For Generations X, Y, and other denizens of Skateboard Nation, it may come as a mild surprise to discover that there used to be baseball in the nation’s capital. The Washington Senators (originally the Nationals) were a charter member of the inaugural American League, where they typically played less than championship-caliber baseball. But there was a brief, shining moment when Washington reigned supreme on the diamond, and Mark Gauvreau Judge has written a most engaging account of that team, that era, and the game that was the national pastime for most of the past century.
Although the book’s ironic title stems from the frustration that the team typically levied on its loyal fans, it is clear that the author has a strong and personal devotion to a team that played its last game in 1971. The focal point of his story is Joe Judge, the solid if largely forgotten star first baseman of the Senators, who also happens to be the author’s grandfather. Though he never knew his grandfather, this is clearly a labor of love for Mark Judge—a balance between a versant sports story and a gentle family memoir. In the process, the younger Judge paints a vivid portrait of an era of baseball and of a nation that is, for better or worse, as gone as the old Griffith Stadium where Joe Judge played.
As a native Washingtonian, I spent many autumn afternoons in RFK Stadium watching the Redskins as well as the Senators before they were unceremoniously moved to Texas. During timeouts, I would stare at the “ring of stars” encircling the upper deck of the stadium, D.C.’s homage to the pantheon of local sports legends. This account opens with the author’s memory of the 1990 day his grandfather was honored with a star then turns to a history lost to most modern fans.
Joe Judge played a yeoman first base from 1915 to 1934, a period that corresponded roughly with Babe Ruth’s career. Indeed, the impossible-to-ignore Ruth provides juicy material as well as a useful foil for the clean-cut, by-the-book protagonist. The oft-told story of how Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the Yankees is told once again, showing how that acquisition was the crucial move that jumpstarted the Yankee dynasty that continues to this day. But just as the Yankees are the pinstriped 800-pound gorillas whose exploits have been trumpeted by the New-York-centric media, the Washington Senators have been arguably the least covered team in Major League history. Judge fills this gap admirably with a book that does not attempt to be definitive but instead concentrates on the glory days of a surprisingly robust franchise.
Mark Judge is undeniably proud of his grandfather, but he wisely does not attempt to inflate a solid career into something it wasn’t. Judge was one of the finest first baseman of his era, an agile and diminutive fielder who also managed to hit .300 in nine seasons. But Joe Judge is almost the Nick Caraway figure of his own story, a presence that allows the author to discuss the colorful Ruth, the saintly teammate Walter Johnson, or the transition of baseball from the dead-ball era to the rabbit-ball era. In fact, to modern sensibilities, Walter Johnson seems positively iconic, almost too good to be true. With statistics that, like Ruth’s, almost defy the modern seamhead’s imagination, Walter Johnson was as renowned for his dignity and modesty as he was for his blazing fastball. (Think of a kinder, gentler Cal Ripken.) Could it be that the nation was as in love with W.J. as the author suggests, to the point of New Yorkers rooting for him and his “Nats” against their Giants in the World Series? Hard to say, but Mark Judge is nothing if not compelling as he culls yellowed newspaper accounts and long dead contemporaries to argue not only for the greatness of the ballplayers but for the goodness and old fashioned heroic values of those like Walter Johnson and Joe Judge.
Aficionados from Abner Doubleday to George Will have lauded the great American game, and while I can excuse the “baseball is life” hyperbole, it is only fair to point out that baseball, like life, isn’t always pretty. Mark Judge does not shy away from the darker side of the game, as his story at various times deals with racism, the Black Sox scandal, and the rawhide-tough excesses of the game itself, often played by sons of immigrants who gave and expected no quarter. Here we are treated to a multitude of brief but vivid vignettes of American originals like John McGraw, Clark Griffith, Ty Cobb, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had more in common with the pioneers and railroad men who settled the continent than with many of their milk-drinking, portfolio-wielding counterparts today.
One of the more colorful images of the book is that of the elderly Joe Judge watching the Washington Senators on television, cursing their ineptitude and offering them tips on how to play the game, exercising the believable conceit that things were done better in the days of Gehrig and Hornsby. The title, Damn Senators, becomes more ironic when the author relates how the model for the protagonist of the novel, musical, and movie, Damn Yankees, could very well have been Joe Judge himself. There, Joe Hardy, a Washington Senator, has sold his soul to the Devil to beat the Yankees and win the pennant. While Mark Judge concedes that the story may be apocryphal, it immediately becomes one so delicious that it will seem true to the reader, who sees in Hardy plenty of good guy Joe Judge.
His grandson writes a more or less chronological narrative, starting with the advent of baseball in the nation’s capital, right up to the present when Washington is in the hunt for big league baseball. (One finishes the book with a keen appreciation of the tradition of baseball in Washington and how ridiculous it is not to have a team in the fifth-largest market in the country.) He writes with a free-flowing style and does not feel too constrained by a pennant race to resist a personal aside. (My favorite was when he relayed how he once worked at a bar where the owner found out he was the grandson of Joe Judge and “practically swooned.”)
Most of all, Judge knows that he has a wonderful story to tell, and he builds up anticipation like, well, an extra-inning game. Reading about the thrilling 1924 World Series may be escapism, but that is almost the point: you may find yourself longing for ice boxes, radio shows, and Packards as you hear the exploits of men in cotton flannel playing a sandlot game.
If you have read this far, you probably are not opposed to baseball books. But readers should understand that while this is a baseball book, it is also a memoir and a search for roots, a real life “Field of Dreams.” Most of us would relish the opportunity to re-create the era that our grandparents inhabited, but few have forebears famous enough to leave a researchable legacy. Mark Judge makes the most of his opportunity, and we are richer for his curiosity and effort. May Washingtonians be lucky enough to yell out “Damn Senators!” once again in the near future. 
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William F. Reyes is an attorney in Washington, D.C.
