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VIDEO: A Washington team once beat the Giants. It's true. The year was 1924...

After the last two games, I know it's hard to imagine a time when a D.C.-based team actually beat the Giants, but in 1924, the Washington Senators bested the then-New York Giants in Game 7 of the World Series and last week newsreel footage was found...

By Patrick Reddington
Washington Senators manager Stanley Harris, in the grandstand, presents President Calvin Coolidge (at left) with the baseball used to open the 1924 World Series.
Washington Senators manager Stanley Harris, in the grandstand, presents President Calvin Coolidge (at left) with the baseball used to open the 1924 World Series.
Photo © United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c11394

Never seen Walter Johnson pitch? How about Bucky Harris' home run in old Griffith Stadium? Ever seen it?

Ever watched Bucky round the bases?

Earl McNeely's World Series-winning double? What about the fans in the nation's capital storming the field to celebrate the first and only World Series Championship won by a D.C.-based team?

"Within less than ten seconds after McNeely’s hit, scoring "Muddy" Ruel, the Nationals’ catcher, with the deciding run, 35,000 men, women and children, delirious with joy, broke into a bedlam on the field..." -Washington Post writer Francis P. Daily

If you're frustrated after last night's loss to the Giants, why not take a minute or two and travel back in time to the year 1924 to watch the Washington Senators beat the New York Giants who would eventually move to San Francisco in 1958.

In need of inspiration? The Walter Johnson-led 1924 Senators lost the first game of their first World Series, but battled back to tie it up at 1-1 in Game 2.

After dropping Game 3, they beat the Giants in the Polo Grounds in Game 4 and after dropping Game 5 to fall behind 3-2 in the best of seven series, they won Game 6 then rallied from behind in Game 7, tying it up at 3-3 with a two-run eighth and then winning it in the 12th on McNeely's double.

Washington Post writer Francis P. Daily captured the moment in print back in 1924:

While a brown October sun, casting its big shadow over the stadium of baseball war, was curling up for the evening at precisely 5:04 o’clock yesterday afternoon, Mr. Earl McNeely, the best bargain at $50,000 ever put over, bludgeoned his way to everlasting fame with a hit that was heard ’round the world and started the greatest public demonstration ever enacted in the Nation’s Capital or anywhere else."

If you missed this the other day when WaPost writer Dan Steinberg posted it, check it out now, maybe it will provide some inspiration and we'll see you on the field in Nationals Park after Game 5 of the NLDS. Or maybe we should wait until the Nationals win the Series since we'll like totally get arrested for storming the field...

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