Cobb (37 page)

Ted Williams and Cobb in 1961, the last year of Cobb's life. Note Cobb's inscription: "good shot of 2 lefties."

United States Senator Hoke Smith of Georgia, a hard-shelled states-rights Democrat and former secretary of the interior, entertained a visitor in Washington one January day of 1913. The caller was no surprise. Ty Cobb had been corresponding with his home-state congressman for several months, writing Smith to the effect that ballplayers' contracts were illegal, that his own attorneys felt an investigation was in order, and that Cobb, a prominent victim of monopolistic practice, hoped Smith would look into it.

Smith's reply had been to wire: “
SEND ME A COPY OF YOUR CONTRACT INCLUDING RESERVE CLAUSE. ALSO SEND COPY TO GEORGIA FEDERATION OF LABOR.
”

Cobb not only obliged, but he followed it up with a trip to Washington for a consultation. Smith was delighted to meet Ty Cobb in the flesh. A strong force in the Senate, the lawmaker had played ball on Georgian sandlots as a boy, and now sat with the gallery gods at local Washington Nationals games. He introduced his guest to colleagues as the best ever to wear spikes. Cobb later noted of their meeting, “He studied the reserve clause binding me to Detroit forever … and another clause which entitled the club to release players on ten days'
notice when he had no equal right to end the agreement … and called it highly improper.” In the next weeks Hoke Smith laid plans to charge organized baseball's compact with its workforce as “outright peonage.” Lining up support from Representative Thomas Hartwick of Georgia and Representative Thomas Gallagher of Illinois, he prepared a resolution stating that ownership of teams as a combine comprised “the most mendacious, audacious and autocratic private monopoly and trust in the world.”

By appealing to high federal officials, Cobb paved the way to an interminable legal war, one that would be fought in lesser courts and on up to the U.S. Supreme Court for the next sixty-two years. Not until 1975 would the national game be found in violation of a player's inherent right to work in the vineyard of his choice.

The bedrock of baseball's sixteen-team amalgamation of franchises was a feudal edifice called the “reserve clause.” This fiat, instituted in 1879, decreed that a club reserved and retained the services of Player X in perpetuity—until he was washed up, retired, or peddled on the market. Further, owners agreed not to employ anyone reserved by any other American or National League member. The cage was shut tight. In the past a few weak attempts to cite anti-trust codes had proved useless.

Although free agency wasn't achieved in the big leagues until many years later, Ty Cobb stands as the rebel who eighty-one years ago initiated a move toward emancipation. “Nobody gave me much credit for it,” he remembered. “But there wasn't another man back then savvy and smart enough to pull the right strings … show up the owners for their racket.” By agitating in Congress he opened the way to reforms leading to the right of free agency and arbitration of contracts, then progressively to where in 1974 it was possible for a pitcher, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, to force the New York Yankees to pay him $3.5 million in a package deal. Thereafter the figure was regularly exceeded by a long string of beneficiaries who in the 1980s and 1990s grossed multimillions and up per plutocrat.

For the 1913 season Cobb asked for $15,000. That meant a $6,000 raise over what he had drawn in 1910, 1911, and 1912 under an existing extended-service agreement. Navin and Yawkey grudgingly offered $10,500. Cobb declined, saying that he had been the core of a prosperous operation ever since leading Detroit to three World Series appearances. Deficit or near-deficit days were ended. Fans now lined
up in the rain to buy tickets, a civic ordinance prohibiting Sunday ball had been overcome in 1911, and Navin Field had been restructured to hold twenty-two thousand—with fire inspectors looking the other way. Profits were way up. Cobb's accountants—he had two of them—estimated the Tigers' franchise value to be $700,000, and Cobb's box-office draw worth $40,000 per season. If a one-man show existed in any American arena or stadium, Cobb the Great was it.

“You know very well they come out to see me,” he put it to Yawkey, “and I want $15,000.”

Navin, as the press reported, retaliated, “You'll play for me at my price or not at all.”

For support, Cobb called upon such fervid admirers as Grantland Rice of the
New York Evening Mail
and Harry Salsinger of the
News
. The columnists publicized his contributions and salary progress:

1906—.320 average (led his team), $1,500 salary

1907—.350 (led league, tied for both leagues' lead), $2,400 salary

1908—.324 (led his league), $4,500 salary

1909—.377 (led both leagues), $4,500 salary

1910—.385 (led both leagues), $9,000 salary

1911—.420 (led both leagues), $9,000 salary

1912—.410 (led both leagues), $9,000 salary

Beyond doubt there was no performance sheet in the majors to match that. Nevertheless the Tigers flatly rejected his “polite request” (Cobb's words before things became flammable), repeating that $15,000 was unprecedented and outrageous.

Detroit's front office compared the pay of other names of fame to strengthen its stand. Walter “Big Train” Johnson of Washington, with a 32–12 win-loss mark in 1912 and 33 shutouts to date, was a pitching paragon earning $8,000 annually. Hal Chase, leading first baseman of Chicago, drew a supposed $7,000. Christy “Big Six” Mathewson of the New York Giants, a machinelike producer of 138 wins in the past five seasons, was in the $9,000 class. Navin was quoted, “Nobody makes $15,000—Cobb's overimpressed with himself. He'll settle or regret it.”

From Augusta, where he was wintering and bagging more wild game, Cobb maintained pressure. Calling a press conference, he made
it plain “I am holding out. I will not report to spring training until I receive what I'm worth. That's final.” Newsmen inquired how he could afford the suspension he would undoubtedly draw for staying out. He was unconcerned. Until now he had been thought of as mostly one-dimensional, a player who despite his sideline activities was dependent upon Detroit as his main source of steady income. But, Cobb pointed out, “Four years ago I bought shares in Arizona copper mines at three dollars per share. They've hit some good veins and the shares now are worth one thousand dollars each. I'm also partner in sporting goods stores.” Also, not long ago, he had sold cotton futures he held for a $7,500 profit. Anything else? “Yes,” he said easily, “I've been invited to become a director of the First National Bank of Lavonia, Georgia.” Beyond all that, the holdout was opening a Hupmobile agency in Augusta in conjunction with a Detroit manufacturer eager to cash in on his name. Who needed Navin's and Yawkey's money? Not he, suggested Cobb. He now was invested from the South to the Far West.

March 10 arrived and the Tigers assembled for spring workout at Gulfport, Mississippi. An absent Cobb was busy with one more project—the brash organizing of his own team, the All-Georgian All-Stars, with himself as the star turn in the outfield. As promoter-owner of the Stars he took 40 percent off the top of gate receipts. By estimate he would clear $3,500 or so during a three-state tour, with the secondary advantage that he would stay in shape. In some cases the barnstorming All-Stars were moving into towns and villages ahead of Detroit's appearances there, cutting into the Tigers' receipts.

Still Navin and Yawkey did not budge. Spring camp ended in April, the regular season neared, and management faced the fact of its weakening bargaining position. Cobb further strengthened his one-man rebellion by announcing that a Logansport, Indiana, automobile concern had guaranteed him a one-year, fifteen-thousand-dollar deal to act as its sales agent in Chicago. He liked the proposition. Why not a year off from baseball? Tyrus produced a wire he had sent the company: “
AM READY TO TALK BUSINESS. AWAIT YOUR ORDERS.
”

Detroit chose to counterattack. The
New York Times
printed Navin's strongest riposte yet: “In the past I have put up with a great deal from Mr. Cobb. It has now reached the point of showdown. It is conceded by everybody that he is the best baseball player in the world.
And Mr. Cobb also is the best-paid player in the world. But this is not the issue. The issue is discipline.

“Cobb did not make baseball, baseball made him. A player cannot be bigger than the game which creates him. To give in to Cobb now would be to concede that he is greater than baseball itself, for he has set all its laws at defiance.”

Sniffing, Cobb answered that he was busy just now supervising plans for his new three-story Augusta home. The dwelling would feature an ornate spiral staircase, Oriental rugs, and a grand piano. With wife Charlie and their two small children he would move in as of November. While conferring with carpenters and plumbers, he found time to reply, “Navin chooses to drag my name through the mud. His statement that discipline and not money is the important issue is enough to queer his whole vicious attack on me. And I wish to deny that I am the best-paid player in the world.”

He did not name his superior, if any, but he seemed to be pointing at John Peter Honus Wagner, the bowlegged, perennial Pittsburgh shortstop who since 1900 had led National League hitting eight times.

Navin retorted in print: “What effect will his I-am-above-the-law theory have on other players? We might as well turn the club over to Cobb and eventually the League.”

The holdout returned, “I'm moveable. Let Detroit sell me elsewhere if they can't meet my demand. I think it likely that some other organization can use me.”

Bill Yawkey, Navin, and American League panjandrums now fully removed the gloves. They took the public backstage in another
New York Times
interview, stating, “If Cobb does not like a hotel room a clerk gives him, he quits the team for a week. If he doesn't like what a silly man in the grandstand yells at him, he punches his face and is again out of the game [the Lueker suspension episode of 1912]. He quit the game in 1910 when we were fighting for the pennant and publicly stated he would not play in company with a comrade in left field, D. [Davy] Jones, on account of some misunderstanding with him.

“If he doesn't feel like practicing he stays away from the park. He has grown to believe that his greatness has precluded him from being subject to discipline.”

On and on it went. Navin said his patience was exhausted and warned that if the boycotter didn't quickly change his mind, the power
of the league would crush him. Ban Johnson, speaking for the American League, confirmed that ultimatum. Johnson: “Cobb's an outlaw. He's always been an outlaw. It was his action in mauling a fan at New York that led to a wholesale strike by the Detroit team.” Johnson's list of Cobb's crimes “is so long it runs into three pages,” commented one baseball writer. An editorialist inquired, “If he's as big an offender against civilization as that, why isn't Ty Cobb in state's prison?”

Always a believer in the timely counterattack, Cobb accepted a vice presidency of the newly formed Base Ball Players Fraternity, which had a list of grievances against the owners longer than Ban Johnson's exhaustive bill of particulars.

On April 17, two weeks after the season had opened, Cobb was summarily suspended by the National Commission and barred from competing in 1913. He took it with suspicious calm. Five days later he left Augusta for Detroit. Word circulated that a “peaceful settlement” was in the works. Checked into the Brunswick Hotel, Cobb had nothing to say to the press about anything, except for an oblique, “I may have a surprise for the fans.”

Long afterward Cobb described what he said was the strategy he used. “What happened was that my senator friend, Hoke Smith, had been keeping busy in Washington. I had his telegram to me saying that my contract was antitrust stuff and illegal. Navin knew of the telegram and it scared the hell out of the boys in sixteen cities. Pure dynamite.” And there was more up the Georgian's sleeve.

On April 22, Representative Thomas Gallagher filed a bill before Congress with teeth in it. In part it read:

WHEREAS
, the most audacious and autocratic trust in the country is the one which presumes to control the game; that competition is stifled; that territory and games are apportioned; that men are enslaved and forced to accept salaries and terms or forever be barred from playing and of other acts incident to trafficking in a national pastime for pecuniary gain—

THEREFORE
be it resolved that the Speaker of the House is hereby directed to appoint a special committee of seven members to investigate the operation of the Baseball Trust … to ascertain whether players have been coerced or restrained from the exercise of their just rights … to take testimony …
that the Attorney General of the United States is hereby directed to use all the powers of his office to summon witnesses and enforce production of all documents, contracts, etc. … to punish by criminal prosecution of the Anti-Trust Laws of the United States.

Gallagher's resolution and Hoke Smith's denunciations were quite enough to cause emergency meetings of the National Commission and end months of fireworks. Yawkey and Navin, wanting no close federal inspection, backed down in partial surrender. On April 25, with his lawyer, Cobb drove to Navin Field to sign a one-year contract at $12,000 “plus some unpublicized bonus money” (so Cobb told me). The $15,000 he had demanded “was a bluff from the start,” he recorded in a journal he kept and called “my son-of-a-bitch list.” What it came down to was an immediate $3,000 pay increase augmented by an off-the-record $2,000 handed him by Yawkey with the words “to be good and take us to another pennant.” The final settlement amounted to $14,000.