The Nats and the Greys David E. Hubler & Joshua H. Drazen

The Nats and the Grays

“Baseball has always been in David Hubler’s bones. A Bronx boy, he grew up in 1950s in the shadow of Yankee Stadium and has lived and worked in the Washington area for much of his adult life.”

Except for a few years in the mid-1920s, Washington’s major league baseball team could hardly be described as a powerhouse before, during, and especially after World War II. But whether they were called the Senators, the Nationals, or simply the Nats, the Washington franchise and its owner experienced the war from a front row box seat. The close relationship between the prairie-bred entrepreneur Clark Griffith, frequently known as the Old Fox, and the New York patrician President Franklin D. Roosevelt played an important, if often backstage role in decisions that affected the team but more importantly, the national pastime itself. Roosevelt’s White House door was usually open to the baseball executive because, as author Richard Goldstein writes in his book, Spartan Seasons, “The seventy-year-old owner of the Senators had built a friendly relation-ship with the president beginning in 1917 when, as the wartime assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt marched to the flagpole on the opening day of the baseball season

in step with the Griffith-managed Washington team. ‘The Old Fox’ would do some quiet lobbying at the White House.”Yet, despite the closeness of the pair, the Washington franchise was not exempt from placing some of its members in harm’s way or temporarily losing several key players who actively participated in winning the war, and in one case shortening an outstanding diamond career.

The ties between Washington baseball and Washington government predated the U.S. entry into World War II when the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Indeed, the nation –and the team in the person of one Washington backup catcher – had begun preparations for the conflict – emotionally and militarily –much earlier, even before Nazi armies swept into Poland on September 1, 1939. Soon after the 1934 baseball season ended, with Washington in its all-too familiar place near the bottom of the eight-team American League with a 66-86 record, backstop Moe Berg – described by Casey Stengel as “the strangest man ever to play baseball” – joined an all-star team that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Lefty Gomez for what was Berg’s second exhibition tour of Japan. Berg had first visited Japan in the winter of 1932 to teach catching techniques to young Japanese players as a member of a three-player American delegation. Always a good defensive catcher, on April 21, 1934, Berg set an AL record catching117 consecutive games without an error. That season was a personal high for Berg at the plate as well. He hit .244, one point higher than his career average.

Now in Japan again in 1934, Berg’s familiarity with the Japanese language (but not fluency as some writers have claimed) and his proclivity to “go native” by wearing a kimono in public allowed him to roam freely about the streets. He took photos and panoramic movies of Tokyo and environs, a highly dangerous activity in an insular country that prohibited “spying” of any kind, especially photography, and was growing ever-more suspicious of Westerners. Upon the group’s return to the United States, Berg collected his photos along with some taken by his touring teammates and turned them over to U.S. military officials. Within less than a year after the U.S. went to war against Japan, General Jimmy Doolittle’s pilots reportedly viewed Berg’s photos to help them become familiar with their target areas before taking off on the famous “Doolittle Raid” on Tokyo on April 18, 1942.

During the war, Berg, the former Princeton scholar and graduate of the Sorbonne and Columbia University Law School – described by his teammates as a man who could speak a dozen languages, but couldn’t hit in any one of them – worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. Among Berg’s OSS missions was to parachute into Yugoslavia to ascertain the strength of the anti-Nazi Chetniks loyal to King Peter and the communist partisans led by Josip Broz Tito. On another mission, posing as a German businessman in Switzerland, Berg met Werner Heisenberg, the 1932 Nobel Prize winner in physics and a prominent German scientist suspected of working on designing an atomic bomb for the Nazi regime. If OSS suspicions were correct, Berg’s orders

were to assassinate the scientist and then take a cyanide capsule to avoid capture. The astute catcher, who was fluent in German, had boned up on atomic physics for his mission. After listening to a lecture given by Heisenberg, Berg concluded that the Germans were not close to developing the atomic bomb. As a result of Berg’s scientific assessment, both men survived the war, and each went on to claim fame in their individual fields: Heisenberg became one of the world’s most influential figures in nuclear physics, cited in everything from documentaries on television’s The History Channel to the acclaimed AMC TV show “Breaking Bad.” Heisenberg died of cancer at his home in Germany on February 1, 1976. Berg, often called the “smartest baseball player ever,” never married. He had no close friends or known romantic attachments. Although he attended many major league games in New York in later life, he remained a virtual recluse and an enigma until his death in Newark, N.J., in 1972. His extramural career in wartime espionage is enshrined in D.C.’s Spy Museum and was also included in an OSS exhibition at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Some might say that major league baseball survived the war unscathed even if the quality of play was somewhat diminished during the approximately three and a half years that the United States was involved in the conflict. Also, of the more than 500 major leaguers who served in the U.S. military during the war, only two were killed in action. One of them played, however briefly, for Washington. He was centerfielder Elmer Gedeon. The Cleveland native was born on April 15, 1917, attended the University of Michigan, and played in just five games for Washington in 1939. His 15 at-bats included three hits, one run batted in, no home runs, and a very mediocre .200 batting average. Sent down in 1940 to Washington’s Class B affiliate Charlotte of the Piedmont League, Gedeon appeared in 131 games, upping his stats to 127 hits, 11 home runs, and a .271 bat-ting average. He was then drafted into the Army Air Corps and served first as a B-25 navigator before getting his wings as a B-26 pilot. (Due to a high crash rate of early models, the B-26 acquired several negative nick-names including the Widow Maker, The Flying Prostitute, and One a Day in Tampa Bay.) Gedeon’s twin-engine Martin Marauder B-26 bomber was shot down over France on April 20, 1944, killing him along with most of his crew. Gedeon is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, only a few miles from where Griffith Stadium stood, home of the franchise from 1911 through 1960.

Being co-located in the nation’s capital along with the Congress, the White House, and the five-sided U.S. Armed Forces citadel, the Pentagon, Washington’s baseball franchise led by its wily owner Clark Griffith, alone among the then 16 major league teams, was uniquely positioned to play an important wartime role of influencing top decision-makers. The team –almost universally known before and after the war as the Washington Senators – actually had a different name, the Nationals (as in their current namesake, which is now playing in the National League at Nationals Park, which opened in 2008). Here’s how that happened:

In its founding years of the late 19th century, the Washington baseball club, like so many other teams, changed names, cities, and leagues with chaotic regularity. Among Washington’s 19th century nicknames were the Washingtons, the Statesmen, the Olympics, the Nationals, and from 1892 to 1899, the Senators, a National League franchise. In addition, those early Washington teams played in a number of different ballparks. Examples include the Olympic Grounds, capacity 500 and home to the Washington Olympics of the National Association in 1871. Later, as an expansion member of the American Association and when the league grew to 12 teams in 1884 to become the Union Association, the team was called the Washington Nationals. However, the bloated Union Association quickly folded and the Washington franchise moved into the Eastern League in 1885, winning the pennant with a 72-24 record. The team then jumped to the major National League as the Senators, (aka the Statesmen) in 1886, taking one of the spots vacated by the collapse of the Buffalo, N.Y., and Providence, R.I., franchises. There the Senators remained, playing between 1886 and 1899, first in colorfully named Swampoodle Grounds. But the Washington Senators folded when the National League contracted from 12 teams to eight after the 1899 season. Little wonder too, because between 1892 and 1899 the Senators finished no higher than seventh place.

The next iteration of the Washington Senators came in 1901 as a founding member of the new American League, where they continued their tradition as a perennial second division team by finishing sixth that inaugural season. The newly formed competitor of the established National League had been the brainchild of three of baseball’s iconic figures – Ban Johnson, a former sportswriter who became the American League’s first president; Charlie Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox; and Griffith, the only man who has ever played for, managed and owned a major league team for 20 years or more in each of those categories. The new Senators played in what was called American League Park I from 1901 to 1903, before the grounds were moved to Florida Avenue and Seventh Street and known as American League Park II, where the outfield included a dog house near the flagpole which housed the Stars and Stripes before and after the games but had no actual canine resident. As author Philip J. Lowry recounts in his history of American baseball parks, Green Cathedrals, the groundskeeper one day failed to close the doghouse door. “It just so happened that a Washington batter hit a line drive that afternoon over the head of Philadelphia Athletics center fielder Socks Seybold and the ball rolled inside the Dog House. Seybold stuck his head and shoulders inside to get the ball and promptly got stuck in the Dog House. Three minutes later, A’s teammates got Socks out, but the batter had long since crossed home plate with the only inside-the-dog-house homer in Major League history.”

Through the 1904 American League season, when Washington lost 113 games against only 38 wins, the team’s worst record ever, the team nickname was the Senators. But in 1905, the franchise officially changed it to the Nationals, “not wanting to confuse fans with the previous franchise,” as the

official team website explains. It’s more likely, however, that the club wanted to erase for itself (and for its fans) all remembrances of things past. But that was not to be thanks to sportswriter Charles Dryden, whose clever description of the last-place 1909 Senators as “Washington – first in war, first in peace and last in the American League,” stuck with the club for decades. From 1905 through the 1911 season the Nationals never finished higher than seventh in the eight-team league. On March 17, 1911, the team’s luck changed when a fire allegedly started by a workman burned down the wooden stands at American League Park II and damaged the field. But the loss of the single-tier structure and the team’s perpetual seasons in or near the American League cellar opened the door for Clark Griffith and led to his lifelong association with the team as its owner and as the go-to leader keeping major league baseball alive during World War II.

Many Washington fans and even many members of the media never knew or truly accepted the team’s actual Nationals nickname, although there is a paper trail to prove it. Copies of several historic documents sent to the authors by local TV sportscaster Phil Wood form a timeline that provides proof positive that the Nationals was the true team nickname: a scorecard from a 1914 home game between the Nationals and the Philadelphia Athletics, the front page of the Nationals’ 1937 Orlando, Fla., spring training guide, the official 1945 Nationals roster, and the cover of the 1956 Nationals Press Guide. Yet, even after the club incorporated “Nationals” into its jersey logo in the early 1950s, the name failed to gain traction, perhaps because so many sportswriters and the popular baseball chewing gum cards insisted on calling them the Senators. (This was before team logos and nicknames were copyrighted items and huge money-making commodities, emblazoned on everything from replica team jerseys, jackets, and caps to children’s lunch boxes, underwear, and even pet clothing.)

Thus to most of the baseball world, including the general public and a good portion of the working press, they were the Senators – or just the Nats, a nickname that was conveniently short for headline purposes and that also could refer to either name, Nats as in short for Nationals and also as short for Senators, found in the middle of the word. The official nickname remained the Nationals until 1957, when the team gave up trying to bend the popular will and the franchise officially became the Washington Senators once again. However, according to Phil Wood, the name Senators didn’t appear on the jerseys until 1959. But that rebranding effort was short-lived, a true exercise in futility, as the franchise, now with a roster of young talent including Harmon Killebrew and Bob Allison, moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul after the 1960 season and became the Minnesota Twins.

The following season, 1961, the first expansion in American League history added the Los Angeles Angels and the new Washington Senators. Both franchises were stocked with aging or castoff players taken from a list of eligible players from both leagues. They played only their inaugural season at Griffith Stadium – finishing tied for ninth place with the Kansas City Athletics with 61 wins and 100 losses, 47½ games behind Yankees. In 1962, the

Senators moved into their final home in the nation’s capital, D.C. Stadium, later renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Between 1962 and 1968, the Nats finished tenth, tenth, ninth, eighth, eighth, sixth, and tenth –never reaching even a .500 season.

They did see some daylight in 1969, when they finished fourth and again in 1971, their last in D.C., when they again squeaked into the first division of the 10-team league, this time finishing fifth but with a losing record of 63-96. Perhaps like Icarus, that year too they flew too close to the sun only to crash and burn. In September, Senators’ owner Bob Short received approval from Major League Baseball to move to Arlington, Texas, for the 1972 season and play as the Texas Rangers. Washington fans were so incensed by a second betrayal and loss of their team that they streamed onto the field in the ninth inning of the final home with the Senators leading the New York Yankees, 75, with two men out. The game was thus forfeited to New York, a fitting coda for the short-lived franchise, and the nation’s capital was again left without Major League Baseball, not to return for more than three decades.

The current Washington Nationals are a Canadian import, formerly the Montreal Expos, a National League expansion team founded in 1969. But unlike its fellow expansion Canadian club, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Expos failed to create a sustaining presence north of the border despite some very good years, and a roster that included stellar players including four future Hall of Famers, catcher Gary Carter, outfielder Andre Dawson, Frank Robinson (who became the new Nationals first manager after also managing the Expos), and former Expos manager Dick Williams. The Expos franchise and all of its baseball records were transferred to the new Lerner ownership group in Washington, D.C., in 2005, which – flying in the face of superstition, a baseball staple – again chose the nickname Nationals. So far the team has outperformed its namesake and, after a poor first few years, has steadily ridded itself of its former image as a perennial loser.* Gone forever (it is to be hoped) is the specter of the perennial loser, the Senators. So no matter what other baseball histories may call the team, for the few years under scrutiny in this book, unless within a quoted passage, we will refer to Washington’s wartime team by its proper nickname, the Nationals.

Authors’ Note: Since "The Nats and the Grays" was first published in 2015, the team won the 2019 World Series beating the Houston Astros in seven games, the hometown team's first championship since 1924, after a 95-year hiatus.

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