“He threw everything toward the plate but the ball.” —Ted Williams

Conrado Eugenio Marrero, the oldest living major league baseball player, celebrated his 102nd birthday in Havana on April 25, 2013 with one of his patented cigars. Connie passed away just short of his 103rd birthday on April 23, 2014.

Connie Marrero pitched 735 innings for the Washington Senators in 1950-54, compiling a W-L record of 39-40. He was named to the 1951 All-Star team but did not play. He left after being scratched from the 1955 roster. (Well, by then he was 43!) He continued playing Cuban ball and was a baseball coach there into his 80s.

His best year was 1952, when he went 11-8 with a 2.88 ERA for the 78-76 Senators, known for good pitching and light hitting. Born in Sagua La Grande, Cuba, he didn’t play his first game in the majors until the age of 38. He was brought up by Senators owner Clark Griffith’s scout, Papa Joe Cambria, who specialized in plumbing Cuba for low-budget players.

Marrero loved to recall facing off against greats like Mickey Mantle and Willliams. The Huffington Post quoted him: “One day Williams got two home runs off me, and afterward he came up to me and said `Sorry, it was my day today.’ I responded, ‘Ted, every day is your day.'”

Marrero stood only 5’5″ but putting on his Senators uniform with its big blue block W “always made me feel bigger, more powerful.” And beating the Yankees was the sweetest feeling in the world: “They were strong. They were the best. Each batter was a struggle.”

From Tom Deveaux’s The Washington Senators 1901-1971:

Manager Bucky Harris was hardly enamored with the rotund Marrero at first sight in 1950…just another one of Joe Cambria’s projects destined to flop. Hardly blessed with a deep roster, however, Bucky, who’d envisaged Marrero as at least a relief possibility, ended up using him primarily as a starter.

No less a hitter than Ted Williams became an admirer of Connie….Hitters would be salivating, anxious to get a crack at his knuckler, but once Marrero got ahead of you, Williams said, you were dead.

After Marrero struck out Williams with the bases loaded at Fenway Park, it became obvious that all was well with Marrero and Harris. Connie walked off the field, proudly plopped his glove in Harris’s lap, and proclaimed, “More money now.”

Marrero, who lived very modestly, was eligible for $20,000 granted him by a 2011 agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association for financial aid to 1947-79 players who did not qualify for a pension. But the money was held up by the U.S. economic embargo, which made financial transactions difficult.

As a sequel to 1960, let’s take 2019. See “Nats Win!”

Until 2019 I was a frustrated fan of the Washington Nationals, as I was the old Washington Senators. As a New York schoolboy in the Fifties, I’d go up to Yankee Stadium to root for the Senators when they were in town. Always wore my navy blue cap with the white block “W.” Big, scary Bronx voices would shout: “Hey, kid—the Washington section’s in the bleachers.”

The Senators were perennial heartbreakers, although in mid-1952 they were only five games out of first place and considered to be pennant contenders. Known for light hitting and good pitching, they played hard and were usually fun to watch.

By 2012 the Nationals, who returned baseball to Washington in 2005, have been playing great baseball, and there’s reason to hope for “Joy in Mudville” soon. But the first six years were pretty rough. In 2009, another Nats loss again to the Phillies, I did a weird thing. I watched the video on Direct TV while listening to a CD of the New York Yankees game at Griffith Stadium on 5 July 1960, last year of the original Washington Senators. (Found it on eBay.)

Back to 1960

Transported back in time, I heard Phil Rizzuto and Mel Allen (one at a time, no tag-team) call a pitcher’s duel between the Yankees’ Ralph Terry and my hero Pedro Ramos, which the Senators won 5-3 in extra innings. (As Casey Stengel said, “you can look it up.”)

How broadcasts have changed: Allen and Rizzuto called plays and made prescient observations—nothing else. There were no reminiscences of their playing days, no ballgirl interviews with celebrities in the bleachers while the game was going on, no goofy mascots, no songfests, no fireworks, no instant-replay, no strike-zone reviews (the zone was uniform, the umps impartial). Just baseball—pure and elegant, as God and Abner Doubleday intended.

How the game has changed. Terry and Ramos (chewing a big wad of ‘baccy) each went eight innings. Relief pitchers came in and stuck—were not pulled after one batter because the next guy was batting from the other side of the plate. The phrase “pitch count” didn’t exist. (I realize that since 1980, there is reliable evidence that you can blow a young pitcher’s arm by leaving him in too long.) There were no “Designated Hitters.” From sluggers to pitchers, everybody knew how to bunt and run bases. No balls went through legs or over heads.

“Rhubarbs” (Red Barber’s term) were similar: José Valdivielso charged the mound when Terry brushed him back (Phil mentioned his “Latin temper,” which he wouldn’t do nowadays.) The next inning Pedro hit Mantle while “Meekie” took his base with a big grin, and the umpire fined Pedro $50 and warned him not to do it again.

Pedro and The Mick

Senators pitchers loved to razz Mantle. In 1956, Mick had hit a Ramos pitch almost out of Yankee Stadium. And it was Chuck Stobbs, the winning pitcher in this game, who had served the ball Mantle hit 565 feet out of Griffith Stadium in 1953, the second-longest home run on record. (The longest was by Babe Ruth, who hit one 575 feet against the Tigers in 1926.)

I was struck by the clean baseball both teams played. Aside from a hit batter and a wild pitch, there were no gaffes. The typical inning ended “nothing across” (a medieval term meaning no Yankee runs or hits and no Senator errors, or vice versa). Hits were scattered, even from the vaunted Yankee lineup. Decisions on relievers, pinch hitters and runners by managers Casey Stengel and Cookie Lavagetto were foxy and smart; nobody could argue with them. The Washington crowd booed José when he charged the mound, knowing Terry wasn’t purposely trying to hit him.

Even the advertising was fun. The sponsors were the Atlantic Refining Company (“Atlantic Imperial, the gasoline that cleans your carburetor as you drive”—remember carburetors?) and Ballantine Beer (“the Crisp Refresher”). There were no ads for patent medicines designed to ward off RLS, DES, PID, HIV or the dreaded ED. Mel and Phil would have been embarrassed to talk about such stuff.

Ah, the summer of 1960. The Yankees went on to win the pennant. The Senators played close to .500 and finished 5th out of eight before packing up for Minnesota. What a wonderful, entertaining game that was—managed, pitched and announced—over a half century ago.