Cobb (32 page)

At St. Louis the “gaff,” or fix, was all too evident; the
Detroit Free Press
bannered: “
ST. LOUIS LAYS DOWN TO LET LAJOIE WIN.
” The
St. Louis
Post
let go with: “All St. Louis is up in arms over the deplorable spectacle, conceived in stupidity and executed in jealousy. The frame-up to deprive Cobb of the title surely will end the careers of whatever home-team officials ordered this monstrous fraud. This city should subscribe to a fund to buy Ty Cobb a Chalmers auto.”

While people awaited the ruling of league president Ban Johnson, unofficial calculations were in disagreement. Chicago's
Tribune
had Lajoie winning the championship by 3 points, .385 to .382. The
Sporting News
called it .38415 to .38411 in favor of Cobb. Other journals had conflicting figures. From Philadelphia, where he was undergoing further eye treatment, Cobb said little, other than to suggest that O'Connor should be fired.

It was widely reported that eight of his Tiger teammates had sent a telegram to Lajoie, prematurely congratulating him on his victory in the Chalmers race. McIntyre, Crawford, Jones, Bush, and Boss Schmidt were said to be among those who signed the message, which they did not deny. Some observers felt that in the unending Cobb-Tigers war the telegram was the most vicious of all acts. Cobb only said, “That was to be expected.” He expressed confidence that a just ruling would be made by Johnson, despite their past differences. It was Frank Navin's voice in the matter that he feared more than Ban Johnson's. “That prick, Navin, never has liked me,” he told one of the few friendly Tigers, “and his vote will be important.”

Enter Hugh Fullerton, New York sportswriter. Fullerton had been a co-scorekeeper of another Detroit game, back in midseason, and at that time had given Cobb credit for a questionable hit. His fellow scorer had changed it to a fielder's error. Digging into his files, Fullerton found the score sheet used that day, restored the hit, and forwarded his amendment to the league office. He urged Johnson to accept his belief that Cobb had been robbed of a single. This complicated things even further for Bob McRoy, the league statistician charged with untangling the issue of who had won.

Other support came from the last place where “runner-up Cobb”—a phrase already being bandied about—expected to find it: Manhattan. In the interest of a square deal, New Yorkers showed sympathy toward their longtime enemy. Heywood Broun of the
New York Morning Telegraph
commanded a large audience as a leading editorialist. A Harvard man and intellectual, Broun's “It Seems to Me” column
on world affairs was becoming a staple for sophisticated readers. Of anti-Cobb sentiment Broun wrote:

As the world knows, Tyrus Raymond Cobb is less popular than Napoleon Lajoie. Perhaps Cobb is the least-popular player who ever lived. And why? Whether you like or you dislike this fellow you must concede him one virtue: what he has won he has taken by might of his own play. Pistareen ball players whom he has shown up dislike him, third basemen with bum arms, second basemen with tender skins, catchers who cannot throw out a talented slider—all despise Cobb. And their attitude has infected the stands.

Ahhh—one wonders. Here is the best man in the world at his game, without the shade of a doubt; the best of any time. Yet it seems he is fated to move across the field as did Bobby Burns' gallant scapegoat, who danced beneath the noose—“Sae wantonly, sae dauntingly, sae rantingly gaied he.” He played a spring and danced it “round the gallows tree.” If Cobb sticks his cap on three hairs, as the Irish say, laughs in the faces of his opponents and steals bases while they stand around with the ball in their hands, is he to be damned by the populace?

With the curious crassity which always leads the mob to rend that hand that feeds and to lick that which whips it, spectators at baseball games do not like this player who gives them more for their hard-earned ticket than any man alive or dead gave them. When humanity put to death its Greatest Servant, all that he could say in condonation was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” That was the biggest and truest thing He ever said. Humanity prefers guile and gaud to honesty and worth. Humanity is asinine.

Humanity also paid to see baseball games, however, and the public would not tolerate an attempted fix. One week after the “black day” at St. Louis, Ban Johnson announced the decision. Napoleon Lajoie had compiled a .384084 average—Johnson accepted Frenchy's gift hits from the Browns as legal without batting an eye—but Cobb had hit .384944. That was squeezing decimal points until they screamed, but Cobb was the victor, by the finest of margins. Detroit whooped.
Elsewhere there were boos. Cobb said that he was delighted—and stopped at that. He was in a position to ask how Johnson could credit Lajoie with hits handed to him fraudulently, but passed up the opportunity. He might have to deal with Johnson on another day.

Not until the following spring could a Detroit writer get him to speak on the matter of the eight Tigers who prematurely congratulated Lajoie. “Oh, when I pass some of them on the street,” he drawled, “I just honk the horn of my new car at them.”

Some analysts of Johnson's decision believed that he ruled as he did in part because Lajoie was thirty-six years old, somewhat slowing up, and would not be a big box-office draw for much longer. By contrast, at twenty-four Ty Cobb would be pulling in crowds for years to come.

Taking his time after the World Series, Johnson forced the St. Louis management to fire Jack O'Connor and Harry Howell, and kept them from being rehired elsewhere. Third baseman Red Corriden and shortstop Bobby Wallace were exonerated. In playing far out of position, they were only following their boss's orders. Wallace replaced O'Connor as manager and St. Louis continued to be the league doormat.

Auto magnate Hugh Chalmers provided the only pleasant note to the affair by generously awarding automobiles to both Cobb and Lajoie. As far as he was concerned, their contest had ended in a tie. Within ten days Cobb was off to Georgia, driving the Chalmers. Over the winter he entered a high speed ten-mile auto race on an Atlanta track where several drivers had been killed. No safety equipment as it is known today was provided. Cobb also rode in exhibitions in tandem with Barney “Fastest Man Alive” Oldfield, who also held the record for most crashes on a speedway. Navin, learning of this in Detroit, threw up his hands. What else could you call Cobb but suicidal?

CURIOUS AS
to how deeply Cobb's racial prejudice went, Joe Vila of the
New York Sun
asked him how he felt about recent Tiger trips to Cuba to meet all-star clubs composed solidly of blacks. Cobb's reply, as preserved in his “career” files, was, “A man named Alex Reeves works for me at my Georgia home. Alex is the best darky and houseman I've ever known.” Concerning another matter: John McGraw, earlier, had disguised a star black semipro, Charlie Grant, as “Charlie Tokahama, a
full-blooded Cherokee.” Cobb noted that McGraw didn't get away with smuggling Grant-Tokahama into the New York Giants lineup; the promising young star was exposed and ousted. “There will never be a darky in the majors,” T.C. confidently foresaw. “Darkies' place is in the stands or as clubhouse help.”

In 1909, a band of Tigers had traveled to Cuba, where they lost eight of twelve exhibitions against a startlingly competent lineup—an ethnic mix of African, Spanish, Yucatec, Jamaican, and other bloodlines—but without Cobb, who declined to join the party. He swore he would never step onto a field against nonwhites.

At a later date Havana promoters offered Detroit a deal to return for a series. Joe Vila prodded Cobb. Still he had no intention of taking part in the coming repeat exhibition—not until Cuba threw in a thousand-dollar bonus and travel expenses so that baseball-happy islanders could see El Supremo perform. “I decided to break my own rule for a few games,” he said in an interview. Money was talking.

On the agreed November 1910 date he failed to appear in Havana, angering Cubans and leaving everybody guessing. Cobb leisurely went fishing off south Florida until he felt like boarding a steamer out of Key West. By the time he checked in, the Tigers had won three, lost three, and tied one game against the challengers and needed help in a hurry. Before his debut at a packed Havana park, Cobb was introduced to John “Pop” Lloyd, an infielder rated by U.S. professionals who had seen him as equal to just about anyone in the majors. Lloyd was one of the few shortstops who could go deep into the hole and while sprinting toward the left-field stands throw across his body to first for outs. Meeting Lloyd, Cobb pointedly didn't shake hands. One photo of their meeting survives; Cobb's hands are in his pockets.

In his first game T.C. hit a pair of singles and a home run. “Ten thousand Cubans ran for that homer ball as a souvenir,” went the report. Next he went hitless against the bullet fastball of the island's pride, Jose de la Caridad Mendez, known as “the greatest pitcher never allowed in U.S. baseball.” On bases, sliding with spikes high, Cobb three times was tagged out by a fearless Lloyd. In a total of five Cuban games Cobb averaged .370. He was outshone by Lloyd, who batted .500. Local reporters asked Cobb when their countrymen would be admitted to top
Yanqui
leagues. He waved away the question. Through a strained series he remained stiff-necked and silent. With his help, the
Detroit Tigers overall won seven of eleven games in Cuba. The results were prototypic proof that skin color had nothing to do with athletic ability, and it pained those white fans who witnessed it.

COBB'S FEATURES
were undergoing noticeable changes for so early an age. His jaw was becoming more set. Pouches appeared below his eyes, his nose had sharpened. His somber face was known everywhere. “I could walk into any saloon in the country and be given free drinks,” he said. On the street he wore his hat pulled low to avoid unwelcome fans. Before he was twenty-eight he could count forty-odd stitch marks on his thighs, legs, and ankles—purplish, healed-over scars with the appearance of tattoos. When I asked him if the wounds were still painful, he snapped, “What the hell do you think?” At the time he was past seventy.

Playing the game had always been painful for him, and in years to come it would continue to be. Once at Cleveland, with Cobb the runner at first, a ball was safely looped to short left field. He went into second and accidentally collided with baseman Joe Sewell. Wheeler Joe Sewell was one opponent whom Cobb liked, a good guy on his way to the Hall of Fame with a career .312 average. In the collision, Cobb spiked himself. He was carried off the field in agony.

Cleveland's trainer called a doctor, who arrived without an anesthetic. “I can't deaden the pain,” he said. The doctor called for volunteers to hold down his patient while he did emergency stitching. Witnesses heard Cobb moan, “I'll take it cold. Just give me a cigar.” He was so deeply cut that bone and ligaments could be seen as the doctor stitched away. “How Cobb took it none of us knew,” said Sewell. “But he did.”

Getting to sleep after ball games was a problem for him. Since boyhood he had suffered from insomnia. He tried sleep potions, exercising on the carpet, and a method known to most ballplayers—sex. He would pick out one of the girls who hung around hotels, looking for a romp with a star player, and who would tire him out. Once, in St. Louis, he invited a girl upstairs. She acted suspiciously. Cobb sensed the old badger game at work. Minutes after the girl walked in, the “husband” would show up, claim she was his wife, and demand a money settlement to prevent publicity alleging rape. Recalled T.C., “I threw this dame out the door just as the badger guy rushed in. They
hit with a bang and went down. But that one was easy. Sometimes women would bribe hotel workers to let them in my room. When I came home, I'd find them under my bed.”

At times, exhausted after a game, he would fall into bed without eating dinner. For sleepless nights, Cobb kept pencil and paper handy for notemaking, in case he thought of an idea useful on the field: “It seemed that just when I got drowsy something would come to my mind that I didn't want to forget by morning. Couldn't turn off my thinking.”

In his “how-to” book,
Busting 'Em,
he told of what an effort it was to arise before 10:00
A.M.
Waking up and feeling functional took an hour or more. On the road in extremely hot weather—with no air-conditioning on hundred-degree nights—he would lie naked or fill a bathtub with ice water and soak in it, wishing he were ocean fishing at Sea Island, Georgia, and not a ballplayer.

As noted, one of the assets of being Ty Cobb was the luxury of not having to share hotel space with anyone. Where other Tigers bunked two and even three to a room, he resided alone in all seven American League cities. Hughie Jennings was the victim in an incident that occurred early in 1912 at Chicago's Beach Hotel. Beach management gave Cobb a room adjacent to a noisy Illinois Central Railway switching yard. He complained to the management that he could not sleep amid such a din.

“Sorry, but we have nothing else available at this time of night,” said the manager.

The Tigers were to face Manager Nixey Callahan's White Sox the next day. At midnight Cobb hammered on Jennings's door. His temper rising, he warned Jennings, “Get me a room or I'm leaving.”

Jennings spoke with the manager, to no avail. The offer was made to transfer Cobb to another hotel. Cobb was willing to go, but only if the entire Detroit team went with him, as a lesson to hotel management.

Nothing was left but for the Peach to move in with Jennings. Again Cobb refused. He could not sleep with anyone else in the room.

Jennings had run out of options. With an important series at hand, it was essential to keep the Tigers' number-one hitter calm and concentrated. He usually hit effectively against White Sox pitching—Ed Walsh, Joe Benz, Eddie Cicotte, Frank Lange. But, standing there at midnight in his nightshirt, Jennings could not very well awaken a
whole team to take up new accommodations. Another problem was that Charlie Comiskey, of Chicago's Comiskey Park ownership, had advertised Ty Cobb's name to draw a crowd. If it got around that the Georgian would not appear, thousands of dollars could be lost at the box office.