Washington DC Baseball

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The 1933 Washington Senators won 99 games, lost 53, and finished in first place in the American League. It was the third and final pennant of the franchise while based in Washington. The team was managed by Joe Cronin and played home games at Griffith Stadium. They lost the best-of-seven World Series in 5 games to the New York Giants.

It would be the last time a Major League Baseball postseason series would be held in Washington until the 2012 season. The Senators franchise, which moved to Minneapolis–St. Paul after the 1960 season, has since won three American League pennants (1965; 1987; 1991) and two World Series (1987 and 1991) as the Minnesota Twins. The Series also marked the last time the nation's capital hosted a World Series game until the Washington Nationals -- spiritual successors to the Senators -- played in and ultimately won the 2019 World Series over the Houston Astros in seven games.

(We will rely on Deveaux's account of the 1933 Washington season.) Despite an outstanding ballclub and another profitable year (1932) for the team's coffers, a pennant seemed no closer in sight. A hot September, in which the Nats had won 24 of 28 games, had left them one game out of second place. This was not good enough for the assembled talent, and Clark Griffith was not going to stand for it.

The Yankees won the (1932) World Series in four straight. That Series would long be remembered for something which may or may not of happened in the third game. Babe Ruth made a gesture which some interpreted as a sign that he was going to belt one over the fence, which he promptly did. The pitcher, Charley Root, maintained until his death in 1970 that he would have decked Ruth if the Babe had really been calling his shot, and that Ruth had merely been indicating that he had but one strike left.

It is very likely that Clark Griffith had other things on his mind at this particular time. As soon as the 1932 season ended, he asked Walter Johnson -- the great Walter Johnson -- whether he was set financially and whether he could have his permission to dismiss him as an employee. In other words, he was firing the Big Train. This came as no surprise to Barney, who'd been working on a one-year contract after his initial three-year deal to manage had expired. The writing had been on the wall, and 1932 was a crutial year for him if he was to continue on as field boss of the Senators. A relationship begun 26 years earlier was severed, but the two parted on amiable terms. After all, for most of the period between 1912 and 1928, Griff had made Johnson the highest-paid pitcher in the American League.

By the following summer, a third of the way into the 1933 campaign, Johnson would be hired to manage the Cleveland Indians, replacing his old teammate, Roger Peckinpaugh, who'd been field boss of the Tribe since 1928. (Peck would later serve as the Indians' president and general manager.) Wes Ferrell, a North Carolina farmer and banjo picker who was to pitch his way into the Hall of Fame, was then with the Indians. Ferrell said he'd never been able to get along with Peckinpaugh, who he said was surly and uncommunicative.

Ferrel preferred Johnson, although he thought the Big Train's idea of managing was to give inane rah-rah speeches punctuated by plenty of "dadgummits" and "doggonnits." Barney brought the Indians in fourth '33 and third in '34, when he had Sam Rice and Moe Berg on the squad, but was relieved of his duties after a 46-48 start in 1935. There exist varied opinions as to his proficiency as a manager. There is support for the school of thought which holds that Johnson should have had more success, especially in light of what was to transpire in 1933. To the charge that he was not a good handler of pitchers, the Big Train answered that, having been a pitcher himself, he felt that no one could know how any pitcher was going to do on any given day. All a manager could do in terms of deploying pitchers was to hope for the best.

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It was indeed, as Cronin had expected, the Yankees, and not the A's, who represented the Senators' main adversary in 1933, and the rivalry was exacerbated by the unforgotten incident involving the departed Carl Reynolds and Bill Dickey the previous year. The Yankees leapt out of the starting gate and won their first seven in a row before coming to Washington. Things got hot when Joe Cronin challenged Babe Ruth to a fight after Ruth came into him hard while Cronin was covering third. But all hell broke loose at Griffith Stadium a few days later, on April 25, when outfielder Ben Chapman of the Yankees, who ran the bases like a wild goose, came in with spikes high on Buddy Myer at second in order to break up a double play. Myer, who the Yankees were accusing of having spiked Lou Gehrig on a play at the first base bag, bounced right back to his feet and began kicking Chapman -- some onlookers estimated Chapman might have absorbed as many as a dozen kicks. The benches emptied and some fans came out of the stands to attack the Yankees as well.

Yankees ace Lefty Gomez brandished a bat and waved it around, reportedly striking a policeman. Dixie Walker, a rookie outfielder with New York who would later star in the National League, as would his younger brother Harry, managed to reach Myer, jumped him, and began punching him repeatedly as Myer lay on the ground. Someone decked Yankees manager Joe McCarthy. Police had to be called in to bring some order to the proceedings, and arrested five fans who had gotten involved.

Myer, Walker, and Chapman were thrown out of the game, but Chapman's woes weren't over. On the way to the dressing room, he had to pass by the Senators' dugout, where the belligerent Earl Whitehill began berating him. Chapman, who would in the future, on two occasions, join the Senators, took a swing that connected with Whitehill's left eye, knocking Washington's ace pitcher back. More Senators players and the police stepped in. Perhaps what infuriated the Nats most in this game was the final score: 16-0 Yankees.

Lost in the shuffle was the performance of New York's Russ Van Atta, who gave up just five hits in posting a shutout in his big-league debut. A few days later, Clark Griffith was angered again when suspensions were announced by league president Will Harridge. Both Myer and Whitehill drew five-day suspensions and $100 fines, while only Chapman of the Yankees incurred the same fate. Dixie Walker got nothing.

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Joe Cronin had been right in terms of how the pennant race would go. The A's were out of it early and never really posed a threat. There was an obvious reason. Owner Connie Mack, engineering a fire sale reminiscent of what he'd done 20 years earlier to keep his operation afloat, had gotten rid of Al Simmons, Mule Haas, and Jimmy Dykes at the end of the previous season. The whole lot of them were sold to the White Sox for a cool $100,000.

In terms of competing with the Yankees, Earl Whitehill and Lefty Stewart were indeed the answer for Washington. On Independence Day, exactly a year after the Dickey-Reynolds dustup, Whitehill and Stewart pitched a doubleheader at Griffith Stadium with the Nationals going into the day with a scant half-game lead. The Senators took the first game in ten innings, 6-5, when Cronin singled to drive in Manush. Walter "Lefty" Stewart went all the way in the second game and the Senators prevailed 3-2 to sweep the twin bill.

Lefty Stewart shared the bulk of the mound chores on the '33 Senators with General Crowder, who finished with 15 losses to go along with his 24 wins, and with Earl Whitehill, 22-8 with a superior (for the inflationary times) 3.33 ERA. Stewart contributed a 15-6 slate. Jack Russell, the third pitcher added before the season, led the league in saves with 13 and posted a 12-6 record with a stingy 2.69 REA.

The pitching arsenal was stacked. Monte Weaver, coming off a 22-win campaign, pitched much less but showed much-improved mastery of the strike zone, culminating in a fine 10-5 year for him. Alphonse "Tommy" Thomas, a veteran righthander who had once won 19 games for the White Sox and led the A.L. in innings pitched, was only 7-7. Thomas had simply pitched his arm out for the White Sox and his career had been on a downslide since 1930. In '33, his first full season in Washington, his ERA was a characteristically high 4.80.

Backed by the best-fielding club in the league, the pitching staff as a unit allowed fewer runs than any other A.L. club in 1933. Nats hitters combined for the best batting average in the league, .287. All of these factors have a good chance of spelling success of course, and 1933 would in fact stand forever as the best season in Washington Senators history. Lead-off man Buddy Myer raised his average 23 points to .302 and scored 95 runs. Young Joe Kuhel topped anything he'd done previously and hit .322 with 117 RBIs. Manager and shortstop Joe Cronin showed leadership in the most tangible of ways with another stellar year, batting .309 with 118 ribbies.

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Ossie Bluege, a fixture for 11 years at third and 32 in his last season as a full-fledged regular, enjoyed a typical year for him, with .261 and 71 runs driven in. On May16 of this season, the Nats introduced for the first time a lefthanded-hitting third baseman who would take over the hot corner and eventually prove himself to be one of the great Washington Senators. His name, Cecil Travis, became known to all serious readers of the sports pages on the morning of May 17, 1933.

In his debut, Travis a lefthanded slap hitter who at this point in his development drove nearly everything to the opposite field, had on the previous day connected for five hits in his first five big-league opportunities. Travis was put out in his final two at-bats in a 12-inning game at Griffith Stadium won by the home side 11-10 over the Indians. Incredibly, Joe Kuhel also rapped out five hits in the same 12-inning game. Travis got into only 17 more games during the course of the regular season, batting .302. In the minors with Chatanooga Lookouts, the Senators' affiliate in the Southern Association, Travis, himself a Southerner from Riverdale, Georgia, posted an ominous .352 bat mark.

The 1933 Washington outfield, predictably potent, did not really disappoint, with Goslin, Schulte, and Manush averaging .297, .295, and .336 respectively. Goslin's power numbers, however, did diminish significantly, and he hit just 10 homers and produced 64 runs. On the way to placing second in the league in batting to Jimmie Foxx, who won the triple crown with gigantic figures of 48-163-.356, Manush hit in 33 consecutive games. This established the still-standing team benchmark, which eclipsed the record of 31 games set by Sam Rice in 1924.

By the second week of September, this best-ever version of the Washington Senators had opened up a nine-game lead, and the pennant was wrapped up by the end of the third week, against the St Louis Browns. The Senators recorded 99 wins in a year in which they played only 152 games. (It was more common back then to leave some games unplayed at the end of the schedule if those games were to have no bearing on the final standings.)

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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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Player #142B: Morris "Moe" Berg. Catcher with the Washington Senators in 1932-1934. 441 hits and 6 home runs in 15 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Brooklyn Robins in 1923. His most productive season was 1929 with the Chicago White Sox as he posted a .323 OBP with 47 RBIs in 384 plate appearances. He finished up with the Boston Red Sox in 1935-1939. His MLB career was statistically mediocre, but he is remembered as a colorful personality. He was a graduate of Princeton University and the Columbia Law School. He spoke several languages and read 10 newspapers a day. He worked as a spy during and after WW2.

Berg's SABR biography explains how he became a catcher (as does the back of his 1933 Goudey): It was in 1927 with the White Sox that he inadvertently became a catcher. Ray Schalk, manager of the Sox and a reserve catcher, was out with a broken thumb. Buck Crouse was also injured. Then in a game in Boston Harry McCurdy had his hand slashed accidentally by a Boston batter.

Schalk was in a panic. Looking up and down the bench, he said, “Can any of you fellows catch?” Moe said he used to think he could. Schalk asked who said Moe couldn’t. Moe’s answer: “My high school coach.” Schalk assured Berg that he’d be obliged if Moe could prove his high school coach wrong.

Moe strapped on the so-called tools of ignorance and proved that indeed he could catch. Schalk was so delighted with Berg after the game he hugged and kissed him. There was no turning back. The brightest man in baseball was now wedded to the tools of ignorance. Berg was an excellent defensive catcher. Possessing a strong arm, he could gun down the swiftest baserunners. His hitting left something to be desired. Berg batted only .243 with six home runs lifetime. But his baseball acumen in calling games and his knowledge of the hitters put him in great demand around the league. Moe went on to play for Cleveland, Washington and Boston in the American League until his retirement after the 1939 season. In all he spent fifteen seasons in the majors mainly because of his defensive skills and his knowledge of baseball.

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Player #89F: Oswald L. "Ossie" Bluege. Third baseman for the Washington Senators in 1922-1939. 1,751 hits and 43 home runs in 18 MLB seasons. 1935 All-Star. 1924 World Series champion. He played his entire career in Washington. He was best known for his defense, but his best season at the plate was 1928 as he posted a .364 OBP with 78 runs scored and 75 RBIs in 588 plate appearances. He managed the Washington Senators in 1943-1947.

Bluege's SABR biography: The 1933 season was Bluege’s last as a regular. The emergence of Cecil Travis gave Cronin good reason to make the switch. The young Georgian might not be able to field like Bluege, but he could hit like no one’s business. From 1934 through 1941, Travis batted over .300 all but one year, and in that season he hit .292.

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