1938 Original AP Wire Photo and Baltimore Sun Election Coverage - Walter Johnson Enters Politics from His Germantown Farm with 1940 Voting Ballot
On August 24, 1938, Walter Johnson visited Washington D.C. and signed baseballs for a crowd of kids - the kind of scene that had followed the Big Train his entire career. What made that particular day different was what the Associated Press caption on the back announced: Johnson, now a Germantown, Maryland farmer, had just filed for election as Montgomery County Commissioner on the Republican ticket. The photo, transmitted by wire on August 25, 1938 and certified directly from the Baltimore Sun's historic archive, captures him at the exact moment his second act in public life began. He is smiling, surrounded by children, signing baseballs -- completely at ease, because this was always who he was. One of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Johnson had retired to his Germantown farm and almost immediately turned toward public service.
The Baltimore Sun from November 10, 1938 tells the rest of the story. Under the headline "Walter Johnson Victor In Montgomery County," the paper confirms he won the Commissioner's race, launching a political career that would take him all the way to a congressional run in 1940, where he lost to Democrat William D. Byron by 60,037 to 52,258 votes -- a margin of just six percent. After that loss he was re-elected County Commissioner in 1942 and served until his death from a brain tumor in 1946. The farm he retired to in Germantown -- the exact ground where he lived out his post-baseball life as a farmer and elected official -- is today the site of Seneca Valley High School. I know this piece of land well. I went to Seneca Valley. The hallways, the fields, the parking lot where buses pull in every morning -- all of it was once Walter Johnson's farm. For most collectors, this is a piece of baseball and political history. For me it is also a piece of the ground I walked every day for four years, long before I knew whose land it had been. That connection is why this set will never leave my collection.
An official Republican Primary ballot for the Montgomery County Election of May 6, 1940, printed for voters and signed by Donald Bowie, Jr., President of the Board of Supervisors of Elections for Montgomery County. The ballot lists Walter P. Johnson of Montgomery County as a candidate for Republican nomination for Representative from the Sixth Congressional District in the 77th Congress, alongside contests for President (Thomas E. Dewey vs. an uninstructed delegation) and U.S. Senator. This is the same Walter Johnson who dominated the American League as a pitcher for two decades and was among the first five men inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. After retiring to his farm in Germantown, Maryland, Johnson moved directly into local politics, winning election as Montgomery County Commissioner in 1938 before running for Congress in 1940. He lost that race to Democrat William D. Byron by a narrow six-point margin, then returned to the Commissioner's seat in 1942 and served until his death in 1946. The farm he worked and lived on during these years sits on what is now the campus of Seneca Valley High School, ground I walked every day for four years without knowing its history until I started collecting. This ballot is a rare surviving piece of that unlikely second act, when one of baseball's greatest pitchers traded the mound for the campaign trail.
The strange, one-of-a-kind political campaign that almost landed Walter Johnson in Congress
