When asked if Walker would be released or traded, Cochrane pulled no punches in his reply: “All I want is to get that fellow out of my sight in a hurry.”33 Since it was past the June 21 trade deadline, however, Walker would have to clear waivers before he could be dealt. Browns manager Rogers Hornsby had already gone on record as saying his team would put in a waiver claim on Walker if it ever came to that.
On Wednesday, back in Detroit, the manager huddled with Navin, who told Cochrane that he would support him in any decision he made regarding disciplining Walker. Cochrane initially wanted to serve the erratic outfielder with his walking papers, but in an unusual move, he decided to leave Walker’s fate up to a player vote. The choice was simple: Should Walker stay or should he go? In a secret ballot, all 24 Tigers voted to allow him to remain with the team. Cochrane abided by the ruling. But Walker was still suspended for ten days without pay. “When he returns I’ll be for him again,” said Cochrane, “provided he plays the right kind of ball. As far as I am concerned now, the case is closed.”34
“I guess I had it coming,” Walker mumbled contritely.35
The incident could not have come at a worse time for Walker personally. After a slow start, he had come on like gangbusters, batting .341 in June to raise his season’s mark to .296. Following a closed-door meeting with Cochrane and Walker, Frank Navin was asked what the player had said. “Oh, just what you’d expect any fiery ballplayer to say under the circumstances. Of course he said he was sorry. He said he was going to be careful from now on.”36
Chapter Six
“They’ll never see another game like it”
Very quietly, Schoolboy Rowe had turned his season around. The day after Walker’s base-running fiasco in St. Louis, Detroit wasted a fine pitching effort by Vic Sorrell in the first game of a doubleheader, losing 3–2. Rowe went the distance in the late game, and while St. Louis tallied 13 hits, all were singles. The biggest improvement for Rowe, however, was his newfound control. This marked the second consecutive start (both complete games) in which he had not issued a free pass. Rogell and Owen each drove in four runs, as Detroit salvaged the series with a 12–3 win. It was the third straight victory for Rowe, raising his mark on the season to 7–4.
The Tigers headed north for Cleveland, where they played an exhausting five-game, home-and-away series with the Indians beginning on July 2. Bridges pitched a brilliant complete game in the opener, Goslin and Owen each banged out four hits, and the Tigers won, 9–2.
The biggest surprise came the next day, however, when Detroit got another complete game, this time from the unlikeliest of pitchers. Rookie Luke Hamlin was born in Ferris Center, Michigan, and was a resident of East Lansing. He contracted malarial fever during spring training in Lakeland and did not make his first appearance of 1934 until May 29. With five relief appearances so far, and an earned run average of 10.22, Hamlin was only given a start on July 3 due to a string of three doubleheaders in four days. In a 7–2 Tigers victory on his 30th birthday, Hamlin gave up only six hits to the Tribe and picked up his first “W” of the season. Nicknamed “Hot Potato” because of his habit of abstractedly juggling the ball while getting set to pitch, he would win only one more game in 1934.
The series shifted to Detroit for an Independence Day doubleheader. Navin Field was standing room only, as over 40,000 shoehorned their way into the ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull. Among them was a glum-looking Gee Walker, still not allowed to suit up or even to sit on the Tigers’ bench. Instead, he was relegated to a box seat along the third base line, where he tried to stay cool in shirtsleeves and fedora. “Long before the first game started several thousand fans had overflowed onto the playing field. Mounted policemen patrolled the outfield from foul line to foul line and they had their work cut out for them. Every seat in the sunbaked bleachers was filled with sweltering fans.”1
The first game ended on an unusual play. With the Tigers trailing 8–5 with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth, Pete Fox launched his second home run of the year to shave the deficit to two. Cochrane kept the inning alive with a double, bringing up Goslin. Cleveland starter Mel Harder, who was still in the game, served a pitch that Goslin launched to deep right. Sam Rice, tracking it, went into the standing overflow crowd, but was unable to come up with the ball. The umpires, claiming fan interference, ruled Goslin out, and the game was over.
In the second half of the doubleheader, Carl Fischer got the start for Detroit but was ineffective. He was pulled in the third inning and replaced by Rowe, who pitched well the rest of the way. Schoolboy got credit for the win, his eighth, in a game called by darkness after eight innings.
The Tigers had enjoyed home cooking all season long, and that trend continued as they swept the Browns in three straight beginning July 6. Bridges kept up his fine pitching with a five-hit shutout in the second game. In the finale, Rowe again came on in relief, this time in the seventh inning with the Tigers trailing, 3–0. By the bottom of the ninth, the score was 4–2 in favor of St. Louis. Singles by Owen and Rowe sent starter George Blaeholder to the showers. Bobo Newsom entered the game and induced Pete Fox to hit a grounder to second baseman Ski Melillo, who booted the ball, loading the bases. Cochrane drew a walk, forcing in a run. Newsom was yanked, bringing on Ed Wells. Up came Goslin, who also hit a grounder to Melillo, who chose to throw home to try to get Rowe. The throw was wild, however, and both Rowe and Fox scored to send the Sunday crowd home happy. Rowe won again, his fifth straight, raising his mark to 9–4.
On July 10, the sport’s best and brightest gathered for the 1934 All-Star Game. This was only the second such contest in Major League Baseball history. The first All-Star Game, played the previous year at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, was the brainchild of Arch Ward, sports editor of the Chicago Tribune. Ward wanted to boost the country’s morale during the Depression, as well as generate further interest in the national pastime. The Tribune said, “For the first time in history, the greatest players of the American League and the greatest players of the National League, picked by popular vote of baseball followers, will meet in team battle.” The newspaper went on to say that, throughout the history of the great American game, “fans kept asking, in their dreamy way, what would happen if the greatest players from all teams, not simply the two best teams, should meet in interleague combat. Unanswered went the question until now.”2
Timed to coincide with Chicago’s “Century of Progress” exhibition, the 1933 All-Star Game was a charity affair, with proceeds going toward the players’ benevolent fund to assist former major leaguers down on their luck. Appropriately, Babe Ruth hit the first All-Star Game home run. The event was a success, both financially and in the eyes of the public, so much so that the owners voted to hold another All-Star Game in 1934, this time at the Polo Grounds. On the day of the game, nearly 50,000 fervent folks jammed themselves into the bathtub-shaped ballpark in upper Manhattan. Another 15,000 reportedly had to be turned away. Spectators thrilled to the wonder of so many stars playing together on the same field. Broadcast over both the NBC and CBS radio networks, the game was already being referred to as baseball’s midsummer classic.
The Tigers sent three players to the Polo Grounds. Gehringer, who received the most votes of any player in the American League (120,781), started at second base. Cochrane was chosen as a reserve, while Bridges was slated for the bullpen. At .384, Gehringer was second in the American League batting race, behind former Tiger Heinie Manush, who was hitting .403. Gehringer had two singles and three walks in the All-Star Game. Cochrane, who replaced starting catcher Bill Dickey in the sixth inning, grounded out in his only at-bat. Bridges, who boasted ten wins on the season, failed to get into the game. The American League won it for the second year in a row. It truly was a star-studded affair; of the 18 men in the starting lineups, all were future Hall of Famers except Wally Berger of Cincinnati.
Detroit was in second place at the All-Star break, with a record of 47–29, only a half-game behind the Yankees. The Red Sox
were a distant third, at six games back. Over in the National League, it was the New York Giants leading the pack, with the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals close behind. When the regular season resumed on July 11, the Tigers’ bats picked up right where they’d left off, topping the Senators, 13–7, in “an old fashioned slugfest festival.”3 The Yankees, however, won in Cleveland to maintain their league lead. Walker also returned from his suspension that day, but Cochrane was not quite ready to put him back into the lineup yet.
Winning was something the Bronx Bombers were doing a lot of lately, with 13 victories in their last 16 games. Lou Gehrig was the team’s biggest offensive weapon in the first half, with 24 home runs, 91 RBI, and a .367 batting average. Bill Dickey and speedy outfielder Ben Chapman were both hitting over .320. New York had concerns, however. Second baseman Tony Lazzeri, who in years past could always be counted on to hit for a high average and drive in over a hundred runs, was mired in a season-long slump. At age 30, and hobbled by an ailing right leg, many were wondering if he was finished. With only a .219 average and 26 RBI, he was one of the biggest disappointments of 1934. Jack Saltzgaver, a 31-year-old rookie third baseman, was a pleasant surprise, hitting .381 since taking over full-time in early May, but he could not be expected to maintain his hot pace for long. Ruth had hit .300 with 13 home runs in the first half, but could his body hold up? The Yankees were still the Yankees, however. Manager Joe McCarthy demanded excellence, and as long as Gehrig and Ruth were around, New York would remain a force.
On Thursday, July 12, the Yankees and Tigers began a highly anticipated four-game series at Navin Field. In a battle of 24-year-olds, Cochrane sent Schoolboy Rowe to the mound, while McCarthy countered with rookie Johnny Broaca. A three-sport star in baseball, boxing, and track at Yale, Broaca had not given up more than three runs in any of his six starts in 1934.
Broaca was shaky at first, giving up three runs in the first three frames, but he settled down and kept the Bengals mostly in check the rest of the way. Rowe was overpowering, striking out 11 in a complete-game, six-hit effort. He was helped by a pair of rally-killing double plays in the fourth and seventh innings. The play of the game occurred in the sixth. Down by a run, New York loaded the bases with two out. Second baseman Don Heffner drove a ball to deep left-center, but Jo-Jo White made a sparkling catch up against the scoreboard to end the inning. Ruth fanned twice and did not get the ball out of the infield. “The Babe seems tired as he goes about his chores,” noted the Detroit Free Press.4 The final score was 4–2. Rowe won his tenth game on the season and sixth in a row. Most importantly, the Tigers took over first place in the American League. “With bands blaring,” said the New York Times, “and seat cushions and straw hats making a veritable shower on the field, more than 20,000 Detroit fans celebrated in world’s series style.”5
The Navin Field faithful were disappointed the following afternoon, as New York pulled out a 4–2 win. The Yankees jumped on the scoreboard in the third inning, when Ruth hit his 700th career home run. “There was a mystical setting,” wrote Bud Shaver of the Detroit Times, “for the Babe’s ascension to the glory of his lost youth. Storm clouds were racing across a sullen sky and heat lightning was playing about the walls as Babe scratched around in the batter’s box waiting the offerings of the slim Tommy Bridges, poised on the rubber.” Despite his physical decline, Ruth was still the Yanks’ biggest drawing card, the player fans paid to watch.
Age and frustration weighed heavily on the barrel bodied Ruth as he fidgeted in the batter’s box. He had not hit a ball out of the infield in two days. Bridges, with his hissing fast ball and baffling curve, had two strikes on him—and the Babe had let three ones go by. [Bridges’ next pitch] was not a fast ball and it was not a curve. It was a half speed ball, designed to throw the Babe off his stride. It wasn’t slow enough. Babe spotted it for what it was when it left Tommy’s hand. He timed his swing perfectly. For that one split second, Ruth shed 10 of his 40 years. The power of his recaptured youth flowed through a buoyant coordinated swing. The fat of the bat met the ball and there was the typical Ruthian “swish” and “swat” as it sailed in a beautiful arc over the right field fences, cleared Trumbull avenue and bounded down the side street to fulfill Babe’s cherished ambition.6
“The Old Man became Babe Ruth again,” noted the Free Press. “He swung viciously. The ball soared over the right field wall. It plunked down in Plum Street and went bounding far up the thoroughfare.”7 The two-run shot off Tommy Bridges reportedly carried 480 feet. Number 700 was the Bambino’s goal going into the season; now he had finally done it. He gleefully rounded the bases, shouting that he wanted the ball as a memento. A boy on a bicycle retrieved it and brought it back to the park. After the game, with a finder’s fee of $20 in his back pocket, he and the Babe mugged for photographers. The game was an entertaining pitchers’ duel, with Bridges and Red Ruffing locking horns. Bill Dickey’s eighth-inning double scored Ruth and Chapman, and that was all the Yankees needed. With the win, New York was back in first place.
There was concern over Gehrig, however: He had “involuntarily withdrawn” from the game in the second inning with what was reported as a case of “lumbago.”8 To that point, Gehrig had played in 1,426 consecutive games, and it was unknown whether he would be able to return for the rest of the series. On Saturday, July 14, he woke up feeling not much better than he had the day before. He insisted he was okay to play, however. For the only time in his career, he was penciled in at leadoff, playing shortstop; McCarthy intended that the Iron Horse bat only once and then take a seat the rest of the afternoon. Gehrig was still “suffering acutely from a cold in the back that makes breathing difficult and swinging a baseball bat torture.”9 After singling to right to start the game, he was removed for a pinch runner, although his consecutive-game playing streak remained intact at 1,427. Unable to get out of the first inning, Tigers starter Vic Sorrell got lit up for four runs; by the end of three frames New York had a 6–0 lead, and it looked like a laugher.
Detroit got on the scoreboard in the third, when a Gehringer single plated Goslin, who had doubled off starter Lefty Gomez. The next inning, however, Ruth blasted a three-run shot off Elden Auker, his 701st, to make it 9–1 and seemingly put the game away. Typesetters throughout the land were preparing their papers to show the Yankees with a game-and-a-half lead.
Wrote Sam Greene, “The Tigers of any other year in the last decade would have been beaten then and there. They would have figured that ‘It just isn’t our day’ and begun to think of tomorrow. But this is a different Tigers team that Cochrane has assembled and infused with belligerence.”10
Against the best pitcher in the American League, the Tigers began a stirring comeback for the ages. They put together a three-run rally in the fourth, putting a slight dent in the New York lead. One more in the fifth made it 9–5 and sent Gomez to an early shower. “Gomez complained of a cold in his precious left arm before the game and pitched as if he had one.”11 It was easily his worst outing of 1934. Neither could relievers Jimmie DeShong and Russ Van Atta stop the bleeding. After the Tigers put up three more runs in the sixth, Navin Field was shaking with the stomps and shouts of the frenzied crowd. Frank Crosetti’s two-run homer in the seventh made it an 11–8 affair, and it stood that way until the bottom of the ninth.
The reason for the high scoring was the small, makeshift bleachers that ringed the outfield. Anticipating large walk-up crowds for the series, the Tigers had hastily slapped them together beforehand. Ironically, attendance at Navin Field this day was well below capacity. Perhaps fans simply chose to stay at home rather than fight the long ticket lines and the expected crush of humanity. In any event, the Tigers chose to open the temporary stands, necessitating special ground rules. Any ball hit into those seats was an automatic double. Altogether, the game featured 13 such blows, ten of them by Detroit. This, in the eyes of New York Times sportswriter Dan Daniel, turned the game into a farce. “Instead of being a real contest between two clubs fighting for
a pennant in a major league, it was a travesty. The fans should have been kept off the field. It was bad enough to have those trick seats on the green without having men and children darting under the feet of the outfielders for those synthetic doubles. Fly balls fell for ground rule doubles. Children were on the field all afternoon.”12
None of the “synthetic” doubles, however, was bigger than the one hit by Goslin with two on and two out in the ninth inning. It tied the game, and moments later Goslin himself scored the winning run when Billy Rogell singled to left. “It was a wild and wooly game; a free-hitting fray with a comedy touch that at times approached the atmosphere of the old-time picnic baseball feature.”13 Not lost in the hitting barrage was Gee Walker’s return to the Tigers’ lineup; in six at-bats, he banged out two singles and a double, scored once, and drove in three runs. For the second time in three days, the Yankees “skidded out of first place in the torrid pennant race,” and the post-game New York clubhouse “held a thick gloom.”14
The Free Press called it “one of the wildest ball games ever played.” It was a dramatic, hard-fought win capable of inspiring a team. “[The Tigers] are very difficult to discourage this season. They kept swinging away and finally fought their way to victory in the riotous ninth, sending 22,500 fans home to tell the folks they’ll never see another game like it.”15
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