“Gonna vomit.” Those were the two words I texted a coworker at 12:17 a.m. this past Sunday morning. Not because I’d been bedridden all day with a flu-like ailment; because, with the entire season on the brink, the Yankees’ Aroldis Chapman had gone two balls, one strike on the Astros’ Jose Altuve, one of the game’s best hitters.  Sure enough, after that text Chapman threw a “here, hit the hell out of this pitch” slider, which Altuve crushed. I turned off the TV before Altuve’s two-run home run – which ended the Yankees 2019 season – even landed. 

As I lay in bed that night, thinking of anything that would take my mind off what had just happened, it hit me: I’d seen this before. I’d seen Aroldis Chapman give up a huge home run in a game his team had to win. It was three years ago in Game 7 of the World Series. Pitching for the Cubs, Chapman gave up a game tying home run in the eighth inning to the Cleveland Indians’ Rajai Davis. At the time, I’d written a column that was based on the Indians – who hadn’t won a championship since 1948 – winning the whole thing in 2016. But even with Davis hitting that big home run, and even after leading the series 3-1, the Indians lost to the Cubs in Game 7 in extra innings. My column never saw the light of day. 

Now, thanks again to Chapman, this abandoned column ran through my mind.  The premise – that New Jersey was a far different place when the Indians last won it all in 1948 – could still be used, thanks to the Washington Nationals. The Nats connection to D.C. goes back only a little more than a decade. But, our nation’s capital had another baseball team for most of the 20th century: the Washington Senators. The Senators history is not unlike that of the Philadelphia Phillies – around for a long time with little to show for it. 

Long story short, this is the first time since 1933 that a World Series game will be played in Washington, D.C.  That fact, plus a heartbreaking reminder from Mr. Chapman, has allowed me to revive that once left for dead column, with some slight variations.  And so, now I ask the question: what was New Jersey like the last time there was World Series baseball in Washington? 

If you have taken a trip to Island Beach State Park or gone to the Seaside Heights boardwalk, you’ve driven across the Mathis (eastbound) and Tunney (westbound) bridges.  But in 1933, you couldn’t do that.  They didn’t exist.  Ever been stuck in traffic on the Garden State Parkway? No one in 1933 was.  The Parkway as we now know it was not completed until the 1950s.  The Turnpike? Nope.  That wouldn’t be done until the 1950s either. 

In the Meadowlands there wasn’t an arena, racetrack, or a mall.  It was still just a stretch of marshlands.  Liberty State Park? It wasn’t officially dedicated until 1976.  In fact, Clemenza wouldn’t even stress about leaving behind cannoli there for another decade.  If you were looking for a roller coaster to ride, you were not going to find it in Jackson.  Great Adventure wasn’t built for another forty years. If you wanted to roll a little dice, you could go talk to Enoch “Nucky” Johnson in Atlantic City, who probably needed the money after prohibition was repealed that year. But legal casino gaming wasn’t allowed in the state for another four decades.   

Sports wise, you had seven teams to root for: the Yankees, Giants (baseball), Dodgers, Phillies, Giants (football), Eagles (in their first season) and Rangers.  No Knicks, 76ers, Mets, Jets, Devils, Flyers, Nets or Red Bulls (though all things considered, maybe it was less painful that way). 

As the Senators battled the New York Giants in the World Series (with New York winning in five games), Democrat A. Harry Moore sat in the governor’s chair in Trenton. Republicans Hamilton Fish Kean and William Warren Barbour represented New Jersey in the United States Senate. Republicans held a 10-4 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. One of the state’s only four Democratic representatives was Mary Teresa Norton (pictured), the first woman elected to Congress from New Jersey. Her district, as well as another, were eventually eliminated from the congressional map.  

The state’s now famous constitutional convention was over a decade away. Governors Kean – Murphy hadn’t been born yet. The world was still four years away from meeting future Congressman Bill Pascrell, one year away from meeting future Congressman Donald Payne, Sr., and nine years away from meeting LGBT activist Babs Siperstein. Wynona Lipman hadn’t made her way to New Jersey yet. 

Newark’s population hovered around 430,000. Douglass College was known as the New Jersey College for Women at Rutgers. Then one day in September, 1933, Mabel Smith Douglass, the college’s first dean, went rowing on Lake Placid. She never came back. Eventually, the school was renamed in her honor. 

Theatres in Trenton were still segregated. A year after it made national headlines, the kidnap of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was still a mystery in 1933. Bruno Hauptmann would not be arrested for the crime until late summer, 1934.  

While we do not know for sure if any Senators’ fans called it home, down in Cumberland County in 1933 existed a little town called Landis.  Like the Senators, Landis entered a prolonged period of obscurity before completely vanishing, because in 1952, the town merged with Vineland.  It remained the last New Jersey town to merge with another until 1997, when Pahaquarry Township in Warren County was incorporated into Hardwick Township.   

1933 New Jersey had Landis and Pahaquarry, but was severely lacking in equality and had no Great Adventure, Meadowlands Sports Complex, casinos, Turnpike, Parkway…the list goes on.  We’ve come a long way since then.  One can only imagine the kinds of innovation, change, and mergers we will see between now and the next time the Phillies win the World Series. 

Chris Donnelly is a Principal at the public affairs and consulting firm Kivvit, located in Asbury Park.  In his spare time, he pretends to be an author.  He’s written three books, Baseball’s Greatest Series: Yankees, Mariners, and the 1995 Matchup That Changed History; How The Yankees Explain New York; and Doc, Donnie, the Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York’s Baseball Soul.