Washington Nationals: The last World Series experience

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The year was 1933, and the Senators delivered euphoria…until they ran into Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott. Here’s the story of the last World Series experience for the Washington Nationals.

There hasn’t been a World Series game played in the city of Washington in 86 years. The last player to wear a Washington Nationals (then, the Senators) uniform in a Series game died a quarter-century ago.

A 10-year-old among the 28,454 in attendance at Griffith Stadium for that Oct. 7, 1933 game would be 96 today.

So it’s no surprise that Nationals fans are eagerly looking forward to the return of World Series baseball to the nation’s capital next week. Aside from Seattle, which has never hosted a World Series, no big-league city has waited longer to watch a World Series.

That 1933 Senators team featured four future Hall of Famers, but few names that would be recognizable to less than hard-core fans today. Still, in an era dominated by the Ruthian Yankees, the Senators won 99 regular-season games and somehow managed to unseat the defending champion Bronx Bombers by seven games.

Unfortunately, the Senators lost that World Series in five games to the New York Giants, absorbing a pair of defeats in Washington including the concluding fifth game by a 4-3 score in 10 innings on a controversial home run.

Those Senators were managed by 26-year-old shortstop Joe Cronin, a five-year veteran appointed by club owner Clark Griffith following the 1932 season. Player-managers were not uncommon in that era – Charley Grimm had both played and managed the Chicago Cubs to the 1932 National League pennant, as would Frankie Frisch with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1934.

In fact, Cronin’s managerial opponent in the 1933 World Series, New York’s Bill Terry, was also the Giants’ star first baseman.

What was unusual was Cronin’s familial connection to his boss. Three years earlier he had married Mildred Robertson, Griffith’s niece. That bond made Cronin a particular favorite of Griffith, although not a big enough favorite that Griffith would say no when the Boston Red Sox offered to buy Cronin for $225,000 prior to the 1935 season.

In 1933 Cronin was his own best player. He batted .309, drove in a team-high 118 runs and was the starting American League shortstop in the inaugural All-Star game that summer. At season’s end, he would finish second to Jimmie Foxx in voting for the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

Washington’s hard hitting 1933 outfield. Heinie Manush, left fielder; Fred Schulte, centerfielder; and Goose Goslin, rightfielder. /

Washington Nationals: The last World Series experience

In Washington’s usual batting order, Cronin was preceded by outfielders Heine Manush and Goose Goslin. Boasting a team-high .336 batting average, Manush had been a fixture in Washington’s lineup since coming over from St. Louis several seasons earlier in a trade for Goslin, of all people.

The Washington Nationals reacquired the Goose prior to the 1933 season, and he rewarded that decision with a .452 slugging average, just seven percentage points behind Manush.

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In time, Manush, Goslin, and Cronin all would be inducted into Cooperstown, as would 43-year-old reserve outfielder Sam Rice, a hero of Washington’s two previous pennant winners in 1924 and 1925.

The pitching staff lacks similar star-power, but it did feature a pair of 20-game winners. Alvin ‘General’ Crowder, who got his nickname from the World War I draft boss Gen. Enoch Crowder, went 24-15 in 52 appearances, 35 of them starts. Left-hander Earl Whitehill compiled a 22-8 record in 37 starts.

In time, the on-field deeds of all those players would be eclipsed by the battlefield accomplishments of a 19-year-old reserve on that Senators team. Infielder Cecil Travis would play in just 18 games that season but would become a three-time All-Star in his own right before being inducted into the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor.

Seeing combat during the Battle of the Bulge, he sustained two frostbitten toes that required amputation, hampering his ability to continue his career post-war. Travis retired in 1947 with a lifetime .314 batting average and the realization that the war had knocked out three and one-half of his prime seasons.

In that 1933 World Series, the Senators ran up against superior Giants pitching in the form of left-hander Carl Hubbell, possibly the best pitcher of the time. A 23-game regular season winner, Hubbell beat the Senators 4-2 in the Series opener at the Polo Grounds and beat them again 2-1 in the fourth game at Griffith Stadium.

Whitehill delivered Washington’s only victory in the third game. In the deciding fifth game, New York held a 3-0 lead until the Senators tied the game in the bottom of the sixth on outfielder Fred Schulte’s three-run home run off Hal Schumacher.

But the game continued scoreless until the 10th inning when Giants slugger Mel Ott provided a controversial winning run. He slammed a low line drive toward some temporary seats in deep center field. Schulte raced after the ball and got a glove on it, but toppled into the seats and lost control of he ball, which bounced down an aisleway. The hit was initially ruled a ground-rule double, but following an umpire conference that call was changed and was Ott permitted to circle the bases.

In the bottom of the 10th, Giants veteran Dolf Luque struck out Washington first baseman Joey Kuhel while Cronin represented the tying run at second base to end the game.

Next. Nationals: Why Expos fans should celebrate. dark

It was the kind of disappointment with which Washington Nationals fans have become familiar in recent seasons.

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