One of the most famous
shows in Broadway history is Damn Yankees a musical known for his brilliant
score and the first collaboration of Broadway power couple Gwen Verdon and Bob
Fosse. The show has become a Broadway institution but I imagine that people
younger than 50 who have been to the revivals or seen the film will ask the
question: Who are the Washington Senators?
Now a personal disclosure.
I own and have read the book that was the inspiration for the musical: The
Year The Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglas Wallop. Written in 1954, I
believe it is superior to the musical in most ways because it has a more daring
satirical approach that the show fundamentally abandons in favor of spending
more time in hell. Indeed if read today I imagine it would resonate with
baseball fans just as much as it did seventy years ago.
The novel is set in 1958
and the Yankees appear on their way to their tenth consecutive American League Pennant. In
reality that nearly came true: the Yankees won nine pennants and seven World
Series by 1958. One of the best recurring jokes of the novel is Joe’s decision
to sell his soul. At one point Lola says that at least he did so for a noble
cause. She tells him she was in Japan and was asked: “When will the Yankees not
win the pennant?” There are many brilliant jokes along this line, the best of
which is that the devil himself is a Yankee fan and has tricked Joe for the
sole purpose of having an exciting pennant race this year. He wants the rest of
the world to be in mourning when the Yankees end up winning the pennant on the
last day of the season. Anyone who has followed major league baseball over the
last century could only nod along in sorrow with this line of satire: even now,
the Yankees loom over the sport like few other professional teams ever do.
The other joke, the one
that audiences of the era would have appreciated just as much, was that the
devil chose a die hard Washington Senators fan rather than one of the Indians
or Red Sox, which were at least contending. Because one of the biggest jokes in
major league baseball was the famous line: “Washington: First in war, first in
peace, and last in the American League.” This was a truth held even deeper than
the Yankees dominances because in 1954 that was basically the story of the Senators.
A more brutal joke in the novel comes when Roscoe Ent, essentially a clown who
performs antics on the field for the Senators, is fired by the team because once
the Senators start doing well the fans actually have a better reason to come to
the games. “I thought I had a lifetime gig,” Roscoe complains at one point. “I
mean, who would have thought the Senators would ever be a winning team?
(In fact, this is based in
reality. During the Senators tenure, Nick Altrock and Al Schacht performed
comedy routines for Washington fans during the 1940s and fifties, usually
during rain delays or the seventh inning stretch Both had once been former players
but their job was to entertain the few Senator fans who would come to the
game.)
All of this was based on a
painful fact. The Senators were one of the original teams when the American
League was founded. But by the 1950s, with the exception of the St. Louis
Browns (who were about to move to Baltimore) they were also one of the worst. In
their entire history they had won only three pennants and one World Series. And
most of their tenure in Washington was spent in seventh or eighth place and
almost always finishing below .500.
The tradition of the President
throwing out of the opening pitch of the baseball season begins in 1910 when
William Howard Taft did so at the Senators opening game. This tradition continued
for the next sixty years and there’s an argument it was the highlight of the
Senator season. After that, it was invariably a ride to the bottom. This was a
sad fact made clearer that for Washington’s tenure it was run by one of the
founders of the league. Clark Griffith.
Born in 1869, Clark Griffith
had been a brilliant pitcher when he debuted with the St. Louis Browns of the
American Association, going 22-7 his rookie year. Not long after, however, the
league dissolved and Griffith spent the next few years in the minors before he
ended up with the Chicago White Stockings (later the Cubs) in 1894. He would
win 20 games or more for the next six seasons.
But in 1900 Ban Johnson,
owner of a new minor league called the Western League, offered Griffith higher
pay and a manager spot with the brand new Chicago White Sox. In 1901, helped by
his 24-7 record, he led them to the American League pennant. When the League
established a team in New York, Griffith jumped to that team and served as
manager and one of the first relief pitchers in history. He finished in second
twice in New York but never won another pennant.
During the 1911 World
Series, the director of the Washington Nationals (they were known by that name
and the Senators) offered Griffith both the managerial spot and an offer to buy
stock in the team. As one of the founding members of the American League,
Griffith decided to join fellow members Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack in
becoming the owner. He became the full owner in 1911, a job he would hold for
the next forty-four years.
After he passed in 1955,
his stepson Cal Griffith would take over the team. Not long after that he moved
the team to Minnesota and would control it until 1984 before he sold the team.
The Griffith dynasty controlled
the Senators-Twins for much of the twentieth century. Both men were known for operating
the poorest franchise in the American League, with far less money to compete
then their rival owners. As a result during their combined seventy-three years
ownership, the Griffiths would only win 4 pennants and a single World Series. Still both men were voted into the Baseball
Hall of Fame; Clark in 1946, Calvin in 2010.
But the family legacy was
greater then the sum of its pennants. In both Washington and Minnesota, the
teams would have moments in the sun where some of the greatest – and in many
cases, the most unsung - ballplayers of all time ended up playing for
them. That they were not greater teams than they were had more to due with the relative
poverty of the Griffith’s and bad luck on multiple occasions.
There are two reasons to
write this series now. The first is that this year will be the centennial of
what was the Washington Senators only World Series. The city would not see
another one until 2018, when the Nationals finally won the World Series.
Furthermore, last year the Veterans committee inducted two Minnesota Twins of
the 1960s, Jim Kaat and Tony Olivia, into the Hall of Fame. In addition to
being two of the greatest players of all time, they were incredible forces on
one of the most undervalued teams of all time and one in the immediate aftermath
of the Yankees Dynasty’s collapse in 1964 were among the most dominant and
least appreciated. Neither of those teams could have been developed without the
work of the Griffith family who deserves more appreciation then some of the
troubled comments Calvin made near the end of his tenure as owner of the Twins.
And with the Twins slowly
beginning to climb back into contention in the American League – they won the A.L
Central and for the first time in twenty years won a postseason series (the
Wild Card defeat over the Twins) they may be do an appreciation. So let’s play
ball!
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