“The afternoon train from the West chugged slowly into Washington’s only railroad depot. As it clanked to a halt and began to disgorge its human cargo deafening cheers from a thousand throats reverberated through the rafters of the old train shed. The focal point of attention was a dozen tanned healthy young men carrying their own suitcases and baseball hats. It was Washington’s leading baseball team, known as the “Nationals,” returning from a triumphant tour of the West in which they had won nine games and lost but one.” – Morris Beale, The Washington Senators, on the Nationals’ return home on August 3, 1867.
“The greatest team in the history of the Negro Leagues, the Homestead Grays, played in the same ballpark, Griffith Stadium, as one of the worst teams in the major leagues, the Washington Senators, during the 1940s. This situation made Washington, D.C. the front of line of the fight to integrate major league baseball.” - Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, Brad Snyder.
Several weeks ago, blogger Jeff Saffelle took a guided tour of the Nationals’ new ballpark. While his photos provide a nice preview of the ballpark experience to come, his discovery of a painting of Walter Johnson in the main concourse gives us a peek into the Nationals’ plans for putting D.C.’s baseball history on prominent display.
As Jeff notes, “Apparently, throughout the new Nationals Park, columns will be dedicated to former Washington baseball greats and DC's history in the game.”
This moment provides a good opportunity to review what baseball greats have been honored in the nation’s capital and which ones have been overlooked.
The Hall of Stars
In late 1979, the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission began selecting members for a “Washington Hall of Stars.” In November, during half time of a Redskins-Cowboys game, the first 20 players and figures were inducted and honored. The baseball greats were Johnson, Josh Gibson, Bucky Harris, Frank Howard, Mickey Vernon and Clark Griffith.
Baseball teams and cities honor their greats in various ways, some more conspicuous than others. The preservers in Washington did it by putting those names and subsequent inductees on display at RFK Stadium along the façade of the mezzanine between the lower and upper decks. In 2005, the Nationals’ first season, the names were removed from that part of the stadium and became part of a large display behind the right field fence and bullpen.
It’s not known what the exact plans are for moving the Hall of Stars to the new stadium or creating something new, but the player columns are an indication the Lerners want to do something. It’s also not known if they or the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission will conduct a review for overlooked greats and standouts. Here are some suggestions.
The Original Nationals
In a much anticipated ceremony at Union Station in 2004, hearty cheers rang out when Mayor Anthony Williams announced the official return of Major League Baseball to the nation’s capital. The game’s re-appearance provided a great opportunity for the publication of several books on D.C.’s baseball history. Anticipating all this, Washington resident Frank Ceresi wrote (along with Mark Rucker and Carol McMains) “Baseball in Washington D.C.”
In early 2003, Ceresi also penned an in-depth piece on the pioneering Washington Nationals. He describes them as “one of the first dominant organized ball clubs in the country” and credits their “grand tour of the west” in 1867 as playing a significant role in helping to develop and popularize baseball in the 1860s.
Ceresi focuses on the role Arthur Pue Gorman played in the development of the team. Later serving as a U.S. Senator from Maryland (1881- 1899, 1903 – 1906), he played a major role in organizing the Nationals' tour. Gorman played on the team and became their President. He also spent time as President of the newly formed National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP).
Gorman also put together a tournament between the Nationals, the Brooklyn Atlantics and the Philadelphia Athletics. The players met President Andrew Johnson at the White House. Ceresi writes, “This was the very first time a sport team would be received by the President of the United States!”
Another figure instrumental in the Nationals birth and development is Mike Scanlon. Google his name and you’ll find scant information. I relied mostly on ProQuest, to find a handful articles in the Washington Post.
One writer called Scanlon the “Daddy of D.C. Baseball.” A highly respected individual across the baseball world, Scanlon, along with Gorman, organized the Nationals and arranged their games. From his poolroom at Ninth and D, this man of Irish roots trained and managed the team from 1868 and for many years thereafter. The Nationals took on the great teams of the time, including the famous Cincinnati Red Sox.
After Scanlon retired, fans gathered around his emporium where photos of past D.C. baseball teams hung. His stories and scrape books also told forgotten stories. The Post called the meetings the “Old Fans Club.”
Baseball’s First Stars
In 1996, SABR published Baseball’s First Stars, a companion piece to Nineteenth Century Stars. With not much else published on 19th Century players, the two books, while not meant to be sterling examples of quantitative analysis, still stand out as great resources.
Richard Puff wrote a bio for Nicholas Young, another baseball great forgotten by time. Puff writes:
“there is perhaps no one who served baseball longer and at higher levels, throughout the nineteenth century than did Nicholas E. Young.”
After the war, Young, who worked for the government throughout his working life, helped form the Washington Olympics. Secretary of the team and one of their players (1867 to 1870), he recommended to his league counterparts a formal schedule. Born out of that meeting was the NAPBBP, baseball’s first league. Elected as the circuit’s first Secretary, Young held down the position for the league’s five-year run (1871 to 1875). Young even found time to establish an umpire’s school in Washington.
When the National League formed in 1876, Young became their first Secretary. He held that job until the magnates elected him as the fifth president of the National League in 1884. He served in that position until 1902. His work earned him the nickname “Uncle Nick.”
The Washington Homestead Grays
In 2003, D.C. native and resident Brad Snyder wrote Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball. Some believe the Grays were the greatest black team ever. Loaded with talent and owned by the great businessman Cum Posey, who moved the team part-time to D.C., the Grays won 12 pennants and three World Series. Snyder unfolds the story of how the team came to prosper and be beloved in Washington in the 40s. Gibson and Leonard get their due for their great play as well as the Monarch’s Satchel Paige whose appearances against the Grays produced record-setting crowds at Griffith Stadium.
Snyder also writes about Sam Lacy, the writer who fought for the integration of major league baseball. A pioneer in his field, Lacy wrote about sports at the Washington Tribune in the 20s before becoming managing editor and sports editor at the paper from 1934-39. After a stint with the Chicago Defender from 1940-1943, he wrote for The Afro-American (based in Baltimore and merged with the Washington Tribune in 1946). Lacy, who considered himself a lifelong Washingtonian and had a large readership here, received many honors including the ultimate nod for a writer, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1997.
In July 2000, MLB gave the National Baseball Hall of Fame a $250,000 grant to conduct research on African Americans in baseball from 1860-1960. Early last year, National Geographic published their findings with Shades of Glory, The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball.
Part of the research was a gathering of statistics. As noted in the book, the researchers “labored under a strict guideline to include only those numbers for league-sanctioned games where boxscores did exist.” The research reveals James “Cool Papa” Bell, who played with the Grays from 1943 to 1946, batted 333, 303, 358 and 398 respectively.
Another product of the research was the creation of a ballot of players to be voted on for induction into the Hall of Fame. Actually, it was two ballots. One for Negro League players, managers, umpires and executives, and one those who played before the Negro Leagues.
The Negro League committee elected 17 for immortality. One of those was Ray Brown, the durable ace for the Grays from 1932 to 1945 and one of the winningest pitchers in the Negro Leagues.
Latino Pioneers
Earlier this year, Adrian Burgos wrote Playing America's Game, Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. One of the stories Burgos covers is the “Cuban Senators.” When the Senators hired Joe Cambria as their scout in Latin America in 1935, they became the first big league team to have an official scout in the Caribbean. Burgos writes, “The Senators evolved into the era’s most active major-league organization in Latin America, accounting for over 40 per cent of the Latino players to debut in the majors between 1935 and 1945.”
The Sabermetric Spotlight
In November 2001, Bill James spoke to a standing room only crowd of about 200 baseball fans at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Promoting his updated Historical Abstract and his new Win Shares method of player evaluation, one of the items he handed out was his list of “The Top 100 Best Players in Washington Major League History.” Of the ten names at the top of that list, seven have been inducted into the Washington Hall of Stars (Johnson, Joe Judge, Mickey Vernon, Goose Goslin, Eddie Yost, Frank Howard and Joe Cronin). The three who have not been are Sam Rice, Clyde Milan and Buddy Meyer.
Behind the Microphone
In 2002, SABR began publishing biographies of players and figures on-line. One of the bio writers is Warren Corbett. His area of expertise is broadcasting and he wrote a bio for Arch McDonald.
McDonald, who passed away in 1960, was the voice of the Senators from 1934 to 1938 and 1940 to 1956. He spent one year with the Yankees where he coined the Joe DiMaggio tag - “The Yankee Clipper.” When he returned to Washington, McDonald performed re-creations from a People’s drugstore near the White House. One of his calls for a home run was, "There she goes, Mrs. Murphy."
Corbett notes that in 1956, McDonald was the longest-serving baseball announcer at the time, with a career dating back to Chattanooga in 1932. He left the Senators after a change in sponsors and called games for University of Maryland football as well as the Redskins. He also talked sports for WTOP radio and television. In 1999, McDonald found an immortal home at the Writer’s Wing at Cooperstown, as a winner of the Ford C. Frick Award for "major contributions to baseball."
In 2005, Curt Smith published Voices of Summer. It serves as an excellent reference for announcers such as Bob Wolff, who broadcast the Senators games from 1947 to 1960, before working with the networks. Smith gives Wolff high marks for his language (“precise”) and voice (“elegant”). Wolff also resides in the Hall as a winner of the Frick Award.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s going to be interesting to see what players and non-players the Nationals do honor. They certainly got off on the right foot by naming their new media center after Shirley Povich.
The rest, we shall see. The Lerners seem like the type who would consider widening the lens. The concern, however, is they will, like most all of the other owners, stick to honoring the familiar players and figures they known about and treat 19th Century baseball as if it did not exist.
That would be a shame. The nation’s capital, while it certainly has seen a fragmented and checkered baseball past, also has a deep and multi-layered history. One can hope the new ballpark honors all of D.C.'s deserving greats.
Sources
Morris Beale, The Washington Senators
Adrian Burgos, Playing America's Game
Frank Ceresi, Baseball in Washington D.C.
National Baseball Hall of Fame
Lawrence Hogan, Shades of Glory, The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball
Bill James, “The Top 100 Best Players in Washington Major League History.”
SABR, Baseball’s First Stars
SABR, Bio Project
SABR, The Negro Leagues Book
Curt Smith, Voices of Summer
Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball
Washington Post via ProQuest
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