Cobb (25 page)

He was
already out,
but he kept the play going for a purpose. He had almost reached the plate when Delahanty slammed the ball into
him again. Cobb collapsed entirely. A trainer and Jennings half-carried him to the bench. None of the Tigers applauded him, although they knew what really had happened. By diverting and sustaining attention to himself, Cobb had ensured that Coughlin was safe at first and another Tiger runner was safe at second. Now a single would win the game, and so it did.

EVENTUALLY THE
race for the league championship narrowed to the Philadelphia A's and the Tigers. Some twenty-five thousand fans packed into Columbia Park in Philly, overflowing the stands and perching atop ladders, fences, hay bales, and roofs bordering the outfield. Detroit led the Athletics by 8 percentage points when a three-game series opened on September 27. “I looked out my hotel window,” said Cobb, “and it was like the British were invading again.” Forty-five thousand people surrounded the park. The
New York Times
headlined: “Reaching an end, this is the greatest struggle in the history of baseball.”

Pressed for money, as always, Cobb mainly was thinking of the fifteen-hundred-dollar or so individual shares awaiting the winner of the coming World Series. He carried five lucky coins in his pocket and, half a century later, still had them amongst his glittering collection of diamond and ruby watches, cups, stickpins, plaques, scrolls, and other trophies at his mountain lodge in Nevada.

Detroit won the opener, 5–4, with Bill Donovan outpitching Eddie Plank. Rain washed out the next game. Then came a Sunday holiday. It boiled down to a September 30 decider, with ace Bill Donovan opposing Jimmy Dygert and Rube Waddell.

Going into the ninth inning, the Tigers, trailing by an 8–6 score, were desperate. Cobb came to bat. In the most important at-bat of his life thus far, he faced George Edward “Rube” Waddell, winner of 110 games in the past five seasons. The six-foot, two-inch, 190-pound Waddell threw left-handed and elsewhere was ambidextrous—he could drink with either hand and, when necessary, it was said, flat on his back. The
Sporting News
called him “that amazing sousepaw.” To keep Rube sober, A's manager Connie Mack once arranged to have him arrested and jailed on concocted false charges. To obtain liquor when broke, Waddell stole team baseballs to trade in saloons for refreshments. In the off-season he worked as a bartender.

Waddell had owned a mockingbird that could imitate a peanut vendor's shrill whistle until, reportedly, some of the A's strangled him.

Cobb figured that the high-strung Rube could be upset and shouted to him, “Where's your cuckoo bird, bo?” Tapping his bat on the plate, Cobb asked if Waddell had visited any good jails lately. Ossie Schreckengost, the A's catcher—“Schreck” for short—admired Cobb for his ability and warned him, “Now you'll get it.”

But no beanball followed. Waddell delivered his fastball for a strike. On the next pitch, Cobb pulled a curveball over the right-field fence for a two-run home run, knotting the score at 8–8. The A's dignified owner, Connie Mack, upset the bat rack when he fell off the bench. “I knew it was gone the second I hit it,” glowed Cobb later that night at the Aldine Hotel. “I expected a breaker and got it.” His clutch homer, as it developed, saved the pennant for Detroit.

It was a contest to remember—“my most thrilling,” said Cobb—that ended only after nearly four hours and seventeen innings of battling and rioting. With the score still tied in the fourteenth, the Tigers survived by what became famous as the “when-a-cop-took-a-stroll play.” Harry Davis of the A's hit a long fly to the outfield ropes. Sam Crawford muffed the catch for what seemed a two-base error. The Tigers claimed interference—“a cop got in Crawford's way!” Connie Mack argued that the officer was only trying to move away and give Crawford some room.

Plate umpire Silk O'Loughlin hesitated on the call while players exchanged shoves. Always the opportunist, Cobb told teammate Claude Rossman that Monte Cross of the A's had called him “a Jew bastard.” Rossman punched Cross and was arrested and ejected by police. With Rossman banned, the situation became so serious that base umpire Tommy Connolly consulted with O'Loughlin and ruled that it had been interference by the cop. Harry Davis was called out.

No scoring followed, and the game staggered on into one of the longest ever played, called by darkness in the seventeenth with the count 9–9. The A's lacked time in a dwindling season to catch up and the Tigers finished with a rush to take their first title in twenty years, dating back to 1887 in the Old National League. Cobb, the “Big Roar from Michigan,” contributed a single, double, key homer, a stolen base, and two runs scored.

A bitter Mack issued a statement: “If there ever was such a thing
as crooked baseball, today's game would stand as a good example.” Mack knew for a fact that the umpires had conspired against him. Newspapers were shocked, replying that Mack's language could not have been worse—he was charging the umpires with deliberately throwing a game.

After the decisive Philadelphia series, the Tigers moved to Washington, where Cobb attracted U.S. senators, curious to learn if the Peach was real. They came away talking about the four bases he stole in one game and his thirteen hits in eighteen at-bats during a series that Detroit swept, 4–0. As his final act of the season, he homered and tripled off St. Louis pitching.

Bonfire-lit parades in Motor City lasted into the night. Firemen feared that a section of Lafayette Boulevard would be burned down by the twenty-five thousand celebrants. Cobb and Bill Donovan buttons were struck off. The Peach received fifty free meals at Halloran's Diamond Grill. A dog painted with tiger stripes was presented to Cobb, who shipped him home to Augusta, where “Tiger” was featured in a parade down Broad Street. A week's billing at Detroit's Gayety Theater was offered Cobb, doing a “how I did it” monologue. He turned it down.

FINAL STATISTICS
gave Cobb the American League batting championship, making him the youngest man ever to accomplish that feat in the major leagues. Not only was his .350 the AL's highest and tied with the National League's best, but he led the circuit in hits, with 212, in runs scored plus runs driven in, with 213, and in steals, with 49. In total bases, 286, he led both leagues. He had accounted for close to one-third of the Tigers' collective 696 runs. Owner Frank Navin could not disclaim the fact that without him a team formerly going nowhere would not have finished close to its mark of 92 wins against 58 losses. Pitchers Donovan, Killian, Mullin, and Siever had a combined 89 victories, in considerable part because of Cobb's base-running, his hitting, and his appearance in 150 games while bandaged for cuts, muscle tears, and infection.

Yet, although the Tigers had reached the World Series, no apology was forthcoming from those who had taunted Cobb and tried to bring off a trade. “Having a bear year didn't seem to matter much,” he said in looking back. “But the boys did me a favor. They went their way, I
went mine. And I had a lot of time alone to think how I would improve. At midnight and later I'd be up reviewing plays made in the past. Could see where I'd gone wrong, how I would hit pitchers like Joss in Cleveland, Plank and Vickers in Philly, Slow Joe Doyle in New York, Johnson in Washington. I'd picture them in my mind's eye . . .”

The Dixie Demon was the toast of the town, drawing more press space in Detroit than anyone save workhorse Donovan. Navin was forced to recognize a seasonal comparison with two other notables who were earning triple or more Cobb's salary:

In a close-to-the-vest era in which one or two runs regularly decided games, the Georgian had not diluted his efforts by going for home runs. His hitting was contained. Even so he had 5 homers, 3 more than Lajoie and only 1 less than Wagner. His 11 errors and 30 assists placed him high in AL-NL fielding.

Six months earlier he had been trade bait. Now, entering postseason play against the Chicago Cubs, he was a celebrity.

IN THE
World Series the Tigers' earnings would have been considerably less if Germany Schaefer and Cobb had not made a bold request. Baseball's National Commission, meeting before the Series, was surprised when the two stood up and asked, “What happens with the players' share of Series receipts if there is a tie game?” No one had sought such clarification until now. Under rules laid down in 1905, players shared in proceeds of the first four contests. No provision was made for a deadlocked game within the first four. Schaefer and Cobb proposed that the hired hands should get a cut if a replay of a tie was required. Since the odds against that happening were long, the commission agreed to a revised division, cutting in teams.

Next day in the Series opener, before a sellout crowd of 24,377 at the West Side Ball Park of the Cubs, the two clubs played to a twelve-inning 3–3 tie called by darkness. A long shot had come in—to the players' profit.

The weather was cold and the hospitable Chicagoans greeted the Tigers by gathering outside their hotel with sticks and stones. Bill Yawkey countered the threat by placing Doc “Six-Gun” Crowe, a giant sheriff from Arizona, on guard duty in the lobby. Reporter Bill Phelon of the
Chicago Daily Journal
explained why elements of the National Guard were called out: “In an onslaught by the bugs, the ballyardfortress became a garrison … Thousands scaled the parapets despite barbed-wire entanglements … Major Charles Williams of the armed guard lost his pants.”

Manager Frank Chance's Cubs, after devastating the National League with a 107–45 win-loss mark in regular play, were favored to win with ease. The prediction was correct. In a five-game walkover Series, nineteen Cub runs were scored to the Tigers' six. On sore legs, and with a bad cold, Cobb could do little with pitchers Big Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, Orvie Overall, and Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown. When he wasn't grounding out (eight times in the Series), he was popping up, striking out, or flying out. When he moved up in the box to beat breaking balls, the Cubs knocked him down with dusters. Cobb invited Pfiester to fight. Pfiester declined. Detroit catcher Boss Schmidt made so many throwing errors that he set a record. Not until game number four, in Detroit, did Cobb manage an extra-baser, a triple off Overall. His Series total was four hits in twenty tries for a .200 average. On the bases he was shut out on steals by catcher Johnny Kling.

Only 7,370 at Detroit attended the final game, where the hometowners were shut out, 2–0. Cobb struck out twice, singled and stole one base. Financially, the short Series was a flop. Critics observed that perhaps the Tigers' seasonal showing was illusionary, that they did not belong in the big show. Cobb was overrated, claimed some experts. Cobb's untypically modest response was, “Well, I'm still learning.”

Becoming a Series “goat” was a blow. It stung enough that he cut short scheduled appearances in post-Series exhibitions and after a few games left for home. His Series check was for $1,945.96, a reprieve from debt for the part-time farmer. It would have been considerably less if Bill Yawkey had not tossed $15,000 into the players' pool from his losing owner's share. That winter Cobb's observation about Yawkey's generosity was, “He's one of the richest men in Michigan and can afford it. Look at what we drew.” With a team payroll of about
$35,000, Detroit pulled close to 300,000 customers, a solid gain over 1906.

In a new suit and derby, Cobb came home to welcoming parades. He now felt and dressed like a star. “But I knew I had it in me to do much better,” he said. “I was taking too many third strikes with the bat on my shoulder.” His legs were a worry. For risking permanent injury while leading the club to a pennant, he had earned $4,345, minus the repaid $300 loan from Navin in March. Cobb had planned to invest some of his Series check in the Aerocar Company or Detroit Auto Vehicle Company, two up-and-coming manufacturers. But that autumn a crisis hit Wall Street, affecting an overexpanded new auto industry. By October both Aerocar and Detroit Auto were in bankruptcy. Cobb was saved a loss that might have prevented—or at least delayed—his getting married.

She was a sixteen-year-old Augusta schoolgirl, a member of the socially prominent Lombard clan of Georgia, and a beauty.

The circumstances of Cobb's marriage in August of the 1908 season were typical of his conduct. A brusque, intolerant way of going about his affairs marked Cobb from the beginning. If someone was scheduled to meet him for a game of pool or for a buggy ride, and was late, he walked out. Even Grantland Rice, his favorite scribe, needed to make an appointment to conduct an interview. “Do you consider baseball a business?” Rice asked him. “If it isn't,” said Cobb, “then Standard Oil is a sport.”