by Al Stump
Otherwise, Ty merely stood around in his gaudy Royston uniform, trying to strike some rhythm with the tough-looking Tourists. “In that monkey-suit,” said first baseman Harry Bussey, “you should join the fire-department volunteers.” Ty moved himself to the infield during six-man defensive drills and worsened his situation by preempting grounders hit to others and yelling it up—“Woweeee!”—when he made a good stop. He would gladly have shed his red outfit, but a set of Tourist flannels was not offered.
Approaching the plate for some swings, he was jostled aside.
“Get the hell away,” growled Mike McMillan, a large outfielder, glaring at him.
Cobb bristled, as usual, when challenged. “It’s my ups,” he pointed out.
“Beat it,” repeated McMillan, shouldering him into the backstop netting that served as a batting cage.
Cobb came back with fists raised, and suddenly he was surrounded by players who knocked off his cap and scuffed his new shoes. The boss, Strouthers, looked on unconcernedly. Cobb’s gripe that he was tired of sitting around was wasted. “You make your own place here,” explained Strouthers.
While half a dozen preseason contests were being played, the novice pro did not leave the dugout, a flimsy lean-to that leaked when it rained. During pregame practice, uninvited to take part, he moved to center field and sat on the grass watching, waiting for something to happen. “I couldn’t figure it out at first, then I got mad,” Cobb related years afterward. “It was humiliating to be taken for a pissant. I wondered why Augusta had bothered to call me up in the first place.” The fact was that Ty had originally approached Augusta; the roughing-up he took was standard maliciousness in a day when young contenders for veterans’ jobs found their suits cut to shreds, their shoes nailed to the floor. Cobb’s welcome was to have his pants and shirt “juiced”—sprayed with tobacco leavings.
Strouthers—who had never risen above the bottom minor leagues as a player—made no move to use Cobb in his lineup when the Detroit Tigers, touring the region in exhibitions, played the Tourists at Warren Park. Cobb stayed anchored to the bench. That did not stop him from closely watching Detroit’s rangy center fielder, a left-hander like himself—Wahoo Sam Crawford. The Tigers, who had finished a bad fifth in the American League in 1903 with 65 wins and 71 losses, tore into the Tourists as if it were midseason in the majors. Cobb saw Crawford, a .332 batting star in the previous season, leisurely trot to first base after drawing a base on balls, then suddenly switch into high gear and race for second. The Tourists were caught napping. While they scrambled to nail Crawford at second, where he threw up a broad cloud of dust, a Tiger runner who had seconds earlier wandered down the line from third base sped home to score by inches. Cobb stored away that delayed, closely timed play for future use.
He noted, too, that while at bat Crawford seemed to be sneaking peeks at the mitt of the Augusta catcher. Was he stealing the catcher’s finger signs to the pitcher? It looked that way to Cobb, although he had never seen this trick. In the outfield, on a wallop heading for the fence, Crawford drifted under the ball, leaped at the exact right moment, and picked the chance off the boards, making the play look easy.
After the Tourists were beaten, Cobb hesitantly walked up to the future Hall of Famer Crawford to say, “That was a great catch, Mr. Crawford. What’s the best way to judge long fly balls?” Crawford didn’t mind talking about his specialty. While giving the rawboned boy his first big-league coaching, he also offered the first friendly words that Cobb had heard recently. Wahoo (from Wahoo, Nebraska) was a town barber in the off-season and had a wheat-belt twang, and Cobb’s speech was filled with “cain’t” for “can’t,” “ah” for “I,” and “yuh” for “you.” Still, they understood each other. Crawford said, “You go [on flies] by the sound of the bat. A sound like a gun going off means the ball’s hit hard … you start back in a big hurry. Use the crossover step, left or right, on the getaway. Run on the balls of your feet … Look over your shoulder to tell where the ball’s headed, so’s you run under it … Don’t do any backpedaling, that gets you nowhere.” He went on, “Use both hands whenever you can … If you get a real good jump on a ball hit to your front, be moving forward on the catch so as to make a stronger throw.” Liking Cobb’s concentrated interest, the loquacious Wahoo passed on other tips: “Make up your mind in advance to what base you’ll throw … Throw on one hop to the bag, not on the fly … Before a road game bounce a ball off the fence in different places, testing for force and direction of the rebound.”
Cobb wanted to hear more. “Hell, I can’t gab all day,” said Wahoo. “Break in a backup glove or two in case your number-one leather is ripped.” Cobb didn’t admit that he could barely afford one old glove.
Cobb was encouraged to show Wahoo his own particular glove. As an experiment, he had cut the leather out of the palm to expose raw flesh, so that any catch essentially was a bare-handeder. Crawford grinned, saying, “I did that as a kid—to keep balls from sliding off the leather. No more, though.”
“It works for me,” said Cobb.
“Then keep it until you can’t stand the blood it’ll draw,” said Wahoo. And then he admonished, “Don’t drink on game days.”
Trying not to stammer—one of the holdover curses of his boyhood —Cobb thanked Crawford before going off to contemplate what he had learned. Some of it was basic. But at least half of what he had heard was new to him. He would always remember Crawford’s kindness.
On opening day of the Tourists’ regular Sally League season, Con Strouthers was short of a middle fielder. First baseman Harry Bussey, a salary holdout, was ineligible to play, meaning that center fielder McMillan moved to first base. Who would replace McMillan? On the lineup card Strouthers wrote: “Cobb, cf,” listing him seventh in the batting order.
This was a reluctant decision, Cobb had reason to believe. Strouthers wanted to see his tryout ended and have the noisy rookie gone down the road, enabling Augusta to sign a replacement. Coming to bat, Cobb received no instructions beyond, “Don’t swing at anything in the dirt.” He took the field steamed up beyond normal.
In the season’s opener, the opponent was a strong Columbia, South Carolina, team, featuring a fastballing pitcher, George Engel. It was a damp, grayish day with fifteen hundred or so fans on hand when Ty Cobb bowed in as a professional baseball player. Using his Roystonized grip—left fist gripping his stick six to seven inches above his right—he grounded out on his first time up. Next time he dug Engel’s pitch up and over third base into the left-field corner, against the fence. As Columbia’s fielder chased a ricocheting ball, Cobb hustled around the bases. The throw-in to the plate was close, but a head-first slide beat the relay by an arm’s length for an inside-the-park home run. That drew cheers—but not in Augusta’s dugout. It was quiet there. In the sixth inning, doubling up the middle, Cobb met the same indifference. Columbia won, 8–7, and Augusta fans went home for dinner, talking about the slender, big-eared newcomer with speed and a sting in his light bat.
A husband and wife from Cornelia, Georgia, near Royston, who were visiting Augusta, made the gesture of inviting Ty to join them for dinner on the night of his home run. Otherwise, he would have dined alone.
Strouthers said nothing hopeful. He griped that Cobb broke too many bats in practice. Bats of willow, ash, or spruce cost seventy-five cents apiece. “I only broke two,” said Cobb. “You don’t let me do much swinging.” Two, said Strouthers, were too many.
Momentarily Cobb thought of mailing a news clipping of his break-in game to his father. The Augusta Chronicle, Georgia’s oldest newspaper—“we never missed a single daily edition during the War Between the States,” the Chronicle could boast—didn’t miss Cobb’s feat, either. In a side note to the main game report it mentioned that “Outfielder T. Cobb was auspicious in his first local showing … Four-base and two-base pry-ups are a better act than anyone could expect from a beginner.”
On second thought, Cobb didn’t send the news item home. Nothing wa
s settled. He might strike out four straight times in his next start. He had been cold-shouldered and “hey-rube’d.”
In a second game with Columbia, Cobb told me, he doubled, fielded well, and stole a base. This may be inaccurate—Fred Lieb in his authoritative 1946 book, The Detroit Tigers, reported him as going hitless. Faded old box scores do not settle the matter. His stolen base, however, was Cobb’s first in organized ball.
Leaving the park, Cobb was called into Strouther’s office. It took about fifteen minutes for the ax to fall. The contract Cobb wanted so badly, placing him on the payroll and picking up some of his room-and-board expenses, was not forthcoming. In his blunt way, Strouthers said, “Our outfield problem is settled. Bussey just got word from the league office taking him off suspension. He’s going to first base and McMillan back to center. That makes you low man out, Cobb. You’re a free agent … you can sign with any team that wants you.”
“But I’m hitting for you,” choked out Cobb.
“You’ve had a few knocks, that’s all, and your throwing isn’t up to snuff,” retorted Strouthers, who then pointed out that since Cobb had not earned a place on the Tourist roster, the club owed him nothing. He had to gain a permanent berth to collect any pay. “But, tell you what …” Strouthers offered him five dollars cash.
“I wouldn’t play for you if you asked me!” shouted Cobb. “You didn’t give me a fair chance, only eighteen innings!” He refused the five dollars.
To Augusta’s regular players, the scene was all too predictable and laughable. A gag about fresh bushers was retold:
Manager: “You’re gone, pack your duds.”
Rookie: “But won’t you give me a recommendation?”
Manager (writing it out): “This fellow played one game for me and I’m satisfied.”
Not many fans noticed Cobb’s disappearance, and few questions were asked. Back at his hotel, Cobb sat alone in his room. Augusta was a place where he would have been happy to live. The growing port of forty-five thousand on the Savannah River had charm, with its blooming flowers, paved streets, healthy climate, and feeling of busyness. He hated to leave before he had shown he belonged.
Nap Rucker, a member of the Tourists at the time, was a witness to how hard Cobb took his discharge. According to Rucker and others, Cobb’s drive to make good was so strong that he became physically ill. As Rucker related it, “the kid” shed tears, raved, and threatened to get a gun and shoot Strouthers. In later years Cobb denied that he had any violent intentions at the time. He called Rucker “full of bullshit” and brushed off the stories with: “I was hurt and damned mad for a while, but I wasn’t stupid at seventeen. When that Strouthers and his gang made it miserable for me from the start, I halfway expected I wouldn’t last long. It was something you could feel in the air.”
Muddy Ruel, a major-league catcher who was close to Cobb, put it this way: “Long years after it happened, Cobb was still burned up by the way Augusta dumped him. And proud of how he finally got even with Strouthers. More than even—he got revenge.”
Grantland Rice’s opinion of his condition then was: “I don’t know how much the Augusta affair affected Cobb. Severely, I’m sure. During those early years I found him to be an extremely peculiar soul, brooding and bubbling with violence, devious, suspicious and combative all the way. This twisted attitude he never lost.”
Whatever his resentment, after April 28 Cobb did not waste time. He contacted several other Sally League franchises, asked for a tryout, and was told that the clubs were set for the season. He wrote as far away as Memphis in the Southern League, but got no reply. Dreading to return home a failure in his father’s eyes, he applied for a cotton warehouse clerking job. Nothing was open. As April ended he had spent part of the funds supplied by Professor Cobb, and the basic need to support himself had him trapped and in no emotional shape to find a solution.
Thad “Mobile Kid” Hayes, a rookie pitcher who had also been cut by the Tourists, joined Cobb on a trolley ride into the countryside. They sat on a fence and talked it over. Hayes remarked that he could always find work back in Mobile, where his family owned property, and he might be able to find employment for friend Ty as well. Neither liked the prospect of giving up his effort to play professionally. Bitten by the ball bug, why should they quit so soon? Hayes had a suggestion. They could try Anniston, in Alabama, where a wildcat semipro town team scheduled three to four games weekly against opponents from southern Tennessee and upper Alabama. Anniston fans were a hot group, and Hayes knew the club owner.
“How fast a team is Anniston?” asked Cobb.
“Not as good as Augusta,” answered Hayes, “but some of the college boys they have are so good that Class A scouts come to watch them. But they’re an outlaw outfit not recognized in New York or Chicago.”
Cobb was teetering on the edge of walking away from the game to pick up his schooling as a college freshman. He had a feeling that this might be a career turning point—the maxim “Yield not to misfortunes, press forward more boldly in their face” came to mind from his schoolboy study of the Romans. And he asked more questions. What was the pay like in Anniston? Hayes thought the Anniston Steelers paid fifty to sixty dollars a month, and he had heard they needed another pitcher and an outfielder. Cobb told how his father was set on his attending the University of Georgia for a medical degree. “I guess I should try it,” he said, “but I’ll phone him first. He’ll raise hell, probably call me home.”
Their conversation was the opposite of what he expected. The Professor did not react with his usual polemic against baseball. Ty explained that he had been dropped by Augusta without the chance to follow up a promising start. W. H. Cobb skipped the sympathy and asked, “What will you do now?”
His son responded with the Anniston possibility.
“If you get hired there,” said Professor Cobb, “you will be leaving the state. Getting farther from home. However, I don’t like the idea of you giving up. To quit is the easy way out. Is playing ball still important to you?”
“Yes, it is,” said Ty.
“Then go on to this Alabama place. Stay away from drink. Do your best to succeed. You have my blessing. I don’t like quitters … don’t come home a failure.”
In one way the Professor was shutting the door to his son’s return until results were obtained. In another way he was inspiring his gadfly heir to go get ’em with everything he had. It was more a demand than a request as Cobb remembered it. Never before had the Professor spoken a positive word about the game. Now he had reversed himself, even if only conditionally. The call took a load off Ty’s mind. Father wanted him to keep trying. That was enough.
Thad Hayes, who had gone ahead to Anniston, called Cobb with word that the Steelers could use him in the outfield. A contract was forwarded. Taking a leaf from major-league player signings of the day, protecting the employer from anything including spotted fever contracted by the employee, the Anniston Base Ball Association stipulated:
Party of the first part agrees to pay the traveling expenses, board and lodging, of said party of the second part … and when not so traveling the party of the second part will pay all of his own expenses.
Should the party of the said second part, at any time or times, or in any manner fail to comply with the covenants and agreements herein contained, or should the said party at any time be intemperate, immoral, careless, indifferent or conduct himself in such a manner, whether on or off the field, as to endanger the interest of said party of the first part, or should the second party become ill or otherwise unfit from any cause whatever or prove incompetent in the judgment of the first party, then the party of the first part hereunto shall have the right to discipline, suspend, fine or discharge the party of the second part as it shall deem fit and proper, and the said party of the first part shall be the sole judge as to the sufficiency of the reason for such discipline, suspension, fine or discharge.
Anniston’s document rambled on to say that any fine imposed on Cobb would be paid
by him or withheld from his salary “as for liquidated damages.” Dated April 29, 1904, the contract called for fifty dollars, or exactly what Cobb would have earned at Augusta if that attempt had not been a washout.
He signed the paper “Tyrus R. Cobb,” omitting his disliked middle name. One worry was that he would be paying his own living costs when the Steelers were not on the road, a considerable item at the going rate of ten dollars weekly for food and housing. Anniston, far from baseball’s mainstream, pulled so little at the gate that bare essentials only were provided. In the Southeastern League to which “Annietown” belonged, players shared one bathtub, one or two baseballs served for entire games no matter how lopsided and black a blur they became, outfields grew weeds, and infields went unrolled. As Cobb figured it, even if he found a cheap boardinghouse, he would be close to broke at season’s end.
In his earlier phone talk with Professor Cobb, no mention had been made of further financial help from home should he repeat his failure to stick in a lineup. Anniston was make or break.
After Thad Hayes shuttled back to Augusta to settle his affairs, the two crammed into a single upper berth for the train ride to Anniston, an overnight hop. Doubling up saved money but left them stiff and sore upon reporting on May 2. Cobb carried with him the telescope grip he had brought from Royston, his yellow bats, spare shirts, and a new straw hat, worn at a jaunty tilt. He lacked a decent glove. A replacement glove, costing two dollars, would be stiff and need plenty of rubbing with tobacco juice to become useful.
Anniston, a steel-mill town, was located not far from the iron and steel processing center of Birmingham. From his first few days in northeast Alabama, the smoky haze set Cobb to coughing. Travel was rough. His new team bounced around by horse and buggy to small towns in all weather. Lunch consisted of a bowl of bean soup, with hog jowls and grits often the dinner fare.
The Steelers had several promising collegians, along with a pair of workhorse pitchers who split mound duty from game to game. Cobb soon found he was well up to this caliber of play. He could outrun everybody, had a rifle arm in center field, and hit sizzling one- and two-baggers to all fields. No longer, as a left-handed batsman, was he regularly pulling pitches to his “natural” direction of right field; more and more, when outfields and infields shifted to counter his strength, Cobb opened his stance at the last split second to chop bleeders through third-base gaps and into an unguarded left field. The Cobb-style bunt, destined to become one of the most deadly weapons since Willie Keeler developed the “Baltimore chop” high-bounding infield hit with the 1890s Orioles, took shape when he retracted his bat and punched the ball to a selected spot between the third baseman and pitcher, dead on the baseline and just out of reach.