Ball for first pitch links Senators to Nationals

For more than 33 years, Joe Grzenda has kept the ball in a big brown envelope, secured inside a desk drawer. It has stayed there the entire time. But now the ball — and Grzenda — will be taking a little trip.

The destination is RFK Stadium and the first home game of the Washington Nationals on Thursday night.

“This is exciting,” he said.

Grzenda plans to emerge from the Nationals dugout before the game, walk to the third-base foul line and hand the ball to President Bush. He thinks he might say something like, “Watch your target and throw a strike.”

The president then will throw the ceremonial first pitch to inaugurate the Nationals’ home opener, the first official major league baseball game played in the nation’s capital since Sept. 30, 1971.

Grzenda, who will be joined by nine other former Washington Senators players for the Opening Night festivities, was clutching the same ball that night. The left-hander, then 34, was pitching for the Senators in the last game of the year, with the team about to leave the District and become the Texas Rangers. He stood on the mound in the top of the ninth protecting a 7-5 lead over the New York Yankees. There were two out, none on, and Horace Clarke was at the plate.

But something was amiss among the crowd of about 14,000. Anger permeated the smell of beer and hot dogs. Signs and bedsheets vilifying Senators owner Bob Short, the maestro of the move to Texas, were everywhere.

“Everybody was a little nervous,” Grzenda recalled from his home in Daleville, Pa. “Somebody told me: When there are two out, hesitate on the mound and let the bullpen empty. They knew something was going to happen.”

Grzenda, wrapping up what would be the best season of an eventual eight-year big league career, retired the first two hitters — Felipe Alou (now the manager of the San Francisco Giants) and Bobby Murcer — on ground balls. Now Clarke was up.

“He took a lot of practice swings,” Grzenda said. “I’m saying, ‘Let’s go, let’s go.’ Then I turned around, and it was over. I saw the dust coming up from the first-base side. The fans jumped the fence and kept coming.”

They stormed the field and tore the place apart in a mad scramble for souvenirs. Bases, pieces of turf, pieces of the ballpark itself — all were fair game.

“I just stood there,” Grzenda, 67, said. “I don’t know why. I grabbed my hat. I figured that would go first. The hat always goes first. I had the ball in my hand. A big guy was coming at me. He had a beard, long hair. I didn’t know if he was going to tackle me. There was no place to run, except home plate, really. He just came up to me and touched my shirt and kept going.”

Grzenda kept going, too, into the clubhouse, still clutching the ball. He took it with him when he left the ballpark for the last time, climbed into his car with his wife and two children and drove back home to Daleville. The ball went into the drawer with some other memorabilia.

“I wanted to stay in Washington,” said Grzenda, who pitched for St. Louis in 1972 and then retired. He later ran unsuccessfully for county commissioner and worked many years for a battery company. “We weren’t big winners, but we had a good bunch of guys. [Manager] Ted [Williams] kept us loose. I loved playing for him. You’d sit there and listen to his stories.”

Grzenda’s story, told often, now has a surprise ending. Closure. The finishing of some business.

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