Cobb (16 page)

Yet why had he made that moonlight climb? A strange act for a man, unless he had a powerful motive …

When a coroner's jury convened the next day, August 10, it voted for Amanda's arrest on the count of voluntary manslaughter. Ty Cobb sat beside his mother at the courthouse and she broke down at the
finding. Amanda was charged with the unlawful killing of a human being by design or intention. The result of that charge remained to be decided by formal jury trial.

“We will withhold serving the warrant for her arrest until after the funeral,” announced the jury foreman. Ty thanked the jury, then all but collapsed himself.

On August 11, at the Cobb home—now the center of a scandal that was bound to spread luridly to Augusta, where Ty was well known as a ballplayer—the funeral was held. Ty had to borrow a dark suit—his small wardrobe was in Augusta. With two black horses on parade, he and his father's fellow Masons lowered the casket into the grave. Next day Amanda was arrested by the county sheriff, posted a stiff seven-thousand-dollar bail to avoid jail time, and within two weeks was indicted by a grand jury. Her trial would not come for many months, due to a crowded court docket.

Riding his horse Blackie, Cobb vanished into the hills. When old companion Joe Cunningham caught up with him, he was pale and still shaking. He told Cunningham, “I'll never get over this.” At the grave he had said, “There goes the best man I ever knew.” Fifty-five years afterward, Cunningham remembered, “I know for a fact that he never got over it. It was like he took an oath in W. H.'s name. A lot of what he'd done until then in playing ball was to win his father's respect … his admiration. Their differences over baseball were coming around to that point. It was always on his mind that his father never would see him in action, crowds cheering him, all that. Ty was just too self-centered and proud to accept W. H.'s death as a very tough break. He was all tied into the man and the thing his family had about winning medals in wars, government, and such. After the shooting, I figure that much of what he did on the diamond was for W. H. Seemed he was out to pay tribute to him in death.” Cunningham added, “I can't be sure of it, but Ty made plays after that which nobody else could make. Not anybody in the game. The thing is, W. H. opposed his playing ball. But he cared enough to let Ty go and prove he was a man. Ty owed him for that and he never stopped paying back.”

A New York sportswriting contemporary of Cobb's in the 1920s, sports editor Paul Gallico of the New York
Daily News
, agreed with Cunningham's evaluation. In his 1965 memoir,
The Golden People
, Gallico
wrote, “The roughnecks of baseball put steel into him … but also there was the traumatic experience of his father's terrible death. Cobb brought a strange fury, cruelty and viciousness to the game.”

Gallico saw him as “a mass of paradoxes,” “a rogue elephant,” and “such a tortured being that what we were observing then was in all likelihood a highly neurotic individual.” Gallico added, “Cobb's admission that he never got over his father's death is all any modern psychiatrist would ask for in plumbing the cause of illness.”

In the same blunt appraisal, Gallico saw Cobb as the greatest player who ever lived, “greater even than Babe Ruth or Honus Wagner, a unique, compelling character … an astonishing man who infused such drama, flesh and blood into the chill records he set that his like has not been seen since.”

Cobb's closest friends found no evidence that he hated his mother for the killing. At Amanda's trial for voluntary manslaughter, he would stand by her. Ty's younger brother, Paul, who became a fairly good hitter in semipro ball and climbed high enough to be drafted by the St. Louis Browns in 1908, confirmed that Cobb, when he owned a home of his own, invited Amanda to stay with him. “But,” said Paul Cobb, “he never allowed any mention of the shooting, it was all closed tight within him.” Amanda, living to age sixty-five, was buried by Ty next to his father's grave in Royston. The sanctity of the Cobb family image was preserved.

Throughout the ordeal of sheriffs, juries, and speculation, Cobb, for the most part, was stoic. Four days after the funeral, on August 15, he rode to the grave, placed flowers upon it, packed up, and rejoined the Tourists in Augusta. Had anyone on the club wisecracked about reports in the Augusta press of the “mystery killing,” Cobb, no doubt, would have gone after him with a bat. By his own description he was “sick at heart” upon returning. But the players remained silent.

Clubhouse chatter in his absence had it that the Royston Rooster was about to achieve what most of the members of Augusta's team could only fantasize might happen to a member—a call-up to the high minors, or to Mount Olympus, the majors. Cobb's matchless ability to concentrate, even at a time like this, was shown when he hit a double and single against the Charleston Sea Gulls in his first start after reporting back, during which he blindsided an infielder with a hard slide for a stolen base. He continued not to socialize with his teammates.

On the morning of August 19, 1905, his employer, William J. Croke, called him in. “They want you in Detroit right away,” began Croke. A beaming George Leidy was standing by.

Cobb was amazed. “They want me
now,
with the season almost over?” he asked.

“Don't get any big ideas,” warned Croke. “The Tigers are hurting for outfielders. They're down to three men there—injuries. You'll probably just be a fill-in for Duff Cooley in left field or center.”

Cooley? Ty had kept track of the Tigers for the fun of it and the fourteen-year veteran, thirty-two-year-old Duff “Sir Richard” Cooley, was a greyhound at outrunning fly balls, although showing signs of slowing. To step into Cooley's shoes without ever having so much as seen a major-league ballpark was mind-bending.

“Don't worry, Ty,” broke in Leidy. “Even if it doesn't work out right away you'll be getting great experience.”

In an ideal world, Cobb, at this moment, would have been rushing to tell his father of his miraculous jump to the Big Show. Now there would be no one at the other end of the phone.

THE THRILL
and chill of going up without warning would have been tempered had Cobb known the whole fact: Frank Navin, secretary–general manager of the Tigers, did not want to plug his outfield gap with a low-level teenager with no experience above the bushes, and particularly not one with a reputation as a “stunt-crazy” infielder and sometimes reckless base runner. To quote a leading Detroit Tigers historian, Harry Salsinger of the
Detroit News,
“They [the Tigers] had quite forgotten about Cobb. Faintly, they recalled the ‘nut' on the Augusta team … he'd had a good season, seemed to have promise. Nothing more.”

Luck played a large role in Cobb's candidacy. Navin had run out of options. After declining to act for several days, he changed his mind. Back in the spring, with the Bengals training at Augusta, Navin, in lieu of paying rent to his hosts, had loaned young pitcher Eddie Cicotte to the Tourists for the season. In return, Bill Croke had guaranteed Navin his pick for 1906 of anyone on the Tourist roster for the sum of $750. Came August and the season's near end, and Navin, in exercising his option and slightly moving it up, preferred a versatile twenty-one-year-old Tourist outfielder-infielder named Clyde Engle over Cobb. He
would have selected Engle but for the intervention of two men. Singing Bill Byron, a Sally League umpire and respected judge of quality, had harangued Detroit's manager, Bill Armour, arguing, “This one is a born hitter—he'll surprise you with all the things he can do. Runs like a scalded dog. Has good instincts. Take him, not Engle.”

Armour was skeptical. “I'm told he's got some screws loose, that the team doesn't like Cobb.”

Byron admitted this was true, saying, “It's not all his fault. Jealousy is involved. Sure, Cobb's got to be controlled. But as he stands right now he's a hell of a prospect, even this far down in the minors.”

While the decision hung fire, George Leidy worked on Heinie Youngman, the Detroit scout who had earlier interviewed the Rooster. Youngman, too, had serious reservations: “He would hardly talk to me,” said Youngman. “The Tourist players think he's got a screw loose.”

“He'll work out, I promise you,” argued Leidy, crossing his fingers. “When he does you're going to see the best young player between Maine and California.”

Even with such strong recommendations, the Tigers still favored Engle. “What saved me,” recorded Cobb in time, “was that Engle tailed off in the August heat and I hung on and was leading the Sally with a .326 average. Otherwise I wouldn't have been chosen.” Croke feared that Cobb would be drafted by a higher club at the current draft price of $350. Three-fifty would not much help Croke's pressing financial bind at Augusta, so he took the $750, and did so in the nick of time. One week after a relieved Croke sold his problem-maker—for $500 plus $250 “adjustment money” for losing Cobb's services for the rest of the season—four teams from higher leagues claimed him in organized baseball's draft. Other eyes had been watching Cobb all along.

As had happened a season earlier when Cobb had been sloughed off to lowly Anniston, Alabama, a band of his special fans had formed in town. The “Cobbies” cheered every time he ticked a foul ball. Ty played his final game with the Tourists on August 25 against Macon. Of the fifteen hundred in the crowd, about 90 percent seemed to be there to celebrate his advancement to the American League. “Give 'em hell in Detroit!” went the cry.

As he stood in the on-deck area, preparing for his first at-bat, a delegation of citizens approached. Augusta's mayor led the parade. Cobbies had taken up a collection and now presented Cobb with flowers
and a fifty-dollar gold watch. Embarrassed, he muttered his thanks, then turned to face Macon's pitcher.

He swung for strike one. He unbuttoned his shirt, swinging and missing for strike two. “On the next pitch,” Cobb described it, “I couldn't have connected with a six-by-eight plank if the pitcher had tossed the ball underhanded up to the plate.”

“Stuuuuhhhrike three!”

His fans sat in silence, except for one group that boomed, “Let Detroit have him!”

Characteristic for Cobb after a failure, he singled twice, stole a bag, and made a circus outfield catch before the game ended.

On the season, his numbers were good here, bad there, and far from portentous. He'd hit safely about one-third of the time—134 base hits in 411 at-bats—and scored 60 runs. He'd stolen a high 41 bases in 104 games. His assists on putouts came to a modest 15. If Detroit hadn't needed roster help in a hurry, Navin might have vetoed the deal, for Cobb's fielding average of .927 was the lowest in the league among regular outfielders. Some of this, however, was explained by his encroaching on chances belonging to other fielders. Over and above spotty defensive work, he had been in several intramural knock-down-drag-out fights.

Across the United States were minor-league baseball players with higher overall statistics. Out in the Pacific Coast League, for instance, Harry Lumley of Los Angeles had batted at a .387 figure. But the Tigers couldn't afford the sales price of Lumley and others like him, and went for Cobb in considerable part because he came so cheap. Thanks to George Leidy's hard schooling, he was given a rare chance. The key point was that he had made the grade, temporarily at least, while still a postadolescent, aged eighteen.

Clyde Engle, the player who had almost beaten Ty to the big time at Detroit, became a historical footnote. Engle reached the majors at New York in 1909 and in eight years there never once hit .300.

Prior to packing his bags and leaving on August 26, Cobb sounded off, again typically, in what boss Bill Croke considered to be the height of ingratitude. An item appeared in the
Augusta Chronicle
in which Cobb complained that he should have received a percentage of his $750 purchase price. Ten percent, he thought, would be fair. “Imagine that,” Croke was quoted. “The Rooster's been here for only 104 games
and wants a money-cut. He wants it from the club that made his big jump to the majors possible and which is paying his travel expenses to Detroit when we didn't have to do any such thing.”

Cobb replied that he had been much underpaid through the season, as his promotion to Detroit proved. But what could you expect from an outfit that fined you for breaking bats?

DETROIT WAS
730 miles away. Cobb was worn out when he caught a train on the night of August 26. Only a few Tourists saw him off. The odds were long against an immature player who had not been allowed to serve a normal apprenticeship in the most difficult of team sports. Through extraordinary circumstances, Detroit had acquired a beginner who was unlikely to finish the season. He was not fully grown, had never set foot in a big-league stadium, and he was in alien country. The Civil War was still a touchy matter. The first time some Yankee in Detroit, Washington, or New York heard his Dixie accent and made a remark derogatory to the South's military effort, there would very likely be a fight.

Beyond that, Cobb had shown little inclination to take orders. If he defied his new manager, he would be on his way home. In that case, with his father gone and a family to support, what would he do? The now-oldest male Cobb of Royston, Georgia, appeared to have burned his bridges behind him.

At the century's outset, the seasonal payrolls for many major-league clubs, covering twenty to thirty players, stood as low as seventy to eighty thousand dollars. To refer to “poorly paid ballplayers” was a tautology. Good hitters and pitchers died broke, pensions did not exist, salary arbitration had not been invented. Boys off a hay-farm wagon with a sketchy education were far outmatched when bargaining against avaricious franchise holders controlling one of the more shameless monopolies in the history of American commerce. Ultimately the gap between the “Johnny Grab” operators and cheap skilled labor would change, but not for another seventy years.