A thick gray flannel jersey worn by Washington Senators pitching legend Walter Johnson between 1919 and 1922 sold Friday in Heritage Auctions’ spring sports auction for $2.01 million. The blue pinstriped jersey, which features a black “W” logo on each arm and Johnson’s name embroidered in red script beneath the Spalding manufacturer’s label inside the collar, is believed to be one of two jerseys worn by the Big Train that survive to this day. The other, from Johnson’s final season in 1927, belongs to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The road jersey was last sold by Sotheby’s to an East Coast collector for $352,000 in 2006. Interest in the rare item ahead of its latest sale was perhaps boosted in small part by a recent discovery about its connection to another all-time great.
Last month, a photo-matching company identified the jersey being auctioned as the one Johnson was wearing in a photograph taken April 29, 1920. Johnson pitched a complete game and struck out eight batters in the Senators’ 2-1 win over the Yankees at the Polo Grounds that day, which marked the pitcher’s first appearance against Babe Ruth after the Red Sox sold the Bambino to New York.
“We have had the opportunity at Heritage Auctions to offer some incredible and museum-worthy jerseys over the decades,” Chris Ivy, Heritage’s director of sports auctions, said in a release. “But this Walter Johnson example, photo-matched to his first duel with the great Babe Ruth in Yankees pinstripes, certainly qualifies it as a cream-of-the-crop rarity.”
Johnson gave the jersey to his friend and former Senators teammate Eric “Swat” Erickson upon Erickson’s retirement in 1922. According to a letter of provenance from his granddaughter, Erickson kept mementos from his seven-year playing career, including photographs, programs and pins, in the attic of the farmhouse he built in Jamestown, N.Y.
“His most prominent keepsake was a jersey from his Washington Senators teammate and friend Walter Johnson, whom he considered to be the greatest pitcher he ever knew,” Linda S. Erickson wrote of the only jersey in her grandfather’s collection.
The item description says there’s “a small degree of rust staining” on the inside collar of the jersey, which is “almost certainly from years spent upon a metal hanger.”
Johnson and Ruth had quite the history against each other before they were both voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1936.
The duo first squared off at the major league level on Oct. 5, 1914, when Ruth struck out in a pinch-hitting appearance against Johnson in Washington’s 9-3 win at Fenway Park. Johnson was wrapping up his eighth major league season and had won the first of his two MVP awards the previous year. Ruth, a 19-year-old rookie, had tossed a complete game in his third career start three days earlier.
Johnson and Ruth opposed each other on the mound for the first time Aug. 14, 1915, at Fenway Park. Ruth allowed five hits and three runs (one earned) over nine innings and struck out five. Johnson allowed four runs on eight hits and took the loss in the Red Sox’s 4-3 win. Washington took a 3-2 lead into the eighth inning, but Ruth, who went 2 for 3 at the plate, scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Tris Speaker and retired the Senators in the ninth to improve his record to 11-6.
“It was a battle between the David and Goliath of American League hurlers with Ruth, the youngest and most erratic of [Red Sox Manager Bill] Carrigan’s hurlers, opposed by Johnson who the Griffmen banked on for victory,” the Washington Herald reported. “But David had it over Goliath in this matchup as Ruth outpitched Johnson and helped to win the game by his destructive work with the stick.”
Ruth got the best of Johnson in their pitching duels over the years. In eight career matchups, Ruth was 6-1 with a 1.21 ERA and three shutouts, including a 13-inning, 1-0 win on Aug. 15, 1916. Johnson had a 1.76 ERA in eight starts opposite Ruth, but went 2-6 in those games.
After Ruth was sold to the Yankees for $100,000 before the 1920 season, he gave up pitching so he could play every day and take advantage of his even better skill as a hitter. His first showdown with Johnson after being traded to the Yankees came on a Thursday afternoon in front of 5,000 fans.
“Babe Ruth, the king buster of the stickmen, was a big bust here today,” The Washington Post reported after the Senators’ 2-1 win. “With the stage all set for him to pole the Yankees into a game in the ninth inning, he was unable to knock the ball out of the infield on Walter Johnson.”
Trailing 2-0, the Yankees had runners on second and third with one out in the ninth inning when Ruth came to the plate. Johnson retired him on a groundball to second baseman Bucky Harris. Future Senator and 1925 American League MVP Roger Peckinpaugh scored on the play to break up the shutout, but Clyde Milan made a running catch on a flyball by Duffy Lewis to seal the win.
Ruth hit .350 with 27 RBI, 27 walks and 22 strikeouts in 123 career at-bats against Johnson, according to Baseball Reference. His 10 home runs against Johnson accounted for more than 10 percent of the 97 longballs the Big Train allowed in his 21-year career.
“Only 10?” Johnson told The Post when reminded of Ruth’s home run total against him years later. “Aw, gee, it seems like it was more than that. I pitched against him for 14 years and I figure if he only got 10 home runs off’n me I was a success. Seems like he was always riding that ball out of the park.”
In his last at-bat against Johnson, Ruth delivered an RBI single in the eighth inning of a 12-1 win at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1927. On Sept. 30 of that year, Johnson made his final major league appearance as a pinch hitter in the same game in which Ruth broke his own record with his 60th home run of the season off Senators left-hander Tom Zachary.
Johnson and Ruth met again in retirement, in an exhibition at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 23, 1942, between games of an Army-Navy benefit doubleheader involving the Yankees and Senators. With 69,126 fans looking on, the 47-year-old Ruth hit Johnson’s fifth pitch into the right field seats near the 344-foot sign.
“The show was not all Ruth,” The Post’s Shirley Povich reported. “Johnson had a zip on his fastball and a little something on most of his pitches. The 55-year-old Maryland farmer looked perfectly at home on the mound where he faced the Bambino for keeps so many times.”
