Washington Nationals One Win Away From Clinching NL East Title

"... With the win, the Washington Senators clinched the first pennant in D.C. baseball history. According to the Washington Post's Frank H. Young's report, the 15,000 fans in attendance in Boston cheered Washington's win, in part, because it helped the Senators beat the hated-even-then New York Yankees and in part, as AP baseball writer Frederick J. Frommer wrote in an October 2010 article, because, "... the underdog Senators were national sentimental favorites that year," and, "Fans were especially pulling for Walter Johnson, by then 36 years old and at the end of his career, to finally make it to the World Series."

"As Mr. Frommer wrote in the article, the humorist Will Rogers noted at the time, in 1924, that there was, '... more genuine interest in [Johnson] than there is in a presidential election." The pennant-clinching win left the Senators 92-61, having claimed the first American League crown after 23 years of futility on the part of the franchise which had resulted in the oft-repeated description of the team as being, "First in war, first in peace and last in the American League."

"As Washington Post writer William Gildea wrote in a March 1999 article on the last century of Senators' history, not many people saw the 1924 Senators coming. 'Even in the spring of 1924,' Mr. Gildea wrote, 'virtually no one imagined that the Senators – then referred to as the Nationals, or Nats – would win their first pennant by displacing the Babe Ruth-led New York Yankees.'

"Well, one person did actually. After he was named the manager in February of 1924, Bucky Harris, "'... vowed that the team would win the pennant," Mr. Gildea noted.

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Washington Nationals One Win Away From Clinching NL East Pennant sbnation.com/e/3201181

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