Senators rose to the heights in ‘24

It would be difficult to select the lowest competitive point of the District’s 71 major league seasons in the 20th century, given that its clubs occupied last place for 15 of those campaigns. Like most successful jokes, the vaudeville refrain of “Washington: first in war, first in peace and last in the American League” was painfully close to the truth.

However, there is no problem picking the zenith for the Senators/Nationals (the names were pretty much interchangeable). Let’s call on Grantland Rice, the deceased dean of sportswriters, to do the job:

Destiny, waiting for the final curtain stepped from the wings today and handed the King his crown. … It was something beyond all belief, beyond all imagining …

That might not match the subsequent fame of Granny’s famous “Four Horsemen” lead, written a couple of weeks later to describe Notre Dame’s backfield, but it effectively captured the moment at which a Washington ballclub won its only World Series in more than seven decades.

The date was Oct. 10, 1924, and the Senators were in the bottom of the 12th inning of Game 7 against the heavily favored New York Giants. After playing 16 seasons with mostly bad teams, all-time ace Walter Johnson was pitching in his first Series. He was the luckless loser in Games 1 and 4, but now he had blanked the Giants in relief for four innings with what was left of the incredible fastball that ultimately yielded 417 victories over 21 seasons.

As the crowd of 31,677 at Griffith Stadium — including President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge — fidgeted in the stands, the Senators obviously needed a break. They got no fewer than three.

With one out, Washington’s Muddy Ruel lifted a foul popup behind the plate. Giants catcher Hank Gowdy was poised to grab it when he stumbled over his mask and dropped the ball. (This is why catchers, 80 years later, still toss their masks far, far away while pursuing foul balls.)

Thus reprieved, Ruel doubled and stood on second base as the potential Series-winning run. Johnson, batting for himself, reached base on an error with Ruel holding. Then came break No. 2: Earl McNeely slapped a routine grounder to third that hit a pebble and bounced over Fred Lindstrom’s head. Ruel rounded third and lumbered toward the plate as men in the crowd stood and hurled their hats and caps skyward.

Break No. 3: Ruel was the slowest runner in baseball, and left fielder Irish Meusel conceivably could have nailed him at the plate. But instead of throwing, Meusel tucked the ball in his pocket and trotted toward the dugout. The Senators, under 27-year-old “Boy Wonder” playing manager Bucky Harris in his first season, had become masters of all they surveyed.

Were divine forces at work and affecting the outcome of a mere baseball game? Jack Bentley, the Giants’ losing pitcher, thought so. “I guess the Good Lord just couldn’t stand seeing Walter Johnson lose again,” he said.

Johnson, supposedly headed downhill at age 37, was standing on second base when McNeely’s freakish hit made him and the Senators winners. “I was so happy it didn’t seem real,” he recalled years later in grandson Henry W. Thomas’ marvelous biography of the great pitcher. “They told me President Coolidge kept watching me all the way into the clubhouse, and I remember somebody yelling, ‘I bet Cal’d like to change places with you right now, Walter.’ ”

That evening as fans snake danced along Pennsylvania Avenue, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis stood watching with sportswriter Fred Lieb at the window of his room in the Raleigh Hotel. “Freddy, this could be the highest point of what we affectionately call our national sport,” Landis said.

No doubt, at least as far as the Senators were concerned. They won the American League pennant the following season and again in 1933 but lost both World Series. Pittsburgh vanquished them in another seven-game Series in 1925 that oddly seemed a backward version of ‘24. This time Johnson won his first two starts as the Senators claimed a 3-1 lead. But the Pirates won the next three games, the last a 9-7 atrocity on a day when heavy rains made the footing around the mound tenuous at Forbes Field and Harris left Johnson in to take a pounding.

American League President Ban Johnson ungraciously fired off a telegram to Harris saying, “You cost the American League a World Series victory because of sentiment.”

Undaunted, Bucky fired right back: “I’d do it the same way again. We went down with our best.”

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