There’s lots of things that happened on this date in history: in 1912 the Titanic set sail from Southampton (to meet its untimely demise five days later) and in 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published. Oh yeah, and in 1961 the expansion Washington Senators took the field for Opening Day at Griffiths Stadium. Of the three events, the last is the most forgettable, even if it most closely resembles the Titanic’s ghastly fate. These were not your daddy’s Senators (those Senators had boarded a plane for Minneapolis, where they became the Twins), and they certainly weren’t memorable: the Senators were cobbled together from an expansion draft of team leftovers when the men who then ran baseball decided that a team in Washington would balance the new high-end la-de-da franchise set to open in Los Angeles — and called (get this) the Angels.

Washington seemed an afterthought: a balancing act to the new west coast team — and its expansion draft reflected it. There just wasn’t that much talent available, and the talent that was available played in New York. Former Cubs great Dale Long came over from the Yankees to play first base, the beautifully named but limping Coot Veal came from the Tigers to play shortstop (which he did, but not often — and poorly), the aging Gene Woodling (38) came down the road from Baltimore to play the outfield and righthander Dick Donovan came in from the Pale Hose to anchor the staff. It wasn’t a surprise that the expansion Senators finished ninth that year — the surprise was that the Kansas City Athletics (then a virtual farm team for the Yankees) were actually worse: though both teams had the same 61-100 season. The Angels, on the other hand, finished ahead of the Senators by some nine wins. They had drafted better (Leon Wagner, Eddie Yost, Earl Averill, Ken Hunt!) and started to build a farm system.

Senators’ fans registered their disdain for the “Afterthoughts” by voting with their feet. The new expansion team drew just 597,000 fans, though the team’s owners thought this might improve — the next year the Senators were slated to move into the newly built “D.C. Stadium,” a then-state of the art facility that would later be named for Robert F. Kennedy. In all, there are only two good reasons to remember the ’61 Senators: Gene Woodling — whose career was revived by a surprising.313 season — and Dick Donovan, as classy a pitcher as there was in baseball. But Woodling’s surprise year was truly a surprise. A 38-year-old could not carry on forever and while Woodling would be remembered for his years of near-greatness with the Indians, he could not replicate them with the Senators. By 1963 he was out of the game.

Not so for Dick Donovan, a righthanded fastballer whose best year as a pitcher was still ahead of him. Donovan, who was originally signed as an amateur by the Boston Braves in 1947, had one day in the sun, though it was a long time coming. After three years of mediocrity bouncing between Boston and the minors, Donovan was signed by the Tigers, who (after eyeballing their wild new “ace”) sent him back to the Braves. “No thanks.” But in 1955 the Chicago White Sox took a gamble on Donovan and were rewarded, in large part because the New England righthander had developed a sneaky slider to complement his above-average fastball. The result was a 15-9 season and a spot at the top of the White Sox rotation. He thereafter served up four steady (and two not-so-steady) seasons before arriving in Washington.

Donovan’s claim to baseball fame, however, came in the third game of the 1959 World Series, when he pitched the best game of his career. Facing off against Dodger great Don Drysdale, Donovan gave up just two hits in 6.2 innings, while Drysdale served up eleven hits to the normally hitless Hose. But the White Sox were the hard-luck losers: after Donovan ambled to the dugout in the 6th, the Chicago bullpen collapsed and the Trolleys took the game 3-1. Donovan must have sensed the impending doom. While waiting for their new stadium to be completed in Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers played at the converted Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the short porch in left was guarded by a looming forty foot screen. As Donovan was warming up prior to facing Drysdale, he looked out at the screen and shook his head: “I wonder how a fellow ever gets the side out,” he said. “I guess you gotta be a positive thinker.”

Donovan was only 10-10 for the ’61 Senators, but he led the AL in ERA and might have become a feature of the new team’s rotation. But the Senators’ front office didn’t think he’d get much better and they dealt him (with Jim Mahoney and Gene Green) to Cleveland for Jimmy Piersall. It was a mistake. Piersall hit .244 for the Senators, while  Donovan won 20 games for the Indians. He was just so-so in the two years that followed and, after pitching only 22 innings in the ’65 season, he retired to his boyhood home in Massachusetts. For the next twenty years, Donovan was a successful businessman and a well-known figure in Weymouth. He died in 1997 at the age of 69.