Player #128C Part 1: Joseph E. "Joe" Cronin. Shortstop for the Washington Senators in 1928-1934 and the Boston Red Sox in 1935-1945. 2,285 hits and 170 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .390. He was a 7-time All Star. Boston Red Sox #4 retired. Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame. In 1956, he was inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame. His best season was probably 1930 for Washington as he posted a .422 OBP with 127 runs scored and 127 RBIs on 686 plate appearances. He managed the Washington Senators in 1933-1934 and the Boston Red Sox in 1935-1947. He was General Manager of the Boston Red Sox in 1948-1958. He was president of the American League in 1959-1973. When he left the Red Sox in 1959, they were the only MLB team without a black player. He and team owner Tom Yawkey are generally viewed as responsible for this injustice which ended six months after Cronin's departure.
There is no doubt that chopping Walter Johnson's $25,000 salary was a key consideration for Clark Griffith when he politely showed Barney the door. Attendance at the stadium had plummeted from 614,000 two years before to 371,000 during the throes of the depression in 1932. The intelligent guess was that Griff would again dip into the ranks of his own club to find a replacement for Johnson. Since he'd given up managing in 1920, he'd followed this pattern on five successive occasions, hiring George McBride, Clyde Milan, Donie Bush, Bucky Harris, and Walter Johnson. There was also widespread speculation that Griffith wanted to purchase Al Simmons' contract from Connie Mack and make him the manager. The old man added fat to the fire by reminding members of the media that he'd once himself managed an American League pennant winner, and that he wasn't too old to do so again.
On October 8, 1932, just four days before his 26th birthday, Joe Cronin was named manager of the Washington Senators, making him at the time the youngest to be appointed manager of a big-league team before the start of the season. (Roger Peckinpaugh still holds the big-league record as the youngest manager to ever end a season, having guided the Yankees for the final 17 games as a 23-year-old in 1914.) Cronin was more than a year younger than Bucky Harris had been when he was hired to skip the Nats back in '24.
Cronin had first been spotted by the Pirates as a 17-year-old playing semi-pro ball around his hometown of San Francisco. After impressing many in his first season by hitting .313 at Johnstown of the Middle Atlantic League in 1925, the Pirates brought him up to the big team to sit on the bench during the hard-fought World Series against the Senators. He got to pose for the team picture with the world champs. But Cronin hit only .257 in brief tryouts with the Pirates over the next two seasons and was batting only .245 for Kansas City of the American Association in midsummer 1928 when Joe Engel came calling.
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