We have come to another it-is-impossible-to-say-with-certainty moment in our tale. While I am able to bring to the discussion of W. H. Cobb’s murder a number of facts and considerations that haven’t seen daylight since the tragedy, if ever, no one can state with certainty why Ty’s father was tramping around in his own side yard at about 11:00 p.m. on August 8, 1905. Ostensibly he had left home for a few days to visit some schools in the district that he supervised. He departed on a Tuesday, telling Amanda and others that he’d return that Thursday evening. But that’s not what happened. His itinerary can’t be reconstructed precisely at this remove, but we do know that in addition to any other calls he may have made he went to see his friend Judge W. R. Little in Carnesville (the jurist to whom he had earlier sent Ty to whet his interest in the law), and that he came back to Royston not two days later but late that same night. Why did he say one thing and do another—and upon his return, why didn’t he go directly into his house? And how come, as the coroner’s report showed, he had a pistol and a rock in the pockets of his suit jacket?
One possible explanation is that he was sneaking in a little spying on the scandalous sisters next door before turning in for the evening. Keeping an eye on Annie and Vinie Jones had become something of an obsession for W.H.—not for any voyeuristic reason, it seems, but because he liked to play detective, surveying their property and tracking their behavior while he built a case against them as a public nuisance. The women’s trial had finally happened a month before, with Judge Little presiding, in the ancient, crumbling courthouse at Carnesville, the county seat. A verdict should have ended the matter but didn’t. Annie and Vinie got such an obviously raw deal from Judge Little in terms of what was admissible evidence and what was not—he told the jury that the sisters’ silence in the face of someone calling them whores could be considered an admission of guilt—and filed an appeal so quickly after they were found guilty of “running a lewd house” that everyone knew that nothing really had been settled and that the case would be back in court presently. More evidence would be needed to get a conviction that would stick, and W. H. Cobb eagerly resumed his role as amateur Pinkerton. It’s conceivable that he returned early from his business trip—perhaps because some meetings were canceled (a malaria epidemic had hit the South that summer)—and on the way back dropped by Judge Little’s place to strategize about the Jones case. Then, arriving at Franklin Springs Street at about 10:30, he may have decided to check for signs of activity next door; stirrings of any kind at that hour would be suspicious. In this scenario, the pistol and rock in his pocket could be accounted for as weapons he might need in case of a confrontation with a Jones client who was angry about being spotted.
Whether that is what happened on the fateful night we cannot say, but it’s a reasonable scenario that you won’t find in any previous Cobb book. The reason is that Cobb’s two main biographers, Charles Alexander and Al Stump, did not seem to be aware that the Jones sisters existed. Both writers accept without question the much repeated rumor of the day—that W.H. was spying on Amanda, whom he had for a while suspected of being unfaithful. In this version, those “school visits” were merely a trap W.H. set for his wife; his plan from the start was to double back and catch her in the act. Such a simple and titillating tale had great appeal to the tabloid-inflected spirit of the times. “Mrs. Cobb is a very beautiful woman,” said the Washington Post in the wake of the tragedy, “and there has been gossip about her for some time.” Another daily said that W.H. had been advised by one neighbor to forget the Joneses and “keep his eye on his own house.” Still others suggested that Amanda, always a little shrewder than her husband, was well aware that he planned to return early, and that she knew exactly whom she was shooting that night.
Amanda was known for being tough and unflappable—“She could chew nails and spit them out,” one family member, who asked not to be identified, as if he were still afraid of her, told me—but at the coroner’s inquest the morning after the shooting, the thirty-four-year-old widow sobbed as she told the story of hearing a “rustling sound” outside her bedroom, going “from window to window, two or three times, maybe more,” and finally firing off two shots. (Ty’s two younger siblings, John Paul, who was usually referred to by his middle name, and Florence, were staying with friends that night.) In her overwrought state, she described the scene somewhat confusingly. Alexander and Stump took her references to “upper and lower windows” and a figure disappearing “around the chimney” to mean that the master bedroom was on the second floor and Amanda shot W.H. while he was walking on the roof. That was not the case. If the authors had looked at an easily found photo of the house (which was demolished in the 1950s to make space for a funeral parlor parking lot) they would have seen it was a one-story structure and that W.H. was standing on terra firma when his wife saw his outline and opened fire. Alexander and Stump made other errors as well. Both also say that Amanda used a shotgun to kill her husband when the corner’s report clearly indicates it was a pistol. (“I went up and got my pistol,” said Amanda. “After shooting, I threw the pistol down.”)
Cobb came home the day after the killing to a house wracked by grief and shame. A burial date had been set for his father, and his possibly adulterous mother had been indicted for voluntary manslaughter, meaning there would be a sensational trial and she might spend twenty or thirty years in prison. News of the tragedy—“Former State Senator Shot”—was turning up in papers from coast to coast; that Amanda had a son named “Cyrus” who was a professional baseball player was sometimes mentioned. Cobb never talked publicly about the death of his father or its immediate aftermath, but the accident (if that’s what it was) must have been made grotesquely painful for him by the attendant whiff of scandal. What would life be like now? Was he suddenly, at eighteen, the man of the house? Should he console his mother, or accept consolation from her, after what she had done?
While his mind reeled, the press wuthered like an idiot wind against the Cobbs’ suddenly much discussed windows. Cobb avoided or turned away the newspapermen who came to Royston in search of dirt, but a Washington Post reporter managed to interview his younger brother, Paul, and wrote a piece that made him look as pathetically naive about adult relationships as, at the age of sixteen, he probably was. Paul and the twelve-year-old Florence, the story said, “were very much surprised to see the sensational reports in regard to family differences between their father and mother. Paul said that the domestic relations between his father and mother were the most pleasant, in that they lived together in perfect harmony.” Yes, indeed, the reader was left to think—until the minute she blew his head off.
Amanda was formally arrested at the funeral, as she stood crying over her husband’s still-open grave. Her bail was set at $7,000. (Stephen Ginn signed the bond, as he had signed the Jones sisters’.) She was temporarily free and presumed innocent, but faced the wrath of W.H.’s brothers, who wanted to see her get the maximum punishment. Although not wealthy, the Cobb men hired four lawyers to help the state’s solicitor general prosecute the case. They intended, they said, to call to the stand the chief of the Atlanta police, who would tell how one of his officers had rushed to quell a disturbance involving W.H. and Amanda that had taken place at the Jackson Hotel a month before the killing. The Cobb brothers promised that in due time they would reveal the name of the man with whom Amanda was allegedly sleeping.
• • •
Ty was missed and pitied in Augusta, where the shooting and its aftermath were covered thoroughly but sensitively by the Chronicle. “A team without Cobb,” one unidentified player said, “is like an army without Washington or Lee.” He was first set to rejoin the Tourists the day after his father’s funeral, on August 12. But after several last-minute changes of travel plans—all too typical for him, yet excusable under the circumstances—he arrived back in Augusta on August 16, in time for a doubleheader against the Charleston Sea Gulls. In terms of hitting he picked up where he left off, smacking two singles in the f
irst game (and going 0-for-3 in the second before bowing out with a minor finger injury). Much had happened with the club, however, in the eight days he’d been away. C. D. Carr, the owner since July 23, had dismissed George Leidy (whose sternness seems to have played poorly with everyone except Cobb) as both a manager and outfielder—and reinstated Andy Roth as the Tourists’ skipper. Carr, a prominent wholesale grocer, stated bluntly that Leidy had “unquestionably done his best and failed.” He also expressed the hope that his Tourists would not relapse into their previous undisciplined state. Alas the unruly “joy club” assembled by Strouthers was soon back in session. Two days into Roth’s second tenure, first baseman Ed Lauzon, a well-known wag, came to bat at Warren Park wearing, said the Chronicle, “a very large false nose and a brush of whiskers”—his way of mocking Savannah Pathfinders pitcher Harry “Klondike” Kane (born Cohen). The paper said the stunt made Kane “dance with rage”—though he may have segued into a celebratory horah after he held Lauzon hitless in four at-bats.
Cobb couldn’t be bothered with such nonsense—he was finally headed for fast company. He’d learned about the Tigers’ interest in him, unofficially, from Youngman, who needed to see him in only three games—the aforementioned doubleheader and the next day’s meeting with the Macon Brigands, in which Cobb hit two singles and a double, and put down a nice sacrifice bunt—before working out a deal with the Tourists to acquire his rights. The price for Cobb’s contract was $500, “payable,” said the awestruck local paper, “in a lump sum.” Under the terms of the agreement, Cobb was to finish out the season with Augusta, then report to Warren Park for spring training as a Tiger the following March.
But no sooner had the scout left town than Tigers manager Armour changed his mind and decided that he needed to have Cobb in Detroit as soon as possible. Duff Cooley was drinking himself out of his center fielder’s job as fast as he could, the sportswriters were running out of polite ways to describe what was causing his inability to chase down fly balls, and the bench was devoid of reasonable substitutes. So debilitated was the team that Armour had to turn down lucrative midseason exhibition games with Michigan schools and semipro squads (“We are too crippled to play,” he wrote to the Mt. Carmel Athletic Association), something that must have troubled Navin. The manager, midway through his first season, seemed worried about his job—and rightly so. The injuries were not his fault but the Tigers had lapsed into in a state of mental, if not moral, disarray. Many men were showing up drunk or seriously hungover. In mid-August the manager made the unusual move of leaving the team to search for players up and down the East Coast. The trip was not productive and owner Yawkey told the Detroit News he was confused by what was going on. “Our team is a mystery to me,” he said. “I go out and see them play the finest ball in the land, and the next day I feel like coming down the back streets to my hotel.”
His embarrassment would only increase. After what the Free Press called a “disastrous road trip” during which they lost four straight to Washington, Detroit again faced the last-place Senators at home in a game that ended, or rather came asunder, in the 11th inning when the Tigers, incensed by a call made by umpire Bill Sheridan, refused to resume their field positions, and fans chased him across the outfield and into the street—where a panting Sheridan declared Detroit losers by forfeit. Over the next several days the Tigers dropped three more games and their despair deepened. Said White Sox manager Fielder Jones: “The Tigers are a minor league bunch.”
Cobb was hardly seen as a savior—the South in general was thought to produce inferior talent—but his arrival would provide at least a brief distraction and perhaps a glimmer of hope. In a flurry of telegrams, Armour and Carr negotiated a codicil in which the Tigers would give the Tourists an additional $200 to have Cobb report immediately, bringing his total cost to $700. Navin, however, thought that was a lot for an unproven teenager and he nixed the deal—forcing the desperate manager to pay the expedited delivery fee out of his own pocket. Cobb didn’t know he’d been put on a fast track to the Big Show (as it was already called) until August 19, when he hit a single in a game against the Brigands, and the first baseman, making chitchat while trying to keep him close to the sack, said, “So I hear you’re going up.”
Soon after the game was over that day Cobb wired Armour asking what the Tigers had paid for his contract. From a legal standpoint this was none of his business, and he almost certainly knew the answer already from talking to Carr—the inquiry was really an attempt to open negotiations. Cobb wanted a cut of what the Tourists were getting for him, a not uncommon request in those days when organized sports was still new and men were startled to find that they could be sold like chattel. If he didn’t get something from the Tigers, he told Carr, he just might not go north. (Though it was illogical to ask the team paying for your contract to kick something back to you, players naturally thought in terms of where they had the most leverage.)
When Carr relayed the news that Cobb was balking, Armour said, “I anticipated some trouble when I received his telegram,” and added, “there is not one ball player in fifty that is sold to a Major League Club who receives any portion of the purchase price whatever.” Yet Cobb wasn’t finished making demands: he wanted the Tigers to pay his $78 round-trip train fare to Detroit and back home to Royston at the end of the season. Armour wrote to him patiently explaining that providing such transportation was “against team rules.” The Tigers would give Cobb a salary of $225 a month, but no more.
While Cobb and Armour stood their ground, 800-odd miles apart, the Tourists went ahead with their farewell tribute. “Ty Cobb was the recipient of a handsome gold watch and a large bunch of roses yesterday during the ball game, as tokens of esteem from fans and a lady friend,” said the Chronicle, which chose not to identify Charlie Lombard by name. The whole ceremony was a bit mystifying. Rather than schedule it before the first pitch, or after the game, the team said goodbye to “the town’s favorite player” (as the Chronicle called him) prior to his third at-bat. With two out and the Tourists trailing the Brigands 2–0 in the sixth inning, the game was halted and Charlie Lombard and several local dignitaries proceeded from the grandstand while Ty, flanked by his teammates, fidgeted at home plate, thinking of the speech he’d have to make. After getting the watch and the flowers, he was brought front and center, and as always in such situations, the son of the founder of the North Georgia Oratorical Association groped for words. “Cobb replied in a couple of sentences, assuring all of his appreciation,” said the paper. “Every time he hesitated for a word, some of the players, who were lined up on either side of him, had a suggestion of a comical nature to make.” When the game resumed, he struck out—“as is usual” in such situations, the Chronicle said. For the afternoon—it was Friday, August 25—he had two singles and a stolen base as the Tourists lost 3–0 to Macon before 1,400, the biggest turnout at Warren Park since opening day.
As a Chronicle story noted, the hoopla might well have been all for naught, since Ty and the Tigers hadn’t yet made a deal. Over the weekend, though, the impasse was broken, and on Sunday the 27th the Detroit Free Press ran a story saying that “the fastest man in the South,” and the “sort of swatsman who can be called a ‘natural born hitter’ ” (the phrase that Cobb detested) would be “joining the Detroit aggregation at once.” Behind the scenes the big league club had caved. Cobb’s acquisition appears to have been recorded, disingenuously, as a draft, so the Tigers could slip him the $150 that draftees traditionally received without setting a distasteful precedent. He also won the battle for round-trip train fare, in August and again in October, a perk offered to no other player.
• • •
It was late in the morning of Tuesday, August 29, when Ty finally put his cloth bag of bats and his leather satchel of clothing down on the platform of Michigan Central Station in downtown Detroit. He seems to have staggered out of the train, thoroughly exhausted. It was his first time north of the Mason-Dixon line and he had not had an easy crossing.
Missing his connections in both Atlanta and Cincinnati (in true Ty Cobb fashion) he had added more than twelve hours to what was under normal summer circumstances a sweaty thirty-hour slog. During his layover in Cincinnati, still known as “the Queen City of the West,” he had hopped a trolley to see the sights, which included the Ivory Soap factory and the neoclassical Cincinnati Reds’ stadium, called the Palace of the Fans. At that point in the journey he still was relatively fresh, with curiosity to satisfy and energy to burn. In Detroit, deprived of sleep and wearing the same August-wrecked suit he had put on as a minor leaguer, he did not appear fit for fast company.
The team functionary who met Ty at the station and drove him to the ballpark in a horse-drawn carriage must have wondered how Armour was going to react to the sight of this strung-out, bedraggled Georgia lad. Would he put him into that afternoon’s game, the first in a three-game series against the New York Highlanders? Cobb wasn’t just travel-worn; he had lost weight and acquired a sunken-eyed look after dealing with all that was going on in Royston. In one of the first photos of him taken in a Detroit uniform—which already had that distinctive Old English “D”—he seems to have reverted to the nervous, stuttering, too-skinny man-child from the Royston Reds. Armour took one look at Cobb and decided he needed at least one good night’s rest before going into the lineup. It wasn’t a difficult decision. Neither the cranks nor the writers would be clamoring for his participation because no one expected a kid from the Sally League to make much difference. More likely, he’d be a total bust, gone and forgotten by the following spring. One Free Press story announcing the arrival of Cobb said “If he gets away with a .275 mark, he will be satisfying everybody.”
Bennett Park didn’t have dugouts yet, so Cobb watched the first major league game he ever saw—a 2–0 Tigers victory, made possible by the golden left arm of “Twilight” Ed Killian, a man who was poetry on the mound, but poison in the clubhouse—from the exposed bench on the third base side of the infield, where the other Tigers sat. No one much noted the arrival of perhaps the greatest player of all time. “The glances of the players as I went to the bench were not unfriendly,” Cobb wrote in a 1925 serial first published in the New York Evening Journal, “but they were decidedly impersonal. No particular interest was taken in my presence. I had a feeling of being a spectator.” The situation would change—but not right away. Ty had arrived on a team that desperately needed healthy bodies, so at first he was accepted and even appreciated by his teammates for the function he served. He wasn’t in those final weeks of the 1905 season barred from the batting cage, denied a locker, or ignored when he asked a question, the way rookies of that era so often were. As a result Cobb felt like he had been “mustered in,” he said. Except he hadn’t; he had only been overlooked, for the moment, by a dysfunctional group of men grimly focused on earning their sobriety bonus, or improving their numbers a bit so they might argue more effectively next winter for a $200 raise, as they played out the schedule. This would be another pennant-less season for the Tigers, and the veterans would get back to him, they figured, in the fullness of time, and in what they deemed the appropriate manner. “I didn’t realize it then,” he wrote, in 1925, “but I was in for the hardest struggle of my life.”
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