Cobb

by Al Stump

  The wedding was a gala affair. “Half of Georgia tried to get in on the hitching,” reported the bridegroom’s uncle, A. C. Ginn. Gifts arrived by the wagonload—several loads of them.

  The timing of the wedding—August 6—was not exactly appreciated by the Detroit management. In the hunt for a second straight league title, Detroit was in first place by one game over the St. Louis Browns by late July, with their most valuable man hitting close to .340. At Boston Cobb had sneaked in from the outfield to trap a runner off second base for an unassisted putout; he had raced from first base to score on an infield hit while the Beantowners threw late or wildly; had gone 3 for 4 in batting against Boston’s Cy Young. He had hit Kid Elberfeld’s New York club so readily that the Kid was convinced he had been tricked, and cried, “The ball’s been treated—it’s not legal!” Elberfeld raised so much hell about something being “not right” with the ball that an umpire used a knife to cut it in half. It was legal.

  That June, Cobb’s built-in prejudice against blacks again had surfaced, this time ending him up in a court of law as the defendant. He was leaving the Pontchartrain Hotel in June when a streetworker who was spreading fresh asphalt shouted at him for walking too close to the gooey stuff. A bit spilled on Cobb’s trouser cuff. A discussion over this led to Cobb knocking the black worker, one Fred Collins, on his back. Collins’s head was injured. Forty-eight hours later Cobb faced a judge on assault and battery charges. Although handed only a suspended sentence, he was ordered to pay Collins seventy-five dollars to cover court costs or face a damage suit. Cobb’s testimony that Collins had been out of line and had spoken insultingly to him was good enough reason for Judge Edward Jeffries—a Tiger fan—to hand down no more than a suspension without fine.

  At the same Pontchartrain, as reported by the Chicago Defender, an early news organ for blacks, Cobb had kicked a chambermaid in the stomach and knocked her down some stairs because she flared back when he called her “nigger.” The hotel’s manager protested and ordered Cobb to leave the place. The story was suppressed by the newspapers, but years later Harold Seymour was moved to track down the details for his book, Baseball: The Golden Age. Seymour’s research showed that the press had finessed the incident, and that because of Cobb’s prominence the woman was quietly paid off in exchange for her dropping a ten-thousand-dollar lawsuit.

  In his racial prejudice, Cobb, at age twenty-two, was far from alone. Almost all players and executives of the majors, whatever their point of origin, supported the policy of excluding blacks from the big time, even though as far back as 1886 a Southern League of Colored Base Ballists had existed and produced talent of unmistakable class. Cobb, however, stood out in the viciousness of his hatred; repeatedly he turned violent on streets and in other public places.

  “I’m sure he would have gone to New York in a big trade,” his teammate, Davy Jones, once said, “but New York was too racially mixed to afford him.” Jones believed that most blacks of Detroit hated Cobb, but, under the eye of the white community, kept their feelings to themselves.

  ON AUGUST 2 a story datelined Washington, D.C., where the Tigers were playing on a road stand, went over the wires. It read in part: “Tyrus Cobb is to desert his teammates to get married. He will return to Detroit accompanied by his wife … The couple will spend the greater part of the winter abroad.” Mention was made that the absentee had obtained Hughie Jennings’s permission to take off.

  No such permission had been given, said Sam Crawford when I visited the seventy-seven-year-old Hall of Famer at his Pearblossom, California, home in 1957. “He just walked out and left us flat in mid-season,” said Crawford bleakly. With his team fighting for the pennant, Cobb proceeded to absent himself for six days, without even bothering to notify the management of his intentions until shortly before he left. Cobb caught an Augusta-bound train on August 3, and was married on August 6. Down home, Georgia governor Hoke Smith and other notables had arranged to attend the wedding ceremonies. But up north, Frank Navin was making expensive plans to expand Bennett Park by three thousand seats, and he badly needed another championship. To Navin and Detroit co-owner Bill Yawkey, the departure of Cobb was inexcusable. In a subsequent dispute with Cobb, Navin spoke of his 1908 defection as the most arrogant act he had ever heard of in baseball.

  Cobb’s leaving the team was one of the earliest of a series of acts by Cobb establishing him as a special case, exempt from the usual organization rules, and presaging his eventual status as a law unto himself. Moreover, he was showing his employers that without him the Tigers were not the same ball club, a point that would be raised time and again in coming salary battles. At his wedding he confided to Georgia friends, “Navin’s a skinflint. He isn’t paying me enough [four thousand dollars] to put missing a few games ahead of a personal matter.”

  The bride, in a New York–styled gown, and Cobb, in formal attire, took their oaths before the Reverend Thomas Walker in the ballroom of the Lombard estate. For the wedding-cake-cutting ceremony, the groom brought along the black thirty-five-ounce bat that had been serving him so well.

  (The bat was one more of his superstitions. It was lucky for him to encounter a wagonload of hay, or find a dime on the street, or to rub a black child’s head before a game. Seeing a black cat or a snake was bad news. In 1914, writing for a national publication, Cobb stressed, “When I’m going good, not slumping, I try to do everything just the same way as I did when on a hitting streak. I always go to the ballpark by the same route, put on my uniform the same way. I try to recall which sock I’d donned first. If it was my left I will not give the right one precedence for a raise in pay.” And, “I hang my towel on the same peg.” Cobb had a furious row in 1909 with a clubhouse boy after he had made four hits in five ups. His towel was improperly pegged. “That next afternoon I did not get a hit and blamed it on the misplaced towel. My run of luck had been broken by it. After my bath that day the towel was placed on the old, lucky peg and I busted ’em for fair the next afternoon.”)

  Ladies attending the wedding may have seen the baseball bat as symbolically inappropriate at this gathering, but Cobb kept his Louisville Slugger beside him during the reception at the local Hotel Genesta. Late that night the newlyweds took a train back to Detroit. Returning to the game on August 9, almost a week after departing, the Peach had a good day—a triple, single, and stolen base in a 5–2 win over Washington’s Nationals. He blew no kisses to his bride in the stands, as Babe Ruth would do with Claire Hodgson Ruth when on the day after their wedding he walloped a home run at Yankee Stadium. But the Tiger star did doff his hat to the crowd, an uncommon act for Cobb.

  During his absence the Tigers had about stayed even in the standings. Fans and civic leaders forgave his walkout and the Detroit News headlined: “MONEY COMES IN FOR COBB’S WEDDING GIFT.” Ten thousand blank pledges were distributed at the ballpark, with donations to be made with the donor’s name or initials at the box office. “There is no limit to the amount given,” stated the News, leading off with a fifty-dollar contribution. “Anything from five cents up will be gratefully taken. The idea is to let every lover of the game, man, woman or child, reward work well done.” Called the Cobb Appreciation Fund, it brought him fine silverware and a cut-glass set for the home he and Charlie planned to build one day.

  It also brought chagrin. Very soon he fell into one of his worst slumps. Strikeouts and groundouts greatly outnumbered base hits as he and the team floundered for a while, before rallying in September to rejoin the title chase. Several writers expressed the opinion that the Peach looked tired. A few hints were cast that honeymooning—he had his wife traveling with him on the road—did not mix with connecting off the likes of Walter Johnson, Addie Joss, Rube Waddell, and, especially, Edward Augustin “Big Ed” Walsh of the Chicago White Sox. A handsome ex–coal miner turned “dipsy-doodling” spitballer, Walsh was on his way in 1908 to winning 40 games against 15 losses, while hurling an immense, record 465 innings. Walsh’s astonishing ironman work had kept the Sox in
the running.

  Coming down to the wire, Walsh beat the Tigers, 6–1, on October 5, his salivator breaking sharply for his fortieth victory. Cleveland lost to St. Louis, giving Detroit only a half-game lead over the White Sox and the Naps, with one game to go. Detroiters jammed the streets around scoreboards mounted on newspaper balconies and flashing results.

  At Chicago, before an unruly crowd of nearly thirty thousand, the White Sox sent Doc White to the mound in an attempt to overtake the Tigers and win the American League championship. White, who had won 18 games that season, got absolutely nowhere. In the first inning Cobb tripled in two runs. Later, Ed Walsh, who had worked only the day before, came in; he was followed in turn by Frank Smith. The Tigers took a 7–0 lead, and behind Bill Donovan’s shutout pitching went on to clinch their second straight pennant. At one point there was a near fight when Cobb, who was feuding with Walsh, spit on the ground near Walsh’s feet as a commentary on Big Ed’s spitball pitch. Ty also tripled in his second time at bat, in what he always considered the two best back-to-back hits he ever made. He added two singles, and feinted so successfully when on first that he caused Walsh to throw the ball away on a pickoff attempt.

  Detroit fans stayed up through the night to watch the victory flag being raised at dawn over City Hall—the same banner that had flown over the USS Detroit in the Spanish-American War. Wisecracks about the debilitating effect of Cobb’s marriage were dropped.

  He could hardly wait for the World Series to begin. To relax tense muscles, he took long steambaths at the Detroit Athletic Club. In part he was out to vindicate what they had said of him after his .200 average of the previous year’s Series. New York’s American called Cobb “a strutter from a South which hasn’t won a war lately” and who was “insolently” sure of himself. The “advertised snarl” on his face when at bat was really a “sneer.” But the American could not overlook the just-concluded season’s numbers, wherein “Speed Boy” had won his second straight batting title at .324, led the AL in hits (188), RBIs (101), doubles (36), triples (20), and total bases reached (248). His base steals dropped from 49 to 39, partly the product of pulled tendons and of catchers bearing down on him even harder. In the field his assists (23) led everyone.

  His statistical showing at the plate was the more impressive because in 1908 the American League was thick with pitchers with 2.50 or below earned-run averages. One hundred and ten shutouts were thrown leaguewide, and only four batters had averaged .300 or above. It was becoming so difficult to get on base against pitchers with controlled speed, a variety of change-ups and spitters, shine and emery balls, that some owners wondered whether fielders’ gloves should be barred, in a return to bare-handed days.

  To boost attendance, something would have to be done to pump up dwindling batting averages. “I’ll play without a glove,” said Cobb deliberately, “on the day they rule out the beanball.”

  BOTHERED BY a cold, and sneezing his way into another World Series against the Chicago Cubs, a rematch of the 1907 finalists, Cobb predicted a Tiger victory this time around. From what Cobb said later on, he was sure enough of this to bet on the outcome, a common sub rosa practice by players in those days. How would he do? “I’ll hit Chicago, don’t worry,” he promised.

  This time Detroit had no excuse for what happened. Finishing in a tie with the New York Giants in the National League, Frank Chance’s Cubs had been forced to a playoff only two days before the Series opened. To break an identical 98–55 season’s deadlock the Cubs had needed to come from behind to win a close clincher from John McGraw’s Giants. They were even more weary than the Tigers.

  In the first two Series matchups, Cobb produced only three singles, and Detroit lost 10–6 and 6–1. In game number three he got hot and drove out four hits in five appearances, one double included. Mixed in was a display of baserunning that left Cubs rooters crying in their beer. From first base he began a campaign of brash, noisy intimidation.

  “Kling!” he bawled to Cubs’ catcher John “Noisy” Kling, “I’m going on the next one!” Kling’s arm was accurate—in game number five of the 1907 Series he had cut down Cobb trying to steal third. He waved the ball in warning.

  “Speedy Tyrus went into second base as he’d boldly promised so hard,” wrote Grantland Rice in the Nashville Tennessean, “that he knocked the bag from its moorings and was safe as he sent baseman Joe Tinker flying.” Acting as if irritated by a defective base bag, Cobb kicked it a few times. His real purpose, soon revealed, was to move the bag a few inches closer to third base. With that, he again shouted to Kling and pitcher Ed Reulbach loudly enough for people in the close seats to hear: “I’m going on the next one!”

  Kling was unnerved. His throw to Harry Steinfeldt at third base was too late to catch Cobb, whose fall-away slide gave Steinfeldt only a toe to tag. He had called his shots twice and made good on both. With George Mullin pitching well, Detroit won, 8–3.

  Was not announcing his intentions in advance a foolish act? Would it not make Kling all the more alert and determined? “No,” said Cobb at age seventy-three, with a clear memory of the plays. “I knew Kling’s mind, how he’d be shook up by it and would have to collect himself before throwing. All I needed was inches.”

  After that, however, the Cubs closed it out, winning a five-game Series with no trouble. Three-Finger Brown and Orvie Overall threw consecutive 3–0 shutouts. In the two closing games Cobb made no hits, striking out, grounding out, or flying out five times. He also misfielded Chance’s fly ball. “Series-jinxed” was the term applied to him by some writers. Yet his overall Series batting average of .368 could not be dismissed—only two Cubs had bettered it. No Tiger had come close to him.

  Like so many modern standout players who have refused press interviews after a defeat, Cobb left Bennett Park in haste.

  THE 1908 season represented a turning point of Cobb’s life. Finally, after three years of indecision, he reached the conclusion that he belonged permanently in the game. Cobb wrote in his diary, “I now made up my mind that the gang couldn’t keep me down … Anytime a man can last more than 400 games and put his team into two Series, his path is chosen for him.” Charlie Cobb may not have agreed with that decision. Just seventeen years old, she disliked living for months far away from her Georgia family. She faced the fact, however, that her husband gave her no say in the matter.

  Poor attendance at the last two Series games—turnouts of 12,900 and 6,200—held each Tiger to loser’s shares of $871 apiece from the box-office division. Cobb was diligent in rooting out every other odd dime. He picked up $1,200 in postseason exhibitions and a $250 purse for entering an around-the-bases sprinting contest.

  How fast was he really? At Chicago he beat some of the top runners by going from home base to first in 3.5 seconds and touring four bases in 13.5 seconds, doing it in cut-down uniform pants and baseball shoes. If alive today, given starting blocks, technique training, and the springy shoes of Carl Lewis, he might well be an Olympic Games prospect.

  That winter, always restless, he spread himself across the South and East. In Louisiana he played against semipros for cash guarantees. Bush ballparks doubled their attendance by his presence. He drove a Thomas Flyer in the New York to North Carolina Good Roads Tour, a promotional event of the auto industry. Between 1900 and 1918, U.S. motor-vehicle production rose from 4,000 units to 187,000, and driver registration from 8,000 to 469,000. Cobb, who was fortunate to have arrived at the outset of automania, owed much of his future financial affluence to endorsing cars, tires, batteries, owning dealerships, and buying early General Motors stock.

  Coach Dan McGugin of Vanderbilt University invited him to attend football practice. Cobb watched the boys bang heads for a while and asked if he could try running the ball. McGugin was hesitant. After taking part in a few “dummy” plays (no tackling), Cobb insisted on donning pads and helmet and engaging in a real scrimmage. McGugin was astonished when he cut off-tackle and ran eighty-five yards for a touch-down the first time he handled th
e ball. “That convinced me,” McGugin told a reporter, “that here is the greatest athlete in the country.”

  A FEW weeks of quiet living at home was enough, after which Cobb needed action. He seemed to require the sounds and sight of a crowd roaring. A New Orleans fight promoter signed him to referee a card of club matches. Before the first fight ended, the audience was howling protests; instead of stopping a bout in which one pug was being battered around the ring, bleeding and nearly unconscious, Cobb let it keep going. With the crowd out of hand, policemen forcibly evicted Cobb from the ring, and the promoter had him removed from the building. After that, the one-night-stand referee left for Georgia to hunt quail and to give Charlie some of his time.

  DURING THE off-season the couple lived at The Oaks, the home of Charlie’s father, Roswell Lombard. A wing of Lombard’s large house was provided for them, along with a household maid. Cobb couldn’t afford his own place as yet. He got along well with a father-in-law who was prominent in his own right.

  DOMESTIC PEACE and quiet may have been Cobb’s lot that winter, but in seven American League cities there were those who wanted him drummed from the game, either through a long-term suspension or permanent barring. From 1908 until the World War I years and beyond, his lawless ways, coupled with his ability to beat teams single-handedly, whether by accepted means or otherwise, would embroil Cobb in almost endless run-ins with opponents, fans, the press, policemen, law courts, his owner, and the American League office. Byron Bancroft Johnson, American League president and advocate of less rowdyism on field and the sanitizing of baseball so that women would be attracted to games, was quoted as saying, “Every time I look up I hear about Mr. Cobb making trouble. He seems unable to conform to the accepted rules of baseball or society.”