Washington DC Baseball

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We stay with Deveaux regarding the acquisition of Rick Ferrell and his brother, Wes: In return (for Bobo Newsom and Ben Chapman), the Senators were getting a sibling battery the likes of which has not since been seen in the major leagues. Catcher Rick Ferrell, a .296 career hitter (Hall of Fame, 1984), still just 31, had hit .312 in '36 and was at .308 this season. He was known for his good eye at the plate and was a crackerjack receiver.

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Player #161A: Wesley C. "Wes" Ferrell. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1937-1938. 193 wins and 13 saves in 15 MLB seasons. 2-time All-Star. 1935 AL wins leader. He pitched a no-hitter in 1931. His 37 career home runs are the MLB record for a pitcher. He debuted with the Cleveland Indians in 1927-1933. His erratic behavior caused concern. He last played with the Boston Braves in 1941. He is a member of the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame. He is a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame. His brother Rick is a member of the MLB Hall of Fame.

Deveaux continues: The brothers were North Carolina farm boys and Rick Ferrell, one of the best catchers of his time, was the more mild-mannered of the two. Three years younger than Rick, Wes Farrell was as handy with a guitar and a banjo as with a pitchfork or a baseball. Younger than Bobo Newsom (who'd won 47 big-league games to this point), Wes Farrell had already racked up six 20-win seasons in the majors. Included were two 25-win years, in 1930 and '35, when he led the league.

Wesley Cheek Ferrell seemed to have a lot more cheek than his older brother. He was a hothead who would at times fly into rages even if he was just having a bad day at the card table. Teammate Billy Werber told of how he'd seen him stomp on an expensive watch after some setback on the field. In 1932, Wes's manager at Cleveland, Roger Peckinpaugh, fined him for refusing to come out of a ballgame. In '36, Wes had a run-in with another old Nat, Joe Cronin, his manager at Boston, who fined him for doing exactly the opposite and leaving a game without permission. Later, while managing in the minor leagues, Wes would be suspended for smacking an umpire, and on another occasion for pulling his team off the field.

Apart from the fact that he'd won 20 or more in six of eight seasons, Wes Farrell also arrived in Washington carrying the reputation of being the best-hitting pitcher in the history of baseball. His lifetime .280 average and 38 home runs are still all-time records. In one memorable contest involving the Senators in late July 1935, he slammed two homers off Bobo Newsom while pitching the Bosox to victory -- remarkably, he hit two home runs in the same game on five different occasions. A week before he had victimized Bobo, he had pinch hit for the immortal Lefty Grove in the ninth inning with two men on base and the score 6-4. The pitcher was Tommy Bridges, who had 21 wins, four shutouts, and who led the league in strikeouts that year. Wes homered, for the victory. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)

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Player #135F: Joseph A. "Joe" Kuhel. First baseman for the Washington Senators in 1930-1937 and 1944-1946. 2,212 hits and 131 home runs in 18 MLB seasons. He had 107 RBIs in Washington's pennant-winning 1933 season, but his best season was probably 1936 as he posted an OBP of .392 with 118 RBIs and 107 runs scored in 660 plate appearances. He managed the Washington Senators in 1948-49.

Kuhel's SABR biography continued: One weapon that Kuhel added to his arsenal was the stolen base. Kuhel explained his strategy on the “hesitation steal”. ‘You take a fair lead off first base, three or four steps. As the pitch passes the batter, you stop momentarily, as if intending to return to the bag. You lean toward first for that split second until the ball hits the catcher’s glove-and then the moment it does, you tear for second. In other words, it’s lead, stop, lean and go!

“The catcher, having seen you stop, takes the ball convinced that you don’t intend to run. He cocks his arm for the throw back to the pitcher. The second baseman and shortstop, also seeing the ball pass the plate without your making a break, are just as likely to relax, pawing the dirt with their spikes, heads half down. By the time they all realize you’ve double-crossed them and are on your way, the catcher has to cock his arm again for the longer throw to second and he has to look to see whether the shortstop or second baseman is going to cover.” There may have been something to Kuhel’s technique, as he was among the league leaders in stolen bases in both 1941 and 1942 with 20 and 22 swipes, respectively.

On November 24, 1943, Chicago sold Kuhel back to Washington. With World War II raging, many ballplayers were starting to be drafted into the service. Kuhel, at 37 years of age, was one of the many older ballplayers who were able to extend their careers past their prime years, when Mickey Vernon, Washington’s regular first baseman, missed the 1944 and ‘45 seasons because he was called up to active duty. Kuhel was brought in to plug the hole, and he performed competently in the absence of Vernon.

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Player #139F: Charles S. "Buddy" Myer. Second baseman with the Washington Senators in 1925-1927 and 1929-1941. 2,131 hits and 38 home runs in 17 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .389. 2-time All-Star. 1935 AL Batting champion. 1928 AL Stolen Base leader. His best season was 1935 for Washington as he posted a .440 OBP with 115 runs scored and 100 RBIs in 719 plate appearances. He was involved in one of baseball's most violent brawls when he was spiked and possibly racially derided by the Yankees' Ben Chapman.

We will follow Myer's SABR biography as we track his career -- Part 6: Myer credited his big year (in 1935) —a batting average 36 points above his previous high—to giving up cigars and taking up golf. He said playing golf helped him stay in shape in the offseason and stopping smoking increased his energy, as well as pleasing Clark Griffith, an antismoking crusader. (Myer continued to chew unlit cigars.) He believed the switch from leadoff to third in the order was an advantage, because he didn’t feel the need to take as many pitches.

The batting championship earned Myer a $500 bonus from the league and a $4,500 raise from Griffith, to $14,000. As to what he was really worth, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert offered a reported $200,000 for him. Griffith said, “Well, I sold Joe Cronin to Tom Yawkey for $250,000; Ruppert is worth twice as much as Yawkey, so I’m asking $500,000 for Myer.” New York writer Dan Daniel reported that the Yankees thought “the big army of Jewish fans of this tremendous Metropolitan area would be lured into the park by a Jewish star.” While the big dollars made good publicity, Myer stayed in Washington.

Comments on players’ ethnic backgrounds were common in a time when many American cities were full of first- and second-generation European immigrants. A player’s Irish, Italian, German, or even Bohemian (Joe Vosmik) ancestry was part of his public biography. Newspaper stories during Myer’s career routinely referred to him as a Jew. The sportswriter Fred Lieb ranked him as the second-greatest Jewish player of all time, after Hank Greenberg. (This was before Koufax.) Jewish writers such as Daniel and the Washington Post’s Shirley Povich, who covered the Senators every day, apparently never questioned his Jewishness. And Myer never denied it.

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Player #157C: Louis N. "Bobo" Newsom. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1935-1937, 1942, 1943, 1946-1947, and 1952. 211 wins and 21 saves in 20 MLB seasons. 4-time All-Star. 1947 World Series champion. 1942 AL strikeout leader. He had a career ERA of 3.98. He debuted with the Brooklyn Robins/Dodgers in 1929-1930. He changed teams 16 times. Almost joined Benton as only to have pitched to Ruth and Mantle. He was known for his eccentricities. In 1940 with the Detroit Tigers, he posted a 21-5 record with a 2.83 ERA in 264 innings pitched. His last team was the Philadelphia Athletics in 1952-1953.

. . . Bobo Newsome made a habit of holding out at the beginning of many a spring and was ahead of his time in that he might be considered one of the first player reps in baseball. He had become known as the "The Voice" around St. Louis because of his willingness to tangle with management whenever he felt a teammate was being slighted. Despite the man's nature, Bucky Harris went along with Griffith's plan to purchase Bobo from the Browns on May 21, 1935. The Old Fox had decided to parlay some of his "winnings" from the sale of his nephew, and Bobo was as good a $40,000 investment as any other.

Bucky Harris, in despair over the disarray of his pitching staff, recognized that Newsom was a blowhard, and said as much, but reasoned that he could handle the headaches if the hard thrower could win Washington some games. Newsom was off to a bad 0-6 start when acquired, and he went 11-12 for the Nats to finish with a very ordinary 11-18, 4.52 slate for the season. But it didn't take him long to get attention with the Senators. In one of his first starts, Earl Averill conked the big guy on the knee with a line drive. Bobo made a show of it, delaying proceedings while he went to the bench for a while, but it wasn't until after the game that he was taken seriously. He had, after all, pitched until the end, and won. It was discovered later that his kneecap was broken.

Newsom would again show uncommon courage in 1940, while a member of the Tigers. After witnessing his son start and win the first game of the World Series, Bobo Newsom's dad died suddenly. A distraught Bobo dedicated his next game to his father and, with all of America's baseball fans except for a few Cincinnati dissenters behind him, won that one as well. Nonetheless, the Cincinnati Reds insisted on deviating from the consummate script, and handed Newsom a very tough 2-1 complete-game loss in game seven. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)

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Player #162: Aloysius H "Al" Simmons, born Alois Szymanski. "Bucketfoot Al". Outfielder with the Washington Senators in 1937-1938. 2,927 hits and 307 home runs in 20 MLB seasons. 3-time All-Star. 1929 and 1930 World Series champion. 2-time AL batting champion. 1929 AL RBI leader. 1953 inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame. He debuted with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1924-1932, 1940-1941, and 1944. In addition to Philadelphia, he played for 6 other MLB teams. His career OBP was .380. His best season may have been 1930 as he posted a .423 OBP with 152 runs scored and 165 RBIs in 611 plate appearances. In 1938 he was the first Washington Senator to hit 20 or more home runs in a season.

From Simmons' SABR biography: Al Simmons (Aloysius Harry Szymanski) was a premier hitter and left fielder for Connie Mack’s formidable Philadelphia Athletics from 1924 to 1932 and subsequently for other major-league clubs through 1944.

Simmons’ powerful hitting was achieved despite his unusual batting stance. A right-handed hitter and thrower, Simmons stood at the plate with his left (front) foot pointed toward third base, “in the bucket” in baseball parlance. Accordingly, he gained the nickname Bucketfoot Al, which he resented. Theoretically, he should have had difficulty in hitting outside pitches solidly. But Simmons overcame this apparent weakness by using an unusually long bat and moving his left foot closer to home plate with the approach of an outside pitch. As Simmons explained, “I’ve studied movies of myself batting. Although my left foot stabbed out toward third base, the rest of me, from the belt up, especially my wrists, arms, and shoulders, was swinging in a proper line over the plate.”

Simmons had a lifetime batting average of .334 with 2,927 base hits (including 539 doubles) and 1,828 RBIs. Despite his induction into the Hall of Fame in 1953, Simmons is not rated by all baseball experts as highly as his gaudy statistics would suggest. Bill James did rate him seventh among left fielders based upon his 375 Win Shares. But in the Seventh Edition of Total Baseball, possibly through inadvertence, Simmons was not rated among the top 100 all-time players.

Well-respected catcher and baseball observer Ralph “Cy” Perkins summed up Simmons when he spoke at Al’s Hall of Fame induction: “He had that swagger of confidence, of defiance, when he came up as a kid. He was as sensational as a rookie as he was as a star. I’ve always classed him next to Ty Cobb (Simmons’s idol) as the greatest player I ever saw. … He was what I would call the ‘perfect player’.”

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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 . . .