The Year the Last Were First

Baseball fans in Washington didn’t demand much. When a batter got a 2-and-0 count, the crowd at Griffith Stadium (and, later, at RFK Stadium) would begin cheering in hopes of a base on balls. Some of the Senators were clownish. Carlos Paula, a slugging outfielder, took two days to report after being called up from the minors. He explained it was because of the time change between the Central and Eastern time zones. Julio Becquer, a slick-fielding first baseman, asked a friendly fan to drive his car to Washington after spring training in Florida. He never saw the car again. In a doubleheader I attended, the pitcher for the Senators was knocked out in the first inning of the first game, and then returned in relief to lose the second game.

But there was a moment when the Senators were not the laughingstock of major-league baseball, a glorious moment when nearly everyone in Washington–from President Coolidge to the cab drivers–and even fans of rival teams cheered the Senators to their only World Series triumph. That was 1924 and one of the stars of the team was first baseman Joe Judge. His grandson, Mark Gauvreau Judge, has beautifully captured the excitement and intensity of that season in “Damn Senators.” (The title is a play on “Damn Yankees,” the 1950s musical about the pact a young Senators fan makes with the devil to stop the Yankees and bring another pennant to Washington.)

What made 1924 so memorable was not just that the Senators beat the New York Yankees, led by Babe Ruth, and clinched the pennant in the next to last game of the regular season. And it was not just that the Senators nipped the New York Giants, managed by the great John McGraw, in the seventh game of the World Series. Nor was it simply the fact that no president has rooted for a major-league baseball team as vigorously as Calvin Coolidge did for the Senators that year. No, what made the season so extraordinary was the team that owner Clark Griffith, the Old Fox, assembled to complement his great pitcher, the Big Train, Walter Johnson.

Johnson was in the twilight of his career in 1924 and already regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time. Humble and gentlemanly, he was beloved by players and fans. Judge, who had joined the Senators in 1915, and Johnson were once rushing to a movie in St. Louis when Johnson was waylaid by a fan for fifteen minutes. What took so long? Judge asked. Johnson explained the fellow was from Kansas, Johnson’s home state, and knew his sister. “I had to be nice to him,” Johnson said. Judge said he didn’t know Johnson had a sister. “I don’t,” the pitcher said. “But I still had to be nice to him.”

Griffith spotted outfielder Sam Rice, later a Hall of Famer, when he pitched for a minor-league team while on furlough from the Navy. Following the 1921 season, Griffith added three players who were crucial to winning the World Series. One was a young slugger from South Carolina, Goose Goslin, also a Hall of Famer. Another was veteran shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh, bought from the Boston Red Sox. The third was Ossie Bluege, who played a shallow third base, “reasoning that the ground he had to cover was cone-shaped, and that playing closer to home meant ‘cutting the angles.'”

The most surprising step by Griffith was his selection of a new manager: twenty-seven-year-old second baseman Bucky Harris, one of the youngest Senators, nine years younger than Johnson, four years younger than Judge. Neither of the older men resented being passed over for manager. Johnson, still healing from injuries, had declared 1924 his last season and felt he could pitch only every four days, not both games of a doubleheader as he once had. (Starters today normally throw only once every five days.)

The Senators were no one’s pick for the pennant and they languished in third or fourth place for several months. But Harris imbued the club with a fighting spirit and it adopted the slogan, “Never beaten.” And Johnson returned to his old form, becoming once again the fastest pitcher in baseball. That, plus better hitting, ignited a pennant run in late summer.

In early September, Coolidge invited the Senators to the White House and told them he’d love to attend a World Series in Washington. Meanwhile, Judge writes, Johnson had become a “national cause.” He had “poured his genius into so many losing Washington teams that the world was ready to see him finally win one. Johnson was admired for his character. . . . [He] seemed a throwback to a simpler, quieter, more decent America. He never raised his voice or scolded teammates. . . . The only time anyone remembered Johnson losing his temper was when he saw a policeman trying to remove a black boy who used to hang around the park doing odd jobs to get close to the players.”

Johnson, whose record was 23-7 in 1924 with an ERA of 2.72, was rewarded with success in the World Series, but not in the way anyone expected. As a starter, he lost the first and fifth games. But then, in the seventh game, he was brought out in relief to pitch the crucial ninth inning. His fastball, which had vanished in the Series’ earlier games, was back. He threw four scoreless innings, and the Senators won in the bottom of the twelfth inning on a bad hop single to left field. “Some say the ball hit a pebble,” Judge writes. “Others think God Himself made it hop.” All Johnson could say after the game was, “Gee, I was lucky, wasn’t I?”

Great players make their own luck, and Johnson had done exactly that. Decades later when I watched the Senators, they had no great players and no luck. I recall a play that epitomized those later Senators. It was at home, against the Red Sox, three runs down, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, the Senators up to bat in their last chance to win the game, Hank Allen at the plate.

My friend Jim Haley was with me at the game. He insisted Hank was better than his brother Richie, the star for the Philadelphia Phillies, and indeed Hank crushed the ball to deep center. Red Sox centerfielder Reggie Smith streaked back and reached over the shoulder-high fence. It looked like a home run, but Smith suddenly lifted his glove with the ball caught halfway in the web. He raced toward the infield holding his glove up. The Senators had lost again. It was nothing like 1924.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.