Frank Howard stepped into the batter's box not knowing this would be his final at-bat in a Senators uniform, his last up at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.
The crowd of 14,460, angry and sad about the team's imminent move to Texas, let out a thunderous roar, trying to will one last thrill from their beloved Bunyanesque slugger. Howard crushed a fastball into the left-field stands that night of Sept. 30, 1971.
At 68, former Senators slugger Frank Howard still looks like he could power one into the upper deck at RFK Stadium, where he plans to attend the Nationals' opening day.
(Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
|
|
The standing ovation went on for minutes. Rounding the bags, Howard tipped his hat and flung it into the stands. And in a page ripped from baseball legend, the giant of a man stood on the dugout's top step, tears in his eyes, and blew a kiss to his cheering fans.
After the game, Howard said it was "the biggest thrill" of his baseball career. Thirty-four years later, and as he begins his 47th season in professional baseball, Big Frank says it still is.
"Oh, gawd, that stands out. An emotional moment," Howard says, sitting at the dining room table of his home in rural Loudoun County. "The last home run I hit in RFK Stadium was the last home run in that ballpark -- though there will be a few hit there this spring, so it won't be the last one."
With Major League Baseball's return to Washington next month, the shadow cast by the towering Senators slugger -- known in his heyday as "Hondo," "The Capital Punisher" and the "Gentle Giant" -- looms large again. Anyone who witnessed him denting RFK's upper-deck seats can't help but envision, on their return to the ballpark, those 24 seats, scattered from left field to straightaway center, that were once painted white to mark where Howard's shots landed.
But as the Washington Nationals try to fill Hondo's size 14D cleats this season, those monster home runs aren't their biggest challenge. The Senators, remember, were "first in war, first in peace and last in the American League." What Howard and his teammates proved was that winning games is one thing, winning hearts another.
Howard answers the phone and when asked, "Is this Frank Howard, the home-run hitter?," he quips: "What's left of 'im."
At 68, there's still plenty left.
One of the largest men ever to play major league baseball, he is 6 feet 7 1/2 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds. He looks almost gaunt compared with his Senators baseball-card photos from '69 or '70, when he tipped the scales at 275.
But it was his rawboned strength in baseball's pre-steroid days that was plain scary. Howard joining the Senators was like Goliath teaming up with David. His forearms still have the Popeye proportions that swung one of the biggest bats in baseball -- a 37-inch, 35-ounce Louisville Slugger.
Mickey Mantle used to tell about Yankee ace Whitey Ford making a stab at one of Howard's scorching line drives. He said Whitey was lucky he missed the ball because it would've carried him over the center-field fence. A lingering tale in Baltimore has Howard jacking a fastball out of old Memorial Stadium so hard it hit a house porch on one bounce.
"As time goes on, we get better and better," Howard says of his own legend.
But home runs have always been measured in feet and hyperbole. Most of Howard's feats aren't apocryphal. A .273 lifetime hitter with 382 homers, he hit an upper-deck gopher ball to win the final game of the 1963 World Series for the Dodgers. In May 1968, the Senators' most popular player went on a record-setting binge, belting 10 homers in 20 at-bats over six games. He ranks among the top five home run hitters of the '60s -- with Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.
