The Tigers, meanwhile, the team that Ruth had almost managed, could do nothing but wait for the result of the game back in Michigan. After its conclusion, a reporter contacted a joyous Cochrane, who said, “Of course I am delighted. But I rather wish we could have clinched it out on the field where we have been fighting all season to win that pennant.”21 Cochrane became only the 12th manager in the history of Major League Baseball to win a championship in his first year at the helm.22
Frank Navin, who got wind of the victory while at his club, noted, with his characteristic composure: “I’m glad that’s over. Now all we have to do is get ready for the World Series, and I hope we make as good a showing as we have made so far.”23 To mark the clinching of the pennant, Hudson’s department store in downtown Detroit unfurled a massive victory banner, “90 feet deep and 60 feet wide,” over its main entrance.24 Six stories in height, it proclaimed “Champions 1934” above a giant smiling tiger. A crowd of thousands snarled traffic on Woodward Avenue in its attempt to catch a glimpse of the huge flag. “We’ll win the World Series,” a jubilant Cochrane announced. “I’ve been on four championship clubs, but never have I been so confident of winning the world championship as right now.”25 Of the long, hard pennant fight, Iffy the Dopester wrote in the Detroit Free Press, “That [the Tigers] didn’t crack under the strain is only due to the genius of Professor Cochrane … he drove them on with a relentless fury. Nor did he spare himself.”26
Suddenly, Detroit’s offense began clicking again. They pounded White Sox pitchers for 22 runs in a September 26 doubleheader, the Tigers’ first appearance at Navin Field since clinching the pennant. Greenberg had one of the best days of his life, with 15 total bases and nine RBI in the two victories. Bridges was roughed up for ten runs in the opener, but Auker pitched well in the second game to capture his 15th win.
The Sox shut out the Tigers in the third and final game of the series, while Schoolboy Rowe surrendered eight runs. Gehringer failed to get a hit, dropping him below Gehrig of the idle Yankees. Finally, Detroit welcomed the Browns to Michigan and Trumbull for a season-ending doubleheader on Sunday, September 30. The bats were alive in the opener, a 10–6 Tigers victory. It was win number 100 for Detroit in 1934, the first time the organization had ever reached the century mark. In the second game of the twin bill, Tommy Bridges won again, his 22nd, to cap the most exciting regular season in Detroit in decades. The only down side was that Gehringer went only 2-for-7 on the day, to wind up second to Gehrig in the AL batting race, .363 to .356.
The hitting star that final day was Jo-Jo White, who collected six hits in the two games, to finish with a batting average of .313. Back in the spring, most everyone figured center field would be the Tigers’ weakest link. The platoon of White and Gee Walker, however, had been a pleasant surprise. White’s average was hovering in the .270 range at midseason. But Walker played only one game in center after returning from his suspension on August 7, as Cochrane shuffled him between the corner outfield spots. Given the full-time job in center and batting leadoff most days, White went on a tear, hitting .383 in August. He also solidified the defense, making some sparkling plays. White’s real name was Joyner, but he had acquired the nickname Jo-Jo because of the way he drawlingly pronounced his home state of Georgia. His hero growing up was Ty Cobb, who also hailed from the Peach State. The 24-year-old White patterned his style of play after Cobb, perfecting a “kicking” slide aimed at jarring the ball out of an infielder’s waiting glove. He was selective enough at the plate to draw 69 walks against only 39 strikeouts, and his speed helped him to steal a team-high 28 bases. White’s hustle endeared him to Cochrane and to Tigers fans, and his second-half play was one of the big reasons for Detroit’s ascension in the American League.
The 1934 Tigers had one of the best offensive seasons ever. The trio of Greenberg, Goslin, and Gehringer were dubbed the “G-Men,” the same nickname as the special agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As a club, Detroit batted a major league-best .300, and their 959 runs also led both circuits by a wide margin (the Yankees were a distant second with 842). They also topped all of baseball in hits, doubles, RBI, stolen bases, and on-base percentage. Their high-octane attack was not predicated solely on the long ball; they only hit 74 home runs, good for fourth in the AL. Greenberg led the team with 26, but nobody else hit more than 13. The excellent defensive infield of Greenberg, Gehringer, Rogell and Owen, known as the “Battalion of Death,” combined for 463 RBI. Incredibly, the quartet played every game of the season, the lone exception being when Greenberg sat out Yom Kippur. Outfielders Fox (.285, 101 runs scored, 25 stolen bases) and Walker (.300, 20 steals) also had big years.
Goslin more than justified the trade that brought him to the Motor City; he hit .305, drove in 100 runs, and scored 106.27 Despite his reputation of thriving at Navin Field, he batted only .279 at home in 1934, compared to .328 on the road.28
Cochrane, who hit .320, gave a valuable insight into the philosophy that had made the Tigers a success: “We determined to stick to our course. Your first five hitters in your lineup are your heavy hitters. Why waste them with sacrifices and leave the lower end of the batting order to bring in the runs? We stuck to our system of playing for a big opening in one inning and cleaning up, and we have won a pennant as a result of it.”29 While other players in baseball had better offensive seasons, Cochrane was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player as much for his inspirational leadership as for his bat.
Detroit’s four starting pitchers all contributed fine seasons, led by Rowe, who won 24, and Bridges, who totaled 22. Auker was a pleasant surprise in his first full season, winning 15 games, as did the veteran Marberry, who was an effective swingman. Crowder proved to be a valuable pickup, going 5–1 after coming over from Washington in August. In an era of high offense, Detroit’s earned run average of 4.06 was second in the AL to New York’s 3.76. The Tigers were also second in strikeouts to the Yankees. Indeed, Cochrane had instilled in his men the importance of throwing strikes: Detroit issued the fewest bases on balls in the junior circuit.
Physical aches and pains are part of the grind of a long baseball season. The team that does not lose key players for extended periods considers itself extremely fortunate. That was the case with the 1934 Tigers, whose roster remained intact throughout the season. Good fortune aside, Detroit’s winning campaign was not a mere fluke. In the words of sportswriter Shirley Povich, “Mickey Cochrane had the kind of team that helped to make its own breaks. He had the kind of team that is always characteristic of the pennant winner—hustling, smart, powerful.”30 Nevertheless, 1934 was a grueling ordeal for Cochrane, mainly because of the torture his body endured. By his own account, he hurt his left ankle early in the season, and it never fully recovered. By the end of the summer, his arms and legs were covered in bumps, bruises and cuts sustained while sliding into bases, or from the innumerable foul balls that ricocheted off his body. With all the squatting endured in his ten years as a major league catcher, his knees and ankles resembled those of an old man. Moreover, Cochrane’s personality did not allow him to relax all season long; by the end, he was emotionally exhausted.
With 101 victories, the Tigers won the American League pennant by seven games over New York. Without question, the turning point in the season for both clubs was July 14, at Navin Field, when Detroit scored four runs in the ninth inning to beat the Yankees, 12–11. Instead of suffering a loss that would have dropped them further into second place, the win catapulted the Tigers into the top spot, and they never relinquished it the rest of the season. It was a defining moment for the team, proving to the baseball world that they were just as good as Ruth, Gehrig, and the rest of the Yankees, maybe even better. At the season’s conclusion, one writer called the Tigers “phenomena, bordering on the miraculous.”31
Despite playing in tiny Navin Field, Detroit led the major leagues in attendance in 1934, with 919,161. Considering the bad economic times, it was a testament to just how much the Motor City
loved its Tigers. In the Detroit Free Press, Iffy the Dopester applauded the newly minted champions, setting the stage for the team’s first trip to the World Series since 1909:
This is the big, the outstanding thing. We have won the American League pennant. And all the rest is frosting to the cake, the parsley to the fish, the feather on the hat, the sauce to the meat. And even if the lads had not won the pennant it would not have mattered greatly. As far as we are concerned ’twas all for the sport of the thing. It has made us forget our troubles, it has cleansed our souls with the joy of laughter, it has been a recess from our woes, a surcease from our worries…. Detroit will remain as it is, the dynamic city of the unsalted seas.32
Chapter Ten
Heartbreak and Garbage
Back in January, a group of reporters had huddled around New York Giants player-manager Bill Terry at the team’s annual business meeting. In a relaxed, bantering style, Terry gave his impressions of the senior circuit’s contenders for the upcoming 1934 season. Someone asked him what he thought of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Looking nonplussed, Terry replied, “Brooklyn? Haven’t heard much about them lately. Is Brooklyn still in the league?”1 The flippant comment would come back to haunt Terry and his team.
For much of the summer, it looked like the Giants were once again the best squad in the National League. With batting stars Terry, Mel Ott, Travis Jackson, and Jo-Jo Moore, along with Carl Hubbell and Hal Schumacher on the hill, they were the odds-on favorite to win their second consecutive World Series. By early September, the poised and experienced Giants had built a seven-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals.
Then New York suddenly went into a swoon. By the time they faced off with Brooklyn for a season-ending, two-game set, the Giants had fallen into a tie for first with streaking St. Louis. Dodgers fans, having waited all year for revenge for what they perceived as Terry’s disrespect, invaded the Polo Grounds en masse, eager to root on their Bums. Brooklyn won both games, proving to Terry that they were, in fact, still in the League. The Cardinals, meanwhile, took two in a row from Cincinnati to capture the pennant in improbable fashion.
Today, we remember the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals as the “Gas House Gang.” While baseball historians cannot agree on exactly when the team picked up the moniker (or who initially bestowed it upon them), it is nevertheless a fitting one, indicative of their rowdy, take-no-prisoners attitude toward the game. When America was looking for heroes in the midst of the Depression, the Gas House Gang provided picturesque characters who were also exceptional talents on the field. Assembled by their Bible-quoting, cigar-chomping general manager, Branch Rickey, they were, like the Tigers, a mix of veterans and youngsters who possessed that often cited but hard-to-define quality called “chemistry.”
Dizzy Dean was the Cardinals’ answer to Schoolboy Rowe (although fans in St. Louis no doubt believed that Rowe was the Tigers’ answer to Dean). Both were 24 years old, grew up in Arkansas, had blazing fastballs, and possessed charismatic personalities. No two pitchers shined brighter than Rowe and Dean in 1934. The latter won 30 games and led the league in strikeouts for the third straight season. Was he the best hurler in the game? He sure thought so; all you had to do was ask him. Such swagger came naturally to Dizzy. “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up,” was perhaps his most enduring bon mot.
There were no two bigger pitching stars in 1934 than Schoolboy Rowe and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Dizzy Dean, seen here at that year’s World Series (courtesy Ernie Harwell Sports Collection, Detroit Public Library).
Dizzy’s younger brother, Paul, was also on the St. Louis starting staff. Back in spring training, before Paul had ever thrown a pitch in a big-league game, the brash Dizzy boasted, “How are they going to stop us? Paul’s going to be a sensation. He’ll win 18 or 20 games. I’ll count 20 to 25 myself.”2 Dizzy turned out to be a prophet, as Paul won 19. Unlike his voluble brother, Paul never said much, which led sportswriters to wonder how two such radically different apples could have fallen from the same tree. Searching for a sobriquet for Paul, the scribes settled on Daffy, mostly because it sounded similar to Dizzy. Paul, understandably, did not appreciate the nickname. Hungry for copy, sportswriters ate up the Deans. Iffy the Dopester, however, was not buying into all the flimflam just yet. “If [the Deans] were sports writers, or lawyers or doctors or truck drivers or peanut vendors their oddities would not attract any attention. But when a fellow can get a four-column cut of himself on any sport page because he caught a ball or hit one or did something else with it, why naturally he is of such importance that every time he kisses his wife, or fails to, it takes on a national—if not worldwide—significance.”3
Frankie Frisch was in his first full campaign as manager of the club, having taken over midway through the 1933 season. Frisch, who was also the team’s second baseman, was a 16-year veteran with a lifetime .319 batting average with the Giants and Cardinals. Like Cochrane, he was extremely energetic, with a fiery, competitive streak that rubbed off on his players. He had attended Fordham University, where he excelled as a track star and majored in Chemistry (hence, his nickname, the “Fordham Flash”). He also showed early on to be a fine leader of men, captaining the football, basketball, and baseball teams.
The biggest cog in the St. Louis offense was slugging first baseman “Ripper” Collins, who topped the National League in 1934 in both home runs and practical jokes. Twenty-two-year-old Joe Medwick walked like a duck, but did not hit like one. “Ducky” banged out 40 doubles, 18 triples, drove in 106 runs, and averaged .319 in 1934. The Cards could manufacture runs like no other team. At third base was Pepper Martin, “The Wild Horse of the Osage,” who could hit for average and was one of the best baserunners in the game. Frisch’s double-play partner was 28-year-old Leo Durocher. The Massachusetts native did not carry much of a bat. Babe Ruth, in fact, once called him “The All-American Out.” He was, nevertheless, a cocky, scrappy player who refused to back down from a challenge. Durocher was “Old School” before there was “Old School.” Nicknamed “The Lip,” he was an irrepressible chatterbox on the field. Off it, he was a playboy who appreciated the perks that came with being a professional athlete. He was also a hustler who never met a rule he didn’t break.
“It’s the gamest team I ever saw,” remarked Frisch of his Cardinals. “The gamest, best bunch of fighters that ever won a league title.”4 On paper, the teams matched up evenly, although the Cardinals possessed the experience that could swing things in their favor. Cochrane and Frisch were intelligent, forward-thinking skippers and excellent strategists. It promised to be one of the most colorful World Series in many a year.
A festive crowd of 42,505 braved the cold and wind for Game One at Navin Field on Thursday, October 3. Among the luminaries in attendance were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford, humorist Will Rogers, comedian Joe E. Brown, and Hollywood actor George Raft. Babe Ruth, in the press box taking notes for his nationally syndicated World Series column, could be forgiven for casting a wistful eye down on the field below and regretting that it was not him managing the Tigers. The Babe also had some unfinished financial business: In the spring, he had laid a $100 wager with Goslin that he would outhit the Goose in 1934. Ruth finished with an average of .288 to Goslin’s .305. During batting practice, The Sultan of Swat went down to present Goose with a check.
Gathering with reporters at the stately Book-Cadillac Hotel before the game, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis declared succinctly, “It’ll be a fire-eating series. That’s enough for me to say.”5 Iffy the Dopester was not making any predictions: “So, who’s going to win the World Series? And I say right back: I don’t know and neither does anybody else.”6
Also taking in the game were five members of the 1909 Detroit team, the last group to reach the Series: Donie Bush, Davy Jones, George Moriarty, Charles O’Leary, and Oscar Stanage. Navin Field appeared different from just a few days ago; the recently built bleachers in left field had necessitated the scoreboard’s relocation to right. In batting pract
ice, Greenberg delighted the early arrivals by blasting three balls into the new section.
It was the hottest ticket in town. Box seats sold for $6.60 a pop (roughly $118 in 2017), grandstands for $5.50. A general admission entry cost $3.30, while bleachers were a relative bargain at $1.10 (all figures included federal tax). The night before the game, an army of die-hard Tigers fans began forming a line that snaked all the way around the stadium, in hopes of grabbing tickets when the bleacher windows opened in the morning.
In a deal brokered by Commissioner Landis, the Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $100,000 to sponsor the radio broadcasts over the NBC and CBS networks. That meant a bigger financial windfall for the players.7 Not everybody was happy with the arrangement, however, specifically newspaper editors across the country, who felt that Landis had turned baseball’s grandest stage into a commercial. The Tigers were proving to be a popular team nationally, which heightened interest in the Series. Just before the opening, Cochrane appeared on the cover of Time magazine. The article was full of praise for the skipper. “Cochrane’s arrival in Detroit coincided roughly with the revival of the automobile industry and the first signs of revived prosperity. His determined jolly face soon came to represent the picture of what a dynamic Detroiter ought to look like.”8
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