Terror in the City of Champions (30 page)

Rowe arrived at twelve-forty.

“Where’ve you been?” Cochrane demanded.

“I been at the hotel resting,” Rowe said. “I didn’t see any sense in coming out here early and wasting a lot of energy mingling with the mob. I did that last year and it didn’t do me any good.”

Cochrane accepted the explanation.

Gee Walker’s boys, Jerry, four, and Mike, three, flitted about the clubhouse in matching blue overalls. The older boy said he wanted to be a cop, the other a fireman. As their dad took a pre-game shower, the boys haphazardly swung bats, hitting a visitor’s shins. One spilled soda pop on golfer Walter Hagen’s shoes.

Hank Greenberg appeared the most nervous of the players, certainly more anxious than Rowe. Greenberg had led the league in home runs and RBI and had just been named Most Valuable Player by
The Sporting News
. He wanted desperately to erase memories of his disappointing World Series showing against Dizzy Dean and the Cardinals.

Outside in the dugout, a white flower popping from his buttonhole, retired Babe Ruth called a batboy to his side and whispered a message. The teen darted into the training room and told Denny Carroll, the Miracle Man of Mustard Plasters, “The Babe wants his drink.” Carroll laughed and mixed Ruth a bicarbonate soda for his stomach.

As the start time approached, fans jammed the aisles. In the outfield bleachers, for which only game-day tickets were sold, some men and women had been seated on benches for four hours—after having spent a night outside in line. Elsewhere celebrities and dignitaries from sports, politics, and entertainment occupied the best seats: the Fords, the Firestones, the Fishers, the Chryslers, the Gehrigs, Joe Louis, various mayors, a governor, actors George Raft and William Frawley, hockey and football players, myriad baseball figures of days past, Broadway composer George M. Cohan, Harry Bennett of Ford, and J. Edgar Hoover, among others. Hoover said he would be rooting for the American League team. “Knowing the Tigers personally makes me pull for them to win,” he said.

The World Series qualified as a society event. Men were outfitted in suits, ties, and overcoats, their heads topped with fedoras, homburgs, and trilbies. Women wore satin and sable and collars of black Persian lamb with feathers and red ribbons and flourishes of flowers. One woman modeled an authentic tiger skin. Orchids as purple as a stormy night sky burst from Mrs. Navin’s coat lapel.

Frank Navin, not one for glowing oratory, had already delivered his encouraging words to his ballplayers. He did it in the form of a note.

If you play the same confident brand of ball that you did to earn the American League pennant, you will have no trouble winning the World Series. Here’s hoping.—Frank J. Navin

His letter lacked the fire of Knute Rockne or Cochrane, but his players knew him, knew his personality, and had seen subtle flashes of his heart when not in negotiations. They realized how much he longed for the elusive world championship and what it would mean to their veteran boss “Uncle Frank.”

Cochrane expected his team to win. Most of America’s baseball writers did not. By a narrow margin they forecast a Cubs victory. Chicago had momentum. Managed by Charlie Grimm, the Cubs had finished strongly, winning twenty-one of their final twenty-three games and leaping from third to first in the final month. Their amazing close—“Grimm’s Fairy Tale”—shamed Detroit’s dismal concluding week: one win, six losses. Still many who had seen the Tigers throughout the year believed they would prevail. Why? “Greenberg’s bat,” said Lou Gehrig. “I think he will hit at least two or three home runs.” Jimmie Foxx agreed: “Greenberg will be a star.”

Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis set the tone before the first pitch, announcing over the public address system from his front-row seat a list of infractions that would not be tolerated. No one had forgotten the riot last year when Ducky Medwick was chased from the game in a shower of glass and apples. This time a massive screen had been erected in front of the 19,000 people sitting in the temporary bleachers. A fan would need an arm like a howitzer to hurl a missile over the barrier. The screen also meant that Greenberg would have to hit a ball higher and farther to get a home run.

Even before the game started, Chicago’s brutal bench jockeys began launching verbal bombs at Greenberg. They believed that the 1934 Cardinals had needled him successfully, breaking his concentration and distracting him from the game. The Cardinals had told them so. Greenberg’s position at first base put him near the Cubs’ dugout and he discovered quickly that they “were a bunch of tough SOBs” and their attacks “especially vicious.” They shouted “Jew this and Jew that,” Greenberg said.

The Cubs scored twice in the first inning, taking a quick lead. Before Greenberg came to bat in the second, home plate umpire George Moriarty, himself a combative individual, strode to Chicago’s bench and ordered Cubs players to tone down their profane, antisemitic taunts. “Those ladies in the boxes shouldn’t have their ears sullied,” he reportedly said. The Cubs told him to mind his own business and began targeting him. It was part of their plan: hound one ump relentlessly. “The trick is to make the umpire believe that he is biased beyond recall,” wrote Harry Salsinger. “Tell a stupid man that long enough and he begins to believe it and as a matter of self-defense will begin giving every break to the other side to prove he is really honest and fearless, as [Brick] Owens did last year.” Although he had been an umpire for fifteen years, Moriarty, the Cubs felt, had an allegiance to Detroit after spending much of his playing career as the Tigers’ third baseman during the era of Ty Cobb. He had also managed Detroit for two seasons.

But the Cubs harassed Greenberg most of all. Years later they would admit to targeting him for abuse. “Some of the words shouldn’t be printed,” said Phil Cavarretta, who was nineteen years old in 1935. It likely wouldn’t have mattered in the first game because pitcher Lon Warneke threw superbly, defeating the Tigers and Rowe 3–0 before 47,000 people. Warneke, described by
Time
as a “hay-pitching, coon-hunting twenty-six-year-old,” had pitched the best game of any Tiger opponent all season, according to Cochrane. One-fourth of the Tigers who made contact with the ball bounced it back to the pitcher. Greenberg went hitless, but so did the other men who also formed the heart of the order: Cochrane, Gehringer, and Goslin. With J. Edgar Hoover watching, the G-Men performed abysmally. In the locker room Charlie Grimm told his pitcher, “Boy, you certainly tied a knot in the old tiger’s tail today. A great big goose-egg knot!”

Ernie Wettler, thirteen, stood along Trumbull Avenue in front of the Checker Cab company on Thursday, hoping he and his pals might stumble into free tickets for the second game. It was as frigid as a winter day but snowless. Hard winds swirled papers and dirt in the streets. Despite the cold, the scene hummed. A muted cheer rose from within the ballpark during batting practice. Wettler looked up as a ball zoomed over the right field wall, slapped the pavement, and careened into his nose. Blood gushed from his face. Police took the boy to the first aid area inside Navin Field, where a doctor splinted his broken schnoz. For his troubles the Tigers found him a seat near the dugout, not far from Father Coughlin.

Starting pitcher Tommy Bridges was loosening his arm. Writers liked to latch on to the most dominant physical trait of a player and turn him into a caricature. With Cochrane it was the ears. With Tommy Bridges it was his size. At five-foot-ten Bridges wasn’t the smallest guy on the team. But his 155 pounds, along with the larger physical stature of fellow pitchers Rowe and Auker, cast him in the role. Over the years he would be described by Damon Runyon as “frail looking,” by Bill Corum as “Little Tennessee Tom,” by Joe Williams as “not much bigger than a hickory bootjack,” by Jack Cuddy of United Press as “skinny . . . slender, wiry,” and by Red Smith as “about as big as thirty cents worth of liver.” One columnist would offer that Bridges “doesn’t look like he could break an overripe egg against a concrete wall.” Bridges, the son of a doctor, had a spectacular curveball. Over the season he had been the team’s best pitcher, winning twenty-one games and leading the staff in strikeouts, complete games, and fewest earned runs. In the first inning, after a lead-off walk, Bridges mowed down the Cubs.

Jo-Jo White opened the game for Detroit with a single. Cochrane drove him in on a double and came home on a hit by Gehringer, which brought Greenberg to the plate. The Chicago bench jockeys resumed their ranting. “We had Greenberg’s goat, and Hank’s play showed he was jittery,” manager Grimm said. “We intended to keep up our jockeying.” This time Greenberg won, launching a home run to deep left.

By the seventh the Tigers were ahead 7–3. Fans began leaving the park to escape the biting cold. The Tigers added another run, but the inning would be costly. Greenberg, trying to score on Pete Fox’s single, injured his wrist sliding into catcher Gabby Hartnett. After the win, as Greenberg got his wrist checked, Cochrane smoked a cigarette and predicted a quick World Series victory. “I knew they couldn’t keep us down forever,” he said. The players rushed to pack their bags for the Tiger Special to Chicago, which would be departing soon.

In the physician’s office Dr. W. E. Keane examined Greenberg’s wrist. It didn’t appear broken but he didn’t like what he saw. Though in severe pain, Greenberg insisted he would be able to play on Friday. By his side was batboy Joey Roggin, Greenberg’s pal and good-luck charm. When it had been revealed that the team wouldn’t be paying for Roggin to go to Chicago, coaches and players pitched in to cover his costs. Roggin was thrilled. His mother bought him a suit for the trip. But he worried that he and Greenberg would miss the train. The ballplayer tried to calm his nerves.

“Never mind about the train, Joe. We’ll be in Chicago at game time tomorrow if we have to walk.”

“Maybe you’ll get a rest anyway tomorrow, Hank,” said the boy. “They say it’s snowing in the south part of the state, and with more of the wind we had today, they may call the game off.”

“I don’t need a rest. I’ll be okay, Joe.”

They made their train. Joey filled up on ice cream, pie, and milk in the dining car.

During the series Spike Briggs, son of Tigers’ co-owner Walter O. Briggs, approached Cochrane. “Mickey, my wife is pregnant,” he said. “If this child turns out to be a boy and you win the World Series, I’ll name him after you.” Others had honored Cochrane in similar ways. Cochrane was unaware of most of his namesakes, including the tyke in Oklahoma who would soon be turning four, little Mickey Mantle.

Greenberg’s wrist swelled to twice its normal size. It felt even worse the next day but he wanted to play. He pleaded his case at Wrigley Field. “You know what this means to me,” he told Cochrane. “It’s what I’ve played for all year, and I want to get in there and do my part.” Greenberg’s hand was soaking in a bucket of ice water. Cochrane sympathized but said the risk was too great.