A fast track to greatness

August 1, 2007 / Dick Heller

"The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup — and then something went past me that made me flinch. I hardly saw the pitch, but I heard it. The thing just hissed with danger. Every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ballpark."
— Ty Cobb, 1961

One hundred years ago tomorrow, Walter Johnson made his major league debut with the Washington Senators at old American League Park in Northwest. Although he lost to the powerful Detroit Tigers, it was the most auspicious debut in the city's sporting history.

Over the next 20 years Johnson won 417 games for frequently inept Washington teams. Armed with arguably the fastest fastball ever, he tossed a record 110 shutouts. He had a lifetime ERA of 2.17. He struck out 3,509 batters, then a record. He became a national hero in one of the most dramatic seventh games in World Series history in 1924. He was a charter member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.

Better still, he was a modest, gracious man beloved by teammates and opponents alike — even the fiery Ty Cobb. He spent nearly four decades in the Washington area as a gentleman farmer and local icon before his death from brain cancer at age 59 on Dec. 10, 1946. After his playing career, he managed the Senators and Cleveland Indians and worked briefly as a play-by-play broadcaster. He even ran for Congress as a Maryland Republican in 1940, possibly because he couldn't say no to his supporters. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he lost.

And it all started Aug. 2, 1907. As usual, the Senators were last with a 28-58 record, while the Tigers were locked in a four-way battle for first place. Yet a throng of 11,000 overflowed the wooden ballpark because Johnson's arrival had been well heralded.

After an old teammate of Senators manager Joe Cantillon raved about Johnson nonstop, the skipper had sent injured catcher Cliff Blankenship west to scout outfielder Clyde Milan and the 19-year-old right-hander, who was amassing incredible strikeout totals in a local league in Weiser, Idaho. This was perhaps the most successful scouting foray in baseball history, considering Milan batted .285 over 16 seasons with the Senators, but Blankenship was an unhappy camper at its outset.

According to the pitcher's grandson and 1995 biographer, Henry W. Thomas, Blankenship griped, "I've got to go up to Idaho and inspect some pitcher named Johnson. He's probably some big busher who isn't even worth the carfare to scout."

Once he got a look, Blankenship became the first major leaguer who was amazed at Johnson's incredible speed. How fast did he throw in those days long before radar guns? "Hard to tell, but I'd guess 110, 115 miles per hour," Thomas said recently.

At any rate, Blankenship gave Johnson a train ticket to Washington and babbled over the telephone to Cantillon. Undoubtedly glad to defray attention from his terrible team, the manager alerted the press a savior was on the way. The Washington Post promptly printed these headlines:

SECURES A PHENOM

Cantillon Signs Young Pitcher With Wonderful Record. Johnson His Name and He Hails From the Wooly West.

Then everybody sat back and waited.

"If this fellow is everything they say he is, we won't have to use but two men in a game, a catcher and Johnson," Cantillon told reporters. "He strikes out most of the men, so why have an infield and an outfield?"

Johnson arrived at Union Station on the evening of July 26 after a four-day train ride from the "wooly West" and took a streetcar to the Regent Hotel near the White House, where Cantillon and two umpires were sitting on the porch trying to catch a cool breeze.

"Is this the place where the Washington ballplayers stay?" Johnson asked.

"Only the good ones," replied Cantillon, a noted jokester.

"Then I guess this is no place for me," Johnson said, picking up his suitcase.

"And who might you be?" Cantillon asked.

"My name is Walter Johnson."

Cantillon leaped to his feet and greeted the young man. A bit later, he inquired, "And how is your control, Johnson?"

"I don't know, sir. I never [had to use] any where I was."

Johnson's daughter, Carolyn Thomas, now 84, harbors a remarkable bit of memorabilia in her home off Connecticut Avenue NW: A blue "Mark Twain Scrap Book" that includes the following in Johnson's hand: "Arrived in D.C. Friday evening July 26, 1907."

It was Johnson's only entry in the ledger, which subsequently was kept and updated by his mother.

"He never talked about his baseball career," Carolyn Thomas said recently. "If you didn't know he had been a player, you would never have found out from him. But he was a great family man."

A few days after hitting town, Johnson pitched batting practice. The first man he faced was Jim Delahanty, one of five brothers who would play in the major leagues. After taking two pitches, he returned to the bench and sat down.

"What has he got? Has he got a fast one?" Cantillon asked.

Replied Delahanty: "No human being ever threw a ball so fast before."

With two other pitchers injured, Cantillon announced Johnson would start against Detroit in the first game of a doubleheader Aug. 2. The hard-hitting Tigers were momentarily delighted. "We took it as a big gift," Cobb recalled years later. "He was only a rookie, and we licked our lips as we warmed up."

When the game started, the Tigers did everything they could to rattle the rook. "One of us imitated a cow mooing, and we hollered to Cantillon. 'Get your pitchfork ready, Joe — your hayseed's on his way back to the barn,' " Cobb said.

Johnson, pitching effortlessly sidearm, began with a called strike to Tigers outfielder Davy Jones — "the fastest ball I ever saw," Jones would say — and retired the side in order.

"We were most respectful now — in fact, awed — and there was only one answer," Cobb said. So in the second inning, the Tigers began bunting. Cobb and Claude Rossman dragged the ball past the perplexed newcomer, and Cobb scored the first run on a wild throw.

The Senators tied the score in the sixth inning, but in the eighth Tigers slugger Sam Crawford blasted an inside-the-park home run to left field for a 2-1 lead. In the bottom of the inning, Blankenship pinch-hit for the pitcher, and Johnson's debut was over. Detroit eventually won 3-2 and swept the doubleheader to move into first place, but the fans and newspapers hailed Johnson's performance. So did the Tigers, with Cobb urging tightfisted owner Frank Navin to buy Johnson "even if he costs you $25,000." Of course, the Senators weren't selling.

Five days later, Johnson beat a contending Cleveland club 7-2 for his first victory. He finished his abbreviated rookie season with a 5-9 record (and a 1.88 ERA!). The following season, at 20, he gained national attention when he shut out the New York Highlanders three times in four days. He won 25 games each in 1910 and 1911 for poor Washington teams.

When the Senators suddenly became a contender in 1912 under new manager Clark Griffith, Johnson won 33 games. The following year he won 36, and now there was no question as to the identity of baseball's best pitcher.

Henry Thomas was only a few months old when his grandfather died, but extensive research into Johnson's life while preparing his biography enables Thomas to say, "I felt like I knew him — he wasn't a particularly complicated individual. When I was growing up, people would refer to him as a great pitcher. Then I learned he was the great pitcher."

And still is.

Carolyn Johnson Thomas and her son, Henry, can relive Walter Johnson's heroic feats in many scrapbooks. (Nancy Pastor / The Washington Times)