Ty Cobb

by Charles Leerhsen

  What this meant was shining his shoes, putting on a sharp, dove-gray fedora, and taking a train from Philadelphia to Augusta. Cobb met Mack at the station on February 4, and drove him to the swanky Bon Air-Vanderbilt Hotel—where he ran into Dan Howley, once a coach under Cobb with the Tigers, and now manager of the St. Louis Browns. “You can’t overemphasize my eagerness to sign Cobb,” Mack told a reporter. Howley, too, had come to town to make his pitch. Both men took the awkwardness of the situation in stride, had dinner at Cobb’s house that evening, and the next morning posed for a photographer from the Augusta Chronicle before getting a northbound train that would take them all to a writers dinner in New York City. When he had Cobb to himself for a moment in their private train compartment, Mack produced a contract with a salary area left blank. “Put down any amount you want, Ty,” he said. Cobb demurred. He knew it would be the last baseball contract he would ever sign and he wanted to do it with a bit of ceremony, a few days hence in Philadelphia.

  For anyone who accepts unquestioningly the notion that Cobb was a widely hated figure in his day—the “son of a bitch” Cobb from Field of Dreams—the fourth annual Baseball Writers Dinner, held in the East Ballroom of the Commodore Hotel on February 6, 1927, should serve as a bracing corrective. “When Bozeman Bulger, dean of New York sportswriters, reached the name of Cobb in reading the list of 20 Major League players present,” said a wire service dispatch, “the gathering rose as a man and cheered the veteran outfielder until he was forced to speak to them. In a choked voice, he told them briefly of his appreciation of the tribute.” Two nights later, at a similar gathering in Philadelphia, where he announced he was joining the Athletics, he basked in another standing ovation, punctuated by shouts of “You still have plenty left!” Mack, smiling in the audience, clearly agreed. The man who had said, in a fit of pique or perhaps a moment of posturing following the Baker Spiking Incident, that he would not have Cobb on my team if he played for nothing, was now paying him slightly more than $65,000, with another $10,000 to come if the Athletics won the pennant.

  That was a lot of money for a man who had been falling apart in public for a while. “The last few years I played,” Cobb said often in later life, “I was just tired, tired, tired.” For Cobb, injuries starting cropping up with alarming frequency starting in 1920, the year that Hughie Jennings said in spring training, “Yeah, it’s true—ole Ty is starting to slow down a little bit.” On July 14, 1920, at Fenway, for example, he wrenched his right knee chasing a ball hit over his head. He had to be carried off the field by teammates and the scribes thought his career might be done. Hardly—he came back in the next game two days later and went 3-for-5, scoring the winning run from first on a 10th-inning double by Bobby Veach. Just three days after that, though, he hurt the same knee again, sat out almost a week, and was never the same for the rest of the season. His 15 stolen bases tell the story.

  The admirable—and maddening—thing about him was that he could never take it easy. In March of the following year, while playing an exhibition game in Americus, Georgia, against the Rochester Broncos of the International League, he stepped on a clod when trying to go from first to third on a single and tore ligaments in his right knee and ankle. The Tigers had been ahead 10–1 in the ninth inning of that meaningless contest, but Cobb said, as Joe DiMaggio supposedly would a decade or so later, that he had been playing for the spectators who might never see him again. At the same time he added, “I’m getting old and can no longer pull the stunts I once did. . . . I’m easier to hurt and harder to mend.” He walked with a cane for a while afterward and didn’t get into the regular lineup for several weeks. These were injuries you did not come all the way back from, not at his age. In 1922 and ’23 he had a combined total of 18 steals.

  In 1925 he was out two weeks with flu; had to be carried from the field after a second baseman fell on his leg; and a “troublesome hip” caused a 20-point drop in his batting average; all the while he was criticized for refusing to bench himself. He would go straight to bed after games, not getting up till morning. Eye surgery caused him to miss much of spring training in 1926 and a lame back hindered his play in May and June.

  Cobb was almost injured again on his first day in an A’s uniform, March 7, 1927—by Thomas Alva Edison. The eighty-year-old inventor paid a visit to the team’s spring training camp in Fort Myers, Florida, and for the sake of the many photographers present took a turn at bat. Mack, wearing his usual suit and tie, acted as catcher while Cobb, standing halfway between the plate and the mound, lobbed the ball in. No one was expecting what the Wizard of Menlo Park delivered—a semi-wicked line drive that struck Cobb in the shoulder, knocking him down. Mack held his breath—until his most expensive player jumped to his feet, smiling, and strode plateward with his hand extended in greeting.

  The Cobb of 1927 was a much sweeter Peach. He wanted to do whatever he could to help the Athletics. “I started out the year with an entirely different idea,” he told Associated Press writer Alan J. Gould a few weeks into the season. “I would simply play the game, have the very best year I could, and work my head off for Connie Mack, one of the finest leaders this game has ever had. I made up my mind I wouldn’t sir up any fuss or do anything that might arouse criticism.” Fourteen-year-old Connie Mack Jr. was surprised to find that “Cobb was friendly right from the start. He often asked my father to let me sit with him on the train or on the bus. He told me stories and taught me card tricks and we became pals. I had thought he was some kind of ogre.” Some of the younger A’s had cherished Cobb’s baseball card when they were kids, and they looked upon him with awe, which Cobb didn’t mind in the slightest. “He could be a little bit crusty,” Mickey Cochrane said, “but he gave me some fine advice and was an inspiration to me in every way.” (Cobb and the feisty catcher bonded over their belief that home plate collisions were a necessary evil, and would later become close friends.)

  One of Mack’s projects on the A’s was Al Simmons, an extremely promising young outfielder (he had hit .387 and .341 in the last two seasons) who had more than a bit of an attitude (the writer Donald Honig once called him “a testy character who bullied rookies and manifested a chilly disdain for lesser mortals”) and an extremely odd batting stance for a right-hander (he pointed his left foot toward third base—“stepping into the bucket,” it’s still called—leaving himself vulnerable to an outside pitch). The manager asked Cobb if he would room with the twenty-four-year-old Simmons on the road, and talk to him in a fatherly way about the ins and outs of the ballplayer’s life, and the older star readily agreed. Infielder Jimmy Dykes remembered eavesdropping on a lesson Cobb was giving Simmons one day. “Cobb is showing him how to hit lefthanders. He’s telling Al to get up on the plate against them. The next day we’re facing a lefty and I get up on the plate and go three for four. After the game I’m sitting in front of my locker all smiles. Cobb comes by, looks at me, and says, ‘Well, rockhead, you’re finally learning aren’t you?’ ” Cobb was wise enough not to tinker too much with Simmons’s stance, and no doubt in part because of that did he gain his respect and admiration. Before long Simmons adopted Cobb’s habit of always wearing a long-sleeve jersey. “Bucketfoot Al,” as they called him, hit .392 that year, his highest average ever. (Cochrane’s average, meanwhile, jumped 65 points, to .338, in 1927.)

  Cobb himself hit .357, doing it with what looked more and more like the old-fashioned way, i.e., meeting the ball up high and kind of paddling it beyond a fielder’s reach—the “hit ’em where they ain’t” style of the by now deceased Wee Willie Keeler. The year of Charles Lindbergh, the Great Mississippi Flood, and, alas for the Athletics, the 1927 Yankees cannot be called Cobb’s best season, but it was perhaps a miraculous one, considering that it represented something like a complete rejuvenation. “Ty Cobb Vindicates Ponce de Leon Idea” said a headline in the Times that spring. Motivated by the notion of pleasing Mack, “Ty Cobb, the old warhorse,” Richard Bak wrote, “galloped around the field like a young colt.” He
had 93 RBI, scored 104 runs, and struck out only 12 times in 490 plate appearances. He also had 22 stolen bases, tied for the third best in the league. In a column in the New York Telegram of April 13, Joe Williams wrote: of a game against the Yankees:

  Ty Cobb went around the bases in the sixth inning, but more enlightening was the method he used—old-fashioned stuff scored in the Era of Ruth.

  He laid down a bunt, perfectly, which caught third baseman Joe Dugan totally by surprise. Cobb slid into first, beating Dugan’s hasty throw. How long since you’ve seen a first base slide?

  Next, when Hale hit a short rap to center field, and when anyone else would have stopped at second, Cobb pumped his aged legs and went for third. Earle Combs’ throw to Dugan had him out cold. Locating the ball with a quick glance over his shoulder, Cobb slid left, then contorted himself to the right. There was a geyser of dust and when it cleared, he was seen to have half-smothered the throw with his body, and as Dugan scrambled for the ball, Cobb was up and dusting himself off.

  The whole sequence was beautiful to see, a subtle, forgotten heritage from the romantic past.

  Cobb stole home three times that season, once on the front end of a rare and exhilarating triple steal. In Boston on April 26 he pulled off an unassisted double play, charging from right field to catch a sinking line drive, then continuing on at full speed to beat the tagging runner, William “Baby Doll” Jacobson, to first base. He put together a 21-game hitting streak, and got his 4,000th career hit (reaching a plateau that has since been achieved only by Pete Rose) and in late August had five hits in a game against St. Louis. He also had his worst-ever slump, going 20 games without a hit, but battled back the way he always did during a dry spell, by bunting, bunting, bunting until his stroke returned. During the Athletics’ homestretch run, he put together a string of four games in which he had three or more hits, which helped his team stave off fast-closing Washington.

  • • •

  Two things spoiled what might have been a storybook season. One was the American League umpiring crew, which seemed to be lying in wait for Cobb after years of feeling they had been used by him to work out his numerous frustrations. At least a couple of umps didn’t seem to notice that he had exhaled and become less confrontational. The problem first cropped up during a spring training game between the A’s and Boston Braves. Umpire Frank Wilson was working the plate that day, and though he was employed by the National League he had previously worked for the American, where, prior to his being fired for oversensitivity, among other things, he had tussled frequently with Cobb. In the fifth inning of a game at St. Petersburg in March of 1927, with Eddie Collins up and Cobb swinging his three bats in the on-deck circle, Wilson whirled, whipped off his mask, and ordered Cobb to the showers. The fiery umpire had once been described by the Times as “an automatic ejector of the most efficient type,” but could there have been cause for this action? Cobb said no, there absolutely wasn’t, that he had said nothing, and when he tried to explain as much, “Wilson said something about beating my head in.” Cobb then returned to the bench and took a seat but refused to go into the clubhouse, which caused Wilson to declare Boston the winners by forfeit. Commissioner Landis fined Cobb $100, but public sentiment was clearly with the player. Perhaps sensing this, Wilson, a few days later, ejected no fewer than fifteen A’s for heckling him about the Cobb incident. Apart from the men on the field, only the team chaplain, a coach, and Connie Mack were left in the dugout. The next day, Wilson tossed nine Yankees for a similar offense—and when they razzed him for doing so, he announced that he was ejecting them again from the same game.

  Cobb’s mix-up with umpire Emmett “Red” Ormsby was less comical. With his team behind by a run in the eighth inning to the Red Sox at Shibe Park on May 5, Cobb saw a fat pitch coming, slid both hands down to the knob of his bat (a lighter model than he’d used in previous years to compensate for his slower swing), and stroked a shot over the right field wall, clearly to the left of the foul pole. To everyone in the park it appeared to be a game-tying homer. However, Ormsby, invoking a rarely applied and since abandoned rule, called it a long strike, because, he said, it had curved foul after it left the park. (Under the old rule a ball was either fair or foul depending where the umpire last saw it.) Cobb muttered something in response, but Simmons ran out and argued so vehemently that Ormsby ejected him. Cobb then resumed his turn at bat and either as he walked by the umpire, or in response to the next pitch (accounts vary), bumped him slightly. Before he could apologize—Cobb always maintained the contact was accidental—Ormsby said “You’re out of the game!” The umpire later explained that an ejection for contact was automatic, that he’d no choice, but the fans got rowdy after the Athletics lost to Boston, and though no one came onto the field it seems, a few spectators threw objects from the stands. A flying seat cushion hit Ormsby in the head.

  The umpire was not injured but by the time the story reached the league office a day or so later, it had grown into the tale of a full-scale riot, actively incited by Cobb and Simmons. Or so it seemed from the ruling of Ban Johnson, who had been reinstated as the AL president. A band of softhearted owners had felt sorry for a man in such an obviously sad state, and Johnson justified their pity by announcing in a deranged-sounding letter he wrote to Connie Mack, then released to the newspapers, that Cobb and Simmons were suspended indefinitely. Mack’s biographer Norman Macht wrote, “Never a temperate man, Johnson had apparently lost some balance of mind and step since Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker [now with Washington] had been readmitted to his league over his ultimatum that they would never appear there again.” In the letter he referred to “the throwing of a great number of murderous pop bottles” and said “the incident stamps the offender [Cobb] as entirely devoid of the highest principles of manhood.” Much of what had happened, he added, “must be attributed to the lack of fairness, intelligence and true sportsmanship on the part of the Philadelphia management.”

  Cobb’s suspension jeopardized his highly anticipated return to Detroit for his first ever game against the Tigers on Tuesday, May 10. Navin Field had been sold out for weeks in advance and, worried that Cobb wouldn’t be able to play, thousands sent letters and telegrams to Johnson begging him to reinstate the star. Mack telephoned the league office several times but was always told the president was unavailable. It wasn’t until the morning of the homecoming game, with Cobb already en route to the ballpark in a parade, that Johnson formally lifted the sanctions, allowing both men to play. At Navin Field, Cobb was treated like, as one local paper put it, “An Old Friend in a New Suit.” During batting practice he signed autographs and lobbed baseballs into the stands. “Just before game time an automobile was driven out and presented to Cobb,” said the Times. “There were other gifts, too, a sombrero, silverware and a floral piece. The presentation and Cobb’s words of appreciation were radiocast from the plate through a microphone placed there.” Announcer Edward Tyson did not try to speak over the thunderous ovation that greeted Cobb in his first turn at bat in the opening inning, when he smacked a double over the head of Harry Heilmann, knocking in the A’s first two runs. He later walked, and made a fine catch in right to rob third baseman Jack Warner of a double, before retiring from the game—won by Philadelphia 6–3—in the seventh inning to rest the leg he’d injured a few days before in an exhibition game. The next day, after learning that Johnson was fining him and Simmons $200 each, he hit two more doubles in another Philadelphia victory.

  As inspiring as Cobb was, though, and as well as Mack’s A’s played, no one that year could outrun the shadow of the Yankees, aka the best team ever assembled. The six members of New York’s Murderers’ Row—Ruth, Gehrig, Earle Combs, Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri, and Mark Koenig—hit for a combined average of .336. Ruth famously hit 60 homers and Gehrig drove in 173 runs. (Ruth had 165 RBI.) On the pitching side, Waite Hoyt went 22–7 with a 2.63 ERA; Herb Pennock was 19–8. The Yankees won 110 that season, and lost 44. They were the only team better than Mack’s Athletics
, but they were 19 games better—and then they swept the Pirates in the World Series.

  With Mack’s permission and the pennant impossible, Cobb checked out of the season early, on September 21, with ten days and seven games to go. He and Charlie went to see the second Jack Dempsey–Gene Tunney fight at Soldier Field in Chicago—the famous “Battle of the Long Count” won by the champion, Tunney—then continued on to a hunting trip in the Grand Tetons. At the end of the year, in a letter to the agent Christy Walsh, he wrote, “I really and truly want to retire from the game—I am getting tired of the competition and being away from my family so much. I have had a lot of baseball and it’s time that I step out.” But he came back again and signed another contract with Mack, for an amount that was never revealed but which was assumed to be about half of what he got the previous season. He couldn’t not stay a little too long. In this way, at least, Ty Cobb was like almost all the others.