Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #155C: John T. "Rocky" Stone. Outfielder with the Washington Senators in 1934-1938. 1,391 hits and 77 home runs in 11 MLB seasons. His career OBP was .376. he debuted with the Detroit Tigers in 1928-1933. His most productive season may have been 1932 with Detroit as he posted a .361 OBP with 106 runs scored and 109 RBIs in 643 plate appearances. His best season in Washington was 1936 as he posted a .421 OBP with 95 runs scored and 90 RBIs in 500 plate appearances.

We'll begin the end of Stone's MLB career here and finish it the next time he surfaces in our progression. From his SABR biography: As the Washington Senators’ 1938 spring training got underway in Orlando, Florida, no player was more anxious to get started in the warm air and brilliant sunshine than veteran outfielder John Thomas Stone.

A respected American League veteran, John Stone had enjoyed a successful campaign in 1937, posting a .330 batting average in 139 games for the Senators. But the winter that followed had been an extremely difficult time for Johnny; he spent the off-season fighting a persistent cold, coinciding with mysterious weight loss and what he called a funny feeling of weakness. Despite the hard work and long hours devoted to his usual pre-season regimen, he nonetheless got off to a poor start in 1938 and the steady play rapidly wore him down.

Johnny was hitting an uncharacteristic .192 when the team began a series against Cleveland. On May 5, 1938, facing Indians right-hander Mel Harder, the left-hand hitting Stone painfully fouled a ball off his front right foot. Limping back into the batter’s box, he settled down and drove the next pitch on a wicked line to right-center. Johnny, with his foot throbbing, raced around the bases for an inside-the-park grand slam home run.

Back on the bench, Shirley Povich wrote, “teammates jeered him pleasantly for being out of condition, and some suggested he get in shape, but the kidding stopped when startled teammates realized his desperate gasping for air was not fun and games but something much more serious than just a shortness of breath.” When he collapsed; shaken teammates realized that “Rocky” (as he was nicknamed) was ailing from something far more serious than simply being out of shape. To be continued . . .