10/31/2019
Last night the Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros in a magnificent seven-game World Series. My father, Judge Wilmer Hunt, loved baseball especially the hometown Houston Astros. He and I went to many games going back to when they were the Houston Colt 45s. He would have been very happy to have seen the Astros win the 2017 Series. But I think he would have been equally happy at last night’s Washington Nationals victory.
Dad got his undergraduate degree at Georgetown University in D.C. He was in the class of 1924 and would certainly have attended series games that year to see the Washington Senators to prevail behind their star pitcher Walter Johnson affectionately know as “The Big Train,” He spoke of watching Johnson many times, and of his team’s duals with the Yankee’s Babe Ruth and Detroit’s Ty Cobb.
Here’s a Wikipedia report of the last series the Washington team won.
1924: World champions
Washington’s Bucky Harris scores on his home run in the fourth inning of Game 7 of the 1924 World Series.
In 1924, Griffith named 27-year-old second baseman Bucky Harris player-manager. Led by the hitting of Goose Goslin and Sam Rice, and a solid pitching staff headlined by the 36-year-old Johnson, the Senators captured their first American League pennant, two games ahead of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees.
The Senators faced John McGraw’s heavily favored New York Giants in the 1924 World Series.[11] 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 baseman Freddie Lindstrom. Two runners scored on the play, tying the score at three.[12] 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 twelfth inning, Muddy Ruel hit a high foul ball near home plate.[13] 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.[13] On the next pitch, Ruel hit a double and, then proceeded to score the winning run when Earl McNeely hit a ground ball that took another bad hop over Lindstrom’s head.[12][13] It was the only World Series triumph for the franchise during their 60-year tenure in Washington.
