Cobb

by Al Stump

  POWER-DRIVEN conveyances and T.C. did not mix well. There had been a close call with death in 1911 when a taxicab in which he was riding dumped him onto the pavement as it crashed into a Detroit streetcar. Driving in Detroit in 1912, he had been forced to jump for his life before an onrushing car. There was also the day in Augusta when his limousine would not start and a busher named Stengel helped try to push it back to life. Cobb felt jinxed, as did thousands of other investors in embryonic machines ranging from the costly Pope-Toledo, Cadillac, and Stutz Bearcat to the six-hundred-dollar-and-up Chevrolet, Maxwell, and Ford models. The hazards of getting horseless carriages to go and keep going were many. When the U.S. Motor Car Company and Maxwell went bankrupt, some people cheered. Cart horses did not require cranking, tow trucks, or smelly fuel.

  Not long before Cobb began his stay in the .400 bracket, still another affair involving himself and a motor car occurred, this one exposing baseball in the worst possible light. In 1910, the nationally notorious “Chalmers frame-up” began when Hugh Chalmers, president of Chalmers Motor Company, offered gifts of his best models to the batting champions of the American and National leagues. Chalmers, a former star salesman for the National Cash Register Company, saw his giveaways as good promotion in a new field—sports—and he threw in a bonus of free tanks of gasoline, costing seventeen cents a gallon. Chalmers could not foresee that his stunt would become a sickening scandal, one of the first public indicators that baseball was not entirely on the up-and-up.

  At midseason, Cobb thought he had little or no chance to win the prize. Napoleon Lajoie, Cleveland’s three-time American League bat titleholder, was averaging .399 to Cobb’s .372. When the Peach contracted another of the eye ailments that handicapped him from time to time, it appeared to be all over except for the shouting. Fitted with smoked glasses to wear in bright sunlight, he was forced to drop out for ten days in September. He hated to show infirmity, but headlines such as “IS COBB GOING BLIND IN ONE EYE?” had appeared on sport pages. In speaking of what followed, he told me, “I was trying to play down the eyes. A confidential letter I sent to a Cleveland friend became public. I never spoke to that squealer again.” A portion of his letter said, “. . . my eyes are not very good now and I have to use one eye to write … It throws me out of the running for the auto … Lajoie surely will best my present average. Tomorrow I consult a stomach specialist, as this may be the trouble. I can only see well from the left eye … the other is smoky. I am very worried.”

  However, Lajoie did not improve, while Cobb, returning to work with vision remarkedly strengthened, collected a double, two triples, and two singles in a doubleheader with New York. At Chicago on October 6 and 7 he went 4 for 7 in two games. In the closing days the race read:

  The tightest of possible finishes gripped fans across the country, leading to formation of Lajoie and Cobb rooter clubs. A Detroiter named Tim Harrigan, with a big bet down on Cobb to win, dropped dead at the Century Club of Detroit supposedly from overexcitement. Public voting was held on who would win.

  On October 6 Cobb’s eye trouble reappeared. He sat out two season-ending Chicago engagements. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer and other Ohio papers scoffed that if he had enough sight to connect at his current rate, then it could only be a case of faint heart—the fear that he would finish poorly and lose points. Moreover, after benching himself in Chicago, he had gone to Philadelphia to appear in an all-star affair. Lajoie, on the other hand, emphasized the Reach Guide, “never got cold feet.”

  Big Frenchy Lajoie’s chance to pass his rival at the wire came in an October 9 Cleveland–St. Louis doubleheader. Cobb’s season was finished, Lajoie’s was not. Eastern gamblers—did they know something?—had Frenchy as a slight favorite to drive away in the deluxe Chalmers. At six feet, one inch and nearly two hundred pounds, Lajoie (pronounced La-zway) was the press’s ideal of grace, power, and confidence under pressure. A native of Fall River, Massachusetts, a former livery-stable hack driver, he was lauded by George Trevor of the New York Sun as an “eye-filling D’Artagnan of the diamond,” along with “living poetry at second base.” Lajoie was “a big, swarthy jungle cat whose superiority oozes from him.” Back in 1901, for the Philadelphia A’s, he had averaged .422 for a full season, although at the time foul balls did not count as strikes.

  The colorful Lajoie chewed a plug of tobacco the size of a hockey puck; once he had been suspended for squirting juice into the eye of umpire Frank “Blinky” Dwyer. He had player-managed Cleveland for a while, then quit to gather more player’s trophies.

  To prevent Cobb, disliked on every American League bench, from edging out Lajoie required the collaboration of St. Louis manager Jack “Peach Pie” O’Connor and his scout, Harry Howell. Their plan was to provide Lajoie with a base hit every time he came up against the Browns on October 9. This could be done in two ways—by feeding him easy pitches, or deploying the Browns’ defense to the Frenchman’s advantage. The second method was selected as more dependable.

  The official scorer of the season-closing doubleheader was a sportswriter, E. V. Parish, who soon realized what was going on but was powerless to prevent it. Supposedly no one informed Lajoie in advance, although some insiders doubted that he was kept ignorant. On his first time at bat he tripled to center field. Fielder Hub Northen fell all over himself misjudging the ball. After that, with third baseman Red Corriden stationed so far back that he was on the outfield grass, Lajoie bunted safely three times. In the second half of the twin bill, with Corriden still playing a ridiculous distance away from him, Lajoie made four more hits, all on bunts that Corriden or shortstop Bobby Wallace were not there to handle. If eight gift base hits didn’t let Lajoie surpass Cobb in the race, nothing could.

  Parish had visitors at his press-box seat throughout the day. Cleveland and St. Louis reserve players came by to suggest that he score everything by Lajoie a hit. Late in the second game, Parish also was handed a note. American League historians have said that it read: “Mr. Parish: If you can see where Lajoie gets a B.H. instead of a sacrifice I will give you an order for a forty-dollar suit—for sure. Answer by boy, in behalf of———I ask you.”

  Afterward, Parish would testify that the note was unsigned; but he could smell two large rodents—manager Jack O’Connor and his aide, Harry Howell. Parish envisioned headlines exposing the conspiracy. Bookies who had made Cobb a favorite to win the Chalmers would be more than angry; they would be murderous. Parish ordered the bribe-offerer out of the press box. As for the St. Louis Browns, the inept eighth-place team had nothing to lose. The Browns would be getting even with Cobb for spiking some of them in the past.

  When the unsophisticated plot was exposed, it shocked a public conditioned to believe that, regardless of what went on in Wall Street and Washington, D.C., back rooms, the American game of games was honest. There had been only minor doubts about that tradition in recent years. In 1908, umpire Bill Klem had revealed that he had been offered three thousand dollars to arrange a New York Giants win in a National League playoff with the Chicago Cubs. And in 1903 the National Commission had investigated suspected conniving in a Philadelphia-Giants series.

  At St. Louis the “gaff,” or fix, was all too evident; the Detroit Free Press bannered: “ST. LOUIS LAYS DOWN TO LET LAJOIE WIN.” The St. Louis Post let go with: “All St. Louis is up in arms over the deplorable spectacle, conceived in stupidity and executed in jealousy. The frame-up to deprive Cobb of the title surely will end the careers of whatever home-team officials ordered this monstrous fraud. This city should subscribe to a fund to buy Ty Cobb a Chalmers auto.”

  While people awaited the ruling of league president Ban Johnson, unofficial calculations were in disagreement. Chicago’s Tribune had Lajoie winning the championship by 3 points, .385 to .382. The Sporting News called it .38415 to .38411 in favor of Cobb. Other journals had conflicting figures. From Philadelphia, where he was undergoing further eye treatment, Cobb said little, other than to suggest that O’Connor should be fired.

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bsp; It was widely reported that eight of his Tiger teammates had sent a telegram to Lajoie, prematurely congratulating him on his victory in the Chalmers race. McIntyre, Crawford, Jones, Bush, and Boss Schmidt were said to be among those who signed the message, which they did not deny. Some observers felt that in the unending Cobb-Tigers war the telegram was the most vicious of all acts. Cobb only said, “That was to be expected.” He expressed confidence that a just ruling would be made by Johnson, despite their past differences. It was Frank Navin’s voice in the matter that he feared more than Ban Johnson’s. “That prick, Navin, never has liked me,” he told one of the few friendly Tigers, “and his vote will be important.”

  Enter Hugh Fullerton, New York sportswriter. Fullerton had been a co-scorekeeper of another Detroit game, back in midseason, and at that time had given Cobb credit for a questionable hit. His fellow scorer had changed it to a fielder’s error. Digging into his files, Fullerton found the score sheet used that day, restored the hit, and forwarded his amendment to the league office. He urged Johnson to accept his belief that Cobb had been robbed of a single. This complicated things even further for Bob McRoy, the league statistician charged with untangling the issue of who had won.

  Other support came from the last place where “runner-up Cobb”—a phrase already being bandied about—expected to find it: Manhattan. In the interest of a square deal, New Yorkers showed sympathy toward their longtime enemy. Heywood Broun of the New York Morning Telegraph commanded a large audience as a leading editorialist. A Harvard man and intellectual, Broun’s “It Seems to Me” column on world affairs was becoming a staple for sophisticated readers. Of anti-Cobb sentiment Broun wrote:

  As the world knows, Tyrus Raymond Cobb is less popular than Napoleon Lajoie. Perhaps Cobb is the least-popular player who ever lived. And why? Whether you like or you dislike this fellow you must concede him one virtue: what he has won he has taken by might of his own play. Pistareen ball players whom he has shown up dislike him, third basemen with bum arms, second basemen with tender skins, catchers who cannot throw out a talented slider—all despise Cobb. And their attitude has infected the stands.

  Ahhh—one wonders. Here is the best man in the world at his game, without the shade of a doubt; the best of any time. Yet it seems he is fated to move across the field as did Bobby Burns’ gallant scapegoat, who danced beneath the noose—“Sae wantonly, sae dauntingly, sae rantingly gaied he.” He played a spring and danced it “round the gallows tree.” If Cobb sticks his cap on three hairs, as the Irish say, laughs in the faces of his opponents and steals bases while they stand around with the ball in their hands, is he to be damned by the populace?

  With the curious crassity which always leads the mob to rend that hand that feeds and to lick that which whips it, spectators at baseball games do not like this player who gives them more for their hard-earned ticket than any man alive or dead gave them. When humanity put to death its Greatest Servant, all that he could say in condonation was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” That was the biggest and truest thing He ever said. Humanity prefers guile and gaud to honesty and worth. Humanity is asinine.

  Humanity also paid to see baseball games, however, and the public would not tolerate an attempted fix. One week after the “black day” at St. Louis, Ban Johnson announced the decision. Napoleon Lajoie had compiled a .384084 average—Johnson accepted Frenchy’s gift hits from the Browns as legal without batting an eye—but Cobb had hit .384944. That was squeezing decimal points until they screamed, but Cobb was the victor, by the finest of margins. Detroit whooped. Elsewhere there were boos. Cobb said that he was delighted—and stopped at that. He was in a position to ask how Johnson could credit Lajoie with hits handed to him fraudulently, but passed up the opportunity. He might have to deal with Johnson on another day.

  Not until the following spring could a Detroit writer get him to speak on the matter of the eight Tigers who prematurely congratulated Lajoie. “Oh, when I pass some of them on the street,” he drawled, “I just honk the horn of my new car at them.”

  Some analysts of Johnson’s decision believed that he ruled as he did in part because Lajoie was thirty-six years old, somewhat slowing up, and would not be a big box-office draw for much longer. By contrast, at twenty-four Ty Cobb would be pulling in crowds for years to come.

  Taking his time after the World Series, Johnson forced the St. Louis management to fire Jack O’Connor and Harry Howell, and kept them from being rehired elsewhere. Third baseman Red Corriden and shortstop Bobby Wallace were exonerated. In playing far out of position, they were only following their boss’s orders. Wallace replaced O’Connor as manager and St. Louis continued to be the league doormat.

  Auto magnate Hugh Chalmers provided the only pleasant note to the affair by generously awarding automobiles to both Cobb and Lajoie. As far as he was concerned, their contest had ended in a tie. Within ten days Cobb was off to Georgia, driving the Chalmers. Over the winter he entered a high speed ten-mile auto race on an Atlanta track where several drivers had been killed. No safety equipment as it is known today was provided. Cobb also rode in exhibitions in tandem with Barney “Fastest Man Alive” Oldfield, who also held the record for most crashes on a speedway. Navin, learning of this in Detroit, threw up his hands. What else could you call Cobb but suicidal?

  CURIOUS AS to how deeply Cobb’s racial prejudice went, Joe Vila of the New York Sun asked him how he felt about recent Tiger trips to Cuba to meet all-star clubs composed solidly of blacks. Cobb’s reply, as preserved in his “career” files, was, “A man named Alex Reeves works for me at my Georgia home. Alex is the best darky and houseman I’ve ever known.” Concerning another matter: John McGraw, earlier, had disguised a star black semipro, Charlie Grant, as “Charlie Tokahama, a full-blooded Cherokee.” Cobb noted that McGraw didn’t get away with smuggling Grant-Tokahama into the New York Giants lineup; the promising young star was exposed and ousted. “There will never be a darky in the majors,” T.C. confidently foresaw. “Darkies’ place is in the stands or as clubhouse help.”

  In 1909, a band of Tigers had traveled to Cuba, where they lost eight of twelve exhibitions against a startlingly competent lineup—an ethnic mix of African, Spanish, Yucatec, Jamaican, and other bloodlines—but without Cobb, who declined to join the party. He swore he would never step onto a field against nonwhites.

  At a later date Havana promoters offered Detroit a deal to return for a series. Joe Vila prodded Cobb. Still he had no intention of taking part in the coming repeat exhibition—not until Cuba threw in a thousand-dollar bonus and travel expenses so that baseball-happy islanders could see El Supremo perform. “I decided to break my own rule for a few games,” he said in an interview. Money was talking.

  On the agreed November 1910 date he failed to appear in Havana, angering Cubans and leaving everybody guessing. Cobb leisurely went fishing off south Florida until he felt like boarding a steamer out of Key West. By the time he checked in, the Tigers had won three, lost three, and tied one game against the challengers and needed help in a hurry. Before his debut at a packed Havana park, Cobb was introduced to John “Pop” Lloyd, an infielder rated by U.S. professionals who had seen him as equal to just about anyone in the majors. Lloyd was one of the few shortstops who could go deep into the hole and while sprinting toward the left-field stands throw across his body to first for outs. Meeting Lloyd, Cobb pointedly didn’t shake hands. One photo of their meeting survives; Cobb’s hands are in his pockets.

  In his first game T.C. hit a pair of singles and a home run. “Ten thousand Cubans ran for that homer ball as a souvenir,” went the report. Next he went hitless against the bullet fastball of the island’s pride, Jose de la Caridad Mendez, known as “the greatest pitcher never allowed in U.S. baseball.” On bases, sliding with spikes high, Cobb three times was tagged out by a fearless Lloyd. In a total of five Cuban games Cobb averaged .370. He was outshone by Lloyd, who batted .500. Local reporters asked Cobb when their countrymen would be admit
ted to top Yanqui leagues. He waved away the question. Through a strained series he remained stiff-necked and silent. With his help, the Detroit Tigers overall won seven of eleven games in Cuba. The results were prototypic proof that skin color had nothing to do with athletic ability, and it pained those white fans who witnessed it.

  COBB’S FEATURES were undergoing noticeable changes for so early an age. His jaw was becoming more set. Pouches appeared below his eyes, his nose had sharpened. His somber face was known everywhere. “I could walk into any saloon in the country and be given free drinks,” he said. On the street he wore his hat pulled low to avoid unwelcome fans. Before he was twenty-eight he could count forty-odd stitch marks on his thighs, legs, and ankles—purplish, healed-over scars with the appearance of tattoos. When I asked him if the wounds were still painful, he snapped, “What the hell do you think?” At the time he was past seventy.

  Playing the game had always been painful for him, and in years to come it would continue to be. Once at Cleveland, with Cobb the runner at first, a ball was safely looped to short left field. He went into second and accidentally collided with baseman Joe Sewell. Wheeler Joe Sewell was one opponent whom Cobb liked, a good guy on his way to the Hall of Fame with a career .312 average. In the collision, Cobb spiked himself. He was carried off the field in agony.