Rowe started again on August 7, this time against the Browns in Detroit. After giving up a leadoff double to Harlond Clift and a walk to Sam West, Rowe felt what was described as a “stitch” in his back.15 Wrote Charles P. Ward: “For a few brief moments it looked as if the Tigers had lost their one big hope in the pennant fight. ‘Oh, ho!’ groaned each man to himself. ‘The Schoolboy’s injured his pitching arm again. Hell and potatoes! There goes our pennant!’”16 Trainer Denny Carroll’s diagnosis was that the pitcher was suffering from a cold, and he reassured everyone that Rowe would be fit to take his next turn in the rotation. This sounds shockingly reckless by modern standards; today, pitchers are placed on the disabled list at the slightest hint of discomfort. In any event, Auker entered the game in a hurry, threw six innings without giving up an earned run, and got credit for the win. One day later, with temperatures in the mid–90s and a soaking humidity, the Tigers overcame a two-run deficit in the ninth inning to tie the game. They won it in the tenth when Cochrane’s single to center plated Goslin, who raced home from second with the winning tally. It was the Tigers debut of Crowder, who pitched a solid five innings before tiring.
Against the Indians on August 10, Rowe extended his personal win streak to 12 games. In the bottom of the 11th, with the bases loaded and nobody out, Schoolboy came to bat in a 5–5 tie with the crowd roaring for a base knock. The Tigers’ pitching prodigy blasted a Mel Harder pitch deep to left field. Dutch Holland hauled it in with a leaping catch, but Greenberg was able to trot home with the game-winning run before Holland’s throw even made it to the infield. That made it ten straight victories for the Bengals. Auker continued his strong pitching the next day, tossing another shutout against the Browns. On August 12, the Tigers again rallied in the ninth against Cleveland, and won it in the tenth on a Jo-Jo White double. The game featured Detroit’s second triple play of the season.
The streaking Tigers followed that up with a rematch with the Yankees in the Bronx. Joe McCarthy, not ready to concede anything to the Tigers just yet, viewed the five-game clash as “just another series. Of course we’d like to win it. But, win or lose, the series won’t be in any way decisive. This race is going to last right down to the wire. Too many things can happen between now and the last week in September.”17 For the Tigers, their 4½-game lead seemed anything but comfortable.
“It will be no faint-hearted army which Mickey Cochrane will lead into the east,” wrote Charles P. Ward in the Detroit Free Press. “Mickey’s Merry Men have been under severe pressure since the season began, have gained confidence in their own abilities in test after test and departed for New York promising to give the Yankees ‘one hell of a fight.’”18
The showdown began with a doubleheader on August 14, a Tuesday. The Yankees were expecting a big walk-up crowd, but even they could not have anticipated the mad rush that descended on The House That Ruth Built. Over 79,000 paying customers squeezed inside, a new Yankee Stadium record. The surrounding streets resembled a mob scene, with an estimated 20,000 sad souls left out. New York Times writer John Drebinger called it “the wildest disorder ever seen [outside] the stadium.” Crowds “fought with the police mounted and on foot, for over an hour after the first game started before giving up the hopeless struggle and receding from the scene.” Not only did fans fight to get inside, they jousted for parking spaces, as automobiles came “honking and piling in, seeking in vain for a space to light, then becoming hopelessly enmeshed in the broiling mass of would-be spectators who couldn’t get in.”19
Inside the stadium was a churning sea of humanity. Wrote Paul Gallico, “You’ve heard the expression—‘Inside, they were hanging from the rafters…’ That was no gag either, today. From the press box as you looked right and left down the mezzanines, all you saw was legs dangling from the rear of the top shelf and the runways leading thereto…. It did one’s heart good to see such excitement and enthusiasm.”20
In the first game, New York sprinted out to a 5–0 lead. But just as they had done a month earlier at Navin Field, Detroit sent the great Lefty Gomez to an early shower. Not intimidated by the thunderous Yankee Stadium crowd, the Tigers pounded Gomez for five runs in the sixth inning, and won 9–5. General Crowder struggled, but picked up his first victory in a Tigers uniform. Detroit took the second game of the doubleheader, 7–3. Despite giving up a home run to Gehrig, Rowe prevailed again, outpitching Red Ruffing to gain his 17th win, and 13th consecutive. Gehringer homered in both games.
The Tigers had won 14 games in a row. Playing with the conviction that no one could beat them, they outscored the opposition, 121–47, while racking up four shutouts. Six of the wins were of the come-from-behind variety.
The incredible streak finally ended on August 15, when Johnny Broaca silenced the Tigers’ bats. The Yankees lit up Tommy Bridges, who, in the words of the Detroit Times’ Bud Shaver, “was unable to shake off the Yankee Stadium jinx even on the crest of a winning wave.”21 Bridges gave up five runs in five innings, unable to find any kind of a groove. A rainy forecast kept many folks at home. Only about 10,000 fans witnessed the 8–2 New York win, among them a pair of distinguished visitors in Prince and Princess Kaya of Japan. No record exists of their impressions of the national pastime, whether they ordered hot dogs, or if they clapped when Babe Ruth made a great running catch in right to snuff out a Tigers rally. Noted Joe McCarthy after the game, “The Tigers had plenty of good fortune in running up fourteen straight and may be due for a slump.”22
A downpour washed out the next day’s affair, necessitating a doubleheader on Friday. With better weather, another huge crowd of around 47,000 made its way to Yankee Stadium. In the first game, Gomez showed why he was a great pitcher, holding the Tigers to eight scattered hits in a 5–0 win. Tony Lazzeri’s home run was one of the hardest shots ever seen at Yankee Stadium, banging against the front of the mezzanine facade just inside the left-field foul pole. For Gomez, it was his 20th victory of 1934, making it the third time he reached the milestone. Babe Ruth made a spectacular lunging catch on a liner to right, doing a complete summersault and scraping yards of Bronx turf in the process.
The rubber game of the series was a classic pitching duel between Schoolboy Rowe and rookie right-hander Jimmie DeShong. Rowe narrowly escaped what could have been a serious injury in the second inning. After bunting for a single, he made it to third on Cochrane’s base hit to right. Rowe slid awkwardly into the bag, however, and commenced rolling around in agony on the infield dirt. As he described it, “I looked up at [third-base coach] Del Baker when I was about ten feet from the bag. Del held up his arms, meaning that I did not have to slide. I had just started to slide and I tried to switch. I was half up and half down when I hit the bag. The spikes of my left shoe caught in the bag and I fell. The spikes held fast and I twisted my ankle.”23
After a few minutes of gingerly testing his body out, Rowe judged himself well enough to brave it out. He pitched brilliantly the rest of the way, giving up only three singles and striking out 11 in a complete-game shutout. But it did not come easy. “I never thought I could finish that game. I had to keep walking in the dugout between innings because I was afraid if I sat down I couldn’t get started again. By walking I kept up the circulation.”24 There were moments when he limped noticeably while on the mound. “Some times I forgot about the leg when I was bearing down.”25 He added later that evening, “I thought the leg was gone, and I said every prayer I ever knew.”26 Rowe’s dominance in that afternoon’s game was incredible given his physical condition. One modern sabermetric used to gauge a starting pitcher’s effectiveness in a particular contest is Game Score (GSc). Rowe’s GSc that afternoon was 87, his highest of the season. It was his 18th victory, and his winning streak now stood at 14. During that run, he had faced Ruth eight times, holding him hitless, including five strikeouts.
The Tigers got out of Gotham having won three of five. They had increased their lead to five and a half games. In the minds of many, Cochrane’s Bengals looked like the team
to beat in the American League. Back in Detroit, fans swamped the ticket office’s mailbox with requests for World Series seats; the Tigers issued a subsequent statement urging fans to hold off until a pennant was assured. Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, however, remained confident. “We’re not out of the race by any means,” he vowed. “And the Yankees are best when the going is tough.”27
Lynwood Thomas “Schoolboy” Rowe tied an American League record with 16 consecutive victories in 1934, on his way to a 24-win season (courtesy National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York).
Of minor note in the series was the arrival of one Rudolph Preston York in the Detroit clubhouse. The Tigers had just called up the 20-year-old Alabaman from Beaumont, where he had developed a reputation as a hitter of awesome power. Rumors had swirled that York, who Cochrane planned to use as a pinch-hitter and utility player, was part Native-American. However, the six-foot, 200-pounder insisted that such claims were exaggerated. “There is a little Indian blood in our family, but it goes a long way back. I never tried to trace it and really don’t know what it amounts to.”28 York would play in only three games the rest of the season with Detroit. He was still a few years away from his arrival as a bona fide slugger who would hit 239 home runs wearing the Old English “D.”
Chapter Eight
Schoolboy and the History Books
The month of August had started on an ominous note in Germany. In the wake of the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler announced himself the country’s new absolute dictator. The Fuehrer called for, and received, a sworn oath of allegiance from every member of the army and navy. It was not until a national plebiscite on August 19, however, that nine out of every ten Germans affirmed the new boss.
In Japan, the press threw the first volleys in a campaign clamoring for war against the Soviet Union. At issue was Manchuria, which Japan had seized from the U.S.S.R. in 1931. Since then, dealings between the two nations had strained to the breaking point. Meanwhile in Italy, Mussolini urged his nation to be ready for warfare. Speaking from the turret of an assault tank in front of 5,000 cheering military officers, the fascist dictator declared, “No one in Europe wants war, but the idea of war is floating in the air. We must become a military nation, even a militaristic nation, even—I might add—a warlike nation.”1
Closer to home, American families were forced to deal with a spike in food prices, a result of the intense drought that had gripped the nation for much of the summer. President Roosevelt, surveying the devastation in Montana, declared that the dire situation required even more than the $525,000,000 in relief recently appropriated by Congress.
In a remarkable display of political audacity, the Louisiana House of Representatives gave controversial Senator Huey Long all-encompassing strength, with “greater powers than those held by Stalin or Mussolini.” As the de facto dictator of the Southern state, Long now had the right to regulate taxes, control election machinery, and form a State Constabulary that would supersede municipal police forces. One representative warned of dire consequences of such a concentration of power. “I am telling you now, warning you, that this stuff you are passing here is going to turn Louisiana into a shambles. I warn you that they will overthrow this government, which is getting worse than anything America ever saw or heard of.”2
Voters in Michigan would go to the polls in September. For now, however, any talk of who would be the next governor or senator took a back seat to the surging Tigers. Wrote David J. Wilkie in the Detroit Free Press: “Republican and Democratic aspirants for office—and they run into the hundreds—have made valiant efforts to arouse public interest, only to find that the baseball scoreboards telling of the fight of the Detroit Tigers toward the American League pennant are drawing the crowds and the cheers, while political rallies thus far have been noteworthy for their lack of attendance.” It was not just the city of Detroit that had caught Tigers fever. “Michigan is baseball-conscious this year, more than it ever has been, and scoreboards and newspapers that tell of the progress of the Tigers and their newest contenders for the pennant, the New York Yankees, are daily bringing cheers or groans as the fortunes of the teams ebb and flow.”3
By the time the Tigers arrived in Boston on August 18, the Red Sox, at 14 games back, needed a telescope to see first place. In the opener of a four-game set, Bucky Harris’s team was not fooled by the curveball of Tommy Bridges. The Tigers’ starter lasted only four frames; eventually, six earned runs were credited against him. Detroit, however, looked like it was going to stage another comeback. Trailing 8–5 in the top of the ninth, the Tigers scored two runs and had Gehringer on third with two down. But Billy Rogell bounced out to end the rally.
“The pennant is by no means clinched,” Cochrane pointed out afterward. His bid for a game-winning three-run homer in the ninth had come to naught when Moose Solters hauled in his hard-hit drive up against the center field wall. “There is still a long way to go.”4 The loss did not stop the Tigers from enjoying their stay in New England. “The entire Detroit squad sailed up to Gloucester last evening on the Grand Marshall, after the game, where they were feted at the Riverside Club.”5
The Tigers were proving to be a major gate attraction. Over 46,000 at Fenway saw them take both ends of a twin bill the following afternoon. Lefty Grove was no mystery to Detroit’s bats in the opener, giving up seven runs in only five innings. The Sox mounted a furious comeback in the bottom of the ninth, but the Tigers held on for an 8–6 victory, with Crowder the winning pitcher. Auker tossed a complete game for his 11th victory in the second contest.
With an off day, Cochrane and his men rose early to take in some deep-sea fishing (all, that is, except Goslin, Owen, Greenberg, and Fox; prone to seasickness, the quartet chose instead to brave things out at the team hotel). Once their chartered boat reached ten miles off Cape Ann, Elden Auker caught the first fish of the day. Schoolboy Rowe’s stomach began to feel the effects of the waves, which, according to the locals, were only a light chop. He spent most of the outing below deck, but was his usual self when the Fenway series continued the following afternoon. Looking, in the words of the Boston Globe’s James C. O’Leary, like “an unconquerable hero,”6 and aided by ample offense behind him, Schoolboy was in fine form. Thanks to home runs by landlubbers Greenberg and Owen, Detroit prevailed, 8–4. That made it 19 victories on the season for Schoolboy.
The young Tigers hurler was entering rarefied air. He had not lost a game since June 10, and with 15 consecutive victories, he was one away from the American League mark of 16. It should be pointed out that the record refers strictly to consecutive decisions won in a single season, whether starting or in relief.7 It had been accomplished three times before, most recently by Lefty Grove in 1931 when he was with Philadelphia. On the day that Grove tried for number 17 against the Browns in St. Louis, he was out-dueled by journeyman Dick Coffman, who surrendered only three singles in a 1–0 Browns win. Goose Goslin was a member of that St. Louis team; he did not get a hit that afternoon, striking out twice against Grove.
Smoky Joe Wood of the Red Sox and Walter Johnson of the Senators had both won 16 consecutive games in 1912. Wood admitted to being under severe strain as the wins piled up. When the streak finally ended on September 20 against the Tigers at Navin Field, it would be hard to say whether he was more disappointed or relieved. “Defeat,” said his manager Jake Stahl immediately afterward, “was the very best thing that could come to Wood. Another week of thinking about his pitching record and he would be fit for a nurse.”8 Johnson’s run ended in a controversial loss, but he shrugged it off in his typical mild-mannered fashion: “I lost the game, so what’s the use worrying and fussing over it.”9
There must have been something they were feeding pitchers in 1912, because that was also the year that Rube Marquard of the New York Giants tied the National League record by winning 19 in a row. That equaled the mark of Tim Keefe, also of the Giants, back in 1888. By the time Marquard’s streak ended, he was physically and mentally exhau
sted. After he lost a few games, the New York Times offered up the opinion that Marquard had “cracked … his greatness dissolved into oblivion.”10 That was a premature assessment; Marquard went on to win two games in that year’s World Series, giving up only one earned run in 18 sparkling innings.
On Saturday, August 25, before one of the biggest crowds of the year at Griffith Stadium, Rowe went to the mound to try to put his name up there with Lefty, The Big Train, Smoky, and Rube. Opposing him was the Senators’ Monte Weaver, a former 20-game winner who had not fared well in 1934. Both men battled, neither giving up a walk, and by the top of the ninth inning, Washington was holding on to a slim 2–1 margin. First up for the Tigers was the right-handed-hitting Greenberg, who walloped a hanging curve long and high to left field, just foul. He stepped out of the batter’s box to regroup, but only for a moment. He drove the next pitch, a fastball, over the high wall in right field for a home run, his 20th of the season, tying the game. The fans, having come out mainly to see Schoolboy continue his streak, thundered their approval and tossed straw hats onto the field by the dozens. The Tigers shouted and danced in the dugout.
Marv Owen singled to left, and that was all for Weaver, who handed the ball over to Jack Russell, a 28-year-old right-hander with a lifetime record of 61–110 for Washington. After years of floundering as a starter, Russell had found his niche as a reliever; he was now one of the best in the game and had even made the All-Star team. Right fielder Pete Fox, who already had two hits on the day, lined a fastball into center for a single, Owen hustling all the way to third. With the go-ahead run 90 feet away, Rowe batted for himself. To call Schoolboy a good-hitting pitcher would be an understatement. He was just a fine hitter, period. He came into the game at .309 and had doubled and singled earlier. In a righty-on-righty matchup, Rowe worked the count to two-and-two, fouled a couple of pitches off, and then hit a blooper that fell just beyond the reach of the shortstop for a single. Owen scored, and the Tigers took the lead. As Rowe stood on first base, wave upon wave of applause descended upon him from the D.C. spectators. An error later in the inning brought in another run to make it 4–2.
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