Cobb

by Al Stump

  In numerous ways, Cobb’s 1909 season was the most brilliant yet reprehensible any player ever lived through. In that span of time Cobb fixed his reputation both as a very great performer and a deeply flawed human being. At year’s end he stood indicted in Cleveland for assault with a deadly weapon, denounced by the black press for flagrant racist behavior, threatened with a life suspension by the league president, targeted by demonstrating Philadelphians, and viewed by tens of thousands as a down-and-dirty ballplayer. He also caught hell from the press in general. The influential Sporting News said in September, “Complaints that Cobb uses his spikes to injure and intimidate infielders are so common that his mere denial will not relieve him of the odium that attaches to a player guilty of this infamous practice … The list of his victims is too long to attribute the injury of all concerned to accidents. Down with this Cobb!”

  Yet his .377 bat mark was 31 points higher than the league’s next best, a .346 by Eddie Collins. He was the only player in the league to drive in more than 100 runs—107 to be exact. In total bases, his 296 easily topped everyone in the American League and the National League as well: 242 by Hans Wagner was second best. Cobb accomplished this all while appearing in a full 156 season games, limping through some of them. He became the first man to win the Triple Crown, leading the league in the same season in batting average, home runs, and runs driven in. Through the next seven decades, such Hall of Famers as Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron would never attain this sweep. If his sweep in 1909 was not the most impressive batting performance of the twentieth century, that would only be because Cobb would have even better seasons in 1911, 1912, 1913, and on up into the 1920s.

  Cobb’s 1909 title was his third straight batting championship in only his fifth year in the league. Babe Ruth did not lead the league in batting average, in his one and only time as number one in that department, until seven years after he turned from pitching to slugging specialist. The great Rajah—Rogers Hornsby—needed six seasons before he led in average.

  BEFORE THE World Series opened against the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had a whopping 110 wins in the National League, Cobb’s dilemma was how to reach Pittsburgh, some three hundred miles from Detroit, without being arrested and jailed en route. In Cleveland a wanted-man warrant in the Stansfield-knifing-gunplay case remained very much active. Ohio authorities held that Cobb had started a near-murderous brawl. He claimed self-defense. His status was that of a fugitive from justice under Ohio felony law. And the way to reach Pittsburgh from the west was via Ohio.

  Studying maps, Cobb saw that by zigzagging around on train lines, taking the Michigan-Pennsy Line by way of Canada, passing through Ontario to Buffalo and thence to Erie and Pittsburgh, he could make it to the game. It would require close rail connections and some luck. Cobb’s description of it to me went, “In case any cop bastards were on my train, I kept to my compartment and had meals brought in by porters. My best bats were with me all the way.”

  No other ballplayer had been known to sneak around fugitive-style to reach World Series games. Teammate Del “Sheriff” Gainor later said, “It was a laugh. You should have seen his coattails flying. Ty had to run for trains after games as soon as he’d had a bath. With his bats banging against his legs.”

  It was comical, and it was tiring. If the Series went the full seven games, it meant that the wanted man would cover close to fourteen hundred extra miles in a nine-day period.

  After one rail trip to Detroit and back, he gave up train travel and made the journey in a big touring automobile driven by his uncle, A. C. Ginn. Through much of Ohio, Cobb sat wrapped in a blanket out of sight in the rear seat. “He’s mad as hell,” Ginn told writer Fred Lieb, who had sworn not to print the story. “But we haven’t been caught yet.”

  His predicament deepened the hard feelings between the team and its star. Losing the Series could cost the Detroiters a bundle of money. They needed their right fielder at his best, not travel-weary. The Tigers felt that Cobb had caused his own troubles. Why had he not walked up the damned hotel stairs on that Friday night in September, instead of pulling a knife on a house detective?

  Another danger was extradition. Through the Series, which would last seven games, Cobb feared that Pennsylvania might agree to his release to Ohio.

  Interest centered on the first matchup of thirty-five-year-old Honus Wagner, the bowlegged “human vacuum cleaner,” holder of four consecutive National League batting titles and seven overall titles (he would win an eighth in 1911), and the young challenger from the West. Cobb was more concerned with studying the Pirates’ pitching staff than shaking Wagner’s hand for the papers. Pittsburgh was a 3–1 favorite with bookies. The Bucs had easily won the pennant. Could Cobb steal on their ace pitchers Vic Willis, Howie Camnitz, and Lefty Leifield, with their combined 2.07 earned-run average? Cobb thought that he could, if his tired legs held up. Opposing catcher George Gibson had an average throwing arm and was only fair at fielding bunts.

  Pregame photographs of Wagner and Cobb emphasized their size, age, and anatomical difference. The Dutchman stood a barrel-like five feet, eleven inches, weighed upward of 200 pounds, and was muscled all over. Except for his heavy thighs and upper legs, his 185-pound rival was slender. The two discussed, among other things, how to treat bats in the off-season. Cobb favored applying the juice of Navy Nerve-Cut tobacco; Wagner had his own prescription. Cobb spoke of hunting in the South, inviting Wagner to join him for a wild-pig shoot. Anything to take a .350 hitter’s mind off the game.

  Eastern sportswriters were the source of the myth that the Dutchman far outplayed his opponent in a maximum-length Series. Their inaccurate picture of Cobb’s performance endures to this day. He didn’t shine, but in game number one he scored Detroit’s only run in the 4–1 defeat, narrowly missed a triple, and stole a base on Gibson. In game number two, Vic Willis relieved Howie Camnitz on the Pirates’ mound. The next few minutes demonstrated Cobb’s mental processes and explained why he stole the most impregnable of stations, home base, more often than any of the thirteen-thousand-odd men who have played the game in this century. He remembered analysis of the play:

  “Willis came in from the bullpen. We had a two-run rally going. I was the runner at third base. The moment Willis took over I decided to try for a steal. There were four angles to it. My reasoning was that he would have his mind far more on stopping our rally than on me. But first I had to experiment. Willis was a twelve-year veteran and smart. So far I was only guessing he’d be a bit careless in watching me. As soon as he took his pose on the rubber, I walked off third a few times as a test and to disarm Willis, the catcher, and third baseman Bob Byrne. Willis’s eyes were fixed on the signal from his catcher. I looked harmless. It was a great moment … he’d left an opening. Just as Willis raised his arm to go into his windup, I broke for the plate with everything I had.

  “Since a right-handed hitter, George Moriarty, was at bat, I had some protection—the screening effect of his body—for partway down the line. Gibson didn’t see me coming at first. Willis did see and reacted like his pants were on fire. He had to check his windup and stance in order to throw home.”

  Reported one correspondent, “Cobb did it in nothing flat.” His home steal, a Series rarity, was done with no rough stuff, but a clean tearing up of dirt for several feet and a toe-hook past Gibson, grabbing for the ball.

  Another dividend was that an upset Willis walked Moriarty. Detroit won, 7–2, with Cobb adding a single.

  Action switched to Detroit for game three, requiring that Cobb make hurried train connections that bypassed Ohio. He didn’t arrive at Bennett Park until batting practice had begun. Feeling “gas pain,” he had a run-scoring single and run-scoring double while the Tigers lost, 8–6. Wagner overshadowed him with three base steals to Cobb’s none, and three timely hits.

  In the next game, Cobb was hit in the stomach by a first-inning pitch, which did not help his nausea. After that he was hot and cold, twice bunting into outs
, while also driving in a pair of runs with an opposite-field double. Detroit won this one, 5–0, thanks to George Mullin’s shutout pitching. That evened the Series at two games each. The Pirates pulled ahead with an 8–4 victory despite home runs by Sam Crawford and Davy Jones; Cobb came up with just one single in a poor outing. Back in Detroit for number six, Cobb doubled in a run while the Tigers battled back to edge the Bucs, 5–4, and force a seventh-game showdown. In this one, the year’s best hitter flied out, bounced out, and in general failed, while Babe Adams, a reserve Pirate pitcher, threw a surprising 8–0 shutout. Cobb kicked his bat halfway to the bench in frustration when for the third straight time the Tigers lost the world championship.

  Collectively, the Pirates batted a light .224 in the Series to Detroit’s .236. The Tigers totaled fifty-five base hits to the winner’s fifty. Because of spotty pitching, failure to bunch hits, and allowing a record-equaling eighteen Pirate base steals, Jennings’s men had thrown it away.

  Wagner had been a more decisive factor than his opposite number, who was a dozen years younger, but not to the extent that legend has it. The Dutchman averaged .333 overall as compared to Cobb’s .231, with eight hits to Cobb’s six, and four runs scored to three by Cobb. Each drove in six runs. Wagner stole six bases to Cobb’s two. Each had three extra-base hits. Cobb had outhit Wagner over the season by 38 points—.377 to .339, outslugged him by .517 to .489, and outscored him, 116 runs to 92.

  Cobb took the Series loss hard; his anger at having been out-played ran deep. He resented the story that he had tried to spike Wagner in one game. It was told and retold how he had supposedly shouted from first base to Wagner at shortstop, “Key, Krauthead! I’m coming down on the next pitch! Look out, Krauthead!” And when he did come, Wagner supposedly jammed the ball into Cobb’s mouth for three stitches (sometimes reported as five) and tagged him out. That anecdote has been repeated by generations of sportswriters; Cobb said that it did not happen, and there is no evidence that it did. Cobb was a busy memorialist, preserving events on paper in the form of memos, annotations, and recorded dialogue, and in his writings he said, “Me insult Wagner, try to spike him? Would have taken a foolhardy man … With his powerful body, you were very careful when you slid in his vicinity. I admired Wagner. The story was invented.” Wagner also denied the story.

  Throughout the playoff the matter of the Cleveland arrest warrant hanging over him worried Cobb. “It bothered my play,” he said, “to think of police coming onto the field and handcuffing me.”

  Cobb’s Tiger teammates let him know how they felt about his uninspired work in the Series. If he hadn’t been rushing back and forth by rail and car between home base and Pittsburgh to avoid arrest, if he had played at his peak, the Tigers might have collected individual Series winner’s shares of $1,825. Instead they drew $1,275 each.

  On top of that, his winter plans were delayed. Navin said, “You can’t go anywhere until we settle the warrant.” Considering the Stansfield legal charges to be very serious, Navin decided that Cobb should face the music. On October 19, Cobb, Navin, and two attorneys were off to see an Ohio judge. One of the lawyers was the former mayor of Cleveland, R. E. McKisson. Well connected in Ohio, McKisson was retained in hope of arranging a milder sentence than a felonious assault charge usually carried. On October 20, the defendant pleaded not guilty. McKisson argued that his client’s use of a knife began only after the night watchman of the Euclid Hotel had attacked him with a billyclub. Upon arraignment, the ballplayer posted a five-hundred-dollar bond, with trial set within thirty days. Back at last in Georgia, the Peach was honored with so many banquets that his weight went to nearly two hundred pounds. Charlie Cobb held a reception at The Oaks attended by friends, Augusta and state officials, and her hubby’s old Royston Reds teammates—some two hundred admirers in all. Diamond stickpins, a silver bat, and jeweled watch fobs were added to his earlier gift collection.

  Attorney McKisson, meantime, had been busy doing, as Cobb was to write, “a helluva job.” The case was plea-bargained down so far that when the accused returned to Cleveland on November 22, the judge handled the bloody fight with the black detective not as a criminal matter but as simple assault and battery. The penalty was a hundred-dollar fine and court costs. It was testified that at home Cobb employed blacks as servants and handymen and treated them well. His off-the-record comment at a later time was, “It would have meant jail if I hadn’t had so much help—a friendly judge, and with the Detroit ball club’s bankroll behind me. We bought this one.”

  WITH A new Detroit contract worth nine thousand dollars a year for three years in his safety box—the second-highest pay in baseball behind Honus Wagner—Cobb gave thought to buying a car. He knew nothing of mechanics and liked the inexpensive Brush Runabout, but when he heard an expert make a wisecrack about the Brush—“a wooden body, wooden axles, wooden wheels, wooden run”—he changed his mind. When Cobb could afford an automobile it would be an impressive Cadillac Six or Chalmers 30, costing a thousand dollars or up. That time was drawing near.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE GREATEST PLAYER WHO EVER LIVED

  Charles Dillon Stengel, soon to be known throughout baseball as “Casey,” experienced a thrill early in 1913. The left-handed ex–semipro pitcher was leaving the Brooklyn spring-training camp one day when he encountered “the greatest of them all,” and a lifelong friendship resulted:

  “This wuz at Augusta an’ I never forgot it. I walk out of the park and there is Ty Cobb, himself. And he has the biggest automobile in the world. Big as a boxcar.

  “The car wouldn’t start. Cobb was kickin’ it with both boots and cussin’ a blue streak. It was an amazin’ sight for a young fella like me to see.”

  Twenty-three-year-old Stengel, one day to become the most famous of big-league managers, had been drifting around the bushes at Kankakee, Illinois, Maysville, Kentucky, and Montgomery, Alabama, for a few years, idolizing the renowned Cobb from afar. By now he was an outfielder with a pretty fair bat. Stengel had played only seventeen games for the Dodgers, but had hopes of winning steady employment. The Georgia Peach had dropped by the Dodgers’ camp for a private workout. He was holding out that April, insisting on more salary and bonuses from a resistant Detroit management. Stengel picked a poor moment to introduce himself, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet his hero.

  “Brooklyn? You’re in a horseshit league!” snapped Cobb. “Know anything about cars?”

  “No, sir,” replied Stengel. “You want me to help push it?”

  Cobb fumed, “This crate is guaranteed to run for months. I’ve had it a few days. Okay, start pushing.”

  The two shoved for a while and all that resulted was popping noises and smoke clouds. Stengel made the ritual remark about horses being more dependable than gas buggies, drawing from Cobb more invective and kicking of his expensive vehicle. Giving up on it, Cobb sat on the grass to wait for a trolley car to come along and take him to the nearest mechanic. Casey sat with him.

  During this chance meeting Stengel advanced their acquaintance by telling how Brooklyn manager Bill Dahlen had only one high-class outfielder, Zachariah “Zack” Wheat. There was a chance for such a prospect as himself to win a job. “If you’re any good you sure as hell should,” said Cobb. “Those Pigtowners have been sixth or worse for years. On hitting, Brooklyn’s known as the oh-for-four club.”

  Stengel stated that he was a left-hander; what would Mister Cobb advise him? One of Cobb’s amiable attributes was that he enjoyed instructing young talent. “Get up in the front of the box against lefties,” he said. “Smack it before the ball tails away from you … or in on your fists.”

  No trolley arrived. Cobb went on talking. “Get yourself hit by pitches. Before the ump can call you out for doing it on purpose, beat him to it. Let out a yell. Throw your bat at the pitcher. Limp around, show that you’re hurt. Then steal second base.”

  Cobb liked the jug-eared rookie enough to act as his counselor from time to time. Marr
iage was a risky move, Cobb warned (Stengel did not marry his Edna until he was thirty-five). And: “Don’t ever be caught with liquor on your breath at game time.” More than sixty years later at his Glendale, California, home, Casey, now an idiosyncratic character with a Hall of Fame plaque of his own, still enjoyed telling at length about how momentous it had been for him to meet “the best bygod ballplayer I ever saw, including some very great ones,” and how a long friendship resulted from his helping Cobb to push his car that spring day. In 1916, with Brooklyn against the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, Stengel sought out Cobb, who was on hand as a press-syndicate commentator, to ask, “How would you hit off Ernie Shore?” Shore was slated to start for Boston the next day. They spoke for two hours by Casey’s estimate, and because of adjustments made by Cobb against Shore’s stuff, Stengel got two hits. Brooklyn lost the Series, but in limited appearances Casey led his club’s overall hitting with a .364 mark.

  Upon Stengel’s being named Brooklyn’s manager in 1934, Cobb, at a banquet honoring his unearthly friend, stood and told the cadaver and manhole stories. As a boyhood student at Western Dental College in Kansas City, considering dentistry as an occupation, Casey dissected the mouths and jaws of dead human bodies. “That,” said Cobb, “is how he got so gabby—getting right into it.”

  Stengel was the dental class’s clown. “He’d cut off a cadaver’s thumb and stick it in somebody’s pocket. And put cigars in the bazoos of corpses,” declared Cobb, as Casey blushed.