This day in baseball history: Washington Senators win World Series

The Major League Baseball playoffs are still meandering their way through what, in essence, are its quarterfinals. The World Series will spill into November. But 100 years ago today, the baseball season concluded when the Washington Senators defeated the New York Giants in Game Seven of the World Series.

The Giants were playing in their fourth consecutive World Series, having taken two of the previous three from the New York Yankees. The Senators had never been in a World Series. In fact, they had only mustered a winning record in one of the three previous seasons.

The Giants were led by John McGraw, the most successful manager of his era. Under McGraw, they had won ten pennants (counting 1924) and three World Series (none was played in 1904 when the Giants won the pennant). The Senators were managed by their 27-year-old second baseman Bucky Harris, in his first year at the helm.

The Giants seemed to have the edge in 1924, as well. True, the teams had won about the same number of games — 93 for the Giants; 92 for the Senators. However, the Giants had a much better run differential than their American League counterparts.

The teams split the first six games of the Series. Walter Johnson, pitching ace of the Senators, lost two of them.

Johnson was the dominant pitcher of his era and arguably the best of all time. Granted, he was a month shy of 37 years in this Series, but he had led the American League with 23 wins (and only seven losses) during the regular season.

Johnson pitched valiantly and effectively in Game One. He allowed only two runs through nine innings, but gave up two in the twelfth to lose 4-3.

Four days later, Johnson returned to the hill with the Series tied two games apiece. This time, the Giants scored three runs against him in the eighth inning (two of them earned) to win 6-3.

The Senators evened the Series the next day, defeating the Giants 2-1. Tom Zachary, the man who would give up Babe Ruth’s 60th home run three years later, went all the way for the win.

Game Seven was played at Griffith Stadium in Washington on October 10. President Coolidge was on hand and cheering for the home team.

Bucky Harris threw McGraw a curve in this game. Many decades ahead of his time, Harris selected an “opener” as his starting pitcher. (Johnson was on only one day of rest.)

That opener was William “Curly” Ogden, a right-hander whose record for the season was 9-8 and who had not yet appeared in the Series.

The idea was to neutralize Bill Terry, the future Hall of Famer who had been chewing up Washington pitchers throughout the Series. Despite Terry’s prowess, McGraw liked to platoon his young left-handed hitting star with Emil “Irish” Meusel, who batted right-handed.

Harris hoped that Terry would start against the right-handed Ogden, but that McGraw would have Meusel pinch hit for him after Harris, according to the plan. brought in a left-hander in the first inning. Terry would then be unavailable against right-handers (including Johnson, possibly) later in the game.

McGraw did start Terry in a lineup that included seven future Hall of Famers (though perhaps not all of them deserving.) But things did not go exactly as Harris planned them.

Ogden struck out leadoff batter Fred Lindstrom, a right-handed hitter, then walked Frankie Frisch, a switch-hitter. At that point, Harris pulled his opener and brought in George Mogridge, a lefty, to face left-handed hitting Ross Youngs. Mogridge struck Youngs out and retired George “High Pockets” Kelly on a grounder to end the inning

Terry was due to leadoff the second. McGraw confounded Harris’s plan by letting him bat. He grounded out.

The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the fourth when Harris hit a home run. He had hit just one in 600 plate appearances during the regular season.

President Coolidge joined the crowd in giving “the Boy Wonder” a standing ovation.

Mogridge cruised through five innings, including a fourth inning strikeout of Terry. However, in the top of the sixth, he walked Youngs and Kelly singled.

That brought up Terry, and it was here that McGraw made the move Harris had been anticipating. He called on Meusel to bat for Terry.

As planned (but a few innings later), Harris brought in right-hander Fred “Firpo” Marberry to face Meusel. Marberry is known in baseball history as the sport’s first relief specialist. Though he did start 186 games in his 14 year career, all 56 of his 1924 appearances were in relief.

On this day, Marberry did not put out the fire, though it was not his fault. Meusel made McGraw look pretty good by hitting a sacrifice fly to tie the game. Hack Wilson followed with a single. It sent Kelly to third. He then scored when first baseman Joe Judge failed to handle a grounder. Next, Wilson scored on an error by Ossie Bluege at shortstop. Bluege normally played third base but was filling in at short for the injured Roger Peckinpaugh.

The Giants led 3-1.

They still led by that score heading into the bottom of the eighth. Bluege led off that frame by popping out. But Nemo Leibold, selected by Harris to pinch hit, doubled. Leibold had played for the Chicago “Black Sox” but was not part of the 1919 Series fix. When he passed away in Michigan in 1977, the headline in a Detroit paper read “An Honest Man Die.”

Catcher Muddy Ruel was next up. He singled, sending Leibold to third.

Ruel was a law school graduate and a member of the Missouri bar. From Ed Whelan, I learned that he was also a member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar. After retirement as a player, Ruel became a coach, manager, farm system director, and general manager. He also put his legal skills to use as a special assistant to baseball commissioner Happy Chandler for several years.

Marberry was due up next, but Harris replaced him with pinch hitter Bennie Tate. He walked.

Tiring Giants pitcher Virgil Barnes then retired Earl McNeely for the second out. But Harris singled past Lindstrom at third to drive in two runs and tie the game at 3-3. The ball wasn’t hit hard but it hit a pebble and took a bad hop on the rookie third baseman.

Only then did McGraw pull Barnes. He replaced him with Art Neff, who had outdueled Johnson in the Series opener. Neff, though, had pitched seven innings the day before Game Seven. McGraw just wanted him to retire one batter — future Hall of Famer Sam Rice — which Neff did to end the inning.

With Marberry out of the game, Harris called on Walter Johnson. It looked like a bad call when Frisch tripled with one out in the top of the ninth. Johnson walked the left-handed hitting Youngs intentionally and struck out the right-handed hitting Kelly.

Now it was time for Harris’ pitching strategy to pay off (or not). Instead of Bill Terry, Johnson faced Meusel. He grounded out to end the inning. Disaster was averted when Judge scooped Bluege’s errant throw.

When the Senators failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, the game went into extra innings.

It was far from smooth sailing for Johnson in the extra frames. The Giants continued to put runners on base — one in the tenth, two in the eleventh, and one in the twelfth.

The Senators went down in order in the tenth. In the eleventh they got a two-out double from Goose Goslin, followed by an intentional walk. But the threat ended with a groundout by Bluege.

By the bottom of the twelfth, Jack Bentley was pitching for the Giants, their fourth hurler of the day. Bentley was a native of Sandy Springs, Maryland, not far from D.C. He had won 16 games during the regular season and had bested Johnson with a strong performance in Game Five.

With one out in the bottom of the inning, Ruel hit a pop foul behind home plate. It should have been an easy play for catcher Hank Gowdy. However, the veteran stumbled over his catcher’s mask, which he hadn’t thrown far enough from the play. As a result, Gowdy failed to catch the ball.

Given a second chance, Ruel doubled.

Johnson was next up. Like many pitchers of that time, he was a decent hitter (lifetime batting average .235). In his previous at-bat, Johnson had hit a deep drive to center field.

This time, he hit a grounder to short. Travis Jackson didn’t field it cleanly and Johnson reached. Ruel held at second base.

That brought up McNeely,. He was a rookie whose excellent performance down the stretch of the regular season had won him the center-fielder job over Leibold. But McNeely was 0-5 on the day.

This time, he hit a sharp grounder towards Lindstrom at third base. The ball evaded him and Ruel gleefully scampered home with the run that won the World Series. Meusel in left field didn’t even bother to make a throw.

The New York Times reported that McNeely hit the ball to Lindstrom’s right and that he had no realistic play. But every other report had Lindstrom ready to make a play and the ball taking a bad hop.

I was raised on the view that McNeely’s ball hit a pebble, maybe the same one that enabled Harris’ eighth inning, two-RBI single. Divine intervention on behalf of Walter Johnson was sometimes cited. As Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators, put it:

God was on our side in that one. Else how did those pebbles get in front of Lindstrom, not once, but twice?

In any case, the Senators won their first and only World Series on this day in baseball history.

Among their many heroes, Harris stands out. For the Series, he hit .333, drove in seven runs, and slugged two home runs. Viewed as having outmanaged the great John McGraw, he became the youngest manager to win a World Series.

Peckinpaugh was right behind him despite missing Game Seven. He batted .417 and slugged .583. His walk-off double won Game Two.

Harris would win another World Series, but not until 1947 as manager of the Yankees. The Senators would play in two more World Series, including in 1925. But they wouldn’t win another one, and Washington was not home to another World Series winner until 2019.

You can view a few highlights of Game Seven, 1924 here. I wish we could see more, but the video does give a good look at Johnson’s three-quarters delivery.