By Jeff Stuart
There have been 4 World Series involving a Washington Baseball Team, in 1924, 1925, 1933, and 2019. Washington won the first and last of these. But there could have been another.
In 1945, the year I was born, the team was competitive and was in the battle for first place. Major League rosters were depleted. There was still a war going on.
The military draft had hurt the Senators. But it had decimated the Yankees and Red Sox. “It had reduced the caliber of major league play to minor league levels,” wrote William Mead of the Post,” and placed a premium on the employment of marginal players – men too old, too young, too infirm or too troublesome for normal times. By Necessity threadbare teams like the Senators had long specialized in finding such players.” Binks was in that category.
When the war broke out, Binks was classified 4-F, “not acceptable for military service,” because he was deaf in one ear due to having mastoid trouble in his childhood. He worked as a machinist in a Studebaker aviation factory in Chicago producing war materials during 1942 and ’43. In 1944 he was swinging a hot bat for the minor league Milwaukee Brewers and was averaging over .400. The Senators bought his contract. Walter Haight of the post reported from the 1945 spring training, “Bingo Binks, former Milwaukee outfielder, looks as if he will do.”
“He was a 30-year-old rookie,” wrote Frederic Frommer, the author of “You Gotta Have Heart – A History of Washington Baseball. “And he also was a very eccentric kind of player, in the sense that while he was a very talented ballplayer – lots of doubles and triples and stolen bases and those sorts of things . He wasn’t very good on fundamentals. He would throw to the wrong base. He would bunt when the coach told him to swing away and he’d swing away when he was told to bunt. Those sorts of things.
Manager Ossie Bluege kept saying he wanted to bench him, but he finally realized that he was too talented to do that, but he would chew him out very often. And at the end of it, Binks would say, ‘You know, I haven’t heard a word you just said’ and walk away.” He called himself the “Magnificent Binks,”
On May 8 the Nazis surrendered in Europe, and the Washington Senators were only 9-9. On June 20, the day I was born, Washington beat Philadelphia, 7-5 to pull their record to 25-26-2. My Dad was at the Park.
Beginning on August 1, in a stretch of 5 straight doubleheaders, Washington won 7 in a row. They jumped past the Yankees into second place. and were hot on the trail of the first place Detroit Tigers.
Binks, who played first base and outfield. and batted and fielded left-handed played a big role in that surge. His RBI and doubles were tops on the team and he could have been ˜Rookie of the year.™. But that prize was not awarded until 1947.
Japan unconditionally surrendered on September 2. Some ball players were returning from military service, including Detroit’s Hank Greenberg.
Bank’s day of infamy came three weeks later. Playing in Philadelphia on September 23, the Nats and Athletics were tied, 3-3 the 12th inning. It was mostly overcast with peeks of sun that day.
But in the top of the 12th, with the sun posed a problem. A’s center fielder Sam Chapman called time-out, and called for his sunglasses. The Senators didn’t score. Binks didn’t take his own sun glasses out into the field in the bottom half on the inning, despite being urged to do so by Coach Joe Judge.
With two outs and nobody on base in the bottom of the 12th, the score still tied, Philadelphia’s Ernie Kish popped an easy fly in Binks’ direction. He staggered under it, losing the ball in the sun. Kish wound up on second base with a gift double. George Kell won the game with a single to right field, and his team had lost a heartbreaker.
Walter Masterson, who had been released from the Navy only ten days before was pitching for Washington. He had two outs in that fatal twelfth inning before that dropped fly.
A fly ball lost in the sun, even if it is dropped, is ruled a hit. Not an error.
As Jayson Werth once said, “You can’t catch what you can’t see.” In a game in Cleveland in August of 2015, the Angels Mike Trout lost one in the sun. ’He was wearing sunglasses. “It didn’t matter,” he said. “When the ball’s right in the sun, you can’t do anything about it. You feel helpless.”
It’s probably unfair to judge the entirety of Bank’s contribution to the team on that play. “The evil that men do lives after them,” wrote Shakespeare. “The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Asked whatever happened to Binks, in 1985, Masterson said, “He is probably selling sunglasses, his own.” “The Detroit Tigers ought to be doubly certain there is a Santa Claus,” wrote Shirley Povich on Christmas Day of that year. An unnamed Washington pitcher said “They ought to fine him 5000 dollars. “Binks neve drew a fine. But before the team disbanded, he was called into Clark Griffith‘s office and given a $1000 bonus check.”
The Senators won the second game of the twin bill, 4-3 behind Marino Pieretti, but an opportunity had passed. They were still one game behind Detroit.
Earlier, in the last home game of the season, on Sept 18, the Senators had beaten the Tigers 12-5.
It was the last game of the season because Owner Clark Griffith had rented out his ballpark to the Washington Redskins for the last week in September, and arranged his schedule to get in what would have been the last few home games earlier.
On September 30, the very last day of the season, Detroit played a doubleheader in St. Louis. The Browns were in third place and playing well. There was a chance. The Tigers would have to lose both games. Then the Senators and the Tigers would finish in a first-place tie. Dutch Leonard was ready to pitch in a playoff game for the American League pennant.
The Senators, meanwhile, were at Griffith Stadium listening to the radio hoping the Tigers were swept. The Browns led 3-2 heading into the ninth. But Greenberg hit a grand slam home run in the top of the 9th to win the first game, 6-3. The second game was rained out but it hardly mattered. The Tigers went on to beat the Cubs in the World Series, 4 games to 3.
