Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #54A: Walter P. "Barney" Johnson. "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.

We go to Deveaux's account of Johnson's 1910 season: Of his 14 opening-day starts, Walter Johnson would win eight of them, an incredible seven by shutout. This one (1910) was the first -- a one-hit masterpiece against the Athletics in front of 12,000 partisans. The no-hitter was lost in the seventh inning when rightfielder Doc Gessler, never known for his prowess with the glove, got tangled up with a fan at the edge of the roped-off outfield and dropped the ball. Gesler, who hit .259 and .282 as the Nats' regular rightfielder in 1910 and '11 before retiring at age 30 to become a physician, apologized to the Big Train. He need not have.

Walter Johnson never, ever, noted errors behind him. He also never spoke of any lack of offensive support behind him. Nor did he ever complain about the vagaries of umpires and the effects their calls might have had on his fate. Johnson was also a rare specimen in the rowdy early years of the century in that he was genuinely concerned about the safety of batters. The fact that he hit a record 205 batters during the course of his career seems illogical. . . .

. . . Walter Johnson's 1910 ERA was a minuscule 1.35, and for a while it ws thought his 313 strikeouts had established a new all-time mark. He had indeed shattered Rube Waddell's mark of 302 set in 1903, but it was later found that Waddell had registered 349 K's in '04. Amazingly, the editor of the Spalding Baseball Guide refused to heap any praise upon the Nats' wunderkind. Among other things, it was written that Johnson "made a better record than he did in some other years, but there is still room for improvement in his pitching . . . he lacks that control which is necessary to place him with the leaders in the Base Ball world." Yet, Johnson was considered enough of an asset that, just after the 1910 World Series, won by Connie Mack's A's, there were rumors flying about that he might be traded for Ty Cobb who, two months shy of his 24th birthday, had just won his fifth consecutive A.L. batting title. When asked about the rumor, Tigers president Frank Navin expressed the opinion that Washington would never consider trading Walter Johnson for anyone, even Ty Cobb.

The Big Train was something of an idler on the mound, meaning he never gunned for strikeouts. He was of a humble nature, and there was evidence that he was the kind who had no use for records and was content to just win, without regard for how that was to be accomplished. This may never have seemed so true at this early stage of his career as in the anomalous July 8 game at St. Louis. Barney struck out the first seven men he faced and eight of the first nine. However, buoyed by a large lead when the Nats scored ten runs in the fifth inning, he didn't strike out anyone else among the anemic Browns over the course of the rest of the game. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)

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