Washington DC Baseball

[brianp-beme]

The below entry evidently got attached to the wrong thread. I am tipping the Net54 world back into semi-equilibrium with the attached post from earlier today.

Brian

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

Player 119B: Alphonse "Tommy" Thomas. Pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1932-1935. 117 wins and 13 saves in 12 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Chicago White Sox in 1926-1932. His best season was 1927 with Chicago as he posted a 19-16 record with a 2.98 ERA in 307.2 innings pitched. He finished his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1937.

Thomas' SABR biography talks to his injury-prone career in Washington: Thomas was still having arm problems during the summer of 1932 but still managed to win games on three consecutive days for the Senators in the middle of July. The first two victories were in relief, and on July 16th he threw a five-hit shutout against the St. Louis Browns. At the end of the season, he had surgery to remove a growth in his pitching arm and to relieve what was reported in the newspapers to be a locked elbow. The numerous innings that Tommy pitched during his early days on the mound contributed heavily to the myriad of injuries and maladies he struggled with later in life.

Tommy was a decent pitcher for Washington over the next few years, but the harsh reality was that his arm was never the same after the 1932 operation. The Senators captured the American League pennant in 1933 but lost out to the New York Giants in the Fall Classic. Thomas, playing in his first and only World Series, made two brief relief appearances, allowing one hit in a little over an inning of work.

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[GeoPoto]

(Thanks Brian: I'm not sure where this post ended up, and I appreciate Brian's rescue. It looks "wrong" on my desktop, however, so I am inserting it again, just for the record.)

Player 119B: Alphonse "Tommy" Thomas. Pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1932-1935. 117 wins and 13 saves in 12 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Chicago White Sox in 1926-1932. His best season was 1927 with Chicago as he posted a 19-16 record with a 2.98 ERA in 307.2 innings pitched. He finished his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1937.

Thomas' SABR biography talks to his injury-prone career in Washington: Thomas was still having arm problems during the summer of 1932 but still managed to win games on three consecutive days for the Senators in the middle of July. The first two victories were in relief, and on July 16th he threw a five-hit shutout against the St. Louis Browns. At the end of the season, he had surgery to remove a growth in his pitching arm and to relieve what was reported in the newspapers to be a locked elbow. The numerous innings that Tommy pitched during his early days on the mound contributed heavily to the myriad of injuries and maladies he struggled with later in life.

Tommy was a decent pitcher for Washington over the next few years, but the harsh reality was that his arm was never the same after the 1932 operation. The Senators captured the American League pennant in 1933 but lost out to the New York Giants in the Fall Classic. Thomas, playing in his first and only World Series, made two brief relief appearances, allowing one hit in a little over an inning of work.

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[GeoPoto]

Player #152A: Montie M. Weaver. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1931-1938. 71 wins and 4 saves in 9 MLB seasons. In 1933 as Washington won the AL pennant, he posted a 10-5 record with a 3.25 ERA in 152.1 innings pitched. He finished his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1939.

Weaver's SABR biography sums him up and then takes us though his 1933 season in Washington: Sportswriters treated pitcher Monte Weaver as a curiosity during his nine seasons with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. He was a college professor, a mathematician, a hypochondriac and – most radically – a vegetarian, according to the sports pages. . . .

. . . In that game (April 19, 1933, against the New York Yankees) Weaver was the beneficiary of what Povich called “the play of the century.” Lou Gehrig reached base on a topped ball that traveled only four feet. Gehrig advanced to second and Dixie Walker was on first when Tony Lazzeri hit a drive to right-center. Gehrig held up until he was sure Goslin couldn’t catch the ball. Then he took off, with the speedy Walker close behind. The relay – Goslin to Cronin to catcher Luke Sewell – cut down Gehrig at the plate, and Sewell spun around to tag Walker for a double play at home. Clark Griffith said, “Forty-eight years in baseball and I’ve never seen the likes of it before.”

The revamped Nats won the 1933 pennant, the last for a Washington team. Weaver pitched even better than in his rookie season – when he was able. He missed more than a month with a sore right shoulder. Without him, the Nats charged into a pennant race with the Yankees. When he recovered, he contributed six wins to the club’s successful stretch drive, two of them over the Yankees.

That summer Povich commented that Weaver was “given to worrying over every ailment, be it hang-nail or toe-nail.” It was the first mention of what would become a familiar criticism. He also acquired a new sports-page nickname: “Brain Truster” Monte Weaver, after the college professors who advised the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Weaver finished with a 10-5 record in 21 starts; his 3.26 ERA was ninth best in the league. Cronin chose him to start the fourth game of the World Series, with Washington trailing the New York Giants two games to one. His opponent was Carl Hubbell, that season’s National League MVP, who had beaten the Nats in game one.

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[GeoPoto]

Player #153A: Earl O. Whitehill. Pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1933-1936. 218 wins and 11 saves in 17 MLB seasons. He debuted with the Detroit Tigers in 1923-1932. His best season came as Washington won the AL pennant in 1933 as he posted a 22-8 record with an ERA of 3.33 in 270 innings pitched. He ended his career with the Chicago Cubs in 1939. His only World Series start was a complete game shutout in Game 3 of the 1933 World Series, which Washington lost in 5 games.

Deveaux addresses Whitehill's entry to Washington: On the following day (December14, 1932), (Carl) Fischer became part of a trade that also brought Earl Olliver Whitehill to Washington, but the cost was much higher than just Fischer. The Tigers insisted on Firpo Marberry, the starter-reliever who'd recorded a stunning 39-13 record over the past three years. However, Marberry had passed his 34th birthday two weeks earlier. Earl Whitehill was only two months younger, but he'd been logging a lot of innings for the Tigers for ten years and was considered a reliable starter and a fierce competitor. Whitehill took a back seat to no one on the field -- he was a win-at-all-costs type of player, as evidenced by his arguments with his manager at Detroit, Ty Cobb, whenever the abrasive Cobb came to the mound to tell him how to pitch.

Dubbed the "Earl" for his dazzling wardrobe, good looks (he was married to the model who gained perpetual life by posing as the original Sunshine Raisin girl), and temperamental air, Whitehill wasn't afraid to tell off teammates or umpires, depending on the particular game situation. While Marberry would have a good year for Detroit, posting a 16-11 record, Earl Whitehill, who'd never won more than 17 for the Tigers, would win 22 games and be the Senators' best pitcher in 1933. Whitehill would eventually retire from baseball with 217 wins, but with the highest ERA (4.36) of any 200-game winner in history. He regularly walked more batters than he struck out in a season, and as late as the 1980s he was still on the top-ten all-time list for bases on balls given up over a career. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)

(We are now going to pause briefly before beginning treatment of the 1933 World Series. Expected re-start: Sunday.)

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[GeoPoto]

If the Senators dominated the league in 1933, Bill Terry's New York Giants did the same in the rival loop, emerging as clear-cut champs with a five-game edge over the Pittsburgh Pirates. The upcoming World Series would pit two "boy managers" against one another. At 34, Terry had taken over from John McGraw early in the 1932 campaign, marking the end of the Lil' General's 30-year reign as the Giants' field boss. Cronin, eight years Terry's junior, became the youngest manager in World Series history, a distinction he still held at the beginning of this century.

So it would be, as in 1924, a confrontation between the Giants and the Senators. However, unlike the '24 Giants team, which was built around hitting, this outfit centered around an outstanding pitching staff. Its ace was Carl Hubbell (Hubbell would be forever remembered in baseball lore for something that would happen during the following year. In the 1934 All-Star game, he struck out, in succession, no less a group of sluggers than Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin.), a lanky, floppy-eared, 30-year-old lefthander who'd been pitching in the National League for six years with some success.

Carl Hubbel's specialty was the screwball, and he delivered it with a slow, cartwheeling movement toward the plate. Until this season, his best showings had been a pair of 18-11 efforts in '29 and '32. But in 1933, Hubbell occupied another stratosphere, leading all National League pitchers in wins (23), ERA (an overpowering 1.66), innings pitched, and shutouts. His ten shutouts were three more than were posted by his teammate, Hal Schumacher, second best in the league in that category. "Prince Hal," a righthander who threw a heavy ball and had a very good overhand curve, went 19-12 with a 2.16 ERA, third best in the league. Hubbell and Schumacher were 1-2 in the N.L. in allowing the fewest number of hits per nine innings, and third on that list was another Giant, Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons, 16-11 with another ERA under 3.00.

Rival managers and future Hall of Famers, Bill Terry and Joe Cronin exchange pleasantries before game 1 at the Polo Grounds:

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[GeoPoto]

Giants manager Bill Terry wasted no time making known who his starter would be for the first game -- Carl Hubbell. The lefty's screwball was said to be even more effective against lefthanded hitters, and of theose, Washington had plenty in its starting lineup -- Myer, Goslin, and Manush, who would be penciled into the 1-2-3 slots in the batting order in game one, and Joe Kuhel, who would bat sixth.

It was the Washington Senators, a truly balanced ball club, who were considered runaway favorites to win the 1933 World Series. As the first contest at New York's Polo Grounds, slated for October 3, approached, Joe Cronin remained mum regarding who would start the first game for the Senators. Terry had already declared that Carl Hubbell would win the first and fourth games, and this may have contributed to Cronin's determination to remain silent. After dallying for a week, he settled on a lefthander as well, but baseball observers were shocked that it wasn't Earl Whitehill, the 22-game winner. Instead, Lefty Stewart, loser of only six games all season, got the nod.

Game 1 starters Carl Hubbel and Lefty Stewart shake hands before the contest:

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[GeoPoto]

The day of the first game started off very badly for the Senators . . . even before play even began. On his way to the Polo Grounds, lead-off batter Buddy Myer was reportedly a witness to a traffic accident in which a pedestrian was killed. Myer, visibly and understandably shaken by the experience, would make three errors in the field on this day. He was easy prey for Hubbell leading off the game and struck out. Goose Goslin and Heinie Manush both struck out as well.

In the field, right away Myer had to handle a ground ball off the bat of lead-off man Jo-Jo Moore (not the same player as Eddie Moore, the second baseman who'd played for the Pirates against Washington in the 1925 Series). Myer booted the play, and the error would be costly. Lefty Stewart got the next two batters but then Mel Ott, the Giants' most powerful hitter, propelled a drive into the lower rightfield stands.

Stewart, Cronin's "hunch," pitched just two innings. He was lifted after giving up three singles, one of them off the wall, and a run, without getting anyone out in the top of the third. Jack Russell came in and got three straight outs, but another run came in when a shot off the bat of Travis Jackson, a 1924 World Series alumnus, went off Kuhel's glove to Myer, who relayed to Russell covering first.

The Senators scored single runs in the fourth and ninth, both unearned, off Hubbell, who went all the way and gave up just five hits. Buddy Myer opened the fourth with a single, advanced on an error by second baseman Hughie Critz, and scored on Fred Schulte's single. In the top of the ninth, with the Nats still down 4-1, New York shortstop Blondy Ryan muffed a Manush grounder to start the inning. Joe Cronin and Fred Schulte then singled, both of them for the second time in the game. Here were the makings of a rally. Joe Kuhel then grounded to short for the first out. Manush scored. The next batter, Ossie Bluege, struck out for the third time, proving that Hubbell was no picnic for righthanded hitters either. Luke Sewell then grounded to short to end the game.

The Caption on the reverse of this photograph reads: "With New Yorkers still bemoaning the decline of Babe Ruth as their son of swat, a new idol popped into the picture at the Polo Grounds in the first game of the series between Giants and Senators yesterday. 'Twas Mel Ott. To make the roaring fans forget Babe Ruth for the day at least, Ott tied a World Series record with a homer and three singles out of four official times at bat. He drove across three of his team's four runs."

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