| Washington Senators | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Information | |||||
| League | American League | ||||
| Ballpark | Griffith Stadium (1911–1960) | ||||
| Established | 1901 | ||||
| Relocated | 1961 (toMinneapolis; became theMinnesota Twins) | ||||
| Nickname(s) | Grifs (1912–1920) Nats (1905–1955) | ||||
| World Series championships | |||||
| American League pennant | |||||
| Former name | Washington Nationals (1905–1955) | ||||
| Former ballpark(s) | American League Park (1901–1903) Boundary Field (1904–1910) | ||||
| Colors | Blue, red, white | ||||
| Retired numbers | |||||
| Ownership | Clark Griffith (1920–1955) Calvin Griffith (1955–1960) | ||||
| Manager | List of managers
| ||||
TheWashington Senators were aMajor League Baseball team based inWashington, D.C. It was one of theAmerican League's eight charter franchises, founded in1901. The team moved toMinneapolis in1961, becoming theMinnesota Twins.
The team was officially named the "Senators" during1901–1904, theNationals during1905–1955 and the Senators again during1956–1960, but nonetheless was commonly referred to as the Senators throughout its history (and unofficially as the "Grifs" duringClark Griffith's tenure as manager during1912–1920).[1][2] The name "Nationals" appeared on the uniforms for only two seasons, and then was replaced with the "W" logo. However, the names "Senators," "Nationals" and shorter "Nats" were used interchangeably by fans and media throughout the team's history; in2005, the latter two names were revived forthe current National League franchise that had previously played inMontreal.
For a time, from 1911 to 1933, the Senators were one of the more successful franchises inMajor League Baseball. The team's rosters includedBaseball Hall of Fame membersGoose Goslin,Sam Rice,Joe Cronin,Bucky Harris,Heinie Manush and one of the greatest players and pitchers of all time,Walter Johnson. But the Senators are remembered more for their many years of mediocrity and futility, including six last-place finishes in the 1940s and 1950s.Joe Judge,Cecil Travis,Buddy Myer,Roy Sievers andEddie Yost were other notable Senators players whose careers were spent in relative obscurity due to the team's lack of success.[3][4]
After the team's relocation to Minnesota in 1961, the Twins largely brushed their history in Washington aside, in part due to the team's lack of success in the decades preceding the move. However, in recent years, the team has taken an effort to better acknowledge their past as the Senators. Many prominent Twins players (such as Hall of FamersJim Kaat andHarmon Killebrew, as well as perennial All-StarsBob Allison andCamilo Pascual) spent significant time as Senators before moving with the team. In 2024, on the 100th anniversary of the Senators'1924 World Series victory (their only championship during their time in D.C.), the Twins held a ceremony atTarget Field unveiling a "W" displayed alongside theirretired numbers to honor the Senators' legacy in Washington.[5] Kaat, who debuted for the Senators in 1959, expressed his appreciation for the club in his speech at the ceremony, stating "Without the Washington Senators, there would be no Minnesota Twins".
The Washington Senators had an overall win–loss record of 4,223–4,864–101 (.465) during their 60 years in Washington, D.C. Six former Washington Senators players were elected to theNational Baseball Hall of Fame.
When theAmerican League declared itself a major league in1901, the new league moved the previous minorWestern League'sKansas City Blues franchise to Washington, a city that had been abandoned by the olderNational League a year earlier. The new Washington club, like the old one, was called the "Senators" (the second of three franchises to hold the name).Jim Manning moved with the Kansas City club tomanage the first Senators team.
The Senators began their history as a consistently losing team, at times so inept thatSan Francisco Chronicle columnist Charley Dryden famously joked, "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League,"[6] a play on the famous line inHenry Lee III's eulogy for PresidentGeorge Washington as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen". The1904 Senators lost 113 games, and the next season the team's owners, trying for a fresh start, changed the team's name to the "Nationals" (and occasionally nicknamed the "Nats"). However, the "Senators" name remained widely used by fans and journalists — in fact, the two names were used interchangeably[7] — although "Nats" remained the team's nickname.[8] The Senators name was officially restored in1956.[9]
The club continued to lose, despite the addition of a talented 19-year-old pitcher namedWalter Johnson in1907. Raised in ruralKansas, Johnson was a tall, lanky man with long arms who, using a leisurely windup and unusual sidearm delivery, threw the ball faster than anyone had ever seen. Johnson's breakout year was1910, when he struck out 313 batters, posted anearned-run average of 1.36 and won 25 games for a losing ball club. Over his 21-year Hall of Fame career, Johnson, nicknamed the "Big Train", won 417 games and struck out 3,508 batters, a major-league record that stood for more than 50 years.
In1911, the Senators' wooden ballpark burned to the ground, and they replaced it with a modern concrete-and-steel structure on the same location. First called National Park, it later was renamedGriffith Stadium, after the man who was named Washington manager in1912 and whose name became almost synonymous with the ball club:Clark Griffith. A star pitcher with the National League'sChicago Colts in the 1890s, Griffith jumped to the AL in 1901 and became a successful manager with theChicago White Sox andNew York Highlanders. Walter Johnson blossomed in1911 with 25 victories, although the Senators still finished the season in seventh place.[10] In1912, the Senators improved dramatically, as their pitching staff led the league in teamearned run average and instrikeouts. Johnson won 33 games while teammateBob Groom added another 24 wins to help the Senators finish the season in second place behind theBoston Red Sox.[11] The Senators continued to perform respectably in1913 with Johnson posting a career-high 35 victories, as the team once again finished in second place, this time to thePhiladelphia Athletics.[12] Starting in1916, the Senators settled back into mediocrity. Griffith, frustrated with the owners' penny-pinching, bought a controlling interest in the team in1920 and stepped down as field manager a year later to focus on his duties as team president. The minority interest was owned by William Richardson, who was content to remain in the background. The shares passed to his twin brother George on his death in 1942, and then to George's son William Richardson II in 1948. William Richardson II sold his shares to an unrelated party in 1949.[13]
In1924, Griffith named 27-year-old second basemanBucky Harris player-manager. Led by the hitting ofGoose Goslin andSam Rice, and a solid pitching staff headlined by the 36-year-old Johnson, the Senators captured their first American League pennant, two games ahead ofBabe Ruth and the New York Yankees.
The Senators facedJohn McGraw's heavily favoredNew York Giants in the1924 World Series.[14] Despite Johnson losing both of his starts, the Senators kept pace to tie the Series at three games apiece and force Game 7. The Senators trailed the Giants 3–1 in the eighth inning of Game 7, when Bucky Harris hit a routine ground ball to third which hit a pebble and took a bad hop over Giants third basemanFreddie Lindstrom. Two runners scored on the play, tying the score at three.[15] In the ninth inning with the game tied, 3–3, Harris brought in an aging Johnson to pitch on just one day of rest – he had been the losing pitcher in Game 5. Johnson held the Giants scoreless into extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th inning,Muddy Ruel hit a highfoul ball nearhome plate.[16] The Giants' catcher,Hank Gowdy, dropped his protective face mask to field the ball but, failing to toss the mask aside, stumbled over it and dropped the ball, thus giving Ruel another chance to bat.[16] On the nextpitch, Ruel hit adouble and, then proceeded to score the winningrun whenEarl McNeely hit aground ball that took another bad hop over Lindstrom's head.[15][16] It was the onlyWorld Series triumph for the franchise during their 60-year tenure in Washington.
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The Senators repeated as American League champions in1925 but lost theWorld Series to thePittsburgh Pirates. After Johnson's retirement in1927, the Senators endured a few losing seasons until returning to contention in1930, this time with Johnson as manager. But after the Senators finished third in1931 and1932, behind powerful Philadelphia and New York, Griffith fired Johnson, a victim of high expectations.[17]
For his new manager in1933, Griffith returned to the formula that worked for him in 1924, and 26-year-old shortstopJoe Cronin became player-manager. The change worked, as Washington posted a 99–53 record and swept to the pennant seven games ahead of the Yankees. But the Senators lost theWorld Series to the Giants in five games, and after that, the city would not host another World Series until2019, when theWashington Nationals, its current National League team, defeated theHouston Astros.
The Senators sank all the way to seventh in1934. Attendance plunged as well, and after the season Griffith traded Cronin to the Red Sox for journeyman shortstopLyn Lary and $225,000 in cash (even though Cronin was married to Griffith's niece, Mildred). Despite the return of Harris as manager in 1935–42 and 1950–54, Washington remained mostly a losing ball club for the next 25 years, contending for the pennant only in the talent-thin war years of1943 and1945.
In the fall of1953, the second major baseball franchise shift of the mid-20th century took place (after theBoston Braves moved toMilwaukee in 1952), with long sufferingBaltimore civic and business interests purchasing the perennially cellar-dwellingSt. Louis Browns from controversial but enterprising ownerBill Veeck and moving them 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Washington to theChesapeake Bay port city. In the spring of1954, the Browns moved to a newly renovated and modernizedMemorial Stadium on the site of their former northeastern city collegiate football bowl, and replacing the earlierminor league level "Triple A" "Orioles" (also sometimes nicknamed the "Birds") of theInternational League where they had been consistent champions since the 1910s. The additional competition in the same League forMaryland andVirginia area baseball fans added to the complexion around the nation's capital for the rest of the 1950s as the new "Baltimore Orioles" swiftly built their team prospects with astute trades and farm system output during the rest of the decade, finally becoming pennant contenders by1960. They continued their winning ways as one of the most dominant teams in professional baseball for the next two decades overpowering even the hapless third Senators franchise in 1961–1971.
The Senators were also the butt of many nationwide jokes during the 1950s, with the debut and running of aBroadway musical play in 1955 inNew York City called"Damn Yankees" (based on an earlier best-selling novel and later movie in 1958), which followed a hapless elderly D.C. fan being given a "Faustian" or "devil's bargain," selling his soul to transform the team by becoming a young powerful new Senators player (played in the movie version by heart-throb leading-man actorTab Hunter) and lead the lowly team to a pennant versus the Yankees.
In 1954, Senators farm system directorOssie Bluege signed a 17-year-oldHarmon Killebrew. Because of his $30,000 signing bonus, an enormous amount for that time, baseball rules required Killebrew to spend the rest of 1954 with the Senators as a "bonus baby." Killebrew bounced between the Senators and the minor leagues for the next few years. He became the Senators' regular third baseman in1959, leading the League with 42 home runs and earning a starting spot on the American LeagueAll-Star team.
Clark Griffith died in1955, and his nephew and adopted sonCalvin took over the team presidency. He sold Griffith Stadium to the city of Washington and leased it back, leading to speculation that the team was planning to move, as theBoston Braves,St. Louis Browns andPhiladelphia Athletics had done in the early 1950s, and theNew York Giants andBrooklyn Dodgers would do later in the decade. After an early flirtation with San Francisco (with a "Triple A"Pacific Coast League team, theSan Francisco Seals), by1957 Griffith was courtingMinneapolis–St. Paul in theUpper Midwest state ofMinnesota, a prolonged process that resulted in his rejecting the Twin Cities' first offer[18] before agreeing to relocate. The American League opposed the move at first, but in1960, in the face of theContinental League's proposed Minnesota franchise, a deal was reached. The Senators moved and were replaced with an expansionWashington Senators team for1961. The old Washington Senators became the newMinnesota Twins; the expansion Senators would become theTexas Rangers in1972, and baseball would not return to the city until2005, when the formerMontreal Expos became theWashington Nationals.
Cronin, Goslin, Griffith, Harris, Johnson, Killebrew and Wynn are listed on the Washington Hall of Stars display atNationals Park (previously they were listed atRobert F. Kennedy Stadium). So areOssie Bluege,George Case,Joe Judge,George Selkirk,Roy Sievers,Cecil Travis,Mickey Vernon andEddie Yost.[19]
The Senators did not retire any numbers during their tenure in Washington D.C., though have had two players who played for the franchise in both Washington and Minnesota retired, that being Harmon Killebrew's #3, who played in Washington for seven seasons and Jim Kaat's #36, who played in Washington for two seasons. In 2024, the 100th anniversary of the franchise's first championship, the Twins retired a "W" to honor the franchise permanently.[20]
| Player | Jersey | Position | Tenure | Date retired |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harmon Killebrew | 3 | LF/1B/3B | 1954–1960 | May 4, 1975 |
| Jim Kaat | 36 | P | 1959–1960 | July 16, 2022 |
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The longtime competitive struggles of the team were fictionalized in the 1954 bookThe Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, which became the 1955Broadway musicalDamn Yankees andthe 1958 film starring then "heart-throb" leading-man actorTab Hunter. The plot centers on Joe Boyd, a middle-aged real estate salesman and long-suffering fan of the Washington Senators baseball club. In this musical comedy-drama of theFaust legend, Boyd sells his soul to theDevil and becomes slugger Joe Hardy, the "long ball hitter the Senators need that he'd sell his soul for" (as spoken by him in a throwaway line near the beginning of the drama). His hitting prowess enables the Senators to win the American Leaguepennant over the then-dominant Yankees. One of the songs from the musical, "Heart", is frequently played at baseball games.
The (expansion) Washington Senators were mentioned several times in Tom Clancy's bookWithout Remorse. As they performed even worse than the team they replaced, they were the subject of an updated joke: "Washington: First in war, first in peace, andstill last in the American League." When the current Nationals had their own struggles, the joke was updated once again, this time to "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the National League."
| Awards and achievements | ||
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| Preceded by | World Series champions Washington Senators 1924 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | American League champions Washington Senators 1924–1925 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | American League champions Washington Senators 1933 | Succeeded by |
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