Cobb (43 page)

McGraw also was possessor of one of the newfangled motion-picture machines recently developed by Mutual Film Corporation, to be used for photographing his Giants in action and improving their play. McGraw had the machine on display in the hotel lobby. On the way out, Cobb kicked it over.

Having disposed of Herzog, Cobb refused to play against the Giants, and left Dallas. He foresaw the possibility of a gang attack on him. He moved his training routine to the Cincinnati camp, where Christy Mathewson managed the Reds. Legendary thirty-six-year-old Matty, or Big Six, had reached the end of throwing his fabled fadeaway pitch—good for 373 wins against only 188 losses for the Giants in seventeen seasons—and on July 20, 1916, had been traded to Cincinnati in a multiple-player exchange. Mathewson welcomed Cobb cordially.
He had inherited a Reds team with a record of two seventh-place and one last-place finish from 1914–16 and saw an opportunity to improve his situation.

“I heard about the Herzog thing,” said Mathewson, according to T.C. “Did you get some help from the boys?” He meant Cobb's team, the Tigers.

“Not much,” answered Cobb. “They love me on payday, but damn few were around me on the field the other day.”

“If you can get loose from Detroit, Hermann will pay you more here than you're getting,” offered Mathewson. “A lot more.”

“Hermann” was Gary Hermann, wealthy owner of the Reds, a wily Ohio politician and big party-thrower, who would enjoy stealing the American League's single best attraction and bringing him into the National fold.

“I'm too tied up in business around Detroit,” Cobb said with regret. “My contract with Navin runs out in January. Let's talk about it then.”

That never came about. Mutual admirers Cobb and Mathewson would next see each other in 1918 in a U.S. Army camp in France.

McGraw's Giants were not finished with him that 1917 spring. En route home from Kansas City to open the season, the entire team telegraphed him: “It's safe to rejoin your club now. We've left Texas.”

The Peach said he wired back: “How's McGraw's nose?”

IN 1917
and in 1918 Cobb was more short-tempered than usual, mostly because at ages thirty and thirty-one he twice dislocated his shoulder diving for outfield chances. Detroit's revamped pitching staff, headed by Hooks Dauss and Bernie Boland, was inadequate. No Tiger moundsman won more than 17 games in either of the two years, and the team limped in at fourth and seventh places. There was “Cobb for manager” noise from the stands at Navin Field.

His injuries healed and nothing was changed—he led the American League in almost everything. In 1917 his 225 base hits, 44 doubles, 23 triples, 336 total bases, .571 slugging average, and 55 steals stood in front. Regaining the batting title at .383, he far outhit the field. George Sisler, the young St. Louis star, was 30 points behind him and Tris Speaker 31, while the National League's leading hitter, outfielder Edd Roush of Cincinnati, trailed by 42 points.

In the war-shortened 1918 season, Cobb didn't pause. His .382 average was well ahead of ex–Tiger first baseman George Burns's .352 at Philadelphia. According to Cobb, an argument he had with Navin earlier, in March of 1918, went as follows:

Cobb: “Don't lose Burns. He's just learning to hit.”

Navin: “I'm dealing with Connie Mack.”

Cobb: “No! No! No! Burns is only twenty-five, for Chrissake, and he's big and can run … and … oh, for Chrissake!”

Away went Burns to the Yankees, who immediately traded him to the A's for outfielder Francesco Stephano Pezzolo (or Pezzullo), playing as Ping Bodie. Burns hit better than .300 for Mack's Athletics and other teams in seven of the next nine seasons, and in 1926 was voted the American League's most valuable player.

Unable to relax when benched by his injuries, Cobb suggested that Hughie Jennings restrict himself to coaching only on the first-base line, while Cobb took over the more-important third-base pathway. Umpires hated him even more at close range. He invaded the batter's box to kick dirt and dispute calls. He would go into an act, putting the ball through a semimicroscopic examination, slowly turning it, claiming that it had been doctored. Some said that Cobb carried a little glob of pine tar in the palm of his hand, which he would apply during the ball testing. When the pitcher was angry enough to lose control, Cobb would toss the ball on the grass nowhere near the batterymates, and say, “Well, pitch it—what the hell are you waiting for?”

About home runs he was phobic. Except when the bases were loaded, homers carried much less value than the single base hit ringing clear, he claimed, followed by more singles and concomitant stealing. Yet one of his own hits he liked best was a homer struck in St. Louis, following a long triple in his previous time at bat. This one soared out of sight over the left-field bleachers—so far that writers judged it as even longer than earlier blasts by Shoeless Joe Jackson and Babe Ruth, which had carried an estimated five-hundred-odd feet. When he felt like it, this percentage player could hit for distance.

After going 7 for 9 in a Cleveland doubleheader in August 1918 and behaving like a good guy for weeks, Cobb took on an unlikely opponent: the U.S. Customs station at the Canadian-American border. There he threw a tantrum so obnoxious that Customs considered arresting him. Jack Miner, a Canadian big-game guide, famous for his
woodcraft and a close friend of Cobb, came across on a ferry to be the Peach's guest at a ball game. Customs closely checked Miner's luggage for illegal booze. Cobb, fuming over the delay, got into a squabble with ferryboat passengers, whom he felt crowded too closely around him. Most of them only wanted to shake his hand.

He threw elbows and yelled, “Goddammit, nobody pushes me around!” A Customs man suggested that jail might cool him off, at which point the Greatest Ballplayer on Earth make a complete fool of himself. “I can lick any son of a bitch here!” he raged at officials. Finally, Miner, much embarrassed as a guest in the United States, calmed Cobb and they proceeded to the ball game.

“I never could understand why he would do a thing like that,” said Miner when long later a Canadian newspaper asked about it. “I liked Cobb, but never could understand him.”

The United States was at war now, and Cobb knew it was inevitable that he would join one of the services. But before he signed up, he wanted to be guaranteed a commission, preferably with the Army. During a late-season 1918 road trip with the Tigers to Washington, D.C., he set out to wear a captain's bars.

As Ty Cobb saw the waging of war, it was inevitable and natural to mankind—and could even be beneficial. He planned martial arts training for his sons when they reached prep-school age. Early in 1918, lecturing American patriots on warfare at a rally in Atlanta, he declared, “When you have a winner and loser, it settles disputes over territory. That might not last long. But after the Germans get their asses kicked in the one going on now, you won't be hearing from them for quite a while.”

His combative nature and his intelligence made Cobb ideal officer material in World War I. Yet as the United States entered the second summer of conflict against Germany's massive forces, he surprised the public by staying on the sidelines. Through some of the heaviest fighting, from late 1917 until well in 1918, Cobb remained a noncombatant.

In so doing, he was far from alone within baseball. So many big-leaguers elected not to join up that charges of slackerism were leveled against the game. In the summer of 1918, while 600,000 American troops were pouring into French ports and the Great War's outcome hung in the balance, Cobb and other stars called unwelcome attention to themselves by continuing as civilians and playing out an abbreviated big-league schedule.

The Georgian put on his usual brilliant show. In a 1918 season shortened by War Department decree, he outhit everyone in the league. That was not surprising. But then, suddenly, belatedly, he reversed himself and made headlines by joining the Army.

FORTY-TWO YEARS
later, at a 1960 social get-together of Cobb and Casey Stengel at Cobb's home in the northern California millionaires' colony of Atherton, the two old friends spoke of their World War I experiences and other matters. Stengel had come to visit a man he had always idolized. In the past, during crises in Stengel's career, Cobb had given helpful advice and practical assistance. He had been there with counsel on where Casey could find another job when the Brooklyn Dodgers fired him as manager in 1936. And he had recommended the Dutchman for employment when the Boston Braves let him go as field chief in 1943. In both cases, Cobb's word in the right ears had helped the vagabond Casey—he was with thirteen teams as player or manager in fifty-six seasons—survive in baseball. Then, six weeks before Stengel came visiting at Atherton, it had happened again: the Old Perfesser had been ousted by the New York Yankees, even though he had just won another pennant for the owners. After the Yankees narrowly lost the ensuing World Series to Pittsburgh, Stengel had been dropped by owners Dan Topping and Del Webb.

Over whiskey sodas at Cobb's mansion, the two talked at length. An aging Stengel was confused and hurt. He wondered if at this point he should retire. “I win ten pennants for the Yanks and I'm out on the street,” he said gloomily.

“I tried managing,” said Cobb. “It's the shits.”

“For twelve months of the year,” said Stengel.

The practical Cobb asked, “Did New York pay you off in full?”

“Every dime,” said Stengel. “I was makin' a hundred and sixty thousand and that's what I got upon leavin'.”

Said Cobb, “Oh, well then . . .” He meant that with his friend paid off, Casey really had no big problem. Baseball managers were born to be fired. In Cobb's view, $160,000 should relieve the pain Casey was feeling.

“The mayor of New York and some rich people are startin' up a new club, the Metropolitans,” mentioned Casey. “They are talkin' to me about comin' in to manage.”

Aware of the formation of the Mets of the National League, Cobb disliked the idea. “They have about a dozen bosses and damned few players,” he warned. “Don't touch it.” However, the Old Perfesser did make a comeback with the Mets in 1962, lending his quaint personality to the most hilarious and inept band of losers yet to step on a major-league field. During the four seasons in which Stengel led them, the Mets finished in tenth and last place all four times. Finally they jumped all the way to ninth place. By then, Stengel had beaten his critics to it; he had retired, permanently. “What I needed with those Mets,” he remarked later, “was an embalmer.”

As I listened in on their rambling conversation in 1960, the seventy-one-year-old Stengel and the ailing seventy-three-year-old Peach fell to recalling World War I. Casey remarked that he had experienced an easy war. “Remember Eddie Grant?” he asked. “Got himself killed in France with the artillery.”

“Grant of the Giants,” said Cobb. “Third baseman. Good field, fair hitter. Too bad about him.”

“I never heard a shot fired,” carried on Stengel. “All I did was hand out baseball equipment to some fellas when they made me sports director at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I just waited it out until I could get back playin' with Pittsburgh.”

“Well, I heard some shots,” retorted Cobb. “Once I almost got blown up coming out of a toilet.”

Casey found that funny. “You should have stayed out of the war like so many baseball guys did.”

“For God's sakes, Casey, how could I do that?”

“No, I guess you couldn't,” said Stengel.

Cobb's point was obvious. If he had not voluntarily enlisted in the armed forces, his public reputation would have been permanently blackened. He was too famous, and too well known for supporting President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war with Germany, issued back in April of 1917, to remain an observer. Americans were dying by the thousands on the western front. The country's watchword—“every able-bodied man should do his bit”—had become more and more a critical issue. As 1918 wore on, editorial writers, seeing how few professional athletes had responded to the call, urged a crackdown by the government.

Cobb's status as the father of three children, ages two to eight, left
him ineligible for conscription by his Georgia draft board; he was rated Division Two and exempt. Yet from spring training time on, he had felt uneasy about staying out. While not singled out as a war-dodger, he was included by association in press broadsides directed at organized baseball for its reluctance to part with prominent talent. During preseason spring training, teams had marched in infantry-type formations, with bats on their shoulders simulating rifles. Army sergeants in some cases handled the drilling. Players found the exercise both a waste of time and deceiving. Eventually the program was cancelled.

It would not suffice for Cobb to stand on dugout roofs with movie stars and other celebrities and sell Liberty Bonds and war stamps before games. Nor would the Peach take a war-connected job in a shipyard or munitions plant, as some big-leaguers had done. It was not his style.

Still, there was nothing precipitous about Cobb's way of doing things when away from the ball field. He took his time about enlisting in the Army, and prepared for a possible long absence by turning over his complicated business affairs to safe hands. “I figured on maybe a year or more of war,” he said. His principal investments were in auto shares, among them Ford and Cadillac, in textile buying, real estate, cotton futures, and in product endorsements. Much of this activity was concentrated in Detroit. The City on the Straits had grown from 488,766 citizens in 1910 to more than 900,000 by 1918. In (or out) of a wartime boom, people were approaching Cobb with a new financial proposition every few weeks, “some of them hard to turn down.”