Aerial shot of Griffith Stadium. Not taken by me. Notice the odd shape of the wall in center field. Griffith, originally named Nationals Park, was built in 1911 to replace the older stadium that burned down in March of that year. The new concrete and steel stadium was completed in three weeks. Later they added a second deck beyond each foul pole, but they were not connected to the main grandstand because the seats were at a steeper pitch. They also needed additional land for bleachers. Notice the odd notch in the outfield wall by the flagpole? One landowner, who had five duplex houses in a lot next to dead center field, refused to sell. Or maybe asked for a ridiculous price. The Senators told the guy to pound sand – or whatever the vernacular for that was in 1911 – and decided instead to have the big indentation in the center field wall. It added character.
Another really old shot. This pre-dated my visit by probably 20 years.
Boy, do these shots look ancient. Because they are. Griffith Stadium was only one year older than Fenway Park, Boston, but looked about 50 years older. The above shots were not taken by me. Below is the same angle in 1958.
These shots were taken by my brother Hugh on the day we went, April 14, 1958. He was using a Kodak Brownie camera that you had to hold at your waist and then look at the subject upside down. The only difference you see in the right field grandstand between the 1930s picture above and the 1958 shot is the light tower. In the first “new” shot you see shortstop Don Buddin (#1). One baseball writer joked that Buddin, who had made 15 errors at short the year before and two more that day, should get the license plate E6. Good line, but Massachusetts didn’t have vanity plates back then. Behind him you see 1st base coach Jack Burns (#31), who played 1st for the St. Louis Browns in the 30s and Rudy York (#34), who played for the Tigers in the 30s and early 40s and was the 1st baseman for the Red Sox in the 1946 World Series, hitting two home runs.
The backstory.
We had a family vacation to Washington DC during April school vacation week. Most states have vacation in March, but Massachusetts and Maine have it in February, the week of Washington’s Birthday, and again in April, the week of Patriot’s Day. Why April vacation, you ask? In Massachusetts Patriot’s Day is a holiday because of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Preserved in memory by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:”Listen my children, and you shall hear…of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…One if by land, and two if by sea, and I on the opposite shore shall be…ready to ride and spread the alarm…” The Boston Marathon is held on Patriot’s Day. Thus the title for the Mark Wahlberg movie about the 2013 bombing. And why Maine also? When Patriot’s Day was established in the 1800s Maine was still part of Massachusetts.
Back to 1958.
The whole family…my parents, Hubie and Barbara Kelley, older brother Hugh, younger brother Peter and sister Barbara…drove down. I-95 wasn’t around back then, so we were on US Route 1 pretty much the whole way. Very slow going. We stayed overnight at the Ship Ahoy motel in Sea Bright New Jersey. They had cardboard ice buckets that were printed to look like wood. I developed an earache during the night and threw up in one of them. This made for tired and annoyed parents during the second day of he drive to DC.
There’s nothing quite like the back of a postcard to bring back those fond memories.
When we got out of Baltimore and my father hit the B-W Parkway, a four-lane expressway with no stop lights, he tromped on it and hit 60 MPH. My mother announced that we were going “a mile a minute” which to me sounded like jet propulsion.
We visited all the DC stuff.
A tour of the White House, the Smithsonian, Ford’s Theatre and the Peterson House across the street, the Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the FBI (where I decided I’d like to be an FBI agent) and the Capitol. We rode in a special subway that goes from the Capitol to the Senate Office Building. Dad took us up to the office of US Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass). “Salty” had been a two-term Governor of Massachusetts and a US Senator for 22 years. My father went in and talked to the Senator for what seemed like an hour, and Hugh and I sat in the lobby, bored to tears. When Dad finally emerged from Salty’s office he had four front row tickets to Opening Day at DC’s Griffith Stadium, where the Washington Senators were hosting the Boston Red Sox.
Years later (as in 52 years later) my wife Kathy and I were in DC for the Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity.
We stayed at the Capital Hilton, and just after checking in we decided to get a bite in the restaurant. It was called Statler’s. I asked the waitperson if this hotel is the same one that used to be called the Statler Hilton, and she said yes, that’s why the restaurant has that name. After lunch I walked into the lobby and saw a corridor heading out to K Street and took a picture. I sent it to my brother Hugh and asked if he recognized it. He did not, so I told him that this is the same corridor where he and I chased Ted Williams out of the hotel.
The fun part from 1958.
The reason Hugh and I got to chase Ted Williams was that we were staying the Statler Hilton, and lo and behold, guess who else is staying at that hotel? The Red Sox! This was like a delayed Christmas present. Not only were we going to the game, but we’re staying under the same roof. Hugh and I were running around the lobby hoping to get an autograph or two…and we did get pitchers Tom Brewer, Frank Sullivan and shortstop Billy Klaus. And then….and then…whom do we see in the middle of the lobby but…the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived. He looked like he was eight feet tall. Of course, I was only 9 at the time and way less than four feet tall. Hugh and I wanted to get a Teddy Ballgame autograph, but he wanted no part of it. (That statue of him outside of Gate B at Fenway Park putting a baseball cap on a little kid was someone’s dream, but I’m sure it never actually happened.)
We wound up chasing Ted down that hallway where he rushed outside and hopped in a cab.
Game Day.
I saved my scorebook for future use in a scrapbook, but over time it got moldy and the pages are stuck together.
The seats were Bob Eucker seats. As in front row, 3rd base side. Can you imagine getting Opening Day tickets in Row 1 for $2 each?
This was my first ballpark other than Fenway. I did not appreciate until years later that you couldn’t just waltz in and get front row Opening Day tickets. Dad, Mom, Hugh and I went. President Eisenhower threw out the first pitch from the front row next to the 1st base dugout. The starting pitcher was Frank Sullivan, who’s autograph we got the night before. The error-prone Don Buddin hit leadoff and made two errors. Batting in the 2-hole, as sportswriters like to say, and playing 1st base, was Pete Runnels, whom the Sox had just picked up in a trade with the Sentaors. He later won the AL Batting Championship for Boston in 1960 and again in 1962. Next up, batting third, was…left fielder Gene Stephens? Wait… What?? Ted Williams is supposed to be batting 3rd and playing left. We know that Ted is in town because Hugh and I chased him out to the sidewalk and he jumped in a cab to get away from us. Maybe we really scared him off and he told the cab driver to just get him away somewhere…anywhere.
Frank Sullivan went 6 innings and gave up 5 runs, but only two were earned. The other 3 came on the Buddin errors. Frank also doubled (this was well in advance of the DH rule). The Sox runs came on a double by right fielder Jackie Jensen. For Washington, Pedro Ramos pitched a complete game, giving up only two runs. Ramos was from Pinar Del Rio, Cuba, where Kathy and I visited in 2017 on Trump’s first day in office (we not only left the country, we went to a Communist country). But in 1958 Castro had not yet taken over and Pedro Ramos and other Cuban ballplayers were free to come and go as they wished.
Back then ballparks had no video boards, no walkup music, no “make some noise” messages. Just a black and white scoreboard. The PA guy only announced batters during their first at-bat. After that you were expected the follow along by scoring the game. Which I tried to do. I’d show you my scorecard in the book shown above, but it got moldy and the pages are stuck together.
With no Teddy Ballgame in the ball game there were no mighty Teddy swings to send one flying into the back yards of the five duplexes sticking into center field. Final score: Washington 5, Boston 2. We’ll be back to wrap it up after these quick words from our sponsors.
We had arrived early and got to park up close, but there were no “easy in-easy out” signs and cars were parked bumper-to-bumper. It took about an hour to get out of the lot.
You’re a little vague on the Senators?
The team had been in the American Association in the late 1880s and moved to the National League in the 1890s when the National League absorbed the AA. In anticipation of the new American League debuting in 1901, the NL dropped four teams for 1900, and the Senators were one of them. They reappeared as one of the eight charter teams in the new American League. Starting In 1905 the nickname Nationals or Nats became a favorite of writers and fans, but the uniform just had a W and Senators was the official name. Early on they were one of the better MLB teams, winning the World Series in 1924 and appearing again in 1925 and 1933. But it was downhill from there. Newspaper scribes frequently roasted them: “Washington…first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.”
Years later, when I started chronicling my Ballpark Tour, my brother handed me my ticket stub and a couple of “snaps” from a Brownie camera as seen above.
What ever happened to the Washington Senators, you ask?
They finished in last place that year, and again the next year. In 1960 they finished in 5th place, but still 24 games behind the Yankees. The following year, 1961, they gave up on DC after 85 years and moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul to become the Minnesota Twins. They were immediately replaced by a new expansion Washington Senators, who wound up being even worse than the original Senators. After only 11 seasons they too blew town, and moved to Arlington, Texas where they became the Texas Rangers.
The Nation’s Capital went without a baseball team for 33 years. Finally, in 2005, the Montreal Expos moved to DC and became the Washington Nationals. In their 15th season they ended the longest championship drought any city had faced – 94 years – and won the 2019 World Series.
Today it is the site of the Howard University Hospital.
