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By Theodore
Fischer, Sidewalk
Ancient baseball. The
Potomac Base-ball Club, organized in 1859, played home games in the White
Lot on the Ellipse near the White House, where, after the Civil
War, President Andrew Johnson watched the National Athletic Club play.
D.C.'s first enclosed park, the Olympic Grounds (17th and S streets
N.W.), was the 500-seat home of the Washington Olympics in 1872 and 1873
and the Washington Nationals in 1874. Capitol Park, on the Senate
side of the Capitol grounds on what is now the site of the Taft
Memorial (Capitol Avenue between F and G streets), was the home of an
early National League incarnation of the Senators from 1886 to 1889.
In 1892 the Senators played at National Park at the Boundary
(Seventh Street and Florida Avenue N.W.), later the site of Griffith
Stadium. After being ousted from the National League (for lousy
attendance) in 1899, the Senators joined the new American League and
played at American League Park (14th Street and Bladensburg Road
N.E.), where E. Lawrence Phillips, using a megaphone, became baseball's
first public-address announcer.
Griffith
Stadium. In
1903 the Senators moved back to National Park (and played some
games at American League Park), which was destroyed by a fire in 1911 and
replaced by the stadium that would be renamed after Senators player and
owner Clark Griffith. The Senators were perennial doormats
("Washington: first in war, first in peace, last in the American
League"), but they had moments in the sun. On April 14, 1910,
President William Howard Taft inaugurated a baseball tradition by throwing
out the first ball of the season. The Senators won their only World Series
in 1924 (against the New York Giants), near the end of the career of their
greatest player, Walter Johnson. Johnson was a right-hander who won 417
games (second on baseball's career list) between 1907 and 1927 and still
holds the career shutouts record (110). A memorial to Johnson from
Griffith Stadium is now located at Walter Johnson High School in
Bethesda (6400 Rock Spring Rd.).
Griffith Stadium was also the site of what some say is the longest home
run: Mickey Mantle's homer went an estimated 565 feet on April 17, 1953,
and landed in the back yard at 434 Oakdale St. N.W. (the house is now
boarded up). The Senators (along with at various times the Potomacs,
Pilots, Elite Giants, Washington Homestead Grays and Black Senators, all
of the Negro leagues) occupied the stadium until the end of the 1960
season, when the Griffith family transformed the Senators into the
Minnesota Twins. The stadium was demolished in 1965, and since 1971, the
site has been occupied by the Howard University Hospital. No marker
indicates that the stadium ever existed.
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. After one season at Griffith
Stadium, a Washington Senators expansion team and a memorial to Clark
Griffith were transplanted to brand-new District of Columbia Stadium for
the 1962 season. President John F. Kennedy threw out the first ball at the
stadium that would be renamed after his brother. After 10 nondescript
seasons, owner Bob Short spirited the team off to Arlington, Texas. The
team's most memorable moment occurred on Sept. 30, 1971, when angry fans
swarmed onto the field, ripped up the bases, tore up the turf – and
forced the Senators to forfeit the last major-league game ever played in
the District.
See also: Baseball bars and memorabilia |
