Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #21: William M. "Bill" Carrick. "Doughnut Bill". Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1901-1902. 63 wins and a 4.14 ERA in 5 MLB seasons. He led the NL in complete games in 1899 and in games pitched in 1900 and in games started both years. He debuted with the New York Giants in 1898-1900. In 1900 he had his best year posting a record of 19-22 with a 3.53 ERA in 341.2 innings pitched.

Doughnut Bill Carrick pitched five years in the majors. He was a workhorse, twice leading the league in starts. At one point during the 1901 season, Carrick lost seventeen consecutive decisions.

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[GeoPoto]

Player #22: William P. "Bill" Coughlin. "Scranton Bill". "Rowdy Bill". Third baseman with the Washington Nationals in 1899 (NL) and Senators in 1901-1904 (AL). 972 hits and 159 stolen bases in 9 MLB seasons. He was known as a master of the hidden-ball trick. He was a key figure on the Detroit Tiger team that won AL pennants in 1907 and 1908. But his most productive season was 1902 with Washington as he posted an OBP of .348 with 84 runs scored and 71 RBIs in 506 plate appearances. His final seasons were with Detroit in 1904-1908.

In 1919, Coughlin was involved in the occupation of Germany after World War I. Coughlin conceived and operated a school for umpires run by the Knights of Columbus in occupied Coblenz, Germany. Coughlin taught the umpire candidates to officiate baseball games for the occupying servicemen. Coughlin taught his umpires to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" if fights erupted among the players, causing "rocks held ready to avenge an unpopular decision" to fall from "reverent hands."

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[ValKehl]

Prior to the game on Saturday vs. the Phillies, the Wash. Nationals held an on-field ceremony to honor Ryan Zimmerman and retire his jersey number. A good player but not a HOF candidate, Zimmerman has been the face of the Nats franchise from almost when the team moved to DC from Montreal. I think this read, which appears in today's Wash. Post, will interest all Washington fans, and hopefully others as well. I have copied and pasted this piece becaise I believe the Post has a paywall.


A century before Zimmerman, Walter Johnson transformed D.C. baseball

By Frederic J. Frommer
Updated June 18, 2022 at 8:00 p.m. EDT|Published June 17, 2022 at 10:01 a.m. EDT

When the Nationals celebrate Ryan Zimmerman and his career at Nationals Park on Saturday, they paid tribute to a player who has been the face of Washington baseball in a way no one has in a century, since Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson.

Like Johnson, Zimmerman, who announced his retirement in February, played his entire career here, slogged through many years of bad baseball, and helped lead his team to a World Series title in the twilight of his career.

Zimmerman made his debut at the age of 20, 98 years after Johnson’s first game with the Washington Senators at the age of 19. Johnson finally got a chance to play in the World Series when he was 36 and the entire nation rallied around the underdog Senators, who beat the New York Giants in seven games.

Zimmerman was 35 when the Nats upset the Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series, also in seven games. Those remain the only World Series titles for Washington, 95 years apart. Zimmerman is also retiring 95 years after Johnson did in 1927.

The Senators and the Nats were nearly equally bad when Johnson and Zimmerman started their careers. In his first five seasons in the big leagues, Johnson pitched for a team that finished in last or second-to-last place in the American League every season. In the first five seasons Zimmerman played for the Nats, the team finished in the bottom two in the National League East Division.

Twice in those periods, their teams had the worst record in baseball. The Nats got to restock off those fallow years by drafting Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper with back-to-back No. 1 draft picks, but there was no draft back when Johnson played, making a rebuild much more challenging.

Both players dated back to the beginning of the Washington teams. The Nats made Zimmerman their first draft selection after moving here from Montreal in June 2005, and he made his debut three months later. The Senators scouted Johnson playing semipro baseball in Idaho and signed him in June 1907 during their seventh season.

“Secures A Phenom,” a Washington Post headline declared on June 30, 1907. “Johnson Is His Name and He Hails from the Wooly West.” He debuted for the Senators that August. They both put up spectacular numbers in their first abbreviated first seasons. Zimmerman hit .397 in 20 games, while Johnson posted a 1.88 earned run average in 14 games.

Zimmerman played his entire career with one team, a feat almost unheard of in this era of free agency, but it was more common when Johnson played. Zimmerman helped bridge generations of Washington baseball fans, many of whom lived 33 years without a local team. As he told me after the Nats won the 2019 World Series for my book on Washington baseball history, “You Gotta Have Heart”:

The team has been here long enough where I’ll have 20-year-old or 25-year-old guys or girls come up to me and be like, “Hey thanks, you know you’ve been my favorite since I was a little kid,” which makes me feel really old, but also it is really cool because you have that again now.

Being here for so long, I’ve talked to some people who said they used to go to Senators games with their parents. These people went to games with their dad or mom when they were four or five or six years old, but their kids are now grown, and they never had a baseball team to do that with their dad or mom. So you missed that whole generation.

One of the most important things this World Series did was restore baseball back to D.C. It’s almost like some closure to baseball coming back.

Both Zimmerman and Johnson knew when it was time to retire. Johnson, 39, went 5-6 with a 5.10 ERA in his final season, although he hit .348 and slugged .522 in 46 at-bats. Zimmerman, 37 when he retired, hit .243 last year, but he did have some pop left in his bat, homering 14 times and driving in 46 RBIs in just 255 at-bats.

ohnson had arguably the best career of any big league pitcher in history and holds the record for most shutouts, with 110. Zimmerman was not that kind of transformational player, but he retired as the all-time Nats leader in homers, hits, RBIs and games played. On Saturday, his No. 11 was retired, the first time a Nats player has received that honor.

Johnson remained a fixture in the region, as Zimmerman, known as “Mr. National,” plans to do. “Although my baseball career has come to an end, my family and I will continue to be heavily involved in the DMV community,” he said.

A few years after retiring, Johnson became manager of the Senators. In three of those four seasons, the Senators had a winning percentage of .597 or better but never made it back to the World Series. Later, he entered politics, winning a seat on the Montgomery County Commission and nearly pulling off an upset victory as a Republican candidate for Congress in 1940. There is also a high school named for him in Bethesda.

Both excelled in unassuming ways, without seeking the spotlight. When Johnson retired, he said he “simply does not want to be in the way next season.”

“Walter Johnson, more than any other ball player, probably more than any other athlete, professional or amateur, became the symbol of gentlemanly conduct in the battle heat,” wrote Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich in 1946, following the death of Johnson at the age of 59.

“The big fellow from Coffeyville, Kan.,” wrote New York Times sports columnist Arthur Daley, “was a gentleman of the highest type, a distinct credit to his sport.”

Although players today are not often described as “gentlemen,” the sentiments behind those comments describe Zimmerman. He told The Post that when people see him and thank him for being a role model, “I feel like I don’t know why you’re thanking me. All I did was play baseball. I got to play baseball for a job. That is the best way to put it. I shouldn’t be being thanked. I feel like I should be thanking them.”

Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports historian, is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals.”

[GeoPoto]

Thanks Val.

Player #23: Lewis L. "Lew" Drill. Catcher with the Washington Senators in 1902-1904. 231 hits in 4 MLB seasons. His career OBP is .353. His last MLB seasons were 1904-1905 with the Detroit Tigers. He declined a contract offer for the 1906 season because he could make more money working as a lawyer.

Drill's SABR biography picks up his 1903 season: With (William "Boileryard") Clarke back in the fold, Drill had less opportunity to play in 1903. He batted .253 in 51 games and kept up his studies while playing ball, earning his law degree from Georgetown in June. After the season he and Bob Blewett, a classmate at Georgetown and a former pitcher with the New York Giants, opened a law office in Seattle; one report stated, “Both men are out of baseball for good.” Drill must have reconsidered: He was one of the first to report for Senator's spring training in 1904.

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[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Prior to the game on Saturday vs. the Phillies, the Wash. Nationals held an on-field ceremony to honor Ryan Zimmerman and retire his jersey number. A good player but not a HOF candidate, Zimmerman has been the face of the Nats franchise from almost when the team moved to DC from Montreal. I think this read, which appears in today's Wash. Post, will interest all Washington fans, and hopefully others as well. I have copied and pasted this piece because I believe the Post has a paywall.

Thanks, Val, for posting this nicely done and apropos article by Fred Frommer, who has become the unofficial historian of the original Nats.

[GeoPoto]

Wyatt A. "Watty" Lee. Outfielder and Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1901-1903. 30 wins in 549.1 innings pitched over 4 MLB seasons.

In 1903 he had an 8-12 record with a 3.08 ERA in 166.2 innings pitched. He finished up with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1904.

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[ValKehl]

George, I'm greatly enjoying seeing the pics of your vintage Washington cards and reading your informative write ups. Here's another "Watty" Lee card to augment your last post.

[ValKehl]

Delete - wrong forum!

[Rad_Hazard]

Here my my 2 Washington cards: