page_title: Griffith Stadium
section_title: Notable sluggers
hierarchical_section_title: Griffith Stadium / Notable sluggers
caption_attribution_description: Original caption&#58; "Plenty of basehits in these bats — Washington D.C., July 7. A million dollar base-ball flesh is represented in these sluggers of the two All- Star Teams which met in the 1937 game at Griffith Stadium today. Left to right: Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg, 7/7/37"
context_page_description: Griffith Stadium stood in Washington, D.C., from 1911 to 1965, between Georgia Avenue and 5th Street, and between W Street and Florida Avenue NW.
  An earlier wooden baseball park had been built on the same site in 1891, called Boundary Field, or National Park after its occupant's nickname. This was destroyed by a fire in 1911 and replaced by a steel and concrete structure, also at first called National Park and then American League Park; it was renamed for Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith in 1923. The stadium was home to the American League Senators from 1911 through 1960, and to an expansion team of the same name for their first season in 1961.
  The venue hosted the All-Star Game in 1937 and 1956, as well as World Series games in 1924, 1925, and 1933. It served as home for the Negro league Homestead Grays during the 1940s and as such hosted both the 1943 and 1944 Negro World Series. It was also home to the Washington Redskins of the National Football League for 24 seasons, from the time they transferred from Boston in 1937 through the 1960 season.
  The ballpark was demolished in 1965 and Howard University Hospital now occupies the site.
context_section_description: For most of its existence, Griffith Stadium was known as a pitcher's park. For instance, the left-field foul line was never less than 350 feet from the plate, and right field was never less than 320 feet. The distant fences were no problem for sluggers like Josh Gibson, Mickey Mantle, and the Senators' own youngster Harmon Killebrew. There have been only three reported instances of a player hitting a home run over the left field bleachers: Mantle once and Gibson twice. Clark Griffith once said that Gibson hit more home runs into Griffith Stadium's distant left-field bleachers than the entire American League. Babe Ruth hit near-500-foot drives over the center field and right-center field walls on consecutive days in May 1921. 
  In May 1949, Cleveland Indians outfielder Larry Doby smacked the then-longest home run ever hit at the stadium over the right-center field wall and onto a rooftop well outside the ballpark. The shot was reported to have traveled over 500 feet (150 m), and Doby called it "the longest homer I've ever hit".
  On April 17, 1953, Mantle hit a home run off Chuck Stobbs that was so impressive that someone tried to determine its flight with some accuracy, thus popularizing the term "tape measure home run". It was alleged to be 565 feet (172 m), although it bounced off the top of the back wall of the bleachers, adding some distance to its flight path. It was believed to be the 2nd longest home run ever hit at the time.
  Aside from some championship seasons in the early 1920s and 1930s, the Senators teams that played at Griffith Stadium were legendarily bad. The hapless Washington team became the butt of a well-known vaudeville joke: "First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League", a twist on the famous Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee eulogy of George Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen" (a similar phrasing was once used for the St. Louis Browns: "First in shoes, first in booze, and last in the American League.")
  Only one Washington, D.C., public high school baseball player ever hit a home run over the 30-foot-high "green monster–like" right field wall at Griffith Stadium—Bill Harrison of Coolidge High School in 1952.
  In 1915, Joseph P. Derby hit a home run off the right field wall, and became the only known amateur baseball player believed to hit a ball completely out of Washington's Griffith Stadium. 
  The stadium was still called Griffith Stadium in 1961, even though team owner Calvin Griffith had moved the original Senators club to the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul (becoming the Minnesota Twins), to be replaced in Washington by a new expansion team, also called the Senators (now the Texas Rangers).
caption: The 1937 All-Star game, played at Griffith Stadium, featured these seven American League players, from left to right: Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg. All seven would eventually be elected to the Hall of Fame.
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