Big Train roared through Boston for only no-hitter

The meager Fenway Park crowd of 3,000 was about to erupt with two out in the bottom of the ninth as Harry Hooper stepped into the batter’s box. “Tell Walter he’s got to pitch to me,” the veteran Boston Red Sox outfielder muttered to catcher Val Picinich. “I’m going to bust one out of the park if I can.”

On the mound, the tall right-hander looked in for Picinich’s sign and whipped his famous fastball with an easy sidearm motion. Hooper smashed a hard grounder down the first-base line that bounced over the bag and hooked foul by as much as 15 feet, according to one estimate. It appeared to be a sure hit, and the spectators groaned in unison.

But no! Joe Judge, the Washington Nationals’ slick first baseman, somehow leaped high to glove the ball and fired to the pitcher covering to nip Hooper by a step.

It was July1, 1920, and Walter Johnson — arguably the greatest pitcher in baseball history — had the only no-hitter of a 21-year career that would yield 417 victories, 110 shutouts and a lifetime 2.21 ERA for mostly mediocre Washington teams.

Ironically, the 1-0 triumph came in the midst of one of Johnson’s worst campaigns. Bothered all year by colds and a sore arm at 32, he would finish his 14th season with an 8-10 record after averaging 26.5 victories over the past decade.

Johnson was a sweet-tempered man beloved even by opponents. After Judge ran to Johnson and pumped his hand, Hooper was the next to offer congratulations, saying, “I’m glad to lose that hit for your no-hit game.”

In the steamy clubhouse, the rest of the Nationals (they weren’t the Senators then) pounded Johnson’s broad back, and someone yelled, “Speech!” Johnson’s response was typically modest: “Goodness gracious sakes alive, wasn’t I lucky?”

Soon the telegrams began pouring in, including one from Johnson’s wife, Hazel: “Eddie doing fine today. Hooray for your no-hit game.”

The reference was to one of their young sons, both sick. Johnson had stayed in Washington until the day before the game to help look after the boys, then took a night train to Boston. Now the children were better; in fact, the no-hitter was a birthday present of sorts for Walter Jr., who was 5 that day.

Johnson had another motive, too. As Burt Whitman wrote floridly in the next day’s Washington Post, “There may have been lurking in the back of the great Walter’s head the idea that it was about time to show Boston that he was not a ‘has been.’ In other cities, too, it has been rumored and whispered that the cyclone had blown its worst and was dwindling to spring zephyr classification. … But he was back in the seat of the mighty yesterday.”

In the Evening Star, beat writer Jack Nye was similarly lyrical, as well as apparently being able to see into the future. The lead on his game story said Johnson “mounted to the highest pinnacle in the baseball hall of fame today.” This was pretty prescient considering that the Cooperstown shrine didn’t open until 19 years later with Johnson, of course, as one of the charter inductees.

Clark Griffith, himself a star pitcher as baseball’s Old Fox in the 1890s, was in his ninth season as the Nationals’ manager and his first as principal owner. In discussing Johnson’s gem, Griff uncharacteristically tried a little humor: “Walter always took [pitching] as a joke until today. But he went out today and tried.”

The day after the game, Griffith was more serious. “His fastball was just like the old times and so good that the Red Sox knew it was coming, laid for it, yet could not touch it. There was too much talk about Johnson being all through. I imagine this got under Walter’s skin. … I never saw him so eager to come through.”

In his previous start, Johnson also had flashed his old form with a three-hit shutout of the Philadelphia Athletics that required only 72 pitches. Yet Johnson was still trying to shake off a chronic cold. On the day of the no-hitter, he didn’t feel well enough at first to play but then told Griffith he would pitch the first inning and see how it went.

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