Cobb (31 page)

In making this charge Cobb neglected to mention what was known as the “pitchers' underground.” Cobb, whatever he believed, was not alone in becoming the object of shared intelligence. He was only one of a number of victims of a clandestine union. Moundsmen would pass on information gained from hard experience to others of their kind who were in the employment of opposing teams. If a Red Soxer could be put out with a sinker, or a St. Louis Brownie was susceptible to a change-of-pace, or a new slugger with a weakness entered a league, the “book” would be quietly exchanged by pitchers. Club owners knew it went on but could not stop such fraternizing. The exception was said to be that no tipster ever revealed information on hitters of his own team.

Providing aid to an opponent, in whatever form, bordered on game fixing, which would condemn baseball in the public eye as dishonest. Cobb's supposed detection of plots against him came as early as his third year in the majors. Here and there he saw hands raised to hurt him, he claimed. He named names, “There was Baldy Louden [an infielder]. He and McIntyre failed time and again to score from second on a play where I followed them with a single. Plays were designed to score them, but they didn't make a good enough start off the bat with the pitch. They'd pull up at third, giving the fielder a chance to throw me out going to second. I'd look foolish. They were out to keep me from setting records. When I jumped Louden on it before the whole club he alibied that his legs hurt. When my own legs carried dozens of stitches.”

If such double crosses did exist, they failed to hurt his cumulative numbers. From 1910 through 1913 he was all but unstoppable. While the Tigers were sliding to third place in 1911 and then to a 69-wins, 84-losses sixth-place mark in 1912, Cobb himself was slamming all
manner of pitching, from screwball to knuckler to spitter, from fastball to greaseball. The Peach's averages at ages twenty-four to twenty-seven were so formidable that in the 1980s his statistics were retroactively examined by researchers, to make sure that record-keepers hadn't erred.

Connie Mack, whose Athletics won three pennants in 1910–13, with but one A's hitter, Eddie Collins, coming in above .365, was supposed to have blurted, “If we had Ty Cobb there'd be no point in holding a season.”

Ungovernable as he regularly was, often using the black ashwood bat he had kept beside him during his 1908 wedding, Cobb hit .385, .420, .410, and .390 in four successive seasons. Along with that came 261 stolen bases. No one since then has matched that performance. It included 818 hits, 829 runs scored or driven in, 233 extra-base hits, and 1,202 total bases, and brought him his fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh consecutive AL batting titles. In his 1911 rush Cobb swept every offensive category except home runs, set a record of 248 base hits that would top all major-league hitting for twenty-two years to come. “He hit me hard with runners on or not, in daylight or twilight,” said Washington's Walter Johnson, spectacular winner of 118 games during that same 1910–13 stretch. “He would get two or three hits and figure it should have been better. Nobody would wait for the right pitch better than Ty. He just wore you out. The balls we used would get black in the late innings and he'd still hit.”

Only one other hitter in history has equalled Cobb's back-to-back .400-plus seasons of 1911–12. Rogers Hornsby, greatest right-handed batsman of all time, hit .424 in 1924 and .403 in 1925. From 1901 onward, to average .400 even once has eluded all but eight hitters—George Sisler, twice; Nap Lajoie; Shoeless Joe Jackson; Harry Heilmann; Bill Terry; and Ted Williams, along with Cobb and Hornsby. No others—not Wagner, Tris Speaker, Al Simmons, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Paul Waner, Lefty O'Doul, Joe DiMaggio, Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron—ever reached that exclusive circle. No one since Williams in 1941, more than fifty years ago, has registered that high. Batters have come close, but failed. When Cobb hit .401 in 1922, a full decade after his last previous such performance, he would stand, along with Hornsby, as one of the only players to do it three times.

“Be sure and put in there,” T.C. instructed me when we collaborated on the chronicle of his life and times, “that from 1910 through 1914 I outhit both the American and National leagues easily. The Nationals had nobody close to me … their best with the bat were at .331, .334, .372, .350, and .329.” His memory on this was faultless, his arithmetic exact. At the same time, the Georgian wished to express his contempt for “two-bit, one-gear” hitters of the post–World War II era, who while swinging for the fences—“moneyland”—led entire leagues with “puny” marks of .320, .327, .328, .336, .338, .325, and once even .309. (He did not live to see Carl Yastrzemski win a batting championship in 1968 with .301.)

His .420 and .410 marks of 1911 and 1912 came during seasons in which Cobb spent some days in bed with another dose of bronchial infection, and while hurting from a banged-up knee acquired in chasing an automobile thief. Upon leaving a Cadillac Square restaurant in Detroit, he found a man cranking his car and taking off. Roars from the owner did not stop the thief, and Cobb sprinted after him.
Sporting Life
marveled in its account of how the driver had reached a speed of almost twenty miles an hour when the pursuer caught up, leaped onto the tonneau, grabbed the driver's neck, and knocked him aside. Driverless, the auto swerved around the street, almost hitting a trolley car with people boarding it, in a replay of Keystone Cops comedies then playing in theaters. Cobb gained control of the car and stopped it in time not to kill anyone. The jailed thief, identified as John Miles, nineteen, exclaimed, “If I'd known it was
him
, I'd never have lifted it!” Cobb came out of it with cuts and a knee bruise, but soon recovered.

POWER-DRIVEN
conveyances and T.C. did not mix well. There had been a close call with death in 1911 when a taxicab in which he was riding dumped him onto the pavement as it crashed into a Detroit streetcar. Driving in Detroit in 1912, he had been forced to jump for his life before an onrushing car. There was also the day in Augusta when his limousine would not start and a busher named Stengel helped try to push it back to life. Cobb felt jinxed, as did thousands of other investors in embryonic machines ranging from the costly Pope-Toledo, Cadillac, and Stutz Bearcat to the six-hundred-dollar-and-up Chevrolet, Maxwell, and Ford models. The hazards of getting horseless carriages to go and keep going were many. When the U.S. Motor Car
Company and Maxwell went bankrupt, some people cheered. Cart horses did not require cranking, tow trucks, or smelly fuel.

Not long before Cobb began his stay in the .400 bracket, still another affair involving himself and a motor car occurred, this one exposing baseball in the worst possible light. In 1910, the nationally notorious “Chalmers frame-up” began when Hugh Chalmers, president of Chalmers Motor Company, offered gifts of his best models to the batting champions of the American and National leagues. Chalmers, a former star salesman for the National Cash Register Company, saw his giveaways as good promotion in a new field—sports—and he threw in a bonus of free tanks of gasoline, costing seventeen cents a gallon. Chalmers could not foresee that his stunt would become a sickening scandal, one of the first public indicators that baseball was not entirely on the up-and-up.

At midseason, Cobb thought he had little or no chance to win the prize. Napoleon Lajoie, Cleveland's three-time American League bat titleholder, was averaging .399 to Cobb's .372. When the Peach contracted another of the eye ailments that handicapped him from time to time, it appeared to be all over except for the shouting. Fitted with smoked glasses to wear in bright sunlight, he was forced to drop out for ten days in September. He hated to show infirmity, but headlines such as “
IS COBB GOING BLIND IN ONE EYE?
” had appeared on sport pages. In speaking of what followed, he told me, “I was trying to play down the eyes. A confidential letter I sent to a Cleveland friend became public. I never spoke to that squealer again.” A portion of his letter said, “. . . my eyes are not very good now and I have to use one eye to write … It throws me out of the running for the auto … Lajoie surely will best my present average. Tomorrow I consult a stomach specialist, as this may be the trouble. I can only see well from the left eye … the other is smoky. I am very worried.”

However, Lajoie did not improve, while Cobb, returning to work with vision remarkedly strengthened, collected a double, two triples, and two singles in a doubleheader with New York. At Chicago on October 6 and 7 he went 4 for 7 in two games. In the closing days the race read:

The tightest of possible finishes gripped fans across the country, leading to formation of Lajoie and Cobb rooter clubs. A Detroiter named Tim Harrigan, with a big bet down on Cobb to win, dropped dead at the Century Club of Detroit supposedly from overexcitement. Public voting was held on who would win.

On October 6 Cobb's eye trouble reappeared. He sat out two season-ending Chicago engagements. Cleveland's
Plain Dealer
and other Ohio papers scoffed that if he had enough sight to connect at his current rate, then it could only be a case of faint heart—the fear that he would finish poorly and lose points. Moreover, after benching himself in Chicago, he had gone to Philadelphia to appear in an all-star affair. Lajoie, on the other hand, emphasized the
Reach Guide,
“never got cold feet.”

Big Frenchy Lajoie's chance to pass his rival at the wire came in an October 9 Cleveland–St. Louis doubleheader. Cobb's season was finished, Lajoie's was not. Eastern gamblers—did they know something?—had Frenchy as a slight favorite to drive away in the deluxe Chalmers. At six feet, one inch and nearly two hundred pounds, Lajoie (pronounced La-zway) was the press's ideal of grace, power, and confidence under pressure. A native of Fall River, Massachusetts, a former livery-stable hack driver, he was lauded by George Trevor of the
New York Sun
as an “eye-filling D'Artagnan of the diamond,” along with “living poetry at second base.” Lajoie was “a big, swarthy jungle cat whose superiority oozes from him.” Back in 1901, for the Philadelphia A's, he had averaged .422 for a full season, although at the time foul balls did not count as strikes.

The colorful Lajoie chewed a plug of tobacco the size of a hockey puck; once he had been suspended for squirting juice into the eye of umpire Frank “Blinky” Dwyer. He had player-managed Cleveland for a while, then quit to gather more player's trophies.

To prevent Cobb, disliked on every American League bench, from edging out Lajoie required the collaboration of St. Louis manager Jack “Peach Pie” O'Connor and his scout, Harry Howell. Their plan was to provide Lajoie with a base hit every time he came up against the Browns on October 9. This could be done in two ways—by feeding him easy pitches, or deploying the Browns' defense to the Frenchman's advantage. The second method was selected as more dependable.

The official scorer of the season-closing doubleheader was a
sportswriter, E. V. Parish, who soon realized what was going on but was powerless to prevent it. Supposedly no one informed Lajoie in advance, although some insiders doubted that he was kept ignorant. On his first time at bat he tripled to center field. Fielder Hub Northen fell all over himself misjudging the ball. After that, with third baseman Red Corriden stationed so far back that he was on the outfield grass, Lajoie bunted safely three times. In the second half of the twin bill, with Corriden still playing a ridiculous distance away from him, Lajoie made four more hits, all on bunts that Corriden or shortstop Bobby Wallace were not there to handle. If eight gift base hits didn't let Lajoie surpass Cobb in the race, nothing could.

Parish had visitors at his press-box seat throughout the day. Cleveland and St. Louis reserve players came by to suggest that he score everything by Lajoie a hit. Late in the second game, Parish also was handed a note. American League historians have said that it read: “Mr. Parish: If you can see where Lajoie gets a B.H. instead of a sacrifice I will give you an order for a forty-dollar suit—for sure. Answer by boy, in behalf of———I ask you.”

Afterward, Parish would testify that the note was unsigned; but he could smell two large rodents—manager Jack O'Connor and his aide, Harry Howell. Parish envisioned headlines exposing the conspiracy. Bookies who had made Cobb a favorite to win the Chalmers would be more than angry; they would be murderous. Parish ordered the bribe-offerer out of the press box. As for the St. Louis Browns, the inept eighth-place team had nothing to lose. The Browns would be getting even with Cobb for spiking some of them in the past.

When the unsophisticated plot was exposed, it shocked a public conditioned to believe that, regardless of what went on in Wall Street and Washington, D.C., back rooms, the American game of games was honest. There had been only minor doubts about that tradition in recent years. In 1908, umpire Bill Klem had revealed that he had been offered three thousand dollars to arrange a New York Giants win in a National League playoff with the Chicago Cubs. And in 1903 the National Commission had investigated suspected conniving in a Philadelphia-Giants series.