Cobb

by Al Stump

  In Philadelphia, Boston, and Cleveland, fans were more direct. They threatened bodily harm, and some of the threats to shoot down Cobb appeared less like the ordinary recriminations aimed at a controversial figure than genuine warnings of deadly intent.

  High on the list of those who wanted him ruled off the diamond was Cornelius McGillicuddy Mack, the “Tall Tactician” and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics. Mack was dignified, soft-spoken, and conservative. He would rule the A’s for fifty years. After Cobb spiked Home Run Baker in a celebrated incident in late August, Mack called Cobb, his bête noire, such names as “back-alley artist,” “a no-good ruffian,” and “a malefactor no league can afford.”

  “I wouldn’t let Cobb play for me if he did it for nothing,” Mack stated.

  Conflicting accounts of one Baker-Cobb incident back in August had been widely published. John Franklin Baker, a five-foot, eleven-inch, 170-pound former butcher from Trappe, Maryland, was on his way to fame as the deadball era’s leading power hitter. In 1911–13 he would knock 33 balls out of parks and be nicknamed Home Run Baker; the beetle-browed ex–meat man was a symbol of power at the plate.

  It had not been proved, either way, that their collision had been a case of Cobb deliberately going for Baker’s body on a steal, or the third baseman’s awkwardness in trying for a tag. Cobb had drawn a walk, stolen second, and soon after tried to take third. Baker, taking a strong throw from A’s catcher Paddy Livingston, had his man out by two feet. At full momentum Cobb faked a hookslide to his left while whipping his right leg across to the bag. Baker, stabbing at the runner bare-handed, went down in pain. Blood ran down his hand and forearm. The runner was safe; Baker was cut an undetermined amount. The A’s quickly bandaged him and he stayed in the game.

  It was an impossible play to call. Harry Salsinger of the Detroit News saw it this way: “Cobb was blocked … and came in spikes flying high and glittering in the sunlight. A photograph taken of the play proved nothing. It could have been an accident.”

  Baker replied, “It was on purpose. After I put the ball on his left leg and had him out, he did a scissors-like motion of his right leg. One-eighth of an inch deeper and he’d have ended my career. I wouldn’t have been able to throw.” Baker added that while he lay on his back, injured, Cobb invited him to settle the matter with fists back of the stands. A crazy thing to do, thought Baker.

  Cobb denied intent, and pointed out that Baker needed only a small sticking plaster on the cut. He maintained, “Mack’s big favorite is Eddie Collins, who slides into base the way I do—he’s hurt more men than I have.” Mack called that a lie.

  A majority of American League teams took the side of Baker and Mack; they believed that Cobb intended to rule the base paths, come what may.

  Another incentive for Mack’s reaction was that after slicing Baker, Cobb had gone on a batting binge such as comes to few men, averaging .640 in one stretch as the Tigers swept sixteen of twenty games. His presence in the lineup meant a probable pennant for Detroit.

  Mack’s enrollment in the Cobb-haters had begun in 1909 at spring training at San Antonio, Texas. A third straight pennant was in prospect for the Tigers. They badly beat New York, 16–5, in their home opener on May 11 before a crowd of about twelve thousand, with their ace running the bases with abandon and doubling twice. In another New York match Cobb singled three times and tripled while accounting for five runs. A half-century later he told San Francisco Examiner sports columnist Prescott Sullivan, “In those two games, I arrived as a big-leaguer.”

  For twenty-four years Cobb’s life was one of unrelieved, preternatural conflict, a bannerline writer’s joy. In the summer of 1909 the Georgian set some kind of record by becoming the only famous baseball player to be jumped and mugged by a group in his own home city on his way to a game. In Detroit, he was attacked by several men, who knifed him and set off a brawl in which Cobb finally drove off a mob and later claimed to have killed one of the attackers with a pistol butt.

  The matter, however, soon took second place to another ugly development. Early in September, Cobb made spectacular news. It happened when the Tigers were in Cleveland against the Naps. Years later Cobb gave his version of what supposedly happened. “With the idea of entering show business one day as an actor, I dined with George M. Cohan, thirty-one-year-old songwriter-actor who had composed such hits as ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ and ‘Give My Regards to Broadway,’ and Vaughn Glaser, a playwright. Our dining and drinking ended about one-thirty A.M.” At that time Cobb was driven to the Tigers’ hotel, the Euclid. He was not drunk, Cobb was to testify in court. He was angered by the night elevator operator, a black man, who allegedly said, “We got no elevators after midnight … you can walk up to your room.”

  “Get going up,” ordered Cobb, waving a fist. They arose, but to the wrong floor. Cobb berated the lift man, slapped him, and they returned to the lobby. There the guest was approached in an “insolent” way by the hotel’s black night watchman–house detective, one George Stansfield. He reproached Cobb for being so noisy at a late hour. A shouting match followed between them. As they say in box scores, error by Cobb, assist to Stansfield. Stansfield pulled his nightstick, and upon moving in on Cobb found himself in a fight for his life. They struggled. Both fell down, and while on the floor the husky Stansfield struck Cobb several times with his truncheon. At that Cobb produced a pocketknife and began cutting Stansfield—in the ear, shoulder, and hands. Stansfield didn’t quit, as evidence showed. He hit Cobb a few more solid blows to the body and head with the stick, then pulled a gun. As Stansfield went down again, Cobb kicked the gun across the lobby and kept up the knife slashing. People from lower-floor rooms came down to witness him kicking Stansfield in the head.

  Homicide wasn’t far away when a desk clerk and janitors jumped in to pin a flailing Cobb to the floor. Bleeding, he staggered to his room to bandage head wounds. Many years later, Cobb showed me old skull scars, saying, “I didn’t want to draw the Tigers into it. But I got in touch with Georgie Cohan at his hotel and had him notify Navin in Detroit.” Such was how Cobb remembered it, in any event. (In point of fact, it is dubious whether Cohan was involved.)

  With a police investigation pending, Cobb appeared at League Park the following afternoon, bandaged from ear to chin. Teammates, not knowing the score, watched in amazement as Cobb played all eighteen innings of a doubleheader. In the first game he had three hits off Cy Falkenberg. Hughie Jennings urged him to sit out the second match. He played and made a pair of good outfield catches. By now his bandages were stained red. Of all sights of Ty Cobb on a ballfield, this one may have been the most bizarre.

  Navin already was in receipt of some dozen “Black Hand” death-threat letters mailed from Philadelphia as a result of the Baker episode. The unsigned notes asserted that when the Tigers reached that city for crucial meetings beginning September 15, a ballpark sniper, or several, would gun down Cobb in reprisal for the spiking of Baker. In addition, junk and threats had been thrown at him in the Boston park, and he had thumbed his nose at Beantown crowds. One of these exchanges had come during a ten-inning Detroit victory in which the Peach tripled, twice singled, poled a home run, and roughly upended shortstop Charles “Heinie” Wagner on a steal attempt. (“That sort of shitty treatment of me at Boston mostly came from Harvard students,” brooded Cobb with unconscious humor in later life. “It’s why I sent my son to Yale when he grew up.”)

  Navin needed to deal with the Cleveland situation, and quickly. From a hospital bed, watchman Stansfield had sworn out an arrest warrant charging aggravated criminal assault with intent to kill. To lose Cobb’s bat and his hustle to drawn-out court procedures or a prison sentence in all probability would end Detroit’s championship hopes. The second-place Athletics were pressing close.

  Before he went on the Euclid Hotel rampage, Cobb had been nothing less than phenomenal. Against New York he had doubled for two RBIs, and at Washington hit two home runs in a game for the first time. Again against the Highla
nders (they would not become the “Yankees” until 1913) he had driven in or personally scored all five runs in a 5–3 Detroit cliffhanger win. So dependable had he become in the pinch that—the story goes—one day the Detroit News published an extra edition before a sixteen-inning struggle with Washington had ended. While the teams played on, newsboys ran the streets, telling readers that heroic Tyrus had beaten the Nationals with a last-moment base hit. It wasn’t true. Faith in local journalism fell. The story has it that William “Billy” Durant, founder of General Motors, bawled out a News editor in public.

  “How could you print that?” demanded Durant. “Why, dammit, the game ended with Cobb striking out with the bases full—and we lost.”

  “How often does the Peach do that?” replied the crestfallen editor.

  Interest was so high in the battle of the Euclid Hotel that Cleveland News writer Ed Bang said he filed twenty thousand words on it cross-country. Luckily for Navin, detectives sent to Cleveland’s League Park following the event arrived too late to detain Cobb for questioning; by then the Tigers were en route to St. Louis. Stansfield added a five-thousand-dollar civil damage suit to his criminal complaint. His lawyers claimed that their client was suffering severe pain. “He was trying to kill me,” Stansfield deposed.

  No information was released on what it cost the partnership of Bill Yawkey and Frank Navin in the next days to persuade Stansfield to drop his suit—a settlement figure of ten thousand dollars was rumored—but to Cleveland officials a payoff was not the main issue: Cobb had shown murderous intent. Police were keeping the case open. By leaving town he had committed another crime. The accused man remained subject to apprehension.

  Cleveland detective Jake Mintz was reported to have advised Navin that with Cobb’s record of violence, he was sure to be convicted in court. Police would watch future Detroit team travel and the next time a train carrying the Tigers entered Ohio, that train would be entered and the offender seized and brought to trial.

  If and when the Tigers hung on in the late season and qualified for the World Series, they probably would open the playoff against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Pittsburgh on October 8. Passing through Ohio on the Lake Shore Line was the regular route for the Tigers when going east. Cobb got out a map and made plans to avoid jail and to not miss the Series.

  “Ohio is blocked to me,” he wrote a Georgia friend. “But I can get to Pittsburgh another way … although it means going into Canada and then a lot of train-hopping.”

  BEFORE DETROIT could clinch a third straight World Series appearance, the matter of defeating the Athletics at hostile Philadelphia had to be faced. The Tigers led the A’s by four games when the teams squared off at Philly on September 16 for four decisive contests. A clean sweep by the A’s would mean a tie for first place. Connie Mack’s campaign to punish Cobb for spiking Frank Baker had led to group frenzy. Placards carried by “Philly Phanatics” outside Shibe Park, the A’s new concrete-and-steel arena seating twenty-five thousand, showed a knife sticking out of Cobb’s chest.

  Hughie Jennings, given the public temper at the rematch, was reluctant to use Cobb. Syndicated columnist Bugs Baer wrote that Cobb was well advised to sit out these games. Dire warnings came from Horace Vogel of the Philadelphia Bulletin, a longtime Cobb hater, who sounded like he wanted a hanging. A frightened Charlie Cobb urged her husband not to appear. His fans in Augusta and Atlanta wired and phoned to the same purpose. They wanted revenge.

  Ban Johnson did little to cool feelings. Earlier, the league chief, a former sportswriter, had stated, “One more attempt at spiking a fellow player will put a sudden quietus on this man’s career … Cobb will stop it or quit the game.” Johnson was talking about outright banishment. A few days later, however, he waffled, saying, “Cobb has learned his lesson and will behave.” Philadelphians did not care if he came onto the field waving a white surrender flag.

  The Peach and Jennings sat in a suite at Philadelphia’s Aldine Hotel on the night before game number one. On a table before them were thirteen anonymous letters. Each promised Cobb’s termination. Some were specific: “If you’re not too cowardly to show up, you’ll be dead. Our guns are ready.” And: “I’ll be on a roof across from the park with a rifle and in the third inning I’ll put a bullet through your heart.” Other notices, preserved by Cobb in the event of a lawsuit, named the killing as happening by knife during a field melee bound to follow the first game.

  Jennings was on the spot. He had been forced to revamp his slumping infield. Several Tigers were hurt. Meanwhile, Mack had his four pitching aces, left-handers Eddie Plank and Harry Krause and right-handers Chief Bender and Cy Morgan, in their best form. The four had produced 20 shutouts on the season. (Detroit’s top four throwers had 12 shutouts.) The A’s fast-rising Eddie Collins at second base and Home Run Baker at third were hitting at more than .300. So Cobb, at close to a .370 figure, was very much needed.

  His conference with Jennings, as Cobb remembered it many years later, went like this:

  Jennings: “These home fans mean business. With you standing in right field a good rifleman couldn’t miss.”

  Cobb: “It’s all bluff. We’ll have an overflow crowd no doubt, and I’ll need some protection. Get me some cops. I just hope the A’s hit one out past me where I’ll have to make a catch falling into the crowd … Let’s find out how tough they’ll get.”

  Jennings (wincing): “Sit out the first game, at least.”

  Cobb: “I’m playing.”

  At a late hour, people by the hundreds milled about the Aldine Hotel, yelling threats. Tiger trainer Harry Tuthill and several hired guards were positioned outside Cobb’s hotel room. Tuthill had brought along bottled Detroit water for Cobb’s use and personally cooked his food; he trusted nobody.

  Connie Mack, alarmed at the town’s choler and beginning to wonder if the major leagues’ first public execution-murder would occur, arranged for some three hundred policemen to mix with the audience at Shibe Park, which would range from twenty-five thousand to a league record of thirty thousand. A cordon of fifty armed cops would stand behind Cobb, ringing his position in right field.

  Cobb was moved from the Aldine Hotel to Shibe Park in a taxicab with a twelve-man police motorcycle escort. “I never heard such noise as when we reached Shibe,” he said. During warm-up, other Tigers stood as far away from him as possible.

  He wasn’t shot at, but at one point there was a loud explosion, causing Cobb to leap upward. A cop explained that it was an auto backfire from nearby Lehigh Avenue.

  If the furor slowed Cobb, it was not noticeable in this first game of the Series. He charged into shortstop Jack Barry and gashed his knee. The whole park arose in a roar, but stopped at that, deterred by the heavy security force all around.

  “Another strange thing happened,” related Cobb in his memoirs. “On a long fly ball I had to dive into the crowd [roped off behind the outfield] to make a one-handed catch. There was a tangle of bodies … In diving I fell on a fan’s hat and crushed it. So [next inning] I got a $5 bill from my purse and found the fan and said I was reimbursing him. He stood with his mouth open.”

  President Benjamin Shibe of the Athletics had guards touring the stands with megaphones, asking people to remain peaceful. If Cobb’s five dollars for the hat helped along that line, it wasn’t noticeable when the game concluded with a 2–0 Philadelphia win. Fans trampled the ropes and Cobb found himself surrounded by mean faces. Just then, according to Cobb in later years, a dozen or so men quickly shoved forward, boxing him in, and saying, “Ty, we know you’re a Mason and we’re fellow Masons. If you want to run for the dugout, we’ll be right with you.”

  “I never ran off a field in my life,” replied Cobb. With Masonic help, Cobb claimed, he reached safety as the crowd overran the field. (In actuality Cobb didn’t join the Masonic Order until 1912, three years later.)

  At around 10:00 P.M. that night, after dining at the Aldine, Cobb did what Jennings had implored him not to do. He went for a solitary w
alk amongst a large crowd ominously gathered in the street outside. Cobb stood, a challenging figure, on the hotel steps and called out, “Now I’m going for a walk. And I just want to say that the first rotten, cowardly hound who tries to stop me is going to drop dead, right where he stands. Now get out of my way.”

  New York reporter Westbrook Pegler estimated the turnout at about three hundred. Cobb kept one hand in his pocket, where he was known to carry a gun. A path opened up, he strolled a few blocks, and returned. “A fool’s act,” Pegler labeled it. “He did it with no cop close by.” Perhaps so, conceded Cobb, but he was armed: “I would have shot the first fee-simple son of a bitch who came at me or showed a weapon. Nobody laid a hand on me.”

  Pegler and other eastern newspapermen had heard that he was fearless, saw it demonstrated, and complimented Cobb, but did not spare the criticism when he went hitless in one game, had two bunt singles and a sacrifice fly in another, and only two additional singles during the set. Three of the four games went to the Athletics, behind the fine pitching of Eddie Plank and Chief Bender. They threw so tight to Cobb that several times he had to hit the dirt.

  “What were you thinking about most during that series?” I once asked Cobb.

  “About getting a base hit,” he said. “I wasn’t doing much.”

  Rocks were thrown at the Tigers’ horse-drawn carriages when they left town, their lead reduced to two games. Jennings let his boys enjoy a “whiskeyfest” on the train to help them relax. They bounced back by beating Boston twice—with Cobb averaging .714 off his five hits in seven times at bat. Meanwhile the Athletics lost two to Chicago. That clinched the title for the Tigers. They finished at 98–54 to the runner-up Athletics’ 95–58.

  Back in 1904 the Boston Red Sox had set the existing American League record for most season wins at 95. The Tigers’ 98 beat that. In an unreal year Detroit stood first. It had two 20-game-winning pitchers, George Mullin (who won 29) and Ed Willett (22). Old reliable Wild Bill Donovan fell to 8–7 on the mound. On offense, besides Cobb, only Sam Crawford at .314 topped the .300 mark. Good defense, and contributions from a few newcomers such as infielder Donie Bush (.273), and from vet Davy Jones (.279) were a help. But it would have been something like a third-place finish for Detroit at best if not for one man, Tyrus Cobb, whose .377 was the highest batting average anywhere in the game.