Terror in the City of Champions (16 page)

Professional football existed in the shadow of college football. Army, Navy, Notre Dame, and numerous other colleges regularly outdrew pro teams. Though the sport was beginning to make headway in New York and Chicago, it struggled elsewhere. Fans weren’t sold on it. They quibbled over whether the professional teams could even beat the best college teams. The Lions played their home games at the University of Detroit Stadium along McNichols Road, blocks from where Mickey Cochrane lived and near the border of Highland Park, where the Black Legion thrived. The stadium could seat 24,000. The Lions needed 8,000 to 10,000 fans per game to break even. Each game cost about $8,000, with $4,000 going to the visiting team and $2,300 toward team payroll. The remainder covered everything from referees to promotion.

A former All-American at Colorado College, Dutch Clark came out of retirement at age twenty-seven to become the Lions quarterback. Coach George “Potsy” Clark, no relation, described his running style as “like a rabbit in brush . . . no set plan, no definite direction.” In 1934 Dutch Clark became the subject of
News
photographer William Kuenzel’s iconic profile of an American football player. It later ran in
Life
magazine. Thousands requested prints, including Cochrane and Harry Bennett.

In their first nine games, the Lions kept their opponents from scoring any points. Every victory was a shutout. During that spell the team drew between 4,800 and 18,000 spectators each Sunday. Their only home sellout came on Thursday, November 29, Thanksgiving Day, when the Lions turned thousands away. Football teams had a long tradition of playing on Thanksgiving. But the Lions’ game against George Halas’s Chicago Bears helped turn a sporadic practice into an annual ritual. Richards arranged for the game to be broadcast nationally over a vast network of NBC stations. The celebrated Graham McNamee was at the microphone. In the final minutes of the game the undefeated Bears, led by Bronko Nagurski, came from behind to take a 19–16 lead. Dutch Clark drove the Lions back down the field. From the sixteen-yard line on the last play of the game, Clark passed toward receiver Glenn Presnell. The aging Red Grange, playing in his final season, deflected Clark’s pass. The game ended. Disappointed Lions fans battered Grange. His teammates rescued him as beer bottles rained upon them.

After the 1934 World Series, the Tigers scattered across the country. Cochrane, Gehringer, and Rogell lived in the Detroit area year-round. Those who didn’t returned to their hometowns. Newlywed Schoolboy Rowe went back to Arkansas with Edna, Tommy Bridges to Tennessee, Elden Auker to Kansas, Marv Owen to California, Pete Fox to Indiana, Gee Walker to Mississippi, Jo-Jo White to Georgia, Goose Goslin to his New Jersey farm, and Flea Clifton to the Kentucky-Ohio border area. Vic Sorrell and Ray Hayworth headed to North Carolina to hunt deer together. Most of the men had come from humble backgrounds and the reality of life in their native states—the sight of struggling neighbors and shuttered storefronts—must have reminded them just how fortunate they were. Across the country headlines confirmed that for the average family troubles persisted.

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Immediately following the World Series, Dizzy and Paul Dean headed out on a barnstorming baseball tour, raking in thousands through exhibitions. They followed it with a vaudeville tour, a lucrative reward for the two of them having won all four St. Louis games—and for Dizzy being one of the most colorful characters on the planet. Opening night was at the Roxy Theatre on Broadway, and Hank Greenberg went to the show. Dean might have been unaware of his presence when he asked from the stage, “Is Greenberg in the house?” Rightly suspecting a setup for a joke, Greenberg didn’t answer.

“If he is,” Dean continued, “I wish he’d come up here on the stage. I’d like to strike him out again.” The jab got some laughs, as well as some boos from Greenberg’s friends. It must have stung Greenberg, who was unhappy with his own series performance, fanning nine times (five against Dean) and faltering in crucial, high-pressure moments. Greenberg intended to ensure such a dismal performance would never haunt him again.

The most profitable spoils went to the triumphant Cardinals. But the Tigers also enjoyed their success. Cochrane, voted the league’s Most Valuable Player, took a long vacation to Hawaii and then drove back to Michigan from California in his flashy new Ford Lincoln, accompanied by his wife Mary and his best friend Cy Perkins. Rogell made extra cash by taking his own barnstorming team to small towns in Michigan and Ontario and, later in winter, by coaching hockey at Assumption College. Gehringer got the sweetest prize: Connie Mack selected him to join Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and others on a tour of Japan and to play scrimmages against an all-star team from Nippon. The Japanese athletes impressed Gehringer, but sleeping on floor mats didn’t. While in the Pacific, Gehringer heard rumors from the wife of a teammate that he was being traded to Cleveland to become the Indians’ player-manager. A soft-spoken man with no desire to lead others, Gehringer rightly dismissed the talk.

During their winter planning sessions, Navin and Cochrane discussed the possibility of luring all-star outfielder and Cochrane pal Al Simmons from the White Sox, but the price forbid it. Though the Tigers’ outfield rated as average, Navin and Cochrane decided not to hazard a trade or disrupt the chemistry of their team (unless they could get a good deal for rambunctious Gee Walker). They hoped to add a lefty from their troop of pitching recruits and they reasoned that their young players had gained a year of valuable experience and would be better for it. Among their other decisions was that Flea Clifton would be sent to the minors. Clifton had spent the year with the team but appeared in only sixteen games. He needed more playing time, they felt. They planned to option him to the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood team. When Clifton got word in northern Kentucky, where he had bought a farm with his playoff money, he leapt into his car and raced to Navin Field uninvited. Clifton shocked Frank Navin by showing up at the headquarters. Impressed by his persistence, Navin made time to talk with him.

Navin knew his players, and he undoubtedly knew Clifton’s story. Since boyhood Clifton had wanted to play for the Tigers because of Ty Cobb, his baseball god. Clifton had read Cobb’s biography and patterned himself after him. He was scrappy because of Cobb. He didn’t take guff from anybody because of Cobb. He worked hard, he led a clean life, and he adopted a never-say-die attitude, all because of Cobb. Cobb’s message resonated with Clifton, particularly during his teen years when he became orphaned and homeless. “He turned out to be my guiding light,” he said. Clifton’s father had died in the Great War. His mother remarried. After she was strangled by a drunken acquaintance, Clifton’s stepfather booted him from the house. Clifton lived behind a garage in Ludlow, Kentucky, pilfering milk bottles from nearby porches. He managed to stay in high school, and though he had scholarship offers for football, he pursued baseball—because of Cobb. He had even turned down better money with other teams so he could play in Detroit.

“Let me go to camp,” he pleaded with Navin. “You never can tell. One of those other infielders may not be up to form and I will have a chance to take his job. I don’t want to be fiddling around in Hollywood and missing opportunities in Detroit.” Navin couldn’t help but be impressed by Clifton’s fighting spirit. Cochrane appreciated the same quality about him. Navin relented. Clifton would be allowed to go to Lakeland with the team, but beyond that Navin was making no promises.

On the poor side of town, Margaret O’Rourke, Dayton Dean’s wife, went to the police after one of her teenage daughters complained that Dean had taken indecent liberties with her. Black Legionnaires worried that an investigation of Dean would bring unwanted attention. They pressured Margaret to drop the charges. If she did so, they said they would punish Dean themselves. If she refused, they said they would kill her. She didn’t prosecute and the legionnaires followed through on their promise. At an outdoor meeting deep in the winter woods, Dean was court-martialed. A hood was placed over his head, his hands were cuffed, and fifteen legionnaires each took a turn lashing his bare back with a blacksnake whip. “I gritted my teeth and didn’t say a word,” Dean would remember.

The legion concerned itself with a broad range of matters, from the petty and personal to the shockingly grandiose. But its aim was scattered, like buckshot, and its principles, such as they were, got applied arbitrarily. On one end of the spectrum were issues related to unseemly or immoral behavior (as judged through the lens of whoever happened to be in charge locally). These might include living out of wedlock or marrying a Catholic woman. Most often the targets in such cases were fellow legionnaires or their family members. At the other end of the spectrum were outrageous plots, several of which would surface early in 1935.

Mickey Cochrane was becoming good friends with the fearsome Harry Bennett, who ran the innocently named Ford Service Department, a private force of spies, guards, and detectives that permeated the gargantuan Rouge plant and tried to keep Ford workers from unionizing. Depending on one’s perspective, the Rouge plant was either a shining example of American innovation or proof of capitalism’s dehumanization of workers. By any measure it was large and important. One
New Republic
writer termed it “Fordissimus.” The complex offered stunning images: the smokestacks, the factory lines, the workers. When Diego Rivera did his Industry murals, he focused on the Rouge. The plant also enticed the lens of photographer Margaret Bourke-White. National writers almost always described the Rouge when profiling Detroit. One writer proclaimed upon beholding the masses coming and going: “At last I had witnessed the god in the machine.”