Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #97A: Earl L. "Sheriff" Smith. Outfielder/Third baseman with the Washington Senators in 1921-1922. 429 hits and 9 home runs in 7 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Chicago Cubs in 1916. His most productive season was 1920 with the St. Louis Browns as he posted a .336 OBP with 55 RBIs in 378 plate appearances.

Smith's minor league career spanned 20 seasons, including nine years at Minneapolis. He was still hitting over .300 at age 44 in 1935. Earl also took a whirl at pitching in 1922 for Topeka, winning 20 games and losing 18.

Smith managed the Denver Bears (1932), Huntington Boosters (1933), Charleroi Tigers (1935), and Bluefield Blue-Grays (1938). He also umpired in the Middle Atlantic League in 1937.

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[GeoPoto]

Player #103: Wallace W. "Cy" Warmoth. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1922-1923. He debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1916. 8 wins with 129 innings pitched in 3 MLB seasons. In 1923 he went 7-5 for Washington with 105 innings pitched.

Wallace Walter "Cy" Warmoth pitched three years in the majors, appearing mostly with the 1923 Washington Senators for whom he went 7-5.
With the 1923 Senators, he was five years younger than teammate Walter Johnson, who went 17-12.

The following year, with Memphis in 1924, Warmoth went 20-11. Several years later, with Kansas City in 1929, the 36-year-old Warmoth went 14-4. The 1929 Blues were one of the minors' great teams, going 111-56.

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[GeoPoto]

Player #98B: J. Thompson "Tom" Zachary. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1919-1925 and 1927-1928. 1924 and 1928 World Series champion. 186 wins and 23 saves in 19 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1918. In Washington's World Series-winning 1924 season, he posted a 15-9 record with a 2.75 ERA in 202.2 innings pitched. In 1949 with the New York Yankees, he went 12-0, an MLB record that still stands for most wins without a loss in one season. He also gave up Babe Ruth's 60th home run in 1927. He finished his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1936.

Back to Zachary's SABR biography: The Senators were down three games to two when Zachary toed the rubber for Game 6 in Washington. He had the Giants batters muttering to themselves for the next two hours as he scattered seven hits. New York scored once in the first before taking the 2-1 loss. The Senators captured the title with a Game 7 win behind Walter Johnson.

The Senators brought in Stan Coveleskie and Dutch Ruether for the 1925 season, which made Mogridge the odd man out. The starting staff of Covey, Ruether, Johnson and Zachary, with relief help from Marberry, led the team to 96 wins and the league title. Zachary was the only one of the group to post a losing record, 12-15.

Seven of those losses came after August 9 and cost him a spot in the starting rotation against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He made only one appearance in the postseason, a lackluster relief showing in Game 5. That game started the Pirate comeback of three straight wins to win the crown. . .

(We will now have a brief pause -- expected next post: 14 February.)

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[ValKehl]

Although WaJo was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 1924 World Series with 4 innings of shutout relief, Tom Zachary was arguably the Senators' pitching hero of this WS. He won Games 2 and 6 (both following losses by WaJo), falling just 1/3 inning short of pitching two complete games against the hard-hitting NY Giant's lineup.

[GeoPoto]

Great card Val, and quite right about his crucial role in Washington's 1924 World Series success. Without Zachary's heroics in games 2 and 6, it would not have been possible for Walter Johnson to finally don the Hero's mantle in game 7. And with that we have reached 1924:

We begin our coverage of the 1924 season with these excerpts from Smiles: At 2:47 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was president. President Warren G. Harding had died of a heart attack in San Francisco. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administrated the oath of office as Vice President Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible. . . .

. . . In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as the "Coolidge Prosperity," he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote. His 25.2-point victory margin in the popular vote is one of the largest ever.
Coolidge was nearly as popular as the capital's baseball team, which he went to see on Thursday, June 26, 1924, as the first-place Washington Senators began a 34-game, 29-day homestand that would include 11 double-headers. The stand opened with a double-header against the A's. Griffith Stadium took on a festive atmosphere to rival a World Series opening. Fans lined up at the box office beginning at 7 o'clock that morning. . . .

. . . At 1 P.M. the Navy band led the Senators onto the field to a tremendous ovation. "A bevy of beautiful girls from the Pemberton Dancing school wearing nothing you couldn't write home about on a postcard, but probably wouldn't, glided onto the field strewing garlands in the path of the players. Some of the fathers on the club thought the girls ought to go home and put something on. The younger members thought it was good stuff." . . .

. . . Approximately 20,000 fans turned out for the first game and 3,000 more for the second, including President Coolidge and four secret servicemen. The presidential box behind the Senators' dugout was empty until the First Lady and her children arrived in the seventh inning of the first game. The president arrived just before the second game. The band played the national anthem as he entered the box. . . .

. . . Altrock and Schacht went through their repertoire of comedy acts, dancing with the dance school girls, rowing and fishing in front of the president's box, and performing their famous slow-motion pitching and batting act. Stringer (Washington Post scribe Harry,) seemed to be obsessed with the dancing girls' attire, writing, "First the clowns participated in athletic dancing with the girls, though their uniforms seemed to hamper their movements, while the fair ones were under no such handicap. The president applauded vigorously."

Johnson, who hadn't pitched in five days, won the first game, 5-0. It was the team's 10th straight win. (Bucky Harris by Jack Smiles.)

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[GeoPoto]

The 1924 Washington Senators won 92 games, lost 62, and finished in first place in the American League. Fueled by the excitement of winning their first AL pennant, the Senators won the World Series in dramatic fashion, a 12-inning Game Seven victory.

Some highlights from Deveaux's account of the 1924 season: . . . During the early weeks, though, there were no real signs that this would be a very special season. Right off the bat, the burdensome term "Griffith's Folly" was used, but only by certain baseball writers; when the Senators sank to the second division, the phrase gained currency.

Then something happened. All the key men started to click on all cylinders. Harris was playing well, not at all affected by his double duties. His partner Peckinpaugh was rebounding from a mediocre 1923, and he and Harris were again formidable as a double-play duo. All of a sudden veterans Johnson, Rice, and Judge were simultaneously enjoying their best periods of sustained good play in years. The scholarly Muddy Ruel, credited with coming up with the term "tools of ignorance" to describe the equipment worn by catchers, was again solid at the plate and behind it. The rookie reliever, Firpo Marberry, was so effective that he would set a record for relief appearances. . . .

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[GeoPoto]

. . . Over the last four days of August, the Nats were to play the Yanks (who they were neck-and-neck with in the pennant race) a single game each day at one-year-old Yankee Stadium. In the opening match, Babe Ruth socked a pair of home runs and Bob Meusel another, but that wasn't enough for the Yankees to reclaim first place. The Nats slaughtered the pitching of Herb Pennock, Goose Goslin hit for the cycle, and Washington scored eight in the eighth, prevailing 11-6. All of a sudden, the Senators were in first place. What's more, the New York fans had cheered Washington's victory unabashedly. It became obvious on this day that the nation truly stood behind the capital's team, and everyone knew why.

When Walter Johnson struck out Babe Ruth to end the first inning the following day, there was bedlam. Barney was good enough on this day to keep New York off the scoresheet for seven innings, working out of a bases-loaded jam and two situations with baserunners on the corners. Twice he snuffed out potential rallies by striking out the dangerous Bob Meusel with two men on. All the while, his mates were amassing a healthy lead off Joe Bush. Goose Goslin, who would end up eclipsing Ruth, Meusel, Pipp, and the rest, to lead the league in runs batted in (129, to go with a .344 average), was on a tear. He went 3-for-4 with a home run and scored three times. Washington won again, the final score 5-1.

In the eighth, everyone got a scare when Johnson reached for a Wally Schrang liner and had the ball bounce off his pitching hand. Bucky Harris decided to not take a chance and immediately pulled the living legend from the contest. One writer described the ovation that followed as the loudest ever accorded any baseball player in New York City.

The third game was a setback, particularly since the Nats got 11 hits off Waite Hoyt, while Curly Ogden gave up just five. The Yankees won 2-1. The finale was a classic. George Mogridge, who would finish the season at 16-11, 3.76, got into plenty of trouble early but held New York to two runs until the eighth, when Firpo Marberry came in to relieve. Joe Judge hit one of his three homers this season, off Sam Jones, setting up some tenth-inning heroics by Sam Rice, who doubled to drive in two runs for a 4-2 decision. Rice led the league in hits (216) and at-bats, and hit .334. The pesky Nats had taken three out of four; within four weeks, their 13-9 overall record against the Yankees in this campaign was to prove of the utmost significance. . . .

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