Motor City Champs

by Scott Ferkovich

  The rest of the staff was riddled with question marks. Crowder had been a pleasant surprise, but at 36 years old, he might not be able to hold up the entire season. Rowe and Auker had been wildly inconsistent. Since his ten-game winning streak, Bridges was 3–4 in nine starts with a 6.16 earned run average, and opponents had a .318 batting average in that stretch. Joe Sullivan, the rookie who had begun the season so well, had obviously lost the confidence of his manager. His old control problems, seemingly conquered, had mysteriously returned. He had pitched only twice in July. Chief Hogsett, on the other hand, remained reliable out of the bullpen, but was in danger of being overworked.

  The Tigers descended on League Park in Cleveland, hoping to create some distance between themselves and the Yankees. Auker pitched well in running his record to 10–4 in a decisive 8–2 win on July 26. Bridges notched his 14th win, besting ace Mel Harder in a complete-game, 6–2 victory the next day. The enigmatic Rowe, however, followed that game up with a bad performance. Staked to a five-run lead in the opening frame, he lasted less than two innings, getting pummeled for seven hits and five runs. Chief Hogsett came on in relief and allowed only one run the rest of the way, while Detroit beat up on Tribe pitching in a 14–6 romp. Cleveland managed a win in the finale, but the Tigers returned home 2½ lengths in front of New York, who dropped three of four to the Senators at Yankee Stadium. Greenberg was on fire, going 11-for-19 with eight RBI in the four games in Cleveland, as was Goslin, who went 10-for-21.

  Pennant fever was once again raging through the Motor City. To feed the hunger of fans for up-to-the-minute game accounts of their Tigers, radio station WMBC came up with a clever solution. Staff engineers installed a public address system on the third floor of the Stormfeltz-Lovely Building at the corner of Woodward and Grand, where the station had its offices. It also happened to be one of the busiest uptown corners during the day, with thousands of office workers scurrying from one place to another. Monitoring ballgame updates as they clicked across the telegraph wire was Bob Evans, WMBC’s sports director and a huge Tigers fan. Evans’ booming voice relayed every Greenberg homer or Gehringer double through the PA system to the expectant masses below. Gridlock naturally ensued, what with drivers pausing to stick their heads out car windows to catch the latest info. Detroit’s finest were dispatched to keep traffic flowing, but the police force was understandably tolerant, and no orders were given to WMBC to remove the speakers.

  For Cochrane, it only meant mounting pressure to win. Iffy the Dopester noticed the visible strain in Black Mike’s face. “Cochrane is saturnine, dour, even sullen at times. His eyes are as black as his hair…. When he smiles it is like the sun popping out of the dark clouds and eager to escape. His grin is lightning on a dark night, a flash and it is gone.”8

  On July 30, Schoolboy Rowe squared off against the St. Louis Browns at Navin Field in his third bid for win number ten. It was the start of an extended home stand for the Tigers, who would not have to pack their bags again until August 28. Rowe was undone by two bad innings, a four-run fourth and a three-run seventh, and Detroit fell, 8–6. It was Rowe’s ninth loss, dropping his record to .500. After the game, Cochrane reluctantly decided he had seen enough. He pulled last year’s ace from the rotation. It was a bit of a psychological gambit on Cochrane’s part. The threat of a train ticket to Beaumont had spurred Rowe to success in 1934; maybe watching the world from the bullpen would have a similar effect in 1935.

  Following two wins against the Browns, rain delayed the start of a three-game series against Walter Johnson’s Indians, necessitating a doubleheader on Saturday, August 3. Elden Auker, who had given up only two earned runs in his last 15⅓ innings, started the opener. Detroit got on the scoreboard first thanks to Greenberg’s solo home run, his 29th. Auker was in fine form, with the Tribe constantly pounding his sinker into the ground. But with a 3–0 lead in the eighth, it quickly unraveled for the submariner. Joe Vosmik’s one-out solo homer narrowed the gap; three batters later, Hal Trosky’s two-run single evened the score. Bowed but unbeaten, Auker survived the inning. In the bottom of the eighth, the Tigers regained the lead on Greenberg’s second solo round-tripper of the day. Cochrane let Auker start the ninth. He immediately rued the decision when the young pitcher coughed up a solo shot to light-hitting leadoff man Boze Berger, tying the game again.

  The Indians had a chance to take their first lead in the tenth. Trosky was on second, Bill Knickerbocker on first after one-out singles off reliever Chief Hogsett. Catcher Ray Hayworth, having entered the game the previous inning as a pinch-hitter for Cochrane, noticed Knickerbocker dancing a little too far off first. Hogsett sneaked a fastball past hard-hitting Odell “Bad News” Hale, and Hayworth immediately whipped the ball down to Greenberg. Knickerbocker dove back to the bag too late to avoid the tag, and umpire Bill Dinneen called him out. The livid Knickerbocker, believing he was safe, put up a loud protest. Not caring for some of Knickerbocker’s commentary, Dinneen wasted no time in tossing him from the game. When play resumed with two down, Hale hit a dribbler down to third; Owen charged the ball but could not make a play anywhere. With Trosky now 90 feet away, representing the go-ahead run, Berger bounced into a 6–4 force out, and the Navin Field faithful breathed a little easier.

  In the 11th, the Tigers got runners on first and second with one out. Hogsett was due up. But Cochrane ordered Rowe to grab a bat. Schoolboy flied out, and though a wild pitch advanced the runners to second and third, Jo-Jo White grounded out to snuff the rally.

  Rowe stayed in to pitch the 12th. Leadoff pinch-hitter Ab Wright hit a chopper to Rogell at short, an easy out for sure, but Rogell’s throw to first was wild. Wright hotfooted it down to second base, but, not satisfied there, made a dash for third. Hayworth finally chased the errant ball down and made a strong peg across the diamond to Owen in time to nip Wright. For the strong-armed Hayworth, it was just like when he used to throw rocks at rabbits and squirrels as a kid back in North Carolina. Rowe, who no doubt owed Hayworth a drink later on, proceeded to walk Trosky. But Rowe settled down, got the next batter on a fly ball, and caught Hale looking for the third out. The fortuitous inning later proved to be a turning point in Rowe’s season.

  Hayworth, leading off the bottom of the 12th, got things going by beating out an infield hit. Gehringer laced a double to left, and Greenberg was walked intentionally to load the bases. That brought up Goslin, hitless in five at-bats, the crowd loudly beseeching for a merciful end to the nerve-wracking game. The Goose got a pitch to his liking and drilled it on a line to center field. Earl Averill caught it but had no chance to nip Hayworth, the Indians’ nemesis for the day, who crossed the plate with the winning tally. Schoolboy Rowe finally had his tenth victory, and with it a shot of confidence.

  His day had only begun. Much to everyone’s surprise, Rowe started the second game, his bullpen exile apparently a fait accompli. He went the route, scattering eight hits, walking one, and fanning five. In the words of H. G. Salsinger, “He pitched very elegant ball.”9 Two wins in one afternoon was not a bad showing at all. “It was a thrill-packed afternoon for the fans,” the Detroit Times’ Bud Shaver wrote,

  a day which started under a cloudy and threatening sky and ended in the soft haze of ideal summer twilight. Straw hats sailed into the air as Hank Greenberg hit his twenty-ninth and thirtieth homers of the season in the first game. Rowe was the Schoolboy of old; fast, debonair and with iron control. He finished with a complete return of the poise and confidence which made him the pitching sensation of the league last year. In the ninth, he retired the last three men in order on exactly three pitches.10

  Bridges had little trouble with the Tribe the next day, fashioning a four-hitter in a 7–0 blanking. His 16th victory, coupled with New York’s tough 11–10 loss in the nation’s capital, put the Tigers up 4½ games, a welcome bit of breathing room.

  The first week of August brought relief from the humidity that had been baking the Detroit area, but there was no respite from the rising cost of putting
food on the table. A dozen women, representing nearly a thousand homemakers, appeared before the Common Council to plead for the city’s aid in lowering meat prices. Plans were under way to picket butcher shops throughout Detroit. One protest at a Mitchell Avenue meat packing plant resulted in the arrest of three women and one man. The following afternoon, a crowd of over 300 marched on the Davison Street Police Station, successfully demanding the quartet’s release. The embattled women insisted that the fight had only begun, and soon the protests threatened to spread to Chicago as well.

  One Detroit city official, meanwhile, described the local welfare problem as a “keg of dynamite.”11 Federal relief allotments were set to end within months, just as an additional 10,500 families would be joining the city’s welfare rolls. There is an old saying that as General Motors goes, so goes the nation. With that in mind, prognosticators gained hope from Alfred Sloan, the president of GM. Citing improving business trends, he announced a $50,000,000 plant expansion program to increase auto production. The entire automobile industry anticipated an investment of nearly $100,000,000 for growth and development. Other economic indicators pointed positive. International shipping saw a spike, although there was a dark side: Much of the traffic had been in war materials such as scrap iron and steel, a sign that global tensions might soon be coming to a head. Indeed, with Mussolini’s refusal to engage in peace talks over his planned Ethiopian conquest, another world war seemed inevitable. While heavy industry may have begun humming, there were still plenty of Americans struggling to find work. On August 15, Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, with a goal of providing benefits for the unemployed and elderly. The president’s detractors, however, saw it as further proof of his overreaching socialist agenda.

  For much of the early summer of 1935, the Chicago White Sox were one of the most improved teams in the league. By the end of July, Jimmie Dykes’s men had beaten the Tigers in eight out of 12 games. The Sox boasted a 51–37 mark, good for third place. Since then, they had apparently forgotten how to hit, losing six of eight games, including one tie. In Detroit on Thursday, August 8, General Crowder added to their misery, getting win number 13 with a 5–2 victory. He got off to a rocky start, giving up singles to the first three batters he faced. He eventually found his groove, however, and the Tigers pulled off four double plays in the game.

  Cochrane handed the ball to Schoolboy Rowe the next day against Ted Lyons. In complete command of his pitches and throwing strikes, Rowe was dominant early on, retiring the first 13 batters. The big blow of the day for the Tigers was Greenberg’s two-run shot over the scoreboard in left-center field, his 31st of the year. Rowe clung to a 4–3 lead heading into the ninth. He walked leadoff man Luke Appling on a full count, causing a collective groan from the Ladies Day crowd of nearly 27,000. Dykes, foreswearing the sacrifice, flied out. Jackie Hayes shot one through the box for a single, with Appling huffing it to third. Joe Sewell made a bid to tie the game with a hard liner toward center, but Gehringer made a spectacular backhanded stab for the out. Lyons, the pitcher, flied out to Goslin to put the game on ice, and Rowe had win number 12.

  Bridges tossed a brilliant three-hitter the next afternoon, his second shutout in a row. Displaying, as the Detroit News put it, “almost faultless control and a world of stuff,” he became the first American League pitcher that year to top 100 strikeouts.12 Auker nearly matched him in the Sunday finale, allowing only four hits as Chicago’s hitting doldrums continued. Gehringer collected three hits in the 4–1 win, played before more than 33,000 Tigers rooters. Pete Fox, whose latest hitting streak had reached 17 games, went 0-for-3. It was Detroit’s ninth win in a row, leaving the Yankees in the rear-view mirror by six full games. The Sox, at 12 games back, had seen their slim pennant hopes exposed as a mere delusion.

  After a tough extra-inning loss to the Senators on August 13, the Tigers looked to Rowe to get them back on the winning track. Detroit’s offense erupted for 18 runs, and Rowe was the biggest star of the day, both on the mound and at bat. In an incredible display, he went 5-for-5 with a double and a triple, drove in four runs, and scored three. He went the distance, giving up only two runs, further evidence that the Tigers possessed perhaps the game’s greatest two-way star. It was Rowe’s fourth victory in a row since his brief bullpen sojourn.

  The next day, the Senators stopped Tommy Bridges’ streak of 23 consecutive scoreless innings, but Detroit still won, 6–3. In the eighth inning, Cecil Travis drove a shot through the box that caromed off Bridges, just above his knee. Staggering, Bridges threw out Travis to end the frame, but he was in too much pain to bat the next inning and exited for a pinch hitter. Still, he picked up win number 18. An examination afterward showed no serious damage, and it was expected that Bridges would not miss his next start. After a loss to Washington the next day, the Tigers welcomed the Yankees to Michigan and Trumbull for the final time in 1935.

  New York’s Lefty Gomez got the nod in the opening game on August 17. Gomez was in the midst of a down year by his standards. He had topped the American League with 26 wins in 1934, but had a pedestrian 10–12 record so far in 1935. He had pitched much better than his record indicated; in nine of his losses, New York had scored three runs or less, and two runs or less in six of them. Three times the Yanks were shut out while he was on the hill. With a respectable 3.22 earned run average, Gomez deserved a better fate.

  Detroit’s lead on the Yankees was six games. Opposing Gomez was General Crowder, seeking his 14th win. A packed house at Navin Field saw plenty of scoring opportunities on both sides, but Gomez and Crowder hung on to go the distance. The Tigers won it in the tenth, 3–2, thanks to a mental lapse by Yankees second baseman Jack Saltzgaver. With the bases loaded and one out, Cochrane worked Gomez to a full count before hitting a ground ball that Saltzgaver easily gobbled up. Saltzgaver started to throw to the plate, hesitated, and then inexplicably flung the ball to first as Rogell, the runner at third, streaked home with the game-winning tally. Crowder picked up the victory, while Gomez once again was the victim of poor support.

  The game featured a kerfuffle that brought back memories of the Marv Owen-Ducky Medwick tussle in the World Series. In the sixth inning, Tony Lazzeri doubled to center field. As he tried to stretch it into a triple, Jo-Jo White made a strong throw to Gehringer, whose perfect peg to third baseman Owen nipped a sliding Lazzeri. In making the tag, Owen’s left hand somehow got jammed between the bag and Lazzeri’s foot. In the words of Owen, “I pulled up my hand, and pulled up Tony’s foot with it. In doing so, I accidentally twisted his leg and that made him mad.”13 Lazzeri rushed at Owen, and the two would have come to blows were it not for the quick intervention of Yankees third-base coach Art Fletcher and umpire Brick Owens. Although both benches cleared, the disorder was speedily defused. Later in the game, to no one’s surprise, Gomez plunked Owen on the shoulder with a fastball. Trotting to first, Owen glared at Gomez and shook his fist, but that was the extent of the hostilities.

  Detroit increased its American League lead to eight games the following afternoon, buoyed by Rowe’s three-hit shutout. He also blasted his first home run of the campaign and picked up his 14th win. After a tough loss on Monday, August 19, Cochrane gave the ball to Rowe for the final game of the series, despite the pitcher having only two full days of rest. There were a couple of reasons for the choice: Rowe, of course, always pitched well against the Yankees, and Tommy Bridges, Cochrane’s other option, almost never did. Besides, Bridges was still nursing a bruised leg from the Cecil Travis line drive in his previous appearance. The strategy backfired, as a tired Rowe gave up six runs in only two innings of work. Greenberg hit his 32nd home run in a losing cause, but Detroit was happy to get a split of the series. According to Frank Navin, more than 120,000 paying customers made their way through the turnstiles for the four games.

  Next, Detroit welcomed the third-place Red Sox. By now a distant 12 games back, Boston looked like a team that had decided to mail in the rest of the season. The Tigers won fou
r of the five contests, including two masterful shutouts, one of them by Rowe in which he also homered and drove in three runs. Wrote Iffy the Dopester of the Detroit Free Press,

  Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, how Schoolboy Rowe is hitting and I’ll tell you how he is pitching. He was hitting ’em again Friday and so he shut out those Boston Beanies. When Babe Ruth was fogging ’em over the plate for Boston it was the same way. Babe and the Schoolboy are natural sluggers. Most pitchers have an idea they should not even be asked to go to the plate—they are that temperamental. But the Schoolboy loves to hit, so when he has felt the thrill of hickory against horsehide, he’s all tuned up to see that the opposition doesn’t get its share of baseknocks.14

  The other Tigers whitewash came courtesy of a 29-year-old, journeyman right-hander making his first appearance of the season. Roxie Lawson, whose three-year career with Cleveland and Detroit had consisted of 28 games, one victory, and a 7.09 earned run average, had nevertheless looked impressive down at Toledo, collecting 14 wins. In an effort to give his seven-man staff some much-needed rest, Cochrane called up Lawson to be another available arm in the bullpen. Sixteen-game-winner Lefty Grove was slated to pitch against the Tigers in the fifth game of the series, and Cochrane preferred not to waste one of his regular pitchers in a likely loss. With Detroit nursing a seven-game cushion at the top of the standings, Cochrane reasoned that he could afford to give Lawson the start.