Will the Senators Finally Win?
Can they lose every game in my 1949 replay?
Will the Senators Finally Win?
The 1949 Senators were bad. And by bad I mean horrible.
How bad were they? This headline appeared in the Evening Star sports section on April 29, 1949:
The commentary under this heading seems just brutal:
In other words, it isn’t just the replay Senators. This was legitimately a bad team.
Late Drama
It took a while for anything to happen in this one.
Yankees ace Vic Raschi blanked the Senators through 7. On the other side, Paul Calvert for the hometown Senators managed to hold the Yankees offense at bay, giving up no runs through 8.
Something had to give eventually.
It actually started off with Calvert in the bottom of the 8th. He walked on 5 pitches, only the 3rd walk given up by Raschi all afternoon. And that set the stage for Bud Stewart:
Hitting “the crud out of the ball” usually refers to a long home run, but apparently not in Stewart’s case. His base hit was solid, but the slow-footed Calvert was forced to stop at second.
Still, we had two on with nobody out. Up came Eddie Robinson:
With that, the spell was broken, and the Senators had a rare 2-0 lead.
Though Washington didn’t manage to advance Robinson at all after this, they went into the top of the 9th clinging to that close 2-0 margin.
With one out, Hank Bauer came up for the Yankees:
Sam Dente’s error was the first of the entire game, which is also a bit surprising. Bobby Brown flied out, however, which brought up Raschi’s spot. The computer manager decided to lift Raschi (the correct move), putting in Gus Niarhos to pinch hit:
In a flash, Dente had redeemed himself, and the Senators were now 1-10.
It’s amazing that New York couldn’t string together enough hits to score. Calvert pitched well, walking only 1 while striking out 4. And perhaps the Senators should continue to hit Stewart and Robinson at the top of the order.
Daniel,
The 1949 Senators were, indeed, horrible. But, their total ineptitude wasn't evident for the first 3 months of the season. I grew up in Silver Spring, MD, a Washington DC suburb. My father was friends with Shirley Povich (Maury's father) who covered the Senators for the Washington Post and was considered the Dean of Washington sportswriters. In the mid-1950's, Shirley wrote a history of the Senators and gave my dad an autographed copy for me which I treasured.
One thing I remember from that book is a section on the 1949 Senators. They took their first western road trip in early May on which they had a 10-game winning streak, losing only the final game to the Tigers. According to Povich, the team returned home to a large welcoming throng at Union Station. Fans carried signs such as "Drink a toast to Eddie Yost" and "We'll Win Plenty With Sam Dente." The team went 18-10 in May and 10-16 in June.
At the end of June, their record was a not completely awful 31-35. After that, it was a disaster. From July-October, the Nats were 19-69. They finished at 50-104, three games behind the almost equally inept St. Louis Browns. With the exceptions of the 1946, 1952 and 1953 seasons the Senators were pretty much the dregs of the AL from the end of World War II until they left for Minnesota after the 1960 season, but the 1949 version was the worst of a bad lot.