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#1
05-19-2024, 04:12 AM
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Walter Johnson
Player #54U: Walter P. "Barney" Johnson. "The Big Train". Pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1907-1927. 417 wins and 34 saves in 21 MLB seasons. 1924 World Series champion. 1913 and 1924 AL Most Valuable Player. 3-time triple crown. 6-time AL wins leader. 5-time AL ERA leader. 12-time AL strikeout leader. He had a career ERA of 2.17 in 5,914.1 innings pitched. He pitched a no-hitter in 1920. He holds the MLB record with 110 career shutouts. MLB All-Time Team. Inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1936. One of his best seasons was 1913 as he posted a record of 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA in 346 innings pitched.
The biggest tragedy of Walter’s later years, though, was Hazel’s death at age 36 on August 1, 1930, apparently the result of exhaustion from a cross-country drive during one of the hottest summers on record. After he lost the woman he idolized, a cloud of melancholy descended over the rest of Johnson’s life, darkening what should have been tranquil, happy years of retirement on his Mountain View Farm in the Maryland countryside. During his later years, Walter kept busy on the farm, served as Montgomery County commissioner, was brought back by the Senators in 1939 as their broadcaster, and made an unsuccessful run as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. Congress. On June 12, 1939, along with such other greats as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner, Johnson was inducted into the newly-created Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. (We will finish "wrapping up" Walter's life in our next, and final, visit with him.) 
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#2
05-19-2024, 06:32 AM
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1924 Washington Team Cabinet Rarity
Pleased to be the new owner of this super rare piece
1924 Washington Senators Wright and Ditson Cabinet Photograph with Charles Conlon Images. Rarely seen, this 7x9.25" cabinet photograph was given away at a banquet at the Bond Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut following the Senators' championship season. Hall of Famer Walter Johnson is front and center while his Cooperstown compatriots Bucky Harris, Goose Goslin, Sam Rice and Clark Griffith are found on the edges. Ossie Bluege, Joe Judge, Muddy Ruel and Roger Peckinpaugh are also in attendance.
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#3
05-19-2024, 08:12 AM
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Quote:
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#4
05-20-2024, 04:49 AM
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Dutch Leonard
(Great piece Wayne! Thanks for posting.)
Player #169A: Emil J. "Dutch" Leonard. Knuckle-ball pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1938-1946. 191 wins and 45 saves in 20 MLB seasons. 5-time All Star. Pitched complete game to beat Yankees in 1st game of doubleheader, after which Lou Gehrig gave "luckiest man in the world" speech. In 1945, part of four-man rotation, made up by four knuckle-ball pitchers. Debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1933. We will follow Leonard's SABR biography for a 3-part overview of his career in Washington -- Part 1: Dutch Leonard rode his knuckleball to a 20-year big league career, baffling batters, catchers, and umpires until he was 44 years old. As Jackie Robinson described Leonard’s knuckler, “It comes up, makes a face at you, then runs away.” . . . . . . For the next two years (1935 and 1936) Leonard worked primarily in relief. He complained that the Dodgers’ catchers wouldn’t call for his knuckleball, leaving him with an assortment of hittable pitches. He led the NL with eight saves in 1935, but nobody knew that because the statistic did not yet exist. His 2-9 record marked him as a failure. In 1936 he was used mostly as a mop-up man in games that were already lost. The club’s new catcher, Babe Phelps, was more hitter than catcher and wanted nothing to do with the knuckleball. He told manager Casey Stengel it was too hard to handle. Stengel barked, “Don’t you think it might be a little hard to hit, too?” Phelps led the Dodgers that season with a .367 batting average, so Stengel needed him more than he needed a mop-up reliever. Leonard was sent down to Atlanta in the Class A-1 Southern Association. Joining the Crackers in June 1936, Leonard met his new catcher, Paul Richards, another washout from the majors. After getting a look at the knuckler, Richards told him, “You keep throwing it, and it’s my job to catch it.” Leonard said, “Richards was the first catcher I ever worked with who wasn’t too timid to call for my knuckleball.” Leonard went 13-3 with a 2.29 ERA, best in the league, and helped Atlanta win the pennant. . . . . . . The Washington Senators drafted Leonard after the 1937 season, paying Atlanta $7,500 for a castoff who was approaching his 29th birthday. Washington owner Clark Griffith said he was confident his catcher, Rick Ferrell, could deal with the knuckleball. The pitch had always been an oddity since it was introduced early in the 20th century. Some pitchers used it occasionally as a change-up or surprise pitch, but few—notably Jesse Haines, Eddie Rommel, Fred Fitzsimmons, and Ted Lyons—had made it their trademark. The knuckler is hard to hit and hard to catch, but also hard to throw, since the pitcher has to deliver it with little or no spin. Even a slight breeze at the pitcher’s back can turn a knuckleball into a nothing ball. As Leonard said, “That knuckler can be either a pitcher’s meat or his poison depending on how it’s working.” Leonard gripped the ball with the tips of his index and middle fingers. He said, “I just throw it straight forward like you’d flip a cigarette butt.” He threw with different arm angles, so the pitch moved up, down, or sideways. He stuck with the knuckler unless he fell behind in the count, when he had to rely on his sort-of fastball or slow curve. What distinguished Leonard from most of his tribe was his excellent control. Although he said he never knew exactly where the pitch was going, he usually walked no more than two batters per nine innings in his prime. But he realized he was balancing on the edge with every pitch: “The trouble with the knuckle ball is that the .250 hitters are just as apt to hit it safe as the .350 hitters. None of them will hit the knuckler if it’s breaking right and all of them will hit it if it isn’t breaking.” Shortly after Leonard joined Washington in 1938, sportswriter Robert Ruark described him as “a fat bald man.” He was six feet tall and topped 200 pounds. In his first start he shut out the Athletics. On May 4 he faced Cleveland’s 19-year-old phenom, Bob Feller. The league’s fastest pitcher and its slowest matched zeroes for 10 innings. Feller was relieved, but Leonard kept knuckling until the Senators won in the 13th. He had secured a regular starting job for the first time in his career. In 1939 he won 20, lost 8, for a sixth-place club that recorded only 65 victories. He was the Senators’ first 20-game winner since their pennant season of 1933. He made the All-Star team in 1940, despite leading the league with 19 losses, then bounced back with 18 wins in ’41, all the while with a losing club.
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#5
05-21-2024, 04:44 AM
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Buddy Lewis
Player #170A: John K. "Buddy" Lewis. Third baseman/right fielder for the Washington Senators in 1935-1941, 1945-1947, and 1949. 1,563 hits and 71 home runs in 11 MLB seasons. He played his entire career in Washington. 2-time All-Star. He had a career OBP of .368. His most productive season was 1938 as he posted an OBP of .354 with 122 runs scored and 91 RBIs in 724 plate appearances.
In the off-season (following the 1937 season), Lewis worked hard to receive a good contract from Griffith, who was quickly becoming Buddy's greatest fan. Though Griffith had his favorites, including former Washington great Walter Johnson, Lewis was near the top of the list. But the Nats' owner never let personal feelings interfere with contract negotiations, and he and Lewis haggled for a period prior to the 1938 tipoff. Finally, Lewis won out, securing a sizable raise. In 1938, Lewis earned his first All-Star selection, joining New York's Red Rolfe as third basemen for the squad. The worst stretch of Lewis' career came in August of 1938, when his mysterious defensive problems were at their worst. During a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Lewis committed 8 errors, leading to 9 unearned runs. Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich noted that Lewis had committed 11 errors in 6 games against the Yankees in just over a week. But to his credit, Lewis did not let his defensive woes affect his hitting. His average still hovered near the .300 mark, and he batted in 91 runs from the #2 spot in the order, while crossing the plate 122 times. In the first month of the 1939 season, Lewis suffered from an illness (diagnosed as a type of influenza known as "grippe") that knocked him out of the lineup for nearly two weeks. When he returned, he posted the highest batting mark of his career, hitting .319 with 49 extra-base hits, including a league-best 16 triples. In spite of his fine offensive numbers, Lewis struggled in the field, often in spurts. In 1939 he made 7 errors in one week, on his way to 32 for the season. His fielding woes in 1938 had resulted in 47 errors and a terrible .912 mark with the glove. His miserable play at third was not lost on manager Bucky Harris, who often criticized Lewis' defensive work in the papers and the clubhouse. In 1940, Harris used the emergence of young infielders Jimmy Bloodworth and Jimmy Pofahl as the impetus to get Lewis out of his infield. Bloodworth moved into second base, Pofahl took over at short, and Travis moved from short to third. That pushed Buddy to right field, where Harris felt he could do far less damage with the leather.
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#6
05-22-2024, 03:45 AM
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Buddy Myer Part 8
Player #139H: 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 8: Myer turned in another gaudy season at bat in 1938, with a line of .336/.454/.465, but he started only 117 games and was on the downslope at 34. When a wrist injury knocked him out of the lineup the next year, a 21-year-old rookie, Jimmy Bloodworth, staked his claim as the second baseman of the future. In September 1940 Myer told Clark Griffith he was retiring to tend to his construction business in Mississippi. He had gotten a government contract to build army camps. Griffith persuaded him to play another year as a benchwarmer before he left the game for good.
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#7
05-23-2024, 04:00 AM
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Al Schacht
Player #88C: Alexander "Al" Schacht. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1919-1921. 14 wins and 3 saves in 3 MLB seasons. Was highly regarded as a third base coach in Washington (1924-1934) and Boston (1935-1936). Performed player mimicry and comedy routines with fellow Washington coach Nick Altrock earning the nickname of "The Clown Prince of Baseball". After leaving coaching he continued comedy but settled in as a restauranteur.
Al's SABR biography sums up his relationship with baseball and its fans: To say that Alexander Schacht was obsessed with baseball is to understate. He was possessed by it. Schacht was an undersized man with an oversized heart and love of baseball. It consumed him as he traveled from hamlet to hamlet trying to sell his wares as a pitcher. When he did finally make it to the big leagues, he hurt his arm and his playing days were over. But Schacht had something more than pitching ability. He had the talent to make people laugh. He did not have to speak a word; his actions portrayed what he was trying to convey. What he conveyed so pointedly is that there is a jester to put things in perspective. The jester points out that life is often absurd, so instead of letting it get us down, we should laugh at the absurdity in baseball or life. Schacht was the court jester, crying and laughing at the world of baseball and life. He would come in with his battered top hat and ragged tails, blowing mightily on a tuba. Maybe he’d wield a catcher’s mitt that weighed twenty-five pounds into which one could fit an entire meal. In fact, this zany guy once ate a meal off home plate. Zany like the Ritz or Marx brothers, Schacht became the first Clown Prince of Baseball. Alexander Schacht or just plain Al was a smart buffoon. One wonders when clowns perform whether they are really happy or sad or both. Tragedy and comedy hang side by side in many theaters, and just a turn of the mouth can be sad or happy. Al Schacht once said, “I came into this world very homely and haven’t changed a bit since.”
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