Terror in the City of Champions (14 page)

Frisch started Dizzy Dean in the opener. Cochrane, concerned about his young team’s lack of championship experience, decided against Schoolboy Rowe and went with thirty-five-year-old Alvin “General” Crowder, who had been acquired in August from the Senators and gone 5–1 while wearing the Old English D. Crowder had pitched for Washington in the 1933 World Series. He had enjoyed a long career and could handle pressure, Cochrane believed.

It was chilly on Wednesday, October 3. Well-to-do fans in the box seats wore furs and wool overcoats. Henry and Edsel Ford chatted with Will Rogers, who had earlier visited the Tigers clubhouse. (“All the boys flocked around him,” said Cochrane. Rogers said that he had bet money on Detroit. Consequently the Tigers felt as if he had adopted them.) Edna Mary Skinner, Schoolboy’s girl, shared a laugh with rubber-lipped comedian Joe E. Brown, dapper in his wide-lapelled houndstooth coat. Big-screen gangster George Raft, who had starred with James Cagney and Carole Lombard, sat two rows over. Edna met Raft, as well as Mrs. Babe Ruth. The Babe himself lumbered by on the field, draped in brown-mustard camel hair, as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, at sixty-seven still the ruler of baseball, settled into the front row, tufts of his Mark Twain hair escaping from beneath his hat. Everywhere one looked, there was a recognizable face: Walter Chrysler, Grantland Rice, Westbrook Pegler, old Senator Couzens, and his son the mayor.

Crowder pitched well initially. The long-sleeved T-shirt under his uniform kept his pitching arm warm and concealed a wartime tattoo of a naked woman. But the Tigers behind him proved jittery. The best infield in baseball made five errors in the first three innings, giving St. Louis a 3–0 lead. The Cardinals’ advantage grew to 8–1 after sixth innings. Though the Tigers added a couple of runs, they were outmatched by Dizzy Dean. Afterward Dean said as much: “I think the Tigers are not as good a ball team as I figured them out to be. . . . I would be tickled to death to pitch tomorrow’s game, too, and could probably shut those Tigers out.”

That was just Dizzy being Dizzy. There was no way Frisch would start him two days in a row. Before Thursday’s game, the second, Dean posed with a sousaphone and then watched his teammates take on Schoolboy Rowe before a record Detroit crowd of 43,451. Somewhere in the skies above was national columnist Henry McLemore aboard the Goodyear blimp, approaching from the south, passing the Rouge complex. “Henry Ford’s big plant slipped by,” he reported. “The skyscrapers popped up out of the mist, and there, looking for all the world like a fancy cardboard toy, was Navin Field.”

Rowe surrendered two runs early, and it appeared going into the ninth that his team would lose 2–1. But after Pete Fox opened with a single and Rowe moved him to second on a bunt, Gee Walker, batting for Jo-Jo White, singled him home to tie the game. The stands exploded. It was a blizzard above the bleachers. Scorecards, napkins, and shreds of newspaper floated on the wind. In the twelfth, with Rowe still in the game, Charlie Gehringer scored the winning run on Goose Goslin’s single. The crowd went wild again. Among the cheering throng were radio priest Father Charles Coughlin and Col. Heinrich Pickert, the police commissioner. The series was even.

Later that night, after Dean and the Cardinals slipped out of town, 3,000 fans jammed into the Fort Street Union Station for a friendly sendoff for the Tigers. Moving through a gauntlet of policemen, the players were patted, praised, and applauded. Fans cheered wobbly Frank Navin, as well as Gehringer, Greenberg, and Cochrane—the whole lot. But the appearance of Schoolboy and Edna brought “a yell that nearly stopped the tower clock,” said one observer.

So many Detroiters were making the trip to St. Louis that six separate engines were deployed. In all sixty Pullman cars would be chugging along the Wabash Railway toward Sportsman’s Park. It would be an overnight trip with a game to follow the next day. The World Series was scheduled to take place on consecutive days—no rest between contests—in two cities. Games one and two were in Detroit, three through five would be in St. Louis, and, if necessary, six and seven back in Michigan.

Sportsman’s Park held fewer fans than Navin Field, but when filled it brought a more lucrative gate because more of its seats were reserved and, thus, more expensive. At Navin Field with the temporary bleachers, almost half of the spectators paid the lowest World Series ticket price: a dollar, plus ten cents tax. Not so at the Missouri park. Thirty-eight thousand fans in St. Louis would bring in more money than 44,000 in Detroit.

The stadium was festive for the St. Louis opener. Red, white, and blue bunting hung along the second deck, and a marching band outfitted in Cardinal Red paraded on the field. The concourses were loud with the churning voices of spectators and the calls of vendors selling sodas, hot dogs, coffee, tiny Dizzy Dean straw hats, and live chameleons. The main scoreboard stood in left field behind the bleachers. Along the outfield walls in fair territory were banner ads for Camel cigarettes, the
Globe-Democrat
newspaper, and Enders Speed Razor—“swift and smooth.”

Shortstop Billy Rogell arrived at the ballpark in pain. He had been playing on a broken ankle for several weeks since suffering the injury in September. Rogell had decided to forgo a cast because he didn’t want to sit out the World Series and risk losing his job. But on this morning he hurt badly. He mentioned it in the locker room but his teammates reacted quickly and fiercely. Rogell asked Cochrane to put someone else in the game but he refused. They couldn’t afford to risk it. Trainer Denny Carroll taped Rogell’s ankle so thickly that Rogell could barely bend it, and still his teammates treated him like the goat.

Hank Greenberg was also having troubles, but his were with his bat. In the first game Greenberg had stranded Cochrane and Gehringer by striking out to end an inning. In the second game he had halted three rallies. It wasn’t the performance anyone expected. Now Greenberg would be playing before his parents, who had come from the Bronx to St. Louis to watch their famous son. Their presence did not alter the outcome. In game three, Greenberg was impotent, flying out in the first with Gehringer on base and striking out in the third with Cochrane and Gehringer waiting to score. Dizzy’s brother Paul won 4–1.

In the clubhouse the next day, Cochrane unleashed his fury and gave his Tigers “a tongue lashing” before the game. He told them to bear down and rise to the occasion. Frustrated by his power-hitting first baseman’s inability to connect in pressure situations, he dropped Greenberg to number six in the batting order and elevated Goslin and Rogell. All three responded. Greenberg got four hits, Goslin scored twice, and Rogell drove home four runs. The fourth inning saw Dizzy Dean enter the game as a pinch runner. On a ground ball to Gehringer, Dean charged toward second base, hoping to break up a double play. Gehringer tossed to Rogell at second. Rogell fired the ball toward first but it struck Dean in the skull. The ball ricocheted off Dean’s helmetless head and veered into shallow right field. Dean dropped like an anchor, falling to the ground beyond second base. He was unconscious. The stadium went silent. Rogell stood over Dean to see if he was okay as Dean’s teammates rushed the field. It looked as if he might have been killed. But after a few minutes, Dean recovered slightly. He was carried off the diamond in the arms of his comrades and rushed to a hospital for x-rays.

The next day Dean reappeared at the park ready to pitch. His entrance helped ease the criticism being lobbed at manager Frisch by those who wondered what the hell he was thinking in putting his best pitcher in to run. Before the game Rogell delivered a military helmet to Dean as a joke. Dean absolved him of any blame. They posed for photos, arms around one another, and then went about playing the game. It was a subdued, low-scoring affair, with the Tigers prevailing. The win gave Detroit a 3–2 lead in the series. Frank Navin watched from his box seat, the anticipation building in his roiling belly. The team needed one more win to capture the world championship.

On the train ride back to Detroit, the Tigers swelled with confidence. They expected to prevail and to enjoy the big payoff that would follow. Everything favored them. They had momentum—two straight wins. They would be playing at home before their own fans. They would be pitching their ace, Schoolboy Rowe. They had just defeated Dizzy Dean, so he wouldn’t be a factor. They would be among friends and family. Rogell, Walker, Sorrell, and Marberry could see their kids, Gehringer his mother, and Flea Clifton his beloved Doberman pinscher.

T
IGERS
I
NSIST
I
T’S IN THE
B
AG
, said the
Detroit News
. Bud Shaver, the
Times
columnist who had earlier described St. Louis as the better team, apologized in print: “We now cheerfully eat those words. There isn’t any better ball club than the Tigers, not in this year 1934.” Coach Cy Perkins flat-out predicted a triumph: “I don’t care who pitches for the Cardinals,” he said. “Rowe will beat them.” Tommy Bridges buffed the varnish off the barrel of a bat, making it easier for his teammates to sign it—a memento from the day they would make history. On cigarette stands the latest issue of
News-Week
endorsed their expectations. Cochrane peered from its cover, his hands framing his mouth megaphone-style, as if yelling directions to his soldiers. M
ICKEY THE
M
ANAGER,
it proclaimed.

Fans anticipated a championship celebration. The mood around town was jubilant. Tickets were going for several times face value. The biggest crowd yet would pack into Navin Field. Judges canceled their afternoon sessions. School principals set up radios so children could listen to the game in their gymnasiums. “We thought Detroit was a madhouse as we played the first two games of the series,” Frisch, the St. Louis manager, said later. “But . . . the excitement was ten times greater [for game six]. Crowds milled in front of our hotel as we arrived and police had to push back the mobs so we could make our way from taxicabs to the hotel entrance. The horn-blowing was deafening.”

But at the ballpark signs were surfacing that perhaps the baseball gods would once again deprive Frank Navin. Something was amiss. The omens ranged from the relatively minor—Greenberg’s severe headache, Frank Doljack’s breaking of Goslin’s favorite bat—to the significant—Cochrane’s bandaged legs and hobbled gait after two spiking incidents. Most worrisome, though, was Schoolboy Rowe’s pitching hand. The star pitcher had already been to Providence Hospital that morning to have his swollen hand x-rayed. It showed no broken bones, but he was hurting. He cringed when comedian Joe E. Brown greeted him with a handshake. Rowe insisted on pitching and Cochrane agreed. He wanted—needed—Rowe to take the mound. Rowe’s explanation as to how he had injured his hand struck listeners as unconvincing. He said someone had slammed it in a hotel door. An elevator, he said one time. The revolving door, another. For much of the week, a Detroit detective had been accompanying Rowe because he had received threats. One had been handed to his sister by a boy in the hotel lobby. The threat was not the work of a child. Don’t win or else, it said. After the game speculation would turn to gamblers. W
HAT
H
APPENED TO
R
OWE’S
H
AND?
a banner headline would ask from atop page one of a daily.

The Tigers fell behind early. Rowe lacked his usual spark. His fastball was slower, the break of his curve softer. His hand was definitely injured. That afternoon the bench jockeys turned even more brutal with Rowe, Cochrane, and Greenberg the favored targets. When Rowe gave up a hit or run, players in the Cardinals dugout would ask profanely how Edna thought he was doing now. When Cochrane came to the plate, they would mimic the morning headlines that painted him a hero and a warrior for playing injured. With Greenberg they focused on his poor series and his Jewish roots. The Cardinals’ own Frisch found the heckling “unparalleled” in all his years in baseball.