Inside the Beltway

Field of dreams

I recall being both happy and sad on Sept. 30, 1971. I witnessed Frank Howard, aka the “Gentle Giant” and “Hondo,” hit his 237th home run as a Washington Senator. Then, three innings later, I waved goodbye to a team that, as a youngster growing up during a troubled time in this city, I’d come to rely on.

I can’t imagine how the old-timers must have felt, the long-suffering Washington baseball fans who faithfully stuck by the Senators for so many years. Team owner and ultimate stealer Bob “Boob” Short declined to show his face the last time the Nats took the field at RFK Stadium.

In 1991, I wrote that the Baltimore Orioles’ final game at Memorial Stadium was a sellout, even though the Birds were moving only across town. It’s a shame, because for all the good the Senators brought to this city, they never had the support they deserved.

In fact, only 18,460 showed up to watch the Senators play ball that final night, and 4,000 of those were gate-crashers who refused to put another dollar into the Boob’s pockets.

I was fortunate that my father introduced me to the Senators at a very young age. We sat in the upper deck above left field — not the most expensive seats in the house, but to me there were none better.

From there, I watched Ken McMullen tag third to complete the most incredible triple play a boy could ever see. I’ll never forget the night a New York Yankee hit a long, towering shot destined to clear the right-field fence, only the ball — and pigeon — dropped like bricks as a bewildered Lee Maye looked on in disbelief.

There was Casey Cox throwing curves to Paul Casanova, Mike Epstein snagging line drives down the first-base line, Tim Cullen and Ed Brinkman trapping runners between bases, and Del Unser swiping homers off the top of the center-field fence.

But no player roused the crowd more than Hondo, who aimed each of his mighty homers for the Anacostia River. Howard hit 44 home runs in both the 1968 and 1970 seasons, leading the league, and I consider myself lucky to have seen many of them. I would dare pitchers to throw Hondo the “blooper,” because when he wasn’t fooled, you could kiss the ball goodbye.

Howard was very friendly to little people like me, which I knew from staring up at him on several occasions. Not far from my home stood the George Mason Hotel, which, like the Senators, is gone now. Every six months or so, manager Ted Williams and other baseball greats would gather there for receptions, and the doorman would allow my friends and me to go as far as the buffet line with our autograph books.

I still look at my faded green book to this day to see names like Joe DiMaggio, Joe Garagiola and Harmon Killebrew. I was just as proud to walk away with Shelby Whitfield’s autograph, the old radio voice of the Senators who brought the games — and thousands of Herby’s Ford commercials (they’re gone now, too) — into my bedroom until the wee hours of the morning.

Dick Bosman, whose autograph I snagged twice, was starting pitcher in that final game against the Yankees. Three home runs were hit off the pitcher before he was pulled in the fifth inning, with the Senators trailing 5-1. Bosman, more than anybody, wanted the win, and his head hung low as he walked off the mound. (Little did he know he had yet to pitch his best game ever — a no-hitter. He did so in a Cleveland Indians uniform on July 19, 1974, against Oakland.)

Soon, it was the bottom of the sixth, and Howard was standing tall at the plate facing Yankees southpaw Mike Kekich when the incredible happened. Kekich — who later told Evening Star sportswriter Dick Heller (now with The Washington Times) that he “felt sorry for the fans” — threw Howard a straight pitch. Hondo accepted the gift, smacking a trademark shot nearly to my seat above left field. The emotional crowd went crazy, drawing Howard out of the dugout for the first time in seven years. The tearful Hondo threw a kiss — and his helmet — into the circus.

“The umpires would never have permitted the game to be continued past Howard’s homer on an ordinary night,” the Evening Star wrote the next day. “The outfield was covered with confetti. Trash littered the field. But this night was something special. A faithful American League city was losing its team. As long as the fun was relatively clean, the umpires were patient.”

But the fans’ patience would run out. With one out left to go in the top of the ninth, and the Senators leading 7-5, hundreds stormed the field, snatching everything not nailed down — even the turf. The game ended in a forfeit, the first in the majors in 17 years.

Washington, in a much different way, remains a troubled city today. But thanks to its loyal fans, we once again have a team — the former Montreal Expos — that will need our support. Maybe even Hondo will come back to RFK and take the first swing.

• Fans of this column will enjoy John McCaslin’s new book, “Inside the Beltway: Offbeat Stories, Scoops, and Shenanigans From Around the Nation’s Capital.” Mr. McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.