Cobb

by Al Stump

  Cobb was full of such acts that summer. It was said that he left open his office door so that Dutch Leonard, struggling in an 11–13 season despite a 3.73 ERA in 1921, could hear him on the phone, faking a call—“I’m putting that damned Dutchman on waivers.” In June the Tigers lost all five games of a Yankee series. Breaking several clubhouse windows with a bat, smashing chairs, Cobb all but wrecked the visitors’ clubhouse. The Detroit front office was reported to have received a bill for $120 damages.

  Further along in June, it was said that Cobb—his batting race with Heilmann remaining a close one—deliberately did a low-down thing. He changed his batting order without informing the long-suffering Heilmann. That left his best man batting out of turn when Slug hit a home run against Washington with one man on base. Umpire Billy Evans called Heilmann out when he crossed the plate and voided both runs. That cut a bit off Heilmann’s hitting average.

  Questions were asked about T.C.’s ability to handle two dozen individuals of varying makeup. Salsinger, with irony, wrote in his “The Umpire” column in the Daily News, “Some weeks ago, Tyrus Raymond Cobb made a flat denial of reports that he intended to use the iron-hand policy in managing the Tigers. He stated emphatically that his aim was to use tact and diplomacy, considering the human element as well as playing ability. Well?” Salsinger’s reminder was printed the same week that Cobb, in center field, called time-out, ran in, wrested the ball from pitcher Red Oldham’s hand, and gave him a dressing-down before calling in a reliever. So much for his concealed bull pen to protect his pitchers’ sensibilities.

  Meanwhile, back at the Polo Grounds Babe Ruth was solidifying his status as the young prince of baseball. He was on the way to a 59-home-run year. Whether at Detroit or at New York, Cobb’s behavior toward Ruth was what Robert Creamer, in his biography Babe, called “cruel and humorless.” Ruth became vulnerable to jockeying after a story leaked that he did not bother to change his underwear from week to week. During pregame activity, the Georgian held his nose while edging close to Ruth and asking the Yankees, “Say, do you smell something? Something around here smells like a polecat. Oh, hello, Babe.” As an aside to Yankees on the bench, he would inquire, “Who’s that blackie you got? Who’s the nigger boy?”

  Customary bench-jockeying or on-field exchanges didn’t often go that far; there was a limit to the jibing. In particular, opponents went easier on Ruth. If you really irritated him he could make you regret it with one swing of his king-sized bat.

  The Yankees wanted him to use his fists. “Sock Cobb on the nose, Babe,” urged catcher Wally Schang.

  “Ahhhh, go fuck yourself,” said Ruth to Cobb.

  Ruth was not notably handy in a fight, whereas the Peach was known to be an expert. Ruth went on taking the barbs, mainly retaliating by citing home-run power. To reporters at the batting cage, when Cobb was within earshot, he would guffaw, “Why, I could hit .400 every year if I just knocked out those little singles like him.”

  One day at New York, after a Cobb triple beat the Yankees and a shoving match occurred between the teams, the Babe blew up and charged into the Detroit clubhouse.

  “Where’s Cobb?” he asked.

  “Right here,” said T.C., appearing from around a corner.

  “You old bastard,” yelled Ruth. “If you ever call me a son of a bitch again, I’ll choke you to death!”

  Cobb calmly replied, “What’s the matter, big stuff? Can’t you take it?”

  “I can take it!” Ruth was jumping up and down in a fury. “But I won’t take that from anybody!”

  “Ah, that’s nothing,” said Cobb. “You have no case after what you called me yesterday.”

  “I didn’t call you anything much yesterday—just a Georgia prick.”

  “You’re a goddamned liar,” Cobb came back.

  Ruth went for him, several Tigers moved between the two, and Babe was escorted (i.e., thrown) out the door. He left huffing and puffing and challenging Cobb to a fight outside. Nothing more happened, according to witness Bob Veach. “I always knew that in a real fight with Ruth,” Cobb often said, “I’d be the loser with the crowd. They might lynch me.”

  In 1921 Ruth was emerging as a full-fledged colossus. Bookies could not guess what the Big Fellow would do next. He was so hot that he had 25 home runs by July; even his pop-ups were so towering that fielders gathered under them reminded Tris Speaker of a union meeting in progress. Babe averaged around .380 most of the season, and if he did not score and drive in 285 or more runs in 150 games, it was said, it would be a shame (he did). Behind him the Yankees might at last reach the World Series (they did, and lost to the Giants). Elsewhere he overshadowed Cobb in notoriety. In a quarrel in a roadhouse, a man pulled a gun on him and Ruth’s career came close to an early ending; his movie, Headin’ Home premiered at Madison Square Garden; Current Opinion saluted him as a national hero, a designation matched only by New York writers’ nickname of “His Royal Nibs,” who was more successful with his “whammer” than Toscanini with his baton.

  Cobb’s problems at Detroit were basic and manifold. To begin with, his infield of Lu Blue at first base, Ralph Young at second base, Donie Bush at shortstop, and Bob Jones at third was no prize crew—a “swamp of despondency” as the press derided it. Things were so bad that he was forced to play outfielder Ira Flagstead at short, deal away Bush to Connie Mack, and introduce two raw rookies into his inner defense. Most of the team, schooled hard by T.C. in the springtime, was hitting far above expectations, but they lacked fighting spirit, the will to win. Cobb railed at almost everyone because men could not perform at his own level. “If I can get eight hits in eleven ups,” he stormed after losing a doubleheader, “why can’t guys fifteen years younger?” The answer was self-evident, but he failed to make allowances. Setting himself as a model was Cobb’s main managerial weakness.

  In late midseason, figures in the batting-title race between Cobb and his protégé Heilmann read:

  The manager’s state of mind was not improved in August upon his receipt of word from Atlanta gynecologists that his wife, Charlie, was dangerously ill. On July 23 she had given birth to their fifth child in eleven years, named James Howell Cobb. Postpartum complications left her doctors much concerned. The Peach had not gone home for the delivery. Now, ready to resume play after recovery from a six-stitch wound in his knee sustained while sliding against Cleveland, a cut that had become infected and had cost him weeks on the sideline, he left Detroit for Charlie’s bedside.

  Childbearing had been an ordeal for her before this; it was another case of a young mother—she was twenty-six—separated from her husband at a crucial time. A still-healing Cobb spent only a few days with Charlie before hurrying back to Detroit. “It was hard to forgive Ty for the way he handled that,” a family friend once responded when asked about this brief visit; “Detroit wasn’t going anywhere in the league.” As it was, Mrs. Cobb had been considering divorce for some time.

  By a wide margin the Tigers were out of the running. Upon rejoining them in New York in the first week of August, however, the Peach evened things somewhat with Ruth and the Yanks. With his knee still hurting, he got into an argument with Bob Shawkey, on the hill for the Yankees. Shawkey, a 20-game winner in two past seasons, had an odd pitch that fluttered. “Illegal,” said Cobb. “He’s using something on the ball.”

  Two umpires examined the ball, found nothing but a small nick in it, threw it out, and ordered play to proceed. Cobb walked off to his dugout. He conferred with its inhabitants and drank some water for a good five minutes. Once Shawkey was sufficiently angry and Cobb was about to be disqualified, he returned and drove a triple to deep right field. For the day, he scored three runs in an 8–3 drubbing of the home team.

  All season long he lashed his second-divisioners, to the point that rumors were heard of a team strike. In New York, he rode Dutch Leonard after Leonard missed two bunt attempts, benching him to send up a pinch hitter with one strike left in the count. Leonard yelled a protest. Somehow the Tig
ers beat Ruth and the Yankees, 4–2.

  NAVIN, AT the finish, was cool to his manager. He had expected much more. Cobb was disgusted at his charges’ concluding sixth-place finish, with a record of 71–82 (.464). He blamed Navin, who had been ineffective in repairing Detroit’s defense and pitching by way of trades, or bringing up outstanding minor-leaguers. Cobb told business associates that owners Navin and Briggs were a “lost cause.” He doubted that he would ever again take on two tasks at once. Most critics sided with him, citing the superlative job he had done in upgrading Tiger hitting. Here was a losing team that, painstakingly taught, had just averaged .316 at bat as a team—the highest offensive showing in modern history. The Tigers’ .316, in fact, was the best since the Baltimore Orioles’ batting spree back in 1897. For the only time in American League history before or since, all three Tiger outfielders—Heilmann, Cobb, Veach—hit better than .300 and drove in 100 or more runs apiece. Not even the 1927 “Murderers’ Row” of Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Bob Meusel, and Earle Combs, possibly the finest lineup ever assembled, would match Detroit’s combined hitting; the Murderers would average .307. Two other great Yankee teams, those of 1926 and 1928, would average .289 and .296. Moreover, the Cobbmen’s hitting had led both leagues.

  It was a conspicuous tribute to Cobb’s tutelage from spring training on; his instruction had improved the batwork of almost every one of the regulars and some subs, so much that the Tigers had climbed by 10½ games over their 1920 standing. But their fielding had been third-rate, near the league bottom for errors. Howard Ehmke’s 13 wins to 14 losses had been the pitching staff’s best showing. Counted-upon reliever Jim Middleton had gone 6–11.

  All that was left to be salvaged was the AL batting crown—Cobb’s or Heilmann’s? The race was coming down to the wire:

  Heilmann went hitless on the final rainy day of October 2, while Cobb, suffering a league suspension for bad behavior, did not play. The pupil seemed to have narrowly won. But unofficial statisticians working for newspapers had a different tabulation. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, for instance, reported:

  Tyrus Cobb Heads League in Hitting for Thirteenth Time

  By Francis Powers

  For the 13th time since his sensational entry into the majors, the American League batting diadem rests on the thinning locks of Tyrus Cobb. Figures give Cobb an average of .391 to .390 for Harry Heilmann, also of Detroit. The indomitable Georgian and Heilmann have been waging a neck-and-neck battle since midseason.

  Official results had not yet been issued when Heilmann conceded victory to the man who had taught him not to lunge at pitches, to grip the bat away from his body, and not to swing at bad balls. He walked up to Cobb in the Navin Field clubhouse and before newspapermen said, “Congratulations—you’re the best hitter the game has known.” Heilmann was hurting, but did not show it.

  “Wait a minute,” said Cobb. “Your congratulations are not in order. Wait for the league office to settle the matter.”

  Heilmann returned, “Well, it’s official to me. The better man won.”

  To the assembled reporters, Cobb went into what appeared to be a prepared explanation, a not-too-subtle reminder that 1921 had been an anomaly. He said, “I’ve been pulling for Harry to win all season. He is one of my few players who came through for me. He’s a grand chap. He served on a U.S. submarine in the war and won medals. But there is no doubt that managing has hurt my hitting. I have had many concerns and did not have time to make a deliberate effort to take another championship.” Without all of his distractions, Cobb strongly implied, he very well could have been number one again.

  The twelve batting titles he already held were his proudest possessions, something he foresaw as lasting for decades, and to make it thirteen was important to him. And it was almost as if he knew what the official standing would be. He mentioned, “I have a little man who keeps the figures for me. His book mark shows Heilmann is the winner.”

  When the official statistics were announced two months later, Heilmann had hit .394 to his manager’s .389. It was only the third time in fifteen years that anyone but the Georgian had stood on top. Heilmann also struck a blow for right-handed batsmen. Not since 1905 had anyone but a left-hander led the American League—“because,” pointed out Cobb, “the best pitchers have been right-handers, with their natural advantage over those batting from the same side.”

  Heilmann was happily convinced that his manager appreciated his victory until he made a trip to San Francisco weeks afterward, when Cobb’s true reaction to losing was confided to him by a businessman friend of both men. The “friend” told Heilmann, “Cobb isn’t the gracious loser he makes out. He was in my office the other day and on the phone to the American League Service Bureau back east. He was yelling into the phone, ‘Dammit, I tell you there must be something wrong with those batting statistics! The figures are wrong! What the hell kind of service are you running anyway?’” For years Heilmann took pleasure in telling that story around Detroit.

  There was consolation in other data. Cobb’s season had been next to sensational by any measurement. In the first year in which he led the league—1907—he had scored 97 runs; now, one and one-half decades later, he scored 124. His total of extra-base hits went from 49 back then to 64 in 1921. His average at the plate went from a twenty-year-old’s .350 up by 39 points to .389. His 22 stolen bases of 1921 were second highest in the league. This was accomplished while leg tendons and ligaments were twice injured. He was in no way in decline; rather, he was improving—except in the desire to continue managing the Tigers, about which he was skeptical.

  HE WAS back in San Francisco that winter, once more managing the local Seals in the Coast League at the same $1,200-per-game salary of 1920. This time the Seals drew poorly at the gate. That affected Cobb’s tentative plan to buy the Golden Gate franchise. “The asking price was two hundred and fifty thousand,” he told Muddy Ruel. “I doubt that I could have broken even with Frisco in less than two years.” He had the needed investment money and more, but he passed up taking on an owner’s burdens.

  He did spend forty thousand dollars of Navin’s money while out west on a likely pair of Portland, Oregon, pitchers, Herman Pillette and Syl Johnson. That didn’t guarantee his return to run the Tigers on the field in 1922. “I’m just scouting players as an accommodation for the ball club first in my heart,” he explained. In private, Cobb commented about Detroit to a Los Angeles writer: “Navin is a two-bit loser.”

  He was far from home base, yet he easily arranged to stay in the headlines during the Coast League winter. One of the Seals’ opponents, the Los Angeles–Vernon team, employed the services of a cross-eyed umpire named Steamboat Johnson. Johnson had set a league record when a count of bottles showed that some three hundred beer containers had been thrown at him after one of his decisions. Fans had presented Steamboat with a seeing-eye dog to guide him from the park to home. He was one of the richest characters that baseball had produced on any level.

  Cobb took an immediate dislike to this sideplay. When Johnson called a San Francisco runner out on a close play at the plate, Cobb burst from the dugout to put the blast on Steamboat. After a verbal exchange, he ripped off Johnson’s face mask and said, “You’re blinder than a potato with a hundred eyes!” And hit Johnson on the nose.

  If he thought that his fame would carry him past such behavior in a minor league, his judgment was wrong. Frank Chance, the one-time Peerless Leader of the Chicago Cubs and a tough man, was president of the Coast League. Chance was no admirer of Cobb’s way of running the bases and his history of molesting umpires.

  “You’re fined one hundred and fifty dollars,” said Chance. “One more infraction and you’re finished on the coast.”

  “I won’t pay it,” said Cobb. “Your umpire is incompetent.”

  “Then go back to Detroit, where they put up with you,” declared Chance.

  Cobb did leave for home, but by way of New York, where before a conclave of big-league owners he reintroduced
the need for a pay scale enabling players to live “decently” and a system whereby permanently and totally disabled players would be supported for life by a system similar to the Workingmen’s Compensation Act. He had been lobbying along this line for some time. But he could not obtain an affirmative vote on either of the projects. Baseball operators saw him as a chronic malcontent who had repeatedly put salary squeezes on Detroit and was talking a fifty-thousand-dollar package, should he elect to again perform in 1922—acts that would have the effect of forcing bigger paychecks for premium players throughout the leagues. Owners who soon would draw a record two-league seasonal total of 9.45 million fans also agreed that the ten thousand dollars they annually donated from World Series receipts to support the game’s disabled was sufficient. Cobb’s reaction was: what can you expect from a monopoly?

  At home in Augusta he found Charlie still sickly. That condition would linger through what remained of their marriage. Father stayed at home for several weeks before leaving on one more big-game hunt. One of his daughters, the late Shirley Cobb Beckwith, who died at eighty in 1991, said in remembrance, “Mr. Cobb would line up us children like soldiers, review our school grades and piano playing—then he’d be gone for months. We never knew him except as a great man. We were afraid of him—afraid of his awful temper.”

  FORTY YEARS later, in 1961, sitting in an easy chair on the patio of his home at 48 Spencer Lane in Atherton, California, Cobb added a footnote to 1921: “It was right about then that I wrote a new will. Tore up the old one [written before he left for France during World War I]. One of the bequests at my death was for twenty thousand dollars … to go to a worthy Georgia student who couldn’t afford college. I’d always regretted that I missed college. My students had to meet strict standards. Later on I enlarged on the Cobb Scholarship Fund to take care of several hundred kids.”