D.C. Scandal: Senators Owner Turned Down Trades For "Catfish" Hunter, Nolan Ryan

All Washington baseball fans, whether they were alive at the time or not, know the story of the magical year of 1969, when Ted Williams led a group of league-average baseball players to an 86-76 record, coming within just one game of third place in the American League’s new Eastern Division.

It had been a quarter-century since Washington fans had experienced a winning season, and they flocked to the then still-new RFK Stadium, hoping to attach themselves vicariously to the miracle that was beginning to blossom on East Capitol Street.

More than 916,000 fans watched the Senators play baseball that year, the seventh-highest number in the American League, and all the while paying what was by far the highest ticket prices in the Major Leagues.

Those tickets were more than the New York Yankees, more than the Boston Red Sox and more than the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Half the talent at twice the price. Only in Washington.

No one expected that twenty-one game increase in the win column in 1969. The team featured the same basic roster as the previous year, but several of those returning players had career years that helped propel the Senators toward their historical season.

Ken McMullen, a third baseman obtained with Frank Howard from the Dodgers for pitcher Claude Osteen a few years earlier, was known as a solid glove man with an average bat.

In his four years with the Senators, he had averaged .247-16-59 while batting third in the lineup. But he blossomed in ’69, hitting .272-19-87 while continuing his excellence with the glove.

Shortstop Eddie Brinkman was such a bad hitter that new manager Ted Williams had toyed with the idea of returning him to the pitcher’s mound where he excelled for the University of Cincinnati a decade earlier.

A founding member of the expansion Senators, Brinkman had failed to hit above .200 in five of his first eight years with the club, and never hit above .229.

A stellar defender, he only needed to hit close to .240 to become a solid major league shortstop.

A special project of manager Ted Williams, he listened and he learned.

Brinkman walked into the batter’s box on Opening Day against the Yankees carrying a bottle bat, a traditional bat but with an extra thick handle, something that hadn’t been seen in the majors since the Second World War.

Thanks to Williams' tutelage, Brinkman finished the season with a .266 batting average and continued his flawless fielding.

Del Unser, who finished second in Rookie-of-the-Year voting in 1968, batted .286-8-57, played center field like a ten-year veteran, and tied Brooks Robinson for 23rd place in the Most Valuable Player Award voting.

But while those players made a difference, the real difference maker in the group was first baseman Mike Epstein, who the Senators received in a 1967 trade with the Baltimore Orioles for reliever Pete Richert.

Though he was always considered a true prospect in Baltimore, Epstein was never going to supplant Baltimore favorite Boog Powell at first, thus forcing the trade to Washington.

Epstein, who batted just .234-13-33 in 1968, provided the Senators with a badly needed second power bat, hitting .278-30-85 in just 403 at bats while walking 85 times, garnering a .414 on-base percentage.

These players, along with Frank Howard (.296-48-111) and a healthy Dick Bosman (14-5, 2.19), were the leaders of the very good 1969 Senators’ team.

Williams sat down with owner Bob Short at the end of the season and laid out a very succinct plan on how to build on the team’s success. The Senators should, he told Short, trade several of the team’s veteran players, each for two or three major league ready prospects.

The team may take a step back in 1970, Williams warned, but they would be in a position to contend by 1972 or 1973.

Though Short assured Williams he would do just that, he instead spent the winter turning down multiple deals that would have brought the Senators those very players that Williams coveted.

The owner, however, believed that he couldn’t make those types of trades, at least not then. Short, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, had called in favors banked during his years in politics and borrowed a great portion of the $9 million he used to purchase the Senators a year earlier.

He was afraid that if he traded any of his marquee players, perhaps Epstein or McMullen, the Senators would suffer at the gate, which at that time was the vast majority of the team’s income. His radio contract wasn’t particularly lucrative and the local CBS affiliate only broadcast 20 games a year.

So he did nothing.

The 1970 Senators featured the same basic lineup as the previous year. Ultimately, he did trade some of those marquee players, partly because of their salaries, partly because they were having down years, but mostly because—I believe—he was paving the way to justify his moving the Senators to Texas.

But what if he had made those trades in the winter of 1969? What if Short had taken a chance and built the Senators then as the Nationals are trying to do now?

In his book, Ted Williams and the 1969 Season, Ted Leavengood listed several trades that were not just rumored but were concrete offers by other teams for several Senators’ players, all turned down by Short.

Mike Epstein was one of the hottest commodities at the 1969 Winter Meetings, and both the Yankees and the Oakland Athletics tried to pry him away from Washington.

The Yankees, seeing the public relations value of having a Jewish slugger on their team—Epstein’s nickname was “Super Jew”—offered lefty Fritz Peterson for the Senators’ slugger. Peterson, just 26, had won 12 games in 1968 and 17 in ’69 with an ERA of just above 3.00.

Bob Short said no.

Peterson finished his career with 133 wins, including 20 in 1970, with a 3.40 ERA.

Athletics’ owner Charley Finley then came calling, offering 23-year-old Catfish Hunter for Epstein, who had already won 55 major league games.

Again, Bob Short said no.

Hunter is a Hall-of-Fame pitcher who won 224 games in his career—including 20 five times—with a 3.26 ERA. He was an eight-time all-star and an ERA champion. He was also one of the best hitting pitchers in the American League.

Two years later, coming off back-to-back disappointing years, Short traded Epstein—along with All-Star closer Darold Knowles—to the Athletics for journeyman first baseman Don Mincher, catcher Frank Fernandez and reliever Paul Linblad.

Mike Epstein was out of baseball three years later at the age of 31.

In other words, he waited too long.

The Senators had a young slugger in 1969 by the name of Brant Alyea, who hit 10 home runs in part-time duty by the All-Star break. Though he would hit only one more that year, Calvin Griffith, owner of the Minnesota Twins, was enamored with his good looks and powerful stroke.

He had offered Short third baseman Craig Nettles, who had shown some promise in parts of three major league seasons. Though major league scouts roundly believed that Nettles would one day become an all-star, and though those same scouts saw major flaws in Alyea’s looping swing (think Austin Kearns, here), Short said no.

Griffith ended up trading Nettles that off-season to Cleveland in an eight-player trade that netted Minnesota Luis Tiant, a career 229 game winner.

Nettles, in his first full season as a major leaguer, hit 26 homers in 1970 and played defense equal to that of the Orioles’ Brooks Robinson.

In a 22-year career, Nettles hit almost 400 homers, drove in more than 1,300 runs, was a six-time All-Star, won multiple Gold Gloves and led the American League in home runs in 1976.

Alyea ended up being traded to the Twins a few months later, but not for Graig Nettles. No, the Senators received in return 33-year-old Joe Grzenda, who won a total of 14 major league games.

Brant Alyea was out of baseball in 1972.

In other words, Bob Short waited too long.

The New York Mets, fresh off their miracle 1969 World Championship season, recognized that they had a problem at third base and saw the Senators' McMullen as their answer.

The Mets used 21-year-old Wayne Garrett (.219-1-39) and 36-year-old Ed Charles (.207-3-18) at third in 1969 and they understood they couldn’t hope to retain their crown with either of them playing on an everyday basis.

The Mets offered a variety of packages for McMullen before settling on a two-for-one trade offer that would have brought to Washington relief pitcher Tug McGraw and starter Nolan Ryan.

Bob Short said no.

McGraw—father of Country singer Tim McGraw—had a great year in 1969, going 9-3, 2.24 with 12 saves. Over his career, McGraw won 96 games, saved another 180, had a very solid 3.14 ERA, and was a two-time all-star. He won two World Series, one with the Mets and the other with the Phillies in 1980.

And McGraw was the worst of the two players being dangled by the Mets.

Nolan Ryan won 324 games in an astonishing 27-year career. He was an eight-time all-star, is the all-time leader in strikeouts and is second in career starts.

Oh yes, he’s also thrown seven no-hitters.

Just a few months after turning down the Mets’ offer, Short traded McMullen to the California Angels for outfielder Rick Reichardt and third baseman Aurelio Rodriguez.

Reichardt was out of baseball three years later and Rodriguez spent the next decade with the Detroit Tigers as a good field, low hit third baseman.

In other words, Short waited too long. Again.

Now let’s do some addition by subtraction.

During the 1971 Winter Meetings, Short traded Brinkman and Rodriguez along with pitchers Joe Coleman and Jim Hannan to the Tigers for over-the-hill Denny McLain and three warm bodies.

Let’s say he never made that trade, and Lord knows, he never should have. That was the final nail in the Senators’ coffin.

This would have been the 1972 Washington Senators starting rotation:

1. Catfish Hunter: 21-7, 2.04
2. Nolan Ryan: 19-16, 2.28
3. Joe Coleman: 20-14, 2.80
4. Rich Hand: 10-14, 3.32
5. Dick Bosman: 8-10, 3.63

Rich Hand and Dick Bosman both played with the Texas Rangers in 1972 and would have been part of the team had they remained in Washington. The Rangers won only 54 games that year, so you would think the two would have combined for an additional eight wins or so with a solid Senators’ team.

The 1972 Senators, with that kind of starting rotation, would never have left Washington.

And those five starters would have combined to win 86 wins (give or take). If that Senators team had even just an average offense, they would have likely won at least 100 games and made it into the post season.

And history would have been forever rewritten regarding baseball in Washington. Those 34 years of emptiness would have been full of wonderful memories of a Senators team that finally and forever buried that oft-repeated, and always hated, saying:

“Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.”

I have written often about Bob Short, perhaps the most hated man in both Minneapolis as well as Washington (He not only moved the Senators to Texas, he also moved the Lakers to Los Angeles).

I have always believed that the movie Major League—about an owner who ruins a baseball team to justify moving it elsewhere—was based on Short.

But it has been difficult knowing how he destroyed the team.

Now we all know that he could have turned the Senators into a winner, but didn’t because he was a poor man looking for money wherever he could find it.

Rot in hell, Bob Short. You deserve it.