Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

The Yankees were in fact involved in two games fewer than the Senators, but when play stopped the Nats finished seven full games ahead of New York, spelling the end of the heyday of Murderers' Row. While Babe Ruth still hit .301 with 34 homers, his production was down and his career was petering out fast. It would be nearly three years before the Yanks would be able to regroup around a rookie named Joe DiMaggio and once again dominate the American League.

The Senators influenced firsthand New York's demise, and Lady Luck was on their side at crucial times during the season. Back in April, Washington was ahead by three runs when Tony Lazzeri, with Lou Gehrig on second and Dixie Walker on first, launched a bullet which ricocheted off Yankee Stadium's rightfield fence. Gehrig thought Goose Goslin might catch the ball, so he tagged up. The much-faster Walker did not, and so here they both came, one behind the other, barreling toward third.

Coach Art Fletcher, confused, couldn't stop one baserunner and not the other. Joe Cronin's relay was on time for Luke Sewell to tag Gehrig out, and then to spin around and tag Walker also. Later in the season, in a game in which the Senators trailed 1-0 in the ninth, with a man on first and two out, Buddy Myer fouled one to the screen which Bill Dickey went back on and caught. Umpire Bill McGowan ruled the ball had grazed the screen, just barely, and Myer had a reprieve. He hit the next pitch out of the park to win the game, one of his four homers of the 1933 campaign.

In the final game of the season, coach Nick Altrock was given a chance to become the oldest player to participate in a major-league game up to that time by being allowed to pinch hit. Unsuccessful in the attempt, against Rube Walberg of the A's, Altrock had played at the age of 57 years, 16 days, a record now held by Satchel Paige, who pitched for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 at the age of 59 years, 2 months, 18 days. Minnie Minoso fell just a few months short of Paige's record when he appeared for the Chicago White Sox in 1980 so that he could become the second player in history to appear in five decades as a player. The first had been Nick Altrock.

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