Frank Howard, the Washington Senators' 'Capital Punisher,' dies at 87 [View all]

Frank Howard, the Washington Senators’ ‘Capital Punisher,’ dies at 87

One of baseball’s most feared hitters, the gigantic slugger belted the final home run for the old Washington Senators in 1971

By Matt Schudel
October 30, 2023 at 5:01 p.m. EDT



Frank Howard of the Washington Senators working out before a game on May 18, 1968. Mr. Howard homered twice that day against the Detroit Tigers, the last of a six-game stretch in which he hit an astonishing 10 home runs. (AP)

When Major League Baseball returned to Washington in 2005, the Nationals played their games at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. It had been 34 years since the city had a baseball team, but the stadium still held remnants of its last star before the game went away. … Deep in the upper deck, several seats were painted white, marking the longest home runs hit by Frank Howard, who during his seven seasons with the woeful Washington Senators was recognized as one of baseball’s strongest and most feared hitters.

At 6-foot-7 and about 270 pounds, he was a towering force on an otherwise forgettable team, launching monumental home runs that sometimes flew more than 500 feet.

When the Nationals arrived in RFK Stadium more than three decades after Mr. Howard’s final game, players looked at the distant white seats in the upper deck and could not believe a baseball could be hit that far. … “They’d ask me, ‘Where was home plate back then?’” Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell wrote in a 2016 online chat. “I’d say, ‘Right where it is now, give or take a foot or two.’ Not one player ever believed me. They considered it impossible.”

Mr. Howard, who twice led the American League in home runs and remained an enduring favorite of Washington’s disenfranchised baseball fans, died Oct. 30 at a hospital in Aldie, Va. He was 87.

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