High Heat by Tim Wendel Page B

Adams’s dream of placing a semipro team just around the corner from the Montgomery Shopping Mall, hard by Interstate 270, was almost reality. Most of the bases had been covered—erecting a lovely ballpark, ordering the uniforms, lining up the ballplayers. Yet somehow in the swirl of it all, the team’s nickname had been left until the late innings.

    So, Adams called a board meeting and told everyone to come with a list of monikers. To his surprise, the favorite soon became Johnson’s best-known nickname, “the Big Train.”
    For those in the D.C. area, who went three-plus decades without a major-league team to call their own, who aren’t quite sure who Walter Johnson was, Adams has a knee-jerk response. “Who was Walter Johnson?” he’ll repeat, voice dripping with the same indignation that Tom Hanks’s character, Jimmy Dugan, has in A League of Their Own . “He’s only the greatest pitcher in baseball history and he lived right here, in Washington, in Montgomery County. If you’re a baseball fan, you have to remember this gentleman.”
    Before Ali-Frazier, Riggs-King, Bird-Magic, there was Smoky Joe versus the Big Train. In September 1912, Johnson faced off against Smoky Joe Wood of the Red Sox at the new Fenway Park. It didn’t matter that the first-place Red Sox were 16 games up on the Senators in the standings. What sold the place out was the opportunity to witness two of the best fireballers of all time go toe-to-toe.
    The two pitchers couldn’t have been more different in stature or delivery. Johnson was 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, while Wood was 5-foot-11 and perhaps 165. Johnson easily threw the ball to the plate. His sidearm delivery belying how fast the ball arrived at the plate. In comparison, Wood had a pitching motion that bordered upon the violent as he put everything he had into the pitch. “I threw so hard I thought my arm would fly right off my body,” Wood said.
    Johnson feared for his rival’s safety, too. “When I used to see Wood pitch, although I admired his speed and control, it made my shoulder ache to watch his delivery,” he told Baseball Magazine . “That pitching with the arm alone, that wrenching of the muscles in the shoulder, would wear out my arm, I am sure, much quicker than the easy, swinging motion I always aim to use.”
    Johnson had won 16 consecutive games earlier in that season. Heading into their marquee matchup, Wood was on a 13-game winning streak, and the Boston faithful were convinced he was well on his way to shattering Johnson’s mark. Between the streaks and the
speed-versus-speed component, the showdown rapidly became a promoter’s dream. And one that Senators manager Clark Griffith made sure came about by wiring the Red Sox management and personally challenging them to the contest. To add a little fuel, Griffith told the press that Wood’s streak was meaningless unless he faced Johnson. The Red Sox took the bait and moved Wood up one day in the rotation to ensure that he would face Johnson at Fenway.
    Incredibly, the game lived up to its hype. Johnson and Wood were on from the beginning, working out of jams in the early innings. It wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth inning that the Red Sox broke the scoreless tie when Duffy Lewis drove home Tris Speaker. That slim lead held up until the ninth, when the Senators put a man on second base, thanks to a single and a sacrifice. It all came down to Wood against Washington catcher Eddie Ainsmith. Johnson’s battery mate struck out swinging on a trio of Wood fastballs.
    Even though Wood won, he would later call Johnson “the greatest pitcher who ever lived.”
    Smoky Joe would go on to tie Johnson’s consecutive-victories record (he would miss out on his 17th in a row when a pop fly dropped safely, allowing the tying and winning runs). His gaudy 34–5 record that season included a no-hitter against St. Louis.