Al Lopez, the longtime catcher and Hall of Fame manager, got his first chance to handle major league pitchers with Clark Griffith’s Washington Senators in 1925. Lopez was just 16 when the defending World Series champs hired him as a batting-practice catcher during spring training in Tampa, where Lopez was born and raised.
“The Washington Senators were training here and they needed a catcher to catch batting practice,” he told Bill Madden of the New York Daily News in 2004 (reprinted the August 2004 Baseball Digest). “They didn’t want to use (only) their regular catchers … and I was playing sandlot ball when they called and offered me $45 a week. … That was my start in professional baseball.”
“I was very lucky,” Lopez told Bob Bloss in an interview recorded for SABR in 1996. “In those days, the clubs couldn’t afford to bring in too many extra men so they could only bring three catchers…. Muddy Ruel, Bennie Tate and Pinky Hargrave were the three catchers with Washington, so they wanted somebody else to just catch batting practice.” He caught sessions with the immortal Walter Johnson and the rest of the mound staff of the Senators, who would repeat as American League champions that season. “I would have done it for nothing just to wear the uniform,” Lopez said.
After spring training ended, Lopez tried out for and was signed by the Class D Tampa Smokers of the Florida State League, where he played his first pro season. That fall, a group of major leaguers, including Walter Johnson, came to Tampa for an exhibition game. In hopes of attracting more Hispanic fans, the teams recruited Lopez, whose parents actually were from Spain, to catch Johnson. So Lopez for one game became the battery mate of The Big Train.
The teen-aged backstop apparently made a good impression. According to a 1954 Arthur Daley column in the New York Times, the veteran pitcher told Lopez: “Nice game, kid. You’re going to be a great catcher someday.” Lopez never forgot. “Johnson threw hard, maybe the hardest of all,” he told Madden in 2004. “But he was easy to catch because he was always around the plate.”
It’s too bad that Johnson, who became Washington’s manager in 1929, didn’t keep track of Lopez. By 1927, he had signed with Brooklyn and made his debut in September 1928. He became one of the premier defensive catchers through the 1930s and into the late ’40s before becoming a successful manager — the only one whose A.L. teams went to the World Series other than the Yankees in the 1950s (with Cleveland in 1954 and Chicago in 1959).
In the majors from 1928 to 1947, Lopez held the record for most games by a catcher until 1987, when Bob Boone passed him. He still ranks in the top 10 in games behind the plate, As a manage, Lopez finished second 10 times, nine of those behind the first-place Yankees. No team he managed for a full season had losing record. They finished lower than second just three times.
During his career, Lopez caught four Hall of Fame pitchers: Dazzy Vance and Waite Hoyt with Brooklyn, and Bob Feller and Bob Lemon with Cleveland. Actually, you could say he caught five. At the time of his death in 2005, he was the last living player to have appeared in the 1920s – and to have caught Walter Johnson, if only in an exhibition game.
Alfonso Ramon Lopez — The Senor as he became known — was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1977. He died in Tampa at age 97 in October 2005.
This also appeared in the April 2024 edition of The Squibber, the online newsletter of SABR’s Bob Davids’ chapter
Washington baseball history 