September 28, 1971: Small crowd sees final win for a Washington team for 33 years

Perhaps more than 3,242 people would have shown up at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington on September 28, 1971, if they’d known that what was going to happen there wouldn’t occur again for more than 33 years.

The Washington Senators, playing out the string before moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area the next season, beat the New York Yankees 4-2 in their third-to-last game of 1971. The Senators lost the next night, then forfeited their final game – which they were leading – when angry fans stormed the field with two out in the ninth inning.

With time, the Senators’ initially unremarkable win on September 28 became a piece of local baseball history. It was the last major-league win for a Washington, DC-based team until April 6, 2005, when the newly created Washington Nationals – formerly the Montreal Expos – beat the Phillies in Philadelphia. And it was the last home win for a Washington-based team until April 14, 2005, when the Nats beat the Arizona Diamondbacks in their home opener, also under the distinctive wavy roof of RFK Stadium.1

The fans who attended on September 28 were not in the mood to celebrate a win. Mostly, they were furious at Senators owner Bob Short, who was absent as his team began its final homestand in Washington. One fan put the frustration into physical form by bringing a dummy labeled SHORT, which was first hung from the upper deck and then taken down and assaulted. “Small boys, who are losing their baseball team, punched and kicked the stuffed figure,” the Washington Post reported.2

The fans also had a bellyful of bad baseball to be angry about. Since joining the American League in 1961, these Senators had managed only one winning season, in 1969.3 It was long since clear that 1971 would not be their second. Manager Ted Williams’s lame-duck Senators entered the game with a 62-94 record, 36½ games out of first in the American League East Division. Bets on veterans Curt Flood and Denny McLain hadn’t panned out. Flood had missed the entire 1970 season while suing major-league baseball in an unsuccessful fight against the reserve clause; out of shape, he hit .200 in 13 games and was gone by the end of April.4 The undisciplined McLain had won 55 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1968-69 but led the AL in 1971 with 22 losses for the Senators.5

One thing these Senators were good at was playing the Yankees. Entering the September 28 game, the Senators had won 10 of 15 matchups between the teams.6 The New Yorkers brought an 80-79 record into the game. They were in fourth place, one ahead of the Senators, and 20 games behind the division-leading Baltimore Orioles. It was a step down from the year before, when Ralph Houk’s team went 93-69 with one tie and finished second behind the Orioles.

Williams called on righty Bill Gogolewski to start the game. Gogolewski had begun the season in the bullpen before shifting to the starting rotation in early July. On September 1, he’d thrown a four-hit shutout against the Yankees at New York. He entered the September 28 game with a 6-5 record and a 2.74 ERA. Although he pitched in only 27 games, Gogolewski led the 1971 Senators with 2.9 Wins Above Replacement, ahead of Frank Howard (2.7) and Don Mincher (2.5).

Opposing him was righty Stan Bahnsen, the 1968 AL Rookie of the Year and The Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year. Bahnsen entered with a 14-11 record and a 3.35 ERA. The night after Gogolewski shut out the Yankees on September 1, Bahnsen turned the tables with a four-hitter of his own against the Senators, winning 4-1. He’d also pitched eight innings against Washington in a tough 2-1 loss in the first game of a doubleheader on June 27.

Both managers gave playing time to rookies and backups. Washington’s lineup included 20-year-old Jeff Burroughs in right field, Jim Mason playing his second big-league game at shortstop, and Tom Ragland playing his eighth major-league game at second base. In the second inning, Mason collected his first of 322 big-league hits.7 The Yankees’ starters included right fielder Rusty Torres, playing in his seventh big-league game; veteran backup Ron Hansen at third base; and second-year role player Frank Baker at short.

The visitors moved a runner into scoring position in the first. Torres doubled with one out and took third on Bobby Murcer’s grounder to first baseman Mincher. Roy White stranded Torres with another grounder to first. Murcer, incidentally, was making an unsuccessful late run for the AL batting title. His 1-for-4 day left him at .331, well behind the .337 mark of Tony Oliva of the Minnesota Twins.8

The Senators accomplished more with their first turn at bat. Del Unser led off by beating out a bunt to the mound.9 A single by rookie Toby Harrah advanced Unser to second, and Mincher’s sacrifice moved both runners up a base. Howard’s fly to left scored Unser and advanced Harrah to third. A passed ball by another former Rookie of the Year, Thurman Munson, allowed Harrah to score for a 2-0 Washington lead.

John Ellis led off the Yankees’ second with a single, and Munson’s bunt moved him to second. But Hansen struck out and Baker grounded to Mincher, whose toss to Gogolewski covering first base retired the side.

The next scoring threat developed in the top of the fourth. White singled and one out later Munson walked. Hansen’s grounder forced Munson at second but moved White to third. Baker, nearing the end of a season of offensive futility, ended the frame with a groundout. The Mississippian had come into the game hitting .149; he ended the season hitting .139 in 79 at-bats.

As Washington’s turns at the plate passed quietly, New York broke through in the fifth to tie the game. With one out, Horace Clarke walked and Torres singled him to second. Murcer, the 1971 Yankees’ RBI leader with 94, delivered a single to right that scored Clarke and moved Torres to third. White, whose 84 RBIs trailed only Murcer among the Yankees, then brought home Torres with a fly to center. It was White’s AL-record-setting 17th sacrifice fly of the season.10 The score stood at 2-2.

Gogolewski had developed a blister on his pitching hand, and Larry Biittner hit for him in the sixth inning.11 Biittner grounded out, and the next two Senators batters also went quietly. Replacing Gogolewski in the seventh was Joe Grzenda, a lefty from northeast Pennsylvania who’d emerged as a steady hand in the 1971 Senators’ bullpen. Grzenda entered the game with a 2.03 ERA and a 4-2 record in addition to five saves. Bahnsen greeted Grzenda with a leadoff single, but the next three Yankees went down in order.

Something ignited the Senators in the bottom of the seventh – perhaps the sound of 3,242 dispirited voices singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. Mincher led off with a single into right field. Speedy young Elliott Maddox ran for him. Maddox took second as Howard was retired on a grounder back to the mound. Dick Billings belted an opposite-field double to right, scoring Maddox.12 Burroughs, three seasons away from winning AL Most Valuable Player honors in 1974, singled to center field; when Murcer fell fielding the ball, Billings scored.13 The Senators had pulled ahead, 4-2.

The Yankees failed to capitalize on White’s leadoff walk in the eighth, and the Senators went down in order in the bottom half. In the Yankees’ last turn at bat, Grzenda struck out Ron Swoboda, batting for Baker. Felipe Alou, batting for Bahnsen, grounded to short, and Clarke struck out to end the game in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Grzenda earned the win, while Bahnsen took the loss.14

The game marked one of the last big-league appearances of umpire Jake O’Donnell, who worked at third base. O’Donnell was in his fourth season as an AL arbiter, and by most appearances he was a success: He’d worked that season’s All-Star Game and was also tapped to umpire the AL Championship Series between the Oakland A’s and Baltimore Orioles. After the season, though, O’Donnell left baseball for a career as a National Basketball Association referee, where he remained until 1995.15

Two nights later, Grzenda was on the mound in the ninth inning when fans stormed the field, turning a potential 7-5 Senators win into a forfeit loss. Left holding the game ball, he kept it until the Washington Nationals’ home opener in April 2005. President George W. Bush used the baseball to throw the ceremonial first pitch to catcher Brian Schneider, starting a new era of big-league baseball in Washington.16

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks SABR member Gary Belleville for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WS2/WS2197109280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1971/B09280WS21971.htm

Photo of 1971 O-Pee-Chee card #518 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The Diamondbacks’ home city of Phoenix was a minor-league town in 1971, home to the Phoenix Giants of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

2 George Minot Jr., “Anti-Short Fans See Nats Win, 4-2,” Washington Post, September 29, 1971: C1. An effigy of Short made it past stadium security again two nights later and was displayed at the Senators’ final game. It’s not clear whether it was the same one. Mike Wise, “The Game May Have Left, but the Memories Linger for the Old-Time Senators,” Washington Post, September 30, 2004.

3 They went 86-76 in 1969, which was only good enough for fourth place in the six-team American League East Division, but which won rookie skipper Ted Williams the AL Manager of the Year award.

4 Terry Sloope, “Curt Flood,” SABR Biography Project, accessed October 2023.

5 Mark Armour, “Denny McLain,” SABR Biography Project, accessed October 2023.

6 Minot, “Anti-Short Fans See Nats Win, 4-2.”

7 Mason went on to play for the Yankees between 1974 and 1976, including appearances in the 1976 AL Championship Series and World Series.

8 Thomas Rogers, “Yankees Downed by Senators, 4-2,” New York Times, September 29, 1971: 23. Oliva, who had been sidelined by late-season knee surgery, finished with a league-leading .337 to Murcer’s .331 and Merv Rettenmund of Baltimore’s .318. Oliva and Murcer also ran one-two in slugging percentage, while Murcer beat out Rettenmund to lead the AL in on-base percentage.

9 “Nats Hang Yanks 4-2; Murcer Drops to .331,” New York Daily News, September 29, 1971: 73.

10 Rogers, “Yankees Downed by Senators, 4-2.” The previous record holders, with 16 each, were Sam Crawford of the Detroit Tigers and Chick Gandil of the Chicago White Sox, both in 1914. As of the end of the 2023 season, White was tied for the single-season AL record with Bobby Bonilla, who hit 17 sacrifice flies for the 1996 Baltimore Orioles. Gil Hodges of the 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers held the major-league record with 19.

11 Minot, “Anti-Short Fans See Nats Win, 4-2.”

12 Rogers, “Yankees Downed by Senators, 4-2.”

13 “Nats Hang Yanks 4-2; Murcer Drops to .331.”

14 Grzenda pitched only one more big-league season, with the 1972 St. Louis Cardinals, and earned only one more win, with 1⅓ innings of shutout relief against the San Francisco Giants on June 17, 1972. Bahnsen remained in the majors through the 1982 season.

15 Joe McGuff, “Sporting Comment,” Kansas City Star, June 3, 1973: 2S; Jim Trinkle, “A Choice of Abuses,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 25, 1973: 2C; Shaun Powell, “Jake O’Donnell Is Gone, NBA Era Goes With Him,” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1995, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-19-sp-15619-story.html.

16 Jeff Kallman, “September 30, 1971: Senators Forfeit Final Home Game in Washington, DC,” SABR Games Project, accessed October 2023, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-30-1971-senators-forfeit-final-home-game-in-washington-dc/.