New book on 1924 Senators recounts road to world title

Two days before the Washington Senators opened the 1924 season, a local sportswriter asked Bucky Harris, the team’s player-manager, for his forecast of the year ahead.

“I believe that I have a club that will bear watching in the pennant race,” Harris said, declining to offer a more specific prediction.

The Senators were synonymous with losing — “Washington: First in war, first in peace, last in the American League,” went the classic vaudeville line — and had finished no better than fourth in the previous five seasons, so it was easy to dismiss Harris’ outlook as overly optimistic. But over the next seven months, the second baseman was proved right, as Washington, led by ace right-hander Walter Johnson and outfielder Goose Goslin, overcame a slow start to win 92 games en route to the franchise’s first World Series title.

Washington’s improbable season is chronicled in Gary Sarnoff’s new book, “Team of Destiny: Walter Johnson, Clark Griffith, Bucky Harris and the 1924 Washington Senators,” which could offer the tiniest sliver of hope for Nationals fans as Manager Dave Martinez’s team prepares for what figures to be another losing campaign. (The Nationals will celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Senators’ 1924 title in September.)

“It’s just such a wonderful story about an underdog, a team that surpassed all expectations, a team that had a losing tradition before 1924 and wasn’t expected to do well that season,” Sarnoff said in a recent phone interview. “And it’s a story, of course, about Walter Johnson finally getting to pitch for a winning team.”

Sarnoff weaves firsthand reports from various daily newspapers and several books to provide a detailed account of the Senators’ 1924 season, mixing information from game recaps with off-field happenings to put readers in the middle of the pennant race. One of the first stories the Alexandria resident and Nationals season ticket holder recounts is how Harris, then 27, learned he had become major league baseball’s youngest manager.

Two weeks before the Senators reported to spring training in 1924, Washington Herald sportswriter John Dugan polled D.C. baseball fans and reported enthusiasm for the club was at a “low ebb.” It was hardly surprising, given that the team hadn’t made any significant changes to a roster that finished three games under .500 the previous year, and had been without a manager since owner Clark Griffith fired Donie Bush after the 1923 season.

On Feb. 9, Harris, who had reported to Washington’s spring training facility in Tampa early, received a telegram from D.C. businessman and baseball fan George Preston Marshall. The message from the future founder of Washington’s NFL franchise contained only one word: “Congratulations.” Harris, who had been the subject of trade rumors that offseason, assumed he had been dealt, potentially to the defending World Series champion New York Yankees. Then he received a second telegram from Griffith offering him the Senators’ managerial job. “I’ll take that job and win Washington’s first American League pennant,” Harris responded.

Sportswriters dubbed the choice “Griffith’s folly,” and their skepticism seemed justified when Washington dropped to 24-26 and sixth place in the American League in mid-June. The Senators rattled off nine consecutive wins, including a three-game sweep of the Yankees at Yankee Stadium that vaulted them to the top of the standings. President Coolidge reserved the box at Griffith Stadium for the doubleheader the next day, and fans greeted the team upon its return from New York at Union Station.

Enthusiasm for the Senators in D.C. was soaring. As Sarnoff details in the book, a motorist stopped at a gas station in the District just before 11 p.m. on Aug. 1 and saw a mob of people rushing a deliveryman carrying a stack of newspapers. “What are they fighting for?” he asked. “It is the early edition of The Washington Post,” the station attendant explained. “From what I understand, it is all on account of the Griffs.” During the pennant race and the Senators’ World Series run, thousands of fans gathered outside newspaper buildings in the city to follow the action on electronic scoreboards.

One of the most surprising things Sarnoff learned in researching the book was that Johnson planned to make the 1924 season his last. The eventual Hall of Famer, who had turned 36 in November, wrote a letter to Griffith in January informing him of his plans to retire.

Johnson went 23-7 with a 2.72 ERA in 1924, and led the AL in strikeouts for the 12th time. His presence on the roster, and the fact that he had never gotten the chance to pitch in the postseason during his illustrious career, was one of the primary reasons fans — and even players — in other cities were rooting for Washington to win it all.

“I’m pulling for the Yankees to win the pennant, and I think they will, but if they don’t there’s no club in the league I’d rather see than Washington,” Yankees slugger Babe Ruth said in July.

The Senators clinched the pennant at Boston in late September. Sarnoff describes Johnson walking slowly from the bullpen to the clubhouse after that game, with tears in his eyes, as 15,000 fans at Fenway Park gave him a standing ovation. Johnson appeared in three games in the 1924 World Series and pitched four innings of scoreless relief in Game 7 to earn the win in the Senators’ 4-3, 12th-inning triumph over the heavily favored New York Giants.