The Senators trailed the Giants 3–1 in the eighth inning of Game 7, when Bucky Harris hit a routine ground ball to third which hit a pebble and took a bad hop over Giants third baseman Freddie Lindstrom. Two runners scored on the play, tying the score at three. In the ninth inning with the game tied, 3–3, Harris brought in an aging Johnson to pitch on just one day of rest – he had been the losing pitcher in Game 5. Johnson held the Giants scoreless into extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th inning, Muddy Ruel hit a high foul ball near home plate. The Giants' catcher, Hank Gowdy, dropped his protective face mask to field the ball but, failing to toss the mask aside, stumbled over it and dropped the ball, thus giving Ruel another chance to bat. On the next pitch, Ruel hit a double and, then proceeded to score the winning run when Earl McNeely hit a ground ball that took another bad hop over Lindstrom's head. It was the only World Series triumph for the franchise during their 60-year tenure in Washington. The Senators repeated as American League champions in but lost the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. After Johnson's retirement in , the Senators endured a few losing seasons until returning to contention in , this time with Johnson as manager. But after the Senators finished third in and , behind powerful Philadelphia and New York, Griffith fired Johnson, a victim of high expectations. For his new manager in , Griffith returned to the formula that worked for him in 1924, and 26-year-old shortstop Joe Cronin became player-manager. The change worked, as Washington posted a 99–53 record and swept to the pennant seven games ahead of the Yankees. But the Senators lost the World Series to the Giants in five games, and after that, the city would not host another World Series until , when the Washington Nationals, its current National League team, defeated the Houston Astros. The Senators sank all the way to seventh in . Attendance plunged as well, and after the season Griffith traded Cronin to the Red Sox for journeyman shortstop Lyn Lary and $225,000 in cash (even though Cronin was married to Griffith's niece, Mildred). Despite the return of Harris as manager in 1935–42 and 1950–54, Washington remained mostly a losing ball club for the next 25 years, contending for the pennant only in the talent-thin war years of and . In the fall of , the second major baseball franchise shift of the mid-20th century took place (after the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1952), with long suffering Baltimore civic and business interests purchasing the perennially cellar-dwelling St. Louis Browns from controversial but enterprising owner Bill Veeck and moving them northeast of Washington to the Chesapeake Bay port city.