War on the Basepaths Read online

  From the initial training session at Warren Park, which was up to snuff by the time Detroit was ready to take the field, Davy Jones displayed an awesome presence. Paul H. Bruske of Sporting Life declared him the “foremost” of all recruits, and it was obvious that Cobb was in the fight of his young career to maintain a spot on the everyday roster.74 Furthermore, Armour felt Jones was the greatest outfielder ever surrendered by the American Association.75 While no decisions were yet made, Jones looked to be the favorite for the outfield slot.

  Cobb, notably, had an influential supporter in Joe S. Jackson of the Detroit Free Press, who, throughout the spring, praised his abilities. Almost from his arrival, Jackson noticed that Cobb was conditioned and ready to play. Others routinely waited for the spring to get into shape and often entered the regular season at a bit less than top speed. But Cobb was prepared, and because of his extra dedication to training, he was a better base runner, an improved slider, and his bunts were more along the lines of a professional at the major league level.76 He even turned out to the grounds on a cold, wet morning after Armour announced that workouts had been cancelled, just to get in some added exercise.77

  Another component of spring training was the general bonding of teammates. Old acquaintances were renewed, introductions were made, and usually cordiality was shared throughout. The Tigers possessed a good number of established friendships, some of which were fostered by sharing teams in the past. For instance, Davy Jones was teammates with new Detroit catcher Charley “Boss” Schmidt and pitcher Ed Siever in Minneapolis in 1905. Three years earlier, he also teamed with pitcher Red Donahue of the St. Louis Browns and infielder Herman “Germany” Schaefer of the Chicago Orphans. Siever and Donahue were on the same St. Louis club in 1903, and Barrett was an old friend of Crawford going back to Cincinnati in 1899–1900.78 Others like McIntyre and pitcher Ed Killian were roommates and shared the same ideals, making friendship easy.

  The more outgoing and charming personalities were, expectedly, easier to get along with. Those who quickly jumped into the ongoing conversations, made jokes, and related by interests or vices, were generally welcomed, regardless of their experience. Cobb was neither outgoing nor charming. He didn’t relate to his teammates through hobbies, vices, religion, background, or outlook. Cobb didn’t drink or smoke, and refrained from using foul language. He was from a Baptist household, whereas baseball historian Fred Lieb suggested that “perhaps half” of Cobb’s teammates were Catholics.79 Cobb didn’t tell stories, laugh at jokes, and certainly avoided sociable situations.80 The humor of those around him didn’t compute in his rigid mind and, instead of trying to understand and grow from personal interaction, he backed further away. It was a tremendous character fault, and early in 1906, it hampered his development as both a player and as an adult.

  Years later Cobb explained: “I have been accused frequently of keeping off by myself and not mixing very much with my teammates. People have construed that to mean [I have felt I’m] a whole lot better than my teammates. But they have misjudged me. I have always been a poor mixer, not because I wanted to be a poor mixer, but simply because nature intended me that way.”81

  Undoubtedly, Cobb’s mind was rather fractured by the approaching court action that involved his mother in the death of his father, a drama that was literally days away.82 He did his best to keep his focus on baseball and little else. Communal happenings and finding friendly companionship was the last thing on his mind. In total, Cobb remained the odd man out, and that status didn’t work against him, surprisingly, as one might think. It made him sharper, more passionate about doing his best and his work improved day after day.

  His mother, Amanda Cobb, was well represented when proceedings opened at Lavonia, Georgia, on March 30, 1906.83 Charged with murder, she was supported by five attorneys, including Judge George C. Thomas and Judge William R. Little, of Athens and Lavonia, respectively. For the prosecution, Solicitor General S. J. Tribble led a four-man team and, altogether, the trial drew impressive attention from the local populace, mostly because of the high profile of the deceased. The case unfolded shortly after a jury was selected, but finding the right twelve individuals to be impaneled was no easy task.84 Evidence, testimony, and arguments dominated the next day and a half, and one of the most striking moments occurred when Cobb spoke in her own defense, fully denying the crime she was accused of. The jury watched as she firmly announced that she didn’t know it was her husband when she fired the deadly weapon.

  That evening, Ty Cobb left Augusta en route to Lavonia and witnessed the closing arguments on March 31.85 The lawyers on both sides were passionate, and Mrs. Cobb’s lead attorney, Judge Thomas, was said to have given “one of the greatest efforts” of his long, esteemed career.86 Once the final words were spoken in open court, jury deliberations began, and the panel required an hour and forty minutes to find Amanda Cobb not guilty. She beamed at the decision, and the correspondent for the Atlanta Journal noted that it appeared that the acquittal was “no surprise” to her. Ty responded by sending news to the team in Augusta via telegraph wire.87 Interestingly enough, Amanda spoke with the Denver News when in that city six years later and was quoted as saying that she was “unable to follow” Ty’s early baseball career because her husband was “ill.” She noted that “he died soon after that.”88

  Perhaps trying to break the lingering stress, Cobb went out one evening with a couple of friends and attended Kittie Baldwin’s mind reading performance at an Augusta theater. The gimmick of the show was that audience members could write down a question on a piece of paper, and Kittie would call an individual’s name, broadcast their question, and then divulge the answer. Cobb followed the rules, asking her how Detroit would finish in the American League standings. Baldwin called his name, and then didn’t hesitate to proclaim the Tigers’ fate as being fifth place in the 1906 race. So upset by the prediction, Cobb quickly called it an evening and rushed back to the hotel to clear his mind.89

  A rash of injuries and illnesses seized Detroit as the team entered the early April exhibition schedule. Tom Doran and Bobby Lowe were joined by both Jones and Armour on the inactive list, and at Cincinnati, Crawford suffered a painful strain. Jones was initially sidelined by tonsillitis, but then suffered a head injury in an accident on the train from Indianapolis to Toledo.90 Jones’s bout with tonsillitis was healing when Cobb went down with the same problem. The agony began while at Birmingham, and Cobb tried to brush off the continuous ache, hoping it would heal on its own. Also gripped by an intense fever, he needed swift medical attention. Guided by teammate “Germany” Schaefer, he visited the resident physician at the Boody House, the team’s hotel in Toledo, and was operated on three separate times over the course of three days, without anesthetic. Cobb told the story in his autobiography, claiming that his doctor was later committed to an asylum. However, no further details can be located, and the Toledo doctor who worked on Cobb remains a mystery.91

  Living through a bloody nightmare, Cobb survived the ordeal and on the third day, hopped on a train for Columbus, Ohio, to rejoin the club. He arrived just hours after being operated on, entered the game in the sixth inning, demonstrating his tremendous grit.92 Despite his obvious tenacity and improved play, Cobb was headed for the dreadful role of utility-man, and his long-term status was up in the air. Other teams requested his services, but Armour declined their offers. There was something special about Ty Cobb, and, as far as he was concerned, Detroit fans were going to be the ones to watch him develop from a young, immature tiger cub into a baseball luminary.

  3

  WAITING FOR THE COBB TO CRACK

  Ty Cobb returned to the baseball diamond with a vengeance following his mother’s acquittal. The seven months between the death of his father, William Herschel Cobb, and the eventual trial was an unimaginably taxing period for Ty and his siblings. They were confronted by wild public accusations, stories portraying one or both of their parents to be adulterers, and, living in a small town, couldn’t get away f
rom the endless murmurs of gawking neighbors. Ty, now nineteen years of age, was an exceptionally proud young man. He yearned to retain the nobility of the Cobb family name and honor the outstanding legacy of his pioneering father. The desires were admirable, but the truth was that the entire situation brought immense embarrassment and shame. It was a needless tragedy and the emotional scars would never completely heal.

  Later in Cobb’s life, he spoke little about his father’s death and rarely talked about his mother. Historians and biographers have tried to tap into Cobb’s mind, sort of channeling him from the grave, and worked to put the loss of his father into a certain perspective. After all, people wanted to understand Ty Cobb the human being, and of course, the violent death of his beloved father at the hands of his mother was a life-altering incident. Upon studying the facts, the data is overwhelmingly strong in favor of the belief that the death of Professor Cobb added to the already burning fire brewing within Ty’s soul. He undoubtedly turned the devastating trauma into a burning desire to be successful. At the same time, his quick temper and inner aggression sharpened, and both would linger on a hair-trigger for years.

  But Cobb was still an immature boy in early 1906, everlastingly headstrong and withdrawn. His confidence on the field was growing by the day, and even the barbaric Toledo surgeries demonstrated his perseverance in the face of extreme pain. But he was more and more frequently being forced to deal with another serious challenge, one that had first reared its ugly head at Anniston in 1904. The renewal of inner-club hazing, an age-old tradition in baseball, was a terrific hardship for Cobb and would nearly siphon all of his love for the sport. The wisecracks toward Cobb while a member of the Tigers likely began in response to all the favorable crowd reactions he received from locals.1 Soon, he’d find himself at odds with more than half his ball club, and in a constant struggle with a pack of mischievous teammates out to run him out of baseball. Cobb explained that this period of his life was the “most miserable and humiliating experience” he’d ever gone through. Because of the seriousness of the situation, he explicitly wanted to tell this portion of his life-story in his autobiography before backtracking to talk about his childhood so people could understand the astronomical challenges he faced when he was starting as a ballplayer in 1905–06. By emphasizing the critical nature of what happened, he hoped some of the distortions about his career would be better understood.

  Rookies and recruits dealing with a moderate ritualistic initiation process was nothing new. It had existed for years and included a number of different techniques, from making the newcomers carry equipment to flat-out ignoring their earthly existence. The most common was basic ribbing, which oftentimes crossed the line into mocking and ridicule, but it was all meant to test the nerves of the youngster. The disparagement usually wasn’t intended to be hateful, and Crawford said that “most” youngsters just laughed about it.2 But for an uptight individual with a propensity to misinterpret words, it was definitely a hostile act. That’s the way Cobb construed it to be. He didn’t realize that the best way to cope with such behavior was to smile and laugh it off, quickly defusing the intensity of the nonsense.

  Cobb had a natural tendency to be respectful, and his first inclination was to look up to the veteran ballplayers. But his naïveté and quiet, courteous personality worked against him, and the club bullies used it to their advantage. In turn, the more Cobb resisted and protested the daily harangue, the more his tormentors picked on him. They found it all to be great entertainment. Examples of his torment were offered in his autobiography and included being locked out of the bathroom at the team hotel, having wet newspapers thrown at him on train trips, and called various names. He felt it was a “carefully schemed campaign” to wreck his spirit and send him running back to the minors.3 Once this wound was ripped open, Cobb stopped listening to them and rejected any advice regarding business on the field. The veterans reacted by cutting off all communications to Cobb entirely, isolating him for the most part, including on train rides and during team meals.4

  Before the 1906 season got under way, the complicated outfield situation in Detroit was made even more difficult to understand when reporters began touting Jimmy Barrett’s return. Barrett himself expressed confidence in being the opening day centerfielder, although business manager Frank Navin told him that he wasn’t immediately needed, as Detroit had five men vying for outfield slots.5 The decision had already been made that Davy Jones was the top man for the position, and, at the time, Joe. S. Jackson of the Detroit Free Press lambasted the choice. He wrote that Jones’ selection illuminated “the lack of wisdom of those who [placed] too much dependence on spring form.” Jackson personally liked Cobb’s work more and felt Jones was picked because he had previous major league experience. While praising Cobb, Jackson managed to criticize both Jones and Matty McIntyre in his article. Such commentary didn’t go a long way in erasing any of the building jealousy and the belief that Cobb was the club’s “golden boy.”6

  Warming the bench, Cobb waited patiently for his opportunity to enter the lineup, and it came in the fifth game at Chicago on April 21, after Sam Crawford went down with an injury.7 He occupied right field alongside Jones and Matty McIntyre, and worked to overcome early growing pains in a part of the outfield he was not as qualified. The lack of cohesion between the players was also apparent. On April 25 versus Cleveland, Cobb and Jones were entangled after an awkward fly by pitcher Addie Joss and the ball dropped for a double. A sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press thought Cobb “might have got to it if left alone.”8 Teamwork improved the longer they worked together, but as Crawford was making his way back, the injury-prone Jones went down with a charley horse.9 That meant Cobb would now have to shift from right to center.

  The ill-fate of Crawford and Jones in early 1906 gave Cobb a chance to perform, and he made the most of the opportunity. On April 30 at Chicago, he hit a timely double in the 10th inning with a man on first. The runner advanced to third and later scored on a sacrifice, giving Detroit a 2–1 victory.10 In Washington two weeks later, Cobb pulled more 10th inning heroics when he tapped a two-out grounder to the right side and launched into a maddening dash for first base. The fielder appeared to have him dead to rights when Cobb slid headfirst, jostling a cloud of dust in the process. Much to the agony of the audience, the umpire, with his vision impaired, called him safe, and Detroit scored the go-ahead run. Another run was scored when Cobb threatened a break for second and the catcher threw the ball away, allowing Jack Warner to safely cross the plate. The umpire, Tom Connor, needed police protection from an angry mob of fans after the game.11

  Facing twenty-nine-year-old lefty Rube Waddell of Philadelphia on May 17, Cobb bunted for the only recorded hit by Detroit in the first inning. Detroit shortstop Charley O’Leary also bunted successfully in the fifth inning, but an error was ruled on the fielder, leaving Cobb to have the only successful hit of the day.12 Waddell brushed the anomaly off and dominated the remainder of the game, winning 5–0. Further along on Detroit’s eastern road trip, at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds May 22, Cobb snagged a nearly impossible drive in the eighth, preventing at least one runner from scoring. He went to bat the following inning and drove in two of his teammates with a sharp drive to the outfield, leading the Tigers to victory. Cobb’s blend of speed, frequent hitting, and glimpses of defensive greatness fascinated spectators and writers on the road. While Jones was considered the better fielder, Cobb was leading Detroit in hitting with a .318 average by the end of May.13 Boston’s manager Jimmy Collins wanted to make a cash purchase for either Cobb or Jones, but Armour wasn’t hearing it.14

  Fans were watching the season develop with optimism, but only insiders realized the complete and utter corruption bubbling underneath the surface in Detroit. The environment was fully enveloped by a plague that was to spread like wildfire. The negative influence increased and swelled to the point that manager Bill Armour couldn’t take it anymore. In the early part of May, he flatly resigned, desiring to tu
rn his back altogether on the Tigers franchise. Navin quickly stepped in and convinced him to stay.15 Months later, Armour revealed that had he left the team, six members of the Detroit squad, valued at $15,000, would have jumped their contracts to go with him.16 Though he stayed, the adverse conditions continued without much of a difference.

  The contaminated atmosphere was several years in the making and couldn’t be blamed on any one man. Despite the common belief, Cobb wasn’t directly at the center of the controversy. In fact, he was almost an innocent, wholly affected by the outgrowths of the terrible environment rather than be responsible for it in the first place. He was more of a punching bag for the clique of rabble-rousers, and the abuse he suffered was beyond words for the young man living through it. Going back to at least 1904, the notable reductions in salaries by team owners caused an irreparable rift that continued to resonate two years later. Additionally, a nauseating stipulation was slipped into selected contracts withholding as much as $500, to be paid after the season, all to guarantee that the players would keep in shape.17 The replacement of Ed Barrow with Bill Armour was also fodder for a bit of displeasure.

  Speaking of Armour, catcher Jack Warner and pitchers Red Donahue, who Armour previously managed in Cleveland, and Bill Donovan were said to be unhappy with his management style and wanted the job themselves.18 Silly jealousies were popping up in many different incarnations, from Warner’s opinion of recruit backstop Charley “Boss” Schmidt to McIntyre’s attitude of Cobb. A Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter wondered if the pessimism stemmed from an overall resentment for the success of both Schmidt and Cobb, two of Armour’s developmental prodigies. Cobb and Schmidt were particularly lauded by Sporting Life. Cobb “is a fine of the first water,” and Schmidt was a “treasure,” the paper exclaimed.19 Warner, who was battling consistent arm problems, watched as Schmidt seamlessly entered the picture and, perhaps, jeopardized the security of his employment. Then there was Cobb, batting after McIntyre in the lineup and producing the only .300 average on the team.