Motor City Champs

by Scott Ferkovich

  In the top of the fifth, Durocher legged out an infield single, and Dean’s bunt sacrifice sent him to second. Pepper Martin, hitting .348 in the Series, lined a single to left. With Durocher rounding third and heading home, Goslin made a wild throw to the plate. Durocher scored, and Martin raced all the way to third. Rothrock bounced out to Rogell, as Martin scored to make it 3–1.

  Dean set Detroit down in order in the bottom half of the frame, but in the sixth he committed the cardinal sin (no pun intended) of walking the leadoff man, in the person of Jo-Jo White. Cochrane’s single put runners on first and third with nobody out. Gehringer ran the count to 3–2 before hitting a dribbler to Dean, a perfect double-play ball. Bending over to field it, the pitcher took his eye off the ball and it rolled through his fingers. White scored, Cochrane suddenly represented the tying run at second, and the Tigers had the makings of a big inning.

  In a classic example of how baseball strategy has changed since the 1930s, Cochrane then entrusted Goose Goslin, his cleanup hitter, with the task of bunting the runners over. The plan went awry; Goslin’s bunt was gobbled up by the catcher, DeLancey, who threw to Marin at third to nail Cochrane. The Tigers’ manager put up a verbal protest, arguing he had slid in under the tag, but umpire Brick Owens wasn’t buying it. Photos seemed to indicate that Cochrane indeed was safe.

  Runners remained at first and second, but now with one out, up strode Rogell. He lofted one to center field for the second out, but Gehringer tagged and reached third. Dean was almost out of the woods, but he still had to face Greenberg. With the crowd praying for a hit, Greenberg banged one into left, scoring Gehringer to tie it up. Marv Owen, with only two hits in the Series, stood in against Dean, hoping to give Detroit its first lead of the game. As Goslin danced off second, Owen hit a chopper to Durocher, who threw to first to end the frame.

  Paul Dean made amends for his costly error the next inning, this time with his bat. After Durocher’s one-out double, Daffy laced a single to right, and Durocher scored easily, giving St. Louis the lead, 4–3. In the home half of the seventh, it looked as if the Tigers would catch a break. Fox led off with a high pop fly to left that fell between the backtracking Durocher and the onrushing Medwick and Orsatti. Fox made it all the way to second, and Rowe bunted him over to third. With a drawn-in infield, White bounced to Durocher, whose quick throw home beat Fox by a slight margin. Cochrane was up next, but did not get a chance to hit, as White was promptly thrown out stealing, ending a frustrating inning for Detroit.

  The Bengals threatened again in the eighth with runners at first and third with only one out. But Dean got Rogell to hit a short fly to center, as the runners were forced to hold. That brought up Greenberg, with a chance to be a hero.

  Many of the great hitters acknowledge that a smart pitcher will throw you only one good pitch to hit in every at-bat. Greenberg was expecting a fastball right in his wheelhouse, which was exactly what Dean threw him. Inexplicably, however, the Tigers’ slugger watched it go by for a called strike. It was an opportunity wasted. Greenberg had lost the battle within the battle; the at-bat ended when he popped out to first base. “I often wondered,” Greenberg recollected decades later, “what would’ve happened if I’d jumped on that fastball.”49

  In the ninth, with two outs and nobody on, Rowe gave the Navin Field crowd one final thrill, driving a ball to deep center field, but Orsatti hauled it in to seal the St. Louis win. “That boy has got ice water in his veins,” Leo Durocher praised Paul Dean in his ghost-written column the next day.50

  It was the best game of the Series from a competitive standpoint. Both Rowe and Dean had pitched valiantly. It did not appear that Rowe’s bruised pitching hand bothered him; he did give up ten hits, but walked none and struck out five. For Paul Dean, who threw 127 pitches, it was his second win of the Series. The Cardinals had withstood the Tigers’ ace and were feeling good about their chances in Game Seven. To many observers, the turning point of the game, and indeed the Series, was Brick Owens calling Cochrane out at third to dampen the seventh-inning rally. Certainly, Frank Navin thought so. “I’ve been waiting 35 years to see Detroit win a championship here,” he growled after the game, “and when we’ve got one in our grip, some guy blows it for us.”51

  Both Cochrane and Rowe were treated at Providence Hospital following the loss. Whether from the effects of throwing nine tough innings, or from Joe E. Brown’s handshake, Schoolboy’s swelling had gotten worse. Whatever chance there was of him being available for Game Seven, even to face a batter or two, it now seemed a highly unlikely prospect. As for Cochrane, he could barely walk up the hospital steps without assistance, as his knee was stiffening up and nearly impossible to bend. He spent several hours with it immobilized under a heat lamp. X-rays revealed no serious injury to the kneecap. In the words of Dr. Keane, the Tigers’ team physician, the cartilage had been “pulled.” When reporters asked for a midnight update, the doctor hedged his bets. “There is no way of determining until tomorrow noon whether Mr. Cochrane will be in any condition to play. I most certainly will not consent to his going in if it means a permanent disablement risk.”52

  The Tigers’ long, long, grinding baseball season, which had begun in Lakeland back in February, came down to a World Series Game Seven at Navin Field on October 9, 1934. Cochrane, despite his aches and pains, decided he was well enough to play. But who would his starting pitcher be? Having used Rowe the previous day, and with Bridges coming off a complete game in Game Five, the most logical choices were Crowder or Auker. In somewhat of a surprise, Cochrane again passed on Crowder’s experience and handed the ball to Auker, the right-hander who had pitched effectively in the Game Four victory.

  The 24-year-old Kansas farm boy had one of the more unusual deliveries in the major leagues, a slinging, sidearm motion that was born out of necessity rather than any desire to be different. In his first football game for Kansas Agricultural and Mechanical College (the forerunner to today’s Kansas State University), Auker separated his shoulder, making it impossible for him to throw overhand. He was forced to completely alter his mechanics and throwing motion, even in football, where he played quarterback.

  As a semipro pitcher in Manhattan, Kansas, Auker once squared off against the Kansas City Monarchs and the great Satchel Paige, who had ridden into town with a 33-game winning streak in tow. The only tally Auker surrendered in the 2–1 victory was a home run by catcher T. J. Young. Once out of college, Auker was scouted by the great Bronco Nagurski, who apparently thought a side-arming quarterback could make it in the National Football League. The Chicago Bears offered Auker $6,000, but he chose baseball instead, signing with the Tigers for $450.

  Bob Coleman, his manager at Class B Decatur, recommended that Auker go from a side-arming delivery to a completely underhanded one. He fashioned his windup after that of Carl Mays, who won over 200 games in the big leagues with a delivery that went so low his knuckles almost scraped the dirt. Auker caught a lot of ridicule about his unorthodox style, but it produced results: He won 16 games with Beaumont in 1933 and three more with the Tigers after being called up in August. Auker always believed that were it not for his gridiron injury, he never would have reached the major leagues.

  With Dizzy Dean gunning for his second Series win, the Tigers had their work cut out for them. It soon became apparent that it was not Auker’s day. He retired Durocher on a fly ball to lead off the third, but after a double, a single, a stolen base, a walk, and another double, he looked up to see Cochrane plodding out to the hill to give him the heave-ho. In an act of desperation, the manager called for Rowe, bruises and all. Schoolboy faced three batters, surrendered a single and a double, and could not be blamed for vowing never again to shake hands with a comedian.

  Before the nightmare inning was over, Chief Hogsett and Tommy Bridges were also thrown into the fire. The Cardinals batted around, scored seven runs, and the city of St. Louis began preparing for a World Series parade. With little hope of coming back against the nearly unbeatable De
an, the Tigers played the rest of the game listlessly, a team beaten in body and spirit.

  The excitement was not over, however. In the top of the sixth, Ducky Medwick and his .357 Series average came to the plate with Pepper Martin on second. Medwick cracked a long drive off the center-field fence. Martin scored easily to make it 8–0, while Medwick ploughed his way around second and headed for third. At the bag, Marv Owen awaited a throw from the outfield as Medwick slid in hard.

  At that point, the firestorm began. In a cloud of dust, Marv Owen’s right foot came down violently on Medwick’s legs. Was it deliberate or accidental? Many of the writers perched in the Navin Field press box agreed that Owen’s act was a cheap shot. He had blocked the runner’s path to the bag as if to make a play, even though the relay throw was obviously going to be too late. They insisted that Owen’s stomp had come while Medwick was on his back, defenseless. The Tigers’ third baseman conceded that his spikes had inadvertently landed on Medwick’s foot. In Owen’s view, Medwick had been the aggressor, kicking him three times and cursing him out. To Owen, it was a dirty slide with bad intent. To Bud Shaver of the Detroit Times, Medwick “deliberately slashed at Owen … a vicious and unprovoked attack.”53

  Whatever the specific details, and without knowing with certainty who kicked whom or when or why, what is clear is that Owen and Medwick nearly came to blows then and there. Third-base coach Mike Gonzalez and umpire Bill Klem quickly intervened. The Cardinals rushed out of the dugout, led by Dean, sporting a towel around his neck. The umps shooed them back to their nest. Medwick claimed he extended his hand to Owen to show there were no hard feelings, but Owen apparently rebuffed the gesture. The outbreak of bitterness was inevitable. All Series long, the two teams had been at each other’s throats.

  A tenuous truce was restored between Owen and Medwick. The first pitch by Tommy Bridges to Ripper Collins was a duster that sent him to the dirt. Picking himself back up, Collins laced the next pitch into center, scoring Medwick to make it 9–0. More boos rained down from the grandstand.

  When the inning ended, and Medwick headed out to his position in left field, he received a rude welcome. The denizens of Navin’s new-built bleachers bombarded Medwick with bottles, fruits, vegetables, and other sundries. At first, Medwick took the onslaught in stride, playfully picking up peaches and pears and pretending to take a bite. When the blitzkrieg failed to subside, and a few projectiles narrowly missed his head, he backed up to the infield, while members of the grounds crew gathered the litter. Even a few Cardinals, including Dizzy Dean, participated in the housecleaning.

  With things seemingly settled down, Medwick resumed his position, only to face a fresh barrage of garbage. He went back to second base, waited a while, and returned to left again. But it was clear that the bleacher fans did not appreciate his presence. More rubbish was thrown. Westbrook Pegler called it “one of the most disgraceful and delightful incidents ever witnessed” in a World Series.54 Finally, Cochrane emerged from the Tigers’ dugout to plead for peace from the mob, with little success. The umpires requested that Medwick be removed from the game so that play could resume, but Frankie Frisch would have none of it.

  Watching all this from the vantage point of a front row box seat was the cigar-chomping, eagle-eyed Commissioner Landis, in fedora and topcoat. With crooked finger, the judge beckoned Klem, Owen, Medwick, and the opposing managers over for a deliberation.

  Landis asked Medwick what had happened on that slide. Medwick answered plaintively that a lot of things can happen on a slide. Landis, that old grandstanding magistrate, theatrically raised his right arm, thumb pointed upward, and ordered Medwick out of the ballgame. His sentence in tow, Medwick was escorted off the field by a posse of police (and a refrain of boos from the bleachers).

  Landis then whirled on Owen. Had the third baseman done anything untoward to instigate the fracas? If Owen’s memory served him well, he had done no such thing. Satisfied with that defense, Landis pounded his proverbial gavel and allowed Owen to remain in the contest. A befuddled Frisch then proceeded to rush at Klem, who apparently had neglected to tell the Judge of Owen’s offense. Frisch’s objection, however, was overruled.

  Chick Fullis replaced Medwick in left. The Tigers went down in order in the sixth. St. Louis tacked on two more runs in the seventh to make it 11–0. Dean dominated, and when Owen grounded into a force for the final out in the ninth, the Cardinals mobbed their flamboyant hero on the Navin Field mound.

  It had been a bitterly contested Series. The heroics of the Brothers Dean, each of whom won two games, stood out for St. Louis. “To the nation’s baseball followers,” claimed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “it was a drive of the Deans. And to the same fans, the World Series triumph was a triumph for the two slender boys from the cotton fields of the South, who in a few brief years have become national figures.”55

  Cardinals left fielder Ducky Medwick huddles with his manager, Frankie Frisch (left), and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (right). Medwick is about to be removed from Game Seven of the 1934 World Series for his own safety (courtesy Ernie Harwell Sports Collection, Detroit Public Library).

  As for the Tigers, they hit only .224 as a team. Greenberg and Gehringer were the sole regulars to hit over .300. Cochrane had driven in one measly run. After the sun had set on Game Seven, he made the obligatory shuffle across to the visitors’ locker room, to congratulate Frisch on a job well done. “We had our best chance Monday and blew it,” Cochrane conceded to reporters. “We should have sewed up the series then but we didn’t and it’s no use crying about it now.”56 Black Mike took a deep breath, as if an influx of oxygen would lend him the strength to undo the past three hours. “Everything happened to us today,” he sighed.57

  Cochrane took the loss hard, harder than any he ever had before. When his Athletics lost the World Series back in 1931, and he gave up all those stolen bases … well, that was one thing, but this was a different animal altogether. As the field general of this team, the man entrusted with the job of leading it to the mountaintop, he knew he would spend the rest of the winter wondering what went wrong at the end.

  The Tigers’ clubhouse had a funereal quality. Before the game had even begun, newsreel technicians, anticipating a Detroit victory, had taken over the cramped space, setting up Kleig lights, huge motion picture cameras, and assorted wiring for sound. It was all for naught. A dapper-looking Graham McNamee, radio personality extraordinaire, would not be asking Cochrane how it felt to be a world champion manager. In fact, he would not be asking him anything. Cochrane, in no mood to chat further, fended off the press. The picture of defeat, he sat slumped on a trainer’s table while a doctor tended to his mangled knee.

  Paul Gallico wrote, “The Cardinals were the roughest, toughest, hardest, slam-bangingest club I have ever seen, and the nearest thing to the old-time baseball nines that the present generation has seen.”58 The Cardinals had capitalized on Detroit’s inexperience. With the eyes of the world on them, the Tigers lacked their customary aggressiveness at the plate, which had served them so well during the regular season. The infield defense, one of the team’s strengths in 1934, looked tight, particularly in the first game. Trying to strike a positive note, General Crowder remarked, “Well, we had to be better than seven other clubs to get into the Series. That’s something.”59

  Down through the ensuing decades, the common refrain has been that Medwick was removed from Game Seven for his own safety. That is mostly true, as far as it goes. But Judge Landis insisted that his taking out Medwick was not merely an act to appease the crowd. “I saw Medwick kick at Owen,” he explained after the Series was over, “and his act warranted punishment. That is why I ordered him out of the game.”60

  As entertainment, the World Series had delivered as promised. Gushed The Sporting News:

  The stirring events that brought to a close the 1934 playing season established the game still more firmly as the national sport—first in the hearts of the American people—a dashing, vivid, pul
sating, brilliant and clean sport, representative of the American spirit…. The St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers have paved the way for the building up of a new courage among the people of the nation by their example and have lifted baseball to a new pinnacle, where it proudly stands as a symbol of a country that never yields to odds.61

  Iffy the Dopester’s poignant column the day after Game Seven of the 1934 Series was one of his most memorable. It echoed the sentiments of a city not yet ready to bid adieu to a splendid summer, nor welcome the winds of winter:

  There are no regrets in the hearts of real sportsmen, Mickey.

  You fought the fight; you did your damndest.

  You gave a tired and jaded old town the thrill it needed, the call to battle and high courage.

  You took a green young ball club and you led them to the American League pennant. By all the laws of baseball and by the gods of chance you should have been beaten but you never sounded retreat.

  Three things make baseball the great American sport: Base hits, errors, and the breaks of the game.

  They epitomize life itself. We advance by hits and the errors of our opponents in baseball as in business. And over all are the breaks in the great game.

  In that sixth game the Cardinals got the breaks. And in the seventh the Tigers got Dizzy Dean. Kismet, selah, and all that sort of rot.

  And so now, Mickey old lad, don’t take it too hard to heart. We know you to be a tough loser, as any game fighting man is, but you can find surcease from your sorrows in this: You gave them everything you had and that is all anybody can ask of any man.

  We’ll be with you when the robins nest again, Mickey, me boy.