This year marks the 100 anniversary of the 1924 World Series. It is considered one of the best in baseball history, featuring the Washington Senators defeating the New York Giants in a seventh game that went 12 innings. It was the only World Series championship for Washington pitcher Walter Johnson, the “Big Train” who many still consider the greatest pitcher in baseball history.
My grandfather, Joe Judge, played first base for Washington at the time. As I have written about in the Washington Examiner, he belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I consider the ’24 Series the greatest of all time. The games were exceptional. Gramps hit .385, and baseball was then played during the day in the summer, as God intended.
There are going to be stories in the media about the anniversary. They will give you statistics, batting orders, and flashbacks to what Washington and America were like in the 1920s. On the weekend of Sept. 14, the Washington Nationals will celebrate the anniversary of the 1924 championship team.
My stories are more personal. My grandfather was drafted to play for Washington in 1915 and did so until 1932. He grew up in New York and lived in the Petworth neighborhood of the district.
After winning the World Series in 1924, and returning and losing in 1925, Joe Judge moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was that Chevy Chase house where the Senators players returned with a gigantic layer cake after winning the World Series. It was also there that Sam Rice, Bucky Harris, Johnson, and even Ty Cobb were said to have visited. The players used to make illegal prohibition gin in the bathtub. Fun fact: In 2016, when soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence needed a temporary place to rent upon arriving in Washington, he rented my grandfather’s old house.
In the early 1950s, my grandfather’s daughter, my aunt Dorothy, dated the writer Douglass Wallop. He would stop by the house in Washington and see my grandfather watching the Senators playing on TV. My grandfather would talk back to the TV, giving players pointers and arguing with the umpires. Wallop went on to write the book Damn Yankees about an aging Washington jock named Joe who makes a deal with the devil to come back and play baseball.
“The man in that book was my father,” my father, also named Joe Judge, would say.
After retiring, my grandfather coached at Georgetown University for 20 years.
“He gave almost 40 years of his life to baseball,” my father would say. “All of his heart and soul.”
My grandfather died in 1963, a year before I was born. I was extremely lucky to grow up in a house in Maryland where we loved sports but did not worship athletes. We faithfully followed the D.C., teams: the Washington Bullets basketball team and the Washington Redskins football team — two names that were killed off by wokeness. But our parents encouraged us to also love great writers, musicians, spiritual leaders, and artists. It was also hard to root for a baseball team as children at the time because Washington lost its team in 1971. Baseball returned in 2005.
Most of all, though, as a child I learned that baseball was supposed to be about fun. The best were the pick-up games played in front of the house, where all the kids from the neighborhood would get a turn. Little League was more organized, but still played with your pals from the neighborhood. We used to practice and play at the local field all day and into the evening during the summers.
I got my grandfather’s genes and have always been good at sports, which come easily to me — even if not on the pro level. I won the “Most Versatile Player” award in Little League, which basically meant I played every position, including pitcher and catcher. I’ll never forget the day I arrived at the Chevy Chase house with my varsity letter jacket for baseball in high school. My grandmother, who, after all, had married a professional baseball player, became overjoyed. She spent the whole day with the jacket on her lap, her hand gently resting on the large G — for Georgetown Prep.
It’s good to see baseball making a comeback over the last few years after a low ebb of participation. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal explained “Why Children Are Abandoning Baseball.” The Washington Post called the game “Behind the Curve,” and the Los Angeles Times asked if the national pastime was “Past Its Time?” There had been a 14.5% decline in youth participation in the previous five years.
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“A pervasive emphasis on performance over mere fun and exercise has driven many children to focus exclusively on one sport from an early age, making it harder for all sports to attract casual participants,” Brian Costa wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “But the decline of baseball as a community sport has been especially precipitous.”
Baseball has since initiated rule changes that improved pace and boosted attendance, and it has also started grassroots efforts by introducing children to baseball at a young age with new programs. More importantly, there is once again an emphasis on fun. After all, Joe Judge loved baseball because it is so much fun.
Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi. He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.