and had attended games at the stadium since his days as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the 1910s. When FDR returned to Washington in 1933 as president, Griffith visited the White House early every season to give Roosevelt season passes; he also constructed a special ramp at the ballpark that accommodated the president's special mobility needs after his bout with polio in 1921. On Opening Day 1941, Roosevelt stood up in the stadium's presidential box on the arm of a military aide, and threw out the first pitch. In 1942, Griffith urged Roosevelt to keep baseball going during the war, and took credit for doing so after Roosevelt's initial "Green Light letter", which allowed baseball to continue. Notable sluggers For most of its existence, Griffith Stadium was known as a pitcher's park. For instance, the left-field foul line was never less than 350 feet from the plate, and right field was never less than 320 feet. The distant fences were no problem for sluggers like Josh Gibson, Mickey Mantle, and the Senators' own youngster Harmon Killebrew. There have been only three reported instances of a player hitting a home run over the left field bleachers: Mantle once and Gibson twice. Clark Griffith once said that Gibson hit more home runs into Griffith Stadium's distant left-field bleachers than the entire American League. Babe Ruth hit near-500-foot drives over the center field and right-center field walls on consecutive days in May 1921. In May 1949, Cleveland Indians outfielder Larry Doby smacked the then-longest home run ever hit at the stadium over the right-center field wall and onto a rooftop well outside the ballpark. The shot was reported to have traveled over , and Doby called it "the longest homer I've ever hit". On April 17, 1953, Mantle hit a home run off Chuck Stobbs that was so impressive that someone tried to determine its flight with some accuracy, thus popularizing the term "tape measure home run". It was alleged to be , although it bounced off the top of the back wall of the bleachers, adding some distance to its flight path. It was believed to be the 2nd longest home run ever hit at the time. Aside from some championship seasons in the early 1920s and 1930s, the Senators teams that played at Griffith Stadium were legendarily bad. The hapless Washington team became the butt of a well-known vaudeville joke: