An MLB opening day look at new book recalling 'Team of Destiny'

Mar. 28—It's opening day of the Major League Baseball season, which means hope still springs eternal for baseball fans everywhere.

Of course, the prognosticators have already made their predictions about which teams have legitimate chances to become the next World Series champions and which ones, due to a perceived lack of talent, are unlikely to win it all.

In 1924, most baseball experts agreed the Washington Senators, a franchise led by a first-time manager whose best player was an aging pitcher who many felt was past his prime, would finish somewhere near the bottom of the American League.

Where those Senators ended up at the close of that season is what author and baseball historian Gary Sarnoff views as one of the great underdog stories not just in baseball but in sports history.

Sarnoff's new book, "Team of Destiny: Walter Johnson, Clark Griffith, Bucky Harris, and the 1924 Washington Senators," tells the tale of the unique and memorable journey of a baseball team that wasn't expected to win anything and ended up winning it all.

"Heading into the season nothing was expected from them," Sarnoff said. "They finished with a losing season from the year before. Most sports writers were picking them for sixth place because they had basically the same team they had in 1923 when they posted a losing season."

The '24 Senators' Cinderella story started with a controversial offseason centered on what newspaper writers of the time dubbed "Griffith's Folly," a decision by team owner Clark Griffith to hand manager duties over to Bucky Harris, a 27-year-old second baseman with zero coaching experience.

"He managed Bucky Harris when Harris broke into the majors. He liked Bucky Harris in the beginning. He always knew he wanted Harris to manage his team one day and he decided — he needed a manager and it was only one week before spring training — the time was now and he offered Harris the job and Harris gladly accepted it."

The team was led by legendary pitcher and future Hall of Famer Walter "Big Train" Johnson, who, by the start of the 1924 season, was well into a 21-year baseball career he started in 1907.

"He was expected, before the season, to go down in baseball history as the greatest pitcher who never had a chance to pitch for a pennant winner and never had a chance to pitch in a World Series," Sarnoff said of Johnson. "He had a sore arm from the previous four seasons leading up to 1924 so people thought he was washed up, that he was done, and lo and behold he had an outstanding season. He had 23 wins, was the American League MVP and finally, he got to pitch for a pennant winner."

The season started slow for the Senators who were in seventh place by mid-May. In June, they got what Sarnoff described as "red hot," winning 19 of 21 games, including a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium.

"Suddenly, they were in first place," Sarnoff said. "That was a huge surprise. In fact, one sports writer described it, he said, 'People all across the land are rubbing their eyes and wondering if they are seeing what they are actually seeing.'"

Sarnoff said the Senators were playing "excellent" baseball heading into July when they dropped four of five games to the Yankees, followed by more losses to the Detroit Tigers and ended up falling down to third place.

"The baseball experts were saying 'uh uh, I told you so,'" Sarnoff said. "So, it like at least they were going to have a good season, but they weren't going to win the pennant."

In August, the "Team of Destiny" got hot again. They took three games in a four-game series at Yankee Stadium to move back into first place. In September, they got invited to the White House by President Calvin Coolidge.

As was standard at the time, the Senators ended the season on an extended road trip lasting 20 games. They headed out on the road trip just two games above the Yankees in the standings.

The trip ended in Boston where the Senators needed to win two out of four games against the Red Sox to clinch the pennant. They arrived in Boston following a 26-hour train trip and had to wait an extra day to play the final regular season game. The reason: In those days, playing baseball on Sundays was outlawed in Boston.

The team spent its off day on a farm outside of Boston and Sarnoff said, "The rest did the trick."

The Senators beat the Red Sox the following Monday to clinch first place and win the American League pennant.

And, yes, they went on to win the 1924 World Series in a thrilling seven-game series that saw the Senators beat the National League pennant winners, the New York Giants, in game seven by a score of 4-3.

So what turned the expected-to-be-hapless Senators into world champions? Was it the drive of their fiery manager whose nickname was "little scrap iron?" Was it Johnson's pitching and the play of his teammates?"

Sarnoff said history shows it was a winning combination of both.

"The chemistry obviously was excellent because Bucky Harris was very well-liked and he was well-respected because of his desire to win," Sarnoff said.

So what can modern-day baseball fans take away from the 1924 "Team of Destiny?"

On opening day, when, as Sarnoff noted "everybody's in first place," it's the idea that over the course of any given baseball season anything can happen.

"It's going to be a lot of fun," Sarnoff said the 2024 season. "It's going to be pretty interesting. It's pretty much wide open. I don't think there's any clear-cut favorites. Some teams are expected to do well. Some teams are not expected to do well. But you never know about the game of baseball."

"Nothing was expected of them, but they came out of nowhere," he added, referring to the 1924 Senators. "Who knows about 2024? Maybe there's another team like that that's lurking that's going to surprise all of us."

Sarnoff's book is available for purchase on Amazon, Thriftbooks, Walmart, Barnes and Noble and other outlets where books are sold.