Frank Howard was a giant baseball star in Washington and beyond when the game was still larger than life.
One summer night in the 1960s, our family went to RFK Stadium to see Frank Howard. I could say we went to see the lousy Washington Senators. But who would believe me?So when Howard came to bat in the first inning, a half-in-the-bag fan near us in the grandstand bellowed, sarcastically, over and over, “Hondo, myHoward, at 6-foot-7 and 270 pounds, ran ponderously, fielded precariously and, to compensate, hustled to admirable but embarrassing excess.
Harper was wonderful here. Howard, in his way, was fully comparable. My gift, as a bar bet and as a tip of the hat to Howard’s relentless, unselfish, rhino-on-fire hustle, is that he also had more triples as a National than Harper . “He’s got us running getting dressed,” third baseman Tom Bianco said. “We lead the league in hustle, rules and meetings. We’re up to two meetings a day. We even had a meeting after a rainout to go over the rain.”“He’ll yell: ‘Stop the bus! Got to get some beer for my boys. They’re playing some hard baseball,’ ” Bianco said.
Though he is known, and always thought of himself, primarily as a Senator, Howard was a star with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was the National League rookie of the year in 1960, he was the Dodgers’ team leader with 31 homers on a 102-win teamThen he indirectly helped win two more Dodgers pennants in 1965 and ’66 by being the main piece in a trade for Senators ace left-hander Claude Osteen, who completed a dominant trio with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
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