Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #122C: Samuel F. "Sam" West. Outfielder with the Washington Senators in 1927-1932 and 1938-1941. 1,838 hits and 75 home runs in 16 MLB seasons. 4-time All-Star. His career OBP was .371. In 1931 for Washington, he posted an OBP of .369 with 91 RBIs in 559 plate appearances. In 1934 for the St. Louis Browns he posted an OBP of .403 with 91 runs scored in 554 plate appearances. His last season was 1942 with the Chicago White Sox.

We go to Sam's SABR biography for a look at how his baseball career began: Sam West could not believe what he was hearing.

On this holiday in the early 1920s, Rule (Texas) High School was about to cap a day of festivities with a baseball game against Hutto High School. West, a student at Rule High, expected to be one of the starting outfielders but was informed by his coach that he would be viewing the game from the bench. Angry and unwilling to sit before the student body, West left the picnic and hurried into town to watch the Rule semipro baseball team play. That was when destiny came calling.

When West got to the ballpark, he found that there was a delay. The right fielder for the Rule nine was missing. West seized the opportunity by volunteering to fill in, and the Rule manager agreed to start the game with the raw schoolkid patrolling an outfield position.

Like a chapter out of the book of Frank Merriwell, West proved to be an asset instead of a liability, and soon enough he was installed as the team’s regular right fielder. But the pleasure of winning a starting job on the town’s team and pointing at the high-school coach each time he saw him, wasn’t enough for Sam West, who wanted to conquer bigger and better goals. . . .

. . . While playing for Rule, West was scouted and signed by Roswell, New Mexico, of the Class D Panhandle-Pecos Valley League, for 1923. At the age of 18, he batted .282 in 99 games. The next season he batted .271 for Sulphur Springs of the Class D East Texas League. He began the 1925 season with Monroe, Louisiana, of the Class D Cotton States League. After hitting .341 in 23 games, he was back in the East Texas League in July, this time with the Longview Cannibals, and on July 19 the Longview native hit for the cycle in the Cannibals’ 9-5 win over Texarkana. He finished the season with a second tour of Sulphur Springs. The Cannibals finished the season with an eight-game winning streak and a 37-26 second-half record. West’s strong showing – he hit .325 in 81 East Texas League games – convinced a scout for the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association that he was ready to play in the upper levels of the minor leagues. Playing the last month of the 1925 campaign for the Barons, West hit .265 in 24 games. In 1926 he burned up the league, and played so well that the caught the eye of the Washington Senators’ super-scout, Joe Engel. Convinced that West would prove to be the center fielder of the future for Washington, Engel began to arrange for his purchase. His scouting report noted West to be a good hitter but, surprisingly, a poor fielder. Engel would have been surprised to know that this prospect would become one of the best defensive center fielders in major-league history.

But Engel’s report about West’s good hitting was accurate. After the first week of July, he was hitting .340 and he was leading the league with 16 home runs and 90 runs.