Cobb (34 page)

Defending world champion Philadelphia won by a landslide 24–2. It could have been 30–0, but for the A's taking it easy. Jeering the travesty, the crowd left early, demanding ticket refunds. Seats were torn up, rocks were thrown at ticket windows. Arriving cops were stoned.

Johnson came down harder, canceling next day's game and affirming that every Tiger would join Cobb in indefinite disbarment. Cobb again spoke to the club, asking that members not risk their livelihood. Seeing they were losing the war, the Tigers surrendered. They accepted hundred-dollar fines each upon their decision to meet Washington, but only after Navin agreed to pay their fines.

Mysteriously, Cobb got off with his “indefinite” suspension reduced to but ten days, along with a fifty-dollar fine. “Johnson had no recourse,” he claimed. “In a private meeting with him I promised to sue the league for a hundred thousand dollars. And I had big-shot backers.”

The most publicized flap in diamond history concluded with the state of Georgia's delegation to the U.S. Congress complimenting their native son for defying “the mailed fist of tyranny,” for upholding precepts of southern manhood. Had he acted otherwise regarding the ballpark insults, all Georgia would have felt ashamed of him, etc.

For unknown reasons, Claude Lueker did not sue Cobb. Rumors of retaliation circulated all summer in New York, however, and Cobb said that then and later he received “a few hundred ‘Black Hand' letters,” many of them mentioning assassination. Meanwhile, Detroit had another series coming up in New York within seven weeks. “Of course I'll play,” Cobb informed the press. At Hilltop, in his July return to the scene of turmoil, he acted as if nothing had happened. His nonchalance never was more conspicuous.

It would have been acceptable to Detroit management if he had batted .280 for a while. Instead he delivered six base hits in seven at-bats in a St. Louis doubleheader. Moving to Philadelphia for two doubleheaders he piled up fourteen more hits in nineteen at-bats. He drilled four singles, two doubles and a triple—
seven straight safeties
—and ended a long road trip with a close to .540 average. Under fire by Ban Johnson, exposed to hostile ballpark crowds, Cobb was never hotter. In July he was averaging an “impossible” .521.

IT WAS
a time of vindication. At last some strides were being taken by the Base Ball Players Fraternity to combat a situation where superbly
skilled athletes had been treated like indentured servants—in many instances not even supplied with a copy of the Uniform Players' Contract upon signing it. “The near-sighted leading the blind” went the expression. With Dave Fultz, a college man and former big-leaguer as BBPF president, the federation shortly collected three hundred members—twelve hundred joined at its peak—and from 1912 on forced through such reforms as a clampdown by owners on spectator abuse of players, a guaranteed hearing for players ejected by umpires and automatically suspended, certification that no man could be traded away at a lesser salary than he had been receiving, and the concession that no one could be farmed out to a lower minor league until clubs in classifications between his old club and the new affiliation were first given a chance to deal for him. Copies of all contracts had to be supplied to the signees. Although falling far short of what unionization in other fields had accomplished, it was a breakthrough. Cobb was particularly proud of the Fraternity's recovery of the $2,348 for Bert Hageman of the Boston Red Sox in a breach-of-contract lawsuit won by the BBPF. “Another thing—until now the cheap owners had made players pay their own travel expenses when traded,” said Cobb. “We got rid of that sort of crap.” When Fultz invited him to serve as BBPF vice president, Cobb accepted.

As another aftermath of the Hilltop Park imbroglio, the result of the
New York American
's poll was announced. Was Cobb within his rights, or should fans be allowed to freely express themselves? Surprisingly, the vote was 3,013 for Cobb, 1,167 against the Peach. The sampler vote became useful to the BBPF in its dealings down the road with National Commission autocrats.

IN AUGUST
of that 1912 season, Cobb was on another of his heavy-hitting streaks when he drove his Chalmers auto to Detroit's train station. His habit when roadward bound was to have wife Charlie accompany him to the train, then drive herself home to the six-room house he rented near Navin Field. Charlie saw little of him, as it was, and she enjoyed their time together. This time the Tigers were leaving for an exhibition game in Syracuse, New York. It was late on a Sunday with streets deserted, when Cobb found himself never so happy to be armed with a gun.

On Trumbull Avenue, three men stood in the street, waving their arms. As soon as he stopped his car one of the trio demanded his
money. To protect his wife, he slid out, to be met by punches from all three. Cobb knocked down one of them, while the others circled. He dropped another. But the third man climbed onto Cobb's back and stuck a knife into him. Cobb pulled out his pistol, which would not fire. He kept on swinging and at one point had two muggers on the ground. When the gang split and ran, he chased them. “I caught up with one and left him in sorry condition,” he declared. “I ran down the other. He'd ducked into a dead-end alley between two houses.” Using his gun's sight like a blade and the butt end as well, he slashed away until the man's face was faceless, “Left him there, not breathing, in his own rotten blood,” he went on with satisfaction. Cobb believed he killed this mugger. A few days later a press report told of an unidentified body found off Trumbull in an alley.

T.C. was bleeding badly, and a hysterical Charlie begged him to go directly to a doctor. The knife used on him had inflicted a six-inch wound in his lower left back. Instead, he drove on to the train station with a kerchief stuck in the cut.

Detroit newspapers had a field day. Extra editions were rushed: “
COBB STABBED!
” cried the
Free Press
. “Attack On Tyrus Throws Detroit Into Paroxysms.” According to the
Free Press
, for a while—until the true facts were ascertained—the city went into mourning at word that the world's foremost ballplayer had been knifed and was dying. One report went: “For an hour or more the business district was practically at a standstill. Men, women and children ceased their work.”

By early Monday a correction was out. An error had been made. The wounded Cobb—“amazingly”—had gone on to Syracuse with the team and there rapped out two hits in four times at bat. “Hardly the work of a dead man,” observed the
Journal
. Mark Twain's celebrated reply that his reported death was an exaggeration was quoted. The
Journal
noted, caustically, “The report that one of our aldermen had refused a bribe scarcely could have upset the town more.”

Upon boarding the train a grim Cobb had told no one of the injury. Teammate Jean Dubuc noticed his blood-soaked coat and a trainer temporarily patched him up. The pair of hits he produced at Syracuse came while wearing a makeshift bandage. Not until after the game did he see a doctor. Stitched up, he didn't miss any start afterward.

Within days he was as frisky as ever. He was all showman, flamboyantly using tactics never before seen. One of his throwaway acts
came when, facing an insecure pitcher, he would step back just before the windup, scoop up a handful of dirt, disdainfully toss it toward the mound, and not bother to swing. Or, as a strike whizzed past, he would stand unmoving, gazing at the sky. Pitchers seethed when Cobb turned his back on their throws to converse casually with the Tiger standing on deck. He'd say something like, “This bozo hasn't got a thing” or “Let's do some duck-hunting next winter.” Sometimes he wouldn't even bother to swing until the strike count reached 0 and 2. Often enough, this paid off. Cobb in 1911 hit safely in 40 straight games, a record that would stand for twenty-two years and today remains the third-longest of the century for the American League; in 1917, he would put together a 35-game streak, exceeded as of 1993 by only five other major league batters.

Beanballs aimed at or near his head came with repayment. Hub “Dutch” Leonard, a Boston left-hander who struck fear in opponents, ticked Cobb's chin once too often. “So I dragged a bunt which their first baseman was forced to field,” he logged in his diary. “Leonard ran to first to take the throw. When he saw I was going for him and not the bag, he kept on running into the coaching box. Damned coward. I ignored the bag, drove right through after him … he ran toward the dugout and I missed cutting him by inches … He never threw another beaner at me.” In years to come Cobb would have more dealings with Leonard.

Several years earlier Cy Morgan, also of Boston, ran and hid on a plate play. As the runner at second base, T.C. raced around third on a wild pitch by Morgan, who was by then covering home. The chance to score was small. “Morgan was at the dish waiting for the throw,” Cobb claimed later. “I guess I hadn't taken more than three strides past third when Morgan had the ball in his hands, waiting for me. I thought,
Well, here's where we settle this
. I went straight at him with my steel showing. He turned and ran away, refusing the contact. Later that night he was released by Boston.” So Cobb said, anyway.

APPRAISALS THAT
the Peach lacked a sense of humor were all too true. He would, however, now and then, find a laugh in the day's routine. But the funny stuff had to be of his own making. When a Detroit team photograph was taken one day, he managed to be in two places at once without ruining or even blurring the film. The Tigers, posed as a
group, formed too long a line for the usual camera to capture, so a panoramic camera was used. A press correspondent's story went, “Cobb was standing fourth from the left, with the lens traveling in an arc from one end of the line to the other. Noticing the rate at which it was going, the prank popped into his head that he could beat the machine.

“So the instant the lens passed him he dashed out and around the rear of the camera and dug out for the other end of the line, like he does when stealing home. What a stunt! He arrived in time to take up a position at the side of Manager Jennings—and in the photo he appears beside Jennings, smiling and as composed as he appears in the fourth place from the right.” The “impossible” feat was played in papers across the country under such captions as “Peach's Fabled Speed Positively Confirmed by Camera!”

If any cloud showed on his horizon as a player in those prewar years, it was a left-handed, raspy-voiced ex-cowboy from Hubbard City, Texas, six feet of tremendous ballhawking talent: Tris Speaker. Previous contenders for best-in-the-game honors, Wagner and Lajoie, were fading with age. Speaker was slightly younger than Cobb. The best playmaking outfielder ever seen, Speaker played in so close that he was known as a fifth infielder. He was so fast that he could set up far in, yet get back in time for the catch. Speaker also could hit well enough to rival Cobb; his career 793 doubles remain a major-league record to this day. From his early years with the Boston Red Sox, he represented a definite challenge to Cobb's all-around domination. A ditty went:

Said Tristram Speaker to Tyrus Cobb,
“Smoke up, kid, or I'll cop your job.”
“October will find you a damned sight meeker,”
Said Tyrus Cobb to Tristram Speaker.

Speaker's abiding frustration was that, while he was shining for Boston and then Cleveland, Cobb always hit a little better than he did. In a season where he averaged .340, Cobb averaged .385; when Speaker did .383, Cobb was at .410; when Speaker posted .352, he was outdone by Cobb's .383. This persisted for almost a decade. The one and only season in which Texas Tris led in their rivalry came in 1916,
when his .386 finally topped Cobb, at .371, ending a string of nine consecutive years of American League batting championships for the Georgian. Cobb was slowed by two bouts of influenza that year. His phenomenal nine-year run has never been matched, let alone closely approached, by anyone else who ever swung a bat. And after his one-season lapse the Peach would ring up three more consecutive championship seasons, to run his batting titles to a unique twelve in thirteen years.

Speaker deserves much credit for goading his rival to consistent heights. He once said to me, “We were a lot alike. Our short move into the pitch was much the same. We were both place-hitters. We were lefties.” The two entered the Hall of Fame one year apart—Cobb, of course, entering first in 1936. Some historians feel—and Cobb didn't disagree—that Speaker was to him what Lou Gehrig was to Babe Ruth. Speaker's lifetime batting average was .345, seventh best in history.

So unlike each other in most other ways, the easygoing Speaker and the frenetic, rancorous Cobb formed a lasting friendship. They joined in hunting trips from the southern U.S. to Canada. Their only hard words came, said Grey Eagle Speaker, on a hunt for moose in the Canadian Rockies. T.C. raised his gun to fire, Speaker knocked it away. “That's a
lady
moose!” Tris objected. “We don't shoot them.” Cobb was angry, but the moment passed.

DURING THIS
period of abundance, from 1910 onward, Cobb was approached on a confidential matter by Grantland Rice, his old advisor and critic from Atlanta. Now on the
New York Evening Mail
, in 1913 Granny Rice brought a dire warning to his fellow southerner.

“Hell may break loose soon, Ty,” Rice confided. “Frank Chance came into the press box the other day and swore that Hal Chase is throwing games on him. Came right out with it.” Chance, the “Peerless Leader,” had been named manager of the New York Yankees earlier in the year, inheriting Chase at first base. Normally a fine performer, Chase had recently become erratic.

“Will you print it?” asked Cobb.

“My editors want more proof, so I'm sitting on Chase for the time being,” said Rice.