What’s the matter with these kids? Nada!
Photo by bestyy38105321 on Vecteezy
We oldies certainly do love our childhood heroes — even when those heroes weren’t always so heroic.
Frank Sinatra? Hung out with mobsters.
Dwight Eisenhower? Might have been an unfaithful husband.
Babe Ruth? Never met a bottle of bourbon he didn’t crack open and adore.
But I’m still stuck on one idol who never fell (or could fall) off his perch: Walter Johnson. He was the legendary flame-throwing pitcher who held the career major-league record for strikeouts for 63 years.
Johnson led the usually horrendous Washington Senators to their one and only World Series championship 100 years ago. He was one of the first five players inducted into the Hall of Fame.
He even threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River on a dare (some say it was the Rappahannock River, but hey, a river is still a river).
Then, after Johnson hung up his spikes, he became a successful farmer, a civic leader, an elected official — truly a man to emulate.
I’ve been a Johnson fan most of my life. But I was brought up short at a recent fancy dinner.
One of my tablemates told me that he attended Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, some 50 years ago. He was one of those guys of a certain age who loves to whine about today’s kids. He unloaded on me.
Today’s WJ students have no idea how great Walter Johnson was, this guy asserted. They don’t consider him an example. And the school does nothing to correct this oversight, he insisted.
“When I was a WJ student, we knew everything about him, including his career batting average,” proclaimed this guy (don’t bother looking it up — Johnson batted .235, a very good mark for a pitcher, then or now).
A lifelong skeptic, I couldn’t simply accept what this guy said. Had to go check it out. So, I arranged to spend a morning at Walter Johnson High School.
My eyes were opened very wide indeed. The great pitcher is held in very high esteem at the school that bears his name.
There’s a museum-style display right in the main lobby that honors him, displays clippings about him, even contains one of his old, dusty mitts.
The school paper is called The Pitch. The yearbook is called The Windup. Student aides are known as “designated hitters.” There’s a bust of Johnson in the school’s art gallery. There’s another out near the tennis courts.
OK, that might all seem like window dressing.
More substantial: The school offers a local history course where a hunk of the curriculum is devoted to the guy they called The Big Train.
On the great pitcher’s birthday, each November 6, the administration springs for 600 cupcakes for students.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s family has donated two seats from long-gone Griffith Stadium, where Johnson pitched for 21 seasons. The seats are on display right near the main entrance to the school — impossible to miss.
“When I interviewed here, I said, ‘Who’s Walter Johnson?’” recalled Nicole Morgan, the principal. “I certainly know now. We celebrate him, recognize him for his contributions to the community.”
Are students on board? Very much so, said Rheem Tungcod and Nick Zampardi, both WJ seniors, both WJ athletes.
Johnson’s accomplishments “are not something that flies over my head,” said Tungcod, a basketball player. Even though Zampardi plays football and lacrosse, not baseball, Johnson’s history “brings us closer together,” he said.
As for the faculty, “we all feel a sense of community because of who he was,” said Larry Hurd, Jr., the school’s “athletic specialist” (he’d be called athletic director at most other schools). “It’s a very special place to be.”
My only beef is with the school’s mascot. Until 1990, WJ’s teams were the Mighty Mad Cows, because moos could be heard from the farm across the street when the school opened in 1956.
Suburbia has long since overtaken the neighborhood, however. WJ’s teams were renamed the Wildcats.
That leaves me as cold as the whining of my dinner partner.
Here’s a request to WJHS from this lifelong Walter Johnson fan: Please rename your teams the Shutouts.
Distinctive. Memorable. And true to Walter Johnson’s history (he pitched 110 of them).
Best of all, a certain dinner partner of mine might realize how well “his” school remembers its namesake.
Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.
