching lines or enjoying a more leisurely lifestyle back in their hometowns.

Another snap by Brown Brothers:

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The 1932 Washington Senators won 93 games, lost 61, and finished in third place in the American League. They were managed by Walter Johnson and played home games at Griffith Stadium.

The 1932 Season Part 3. The Nats were themselves able to subdue other A.L. teams more often than not in 1932, and this was largely thanks to a pitching staff that allowed fewer runs than any other in the league. General Alvin Crowder had a career year, 26-13, 3.33. He led the league in wins and was also the number-one workhorse in the loop, with a whopping 327 innings (Dizzy Dean was first in the National League with just 286). Crowder's 26th win was his 15th in a row, a 2-1 decision over the A's at Griffith Stadium. Philadelphia's only run resulted from Jimmie Foxx's 58th home run, which turned out to be his last of the year in the first serious challenge mounted on Babe Ruth's 1927 standard. In this season, Foxx had had two home runs canceled because of rainouts in the early innings of games.

Rookie righthander Monte Weaver, purchased from Baltimore the previous season, spun a very gratifying 22-10 record for Clark Griffith in 1932. In later years, Weaver recalled how he'd been greeted upon his arrival in '31, when he won his first big-league decision. While he was shagging flies in the outfield, Walter Johnson went up to him and said that if Weaver pitched like he had in Baltimore, everything would be fine. The fact was, however, that Weaver had been pitching, to quote him, "lousy" in Baltimore at the time of his purchase. Being a brainy guy who later earned a master's degree in mathematics, he knew that Walter was just being nice. In addition to Weaver's phenomenal rookie year, Lloyd Brown contributed a 15-12 slate, and Firpo Marberry, used primarily as a reliever for the first time in four years, went 8-4 with a league-leading 13 saves.

All added up, the Senators had another great year -- 93 wins, third-highest in club history, against 61 losses. It was a better record than that of the National League champions, the Chicago Cubs. However, Washington only gained two games in the standings, winding up a disappointing 14 lengths behind New York, winners of 107 games, who finished 13 ahead of the defending champions, the Athletics. While Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig drove in 288 runs between them, it was with pitching -- courtesy of Gomez, Ruffing, Pipgras, and Pennock -- that the Yankees were able to outclass the A's.

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