Washington DC Baseball

[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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[ValKehl]

Pennant fever swept Washington, DC, after the Senators took 3 games out of 4 from the Yankees at Yankee Stadium at the end of August, as George aptly described in the above post. On September 2, 1924, the team was invited to the White House by President Coolidge, and this team photo with Coolidge was taken on the grounds of the White House on this date. BTW, I will have this photo on display at this Saturday's No. Va. Net54 get together - hoping for a great turnout.

[GeoPoto]

Fabulous picture Val! Early "Ken Rosenthal" look being sported by Walter and Bucky.

. . . The Senators were to end the season on the road, with a three-week road trip starting September 8. Walter Johnson won 8-4 that day in Philadelphia, his tenth win in a row and 20th of the year. Taking three of four in Philly, the Nationals moved on to Detroit, where Johnson decisioned rookie Earl Whitehill, a future Washington player. The victory was coupled in the newspapers the following day with news that Barney had been named the league's most valuable player for 1924, getting 55 of a possible 64 votes. The Nats, however, lost the last two games of the Detroit series and were now only three games up on the Tigers. Worse still, the feared Yankees had now caught up with them, with both teams at 82-59.

The Senators swept three games at Cleveland, where they had lost seven of eight games in their first two visits. Fans cheered wildly for Walter Johnson when he took the middle game 3-2 on September 17. On the 19th, the Nats ran the score up to 9-0 before the Browns even got up to bat in stifling St. Louis heat. But the Yankees were keeping pace, and Bucky Harris decided to call upon his 36-year-old ironman on just two days rest. The strategy didn't work, and Johnson was kayoed in the first inning. Five pitchers gave up 18 hits, but the Nats managed 18 safeties of their own and nearly pulled it out. Goose Goslin homered in the top of the tenth inning, his second of the day, but Washington blew the lead in the bottom of the inning and lost 15-14 when Firpo Marberry, who could have opted for an easy play at the plate, threw wildly past second base instead.

On September 21, the Senators won when the game was called in the seventh because of rain, and with the Yankees having lost two straight in Detroit, the Nats were now two ahead. A three-game series began against the hated Chisox the next day. With Harris urging his Nats to insult the White Sox and THEN beat them, Walter Johnson won his 13th consecutive game, his 23rd victory of the season. Playing 20 games over .500 during the last month of the season, the sizzling Nationals swept Chicago. But the Yankees, champions of the world and winners of the pennant by 16 games in 1923, could not be shaken off. While the Nats were sweeping Chicago, the Bombers were doing the same to Cleveland, so Washington could do no better than to hang on to its slim lead. Everything would be decided back east after all.

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[GeoPoto]

Ahead by two games with four left to play, the Senators might have seemed, on the face of it, to have had a slight advantage -- their last four games would be contested at Fenway Park against last-place Boston. But the Yankees' opponents weren't much better. They were to face the Athletics, fighting for sixth place, in Philadelphia. The Senators quickly dispensed with half their advantage when Walter Johnson's consecutive-win streak was broken at 13 in a 2-1 heartbreaker on September 26, despite the fact that Boston fans were openly rooting for the Senators. In the same game, Sam Rice's team-record 31-game hitting streak (broken by Heinie Manush in 1933) was brought to a halt. At the same time, New York was pounding the A's, 7-1. Once again, Johnson was struck on the arm, this time by a pitched ball on the elbow. Earl McNeely had a bad game, and the rookie admitted to being downright scared about what could happen to the Nats' World Series prospects.

The following day, George Mogridge gave up four runs in the first inning, and disaster lurked and seemed imminent. Bucky Harris brought in Fred Marberry, Allen Russell, and Tom Zachary, who held the Red Sox to just one more run the rest of the way. The Senators won the game, 7-5. At one point, the Boston fans jeered their pitcher, Howard Ehmke, for striking out Roger Peckinpaugh in a key situation. When the news came that a Bullet Joe Bush wild pitch had cost New York a 4-3 decision in Philadelphia, the Nats had their two-game lead back. More importantly, with two games left in the season, the worst the Senators could do was to finish the season in a dead heat atop the standings.

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[GeoPoto]

On a Sunday off-day, which arose from baseball's adherence to the so-called blue laws which banned playing on the Sabbath day -- the Nationals had time to contemplate the prospect of doing no worse than going into a play-off with the Yankees. That play-off was not in the cards. On the Monday, September 29, Zachary and Marberry teamed up in a 4-2 win over Boston. The offensive hero was Wade Lefler, a 28-year-old refugee from the Eastern League whose big-league experience up to then had consisted of one solitary at-bat. Lefler had driven in the only run in the 2-1 loss the previous Friday and, pushed into a crucial situation by Harris in this game, delivered a three-run double to determine the outcome. In all, Lefler went 5-for-8 for the Nats, including three doubles, before disappearing into eternal obscurity with the enviable career major-league batting average of .556.

The Yankees were rained out in Philadelphia, although it made no difference. The improbable had finally happened. The Washington Senators, last in the league in home runs, had fought off Goliath and were the new champions of the American League. There were tears in Walter Johnson's eyes -- he kept his head down as he made his way to the clubhouse from the bullpen. There were many tears in the clubhouse following the game, including some shed by Clark Griffith and Bucky Harris, who was hoisted up on the shoulders of Johnson and Altrock and paraded around the clubhouse in celebration of what he had been able to achieve up to this point. Washington baseball fans finally had a champion.

When Babe Ruth found out that Washington had won its game and the pennant, he began rousing his teammates in a Philadelphia hotel. He added to the cheerlessness of an already gloomy day by shaking his teammates out of their slumber to announce that not only were they sleeping, but they were now also dead. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)

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[ValKehl]

After managing and pitching (24 7 won-loss record with a 2.67 ERA) the Chicago White Sox to the A.L. pennant in 1901, Clark Griffith endured a long drought until his team next won a pennant, this time as team owner of the Washington Senators, in 1924. Let's honor Mr. Griffith with a Besta Cake in recognition of his team's achievement.

[GeoPoto]

Another great card, Val! Thank you. And now, Griffith's Folly:

Player #83E: Stanley R. "Bucky" Harris Part 1. Second baseman for the Washington Senators in 1919-1928. 1,297 hits and 167 stolen bases in 12 MLB seasons. 1924 and 1947 World Series champion. In 1975, inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame. Named player-manager of the Washington Senators in 1924 at age 27. "The Boy Wonder" led Washington to World Series victory as "rookie" manger. Managed Washington Senators in 1924-1928, 1935-1942, and 1950-1954. Managed the Detroit Tigers in 1929-1933 and 1955-1956. Managed the Boston Red Sox in 1934. Managed the Philadelphia Phillies in 1943. Managed the New York Yankees in 1947-1948, including winning the 1947 world Series. Served as the General Manager of the Boston Red Sox in 1959-1960.

Deveaux relates an example of the type of relationship Harris cultivated with his players: In years to come, Harris would promote the notion that there were really only two things a manager had to know: when to change pitchers, and how to get along with his players. At spring training '24, Bucky showed he had a grasp of that philosophy very early on by employing a novel approach among big-league managers -- one brought on by necessity, as he was being asked to lead a bunch of former teammates, most of whom were older than he was. He informed his players in clear terms that he was not going to tell them how to play baseball. He implored them to simply make him a good manager. Walter Johnson and Joe Judge, good leaders of men, had been approached by him already, and they had pledged their allegiance.

Harris relaxed bed checks and invoked the honor system during spring training at Hot Springs, Arkansas. He turned the comradeship he had with his teammates to his advantage. On one occasion, on his way back east from Hot Springs with the main squad, he plotted with his underlings to get even but good with the team's resident clown, the comedic buzzsaw, Al Schacht. Harris hatched a plan designed to bring the prankster to his knees. Schacht was a real ladies' man, and when Bucky and the rest of the team reached Orlando, Florida, he told Schacht that there were a couple of fine-looking southern ladies who were going to be catching up with them later on in the week. And . . . they wanted to meet Al Schacht.

Intrigued, Schacht asked a number of questions. One of them was whether these ladies were single. Harris said that indeed they were, that both women were applying for divorce so there was nothing to worry about. Harris also reassured Schacht by telling him that he, manager of a big-league ballclub, knew what he was doing and was not about to get himself involved in any sort of scandal. On the appointed day, Schacht eagerly went looking for Harris at the team dinner, reminding him of the date they had for that evening. Harris encouraged Schacht to spend a few dollars, for a bottle of liquor and some oranges for the ladies. . . .

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