Did you enjoy the World Series? There are plenty of Nevada connections to the Fall Classic, from Tuscarora native Wheezer Dell pitching in the 1916 series for Brooklyn to Greg Maddux pitching for Atlanta in the 1990s. Bryce Harper grew up in Las Vegas, joined the Washington Nationals in 2012, and left after 2018 to sign a free-agent contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Right after he left, the Nationals won the World Series, though Harper did go to the series in 2022 with the Phillies. But let’s return to the Nationals. It was the first time a DC baseball team had won a World Series in nearly a century. The last time was a century ago, when they were also called the Washington Nationals, too, or Senators. And there’s a Nevada connection.
The Senators had never won a pennant. Their player-manager, Bucky Harris, got the job when he was 27. They had what many consider the greatest pitcher of all time, Walter Johnson, who won 416 games in a twenty-year career. When he finally got to the series in 1924, he was 36 and in his 18th season. That year, he had won 23 games. He lost his first two starts in the series against the New York Giants. Game 7 went into extra innings and Johnson came in to pitch in relief in the ninth. In the twelfth, the Senators scored a run and won the World Series.
But let’s get to Nevada. Edwin Ewing Roberts was a former teacher in Empire, near Carson City, who had studied law, served as Ormsby County district attorney for a decade, and then, in 1910, won election to Nevada’s lone seat in the House of Representatives. He brought his family east, including his wife and children. That included his daughter Hazel Lee, who had been a star basketball player in high school. She was 20 and part of the DC social whirl. She met Johnson and they fell in love. A year after they met, in June 1914, they got married. They went on to have five children.
The summer of 1930 was unusually hot, and she had taken a long road trip. Their son had been sick, and she worked hard at taking care of him. She died of complications from heatstroke at the age of 36.
Johnson was then managing the Senators. Later he served as a county commissioner in Maryland, and lost a bid for Congress as a Republican, following in his father-in-law’s footsteps.
Roberts spent four terms in the House. In 1918, he lost a Senate bid to Charles Belknap Henderson, part of an old Elko family for whom a Nevada city is named. Roberts then won election as Reno’s mayor in 1923 on a platform of ignoring Prohibition, promising a barrel of whiskey on every corner. That didn’t happen, but he served for a decade until his death in 1933.
Another Nevada connection for you. Bucky Harris was Johnson’s manager in the 1924 series, and managed the New York Yankees to victory in the 1947 World Series. They defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose manager took over early that season—Burt Shotton. He replaced Leo Durocher, who had been suspended from baseball by Commissioner Happy Chandler. Among Durocher’s sins was hanging out with Bugsy Siegel. Chandler’s son Dan later became a casino host in Las Vegas. It was a great World Series, and it’s a small world.