Cobb (18 page)

Bill Armour's reaction to Cobb's refusal of scoreboard help was unfavorable. The general feeling was that Cobb had better show something and do it in a hurry.

When Cobb came to bat for the first time in the majors—it was August 30, 1905—he came with a refinement of his own. Waiting for
his turn against Chesbro, he had carried not one, not two, but three bats. Swinging them vigorously around in warm-up, he discarded two and stepped into the box. Down home Ty had found that warming up this way made the remaining bat, through weight contrast, feel lighter and springier. It was one of the small advantages he forever sought. This, though, was hardly the time for displaying so much lumber. Catcher Red Kleinow asked, “You up here to hit or kill chickens?” Detroit fans rarely if ever had seen a triple-bat stunt before, but even though it looked like grandstanding they refrained from booing for the moment. A midweek turnout of twelve hundred customers could not even find Cobb's name on their scorecards, for the reason that it was not listed.

His debut went like this:

Chesbro faced outfielder Matty McIntyre leading off the first inning. McIntyre doubled. First baseman Pinky Lindsay singled McIntyre home. Next, infielder Germany Schaefer bunt-sacrificed Lindsay to second base. Sam Crawford bounced out to the mound, Lindsay advanced to third. The angry Chesbro bore down on Cobb, hitting fifth.

“Up came a fairly tall, gaunt, almost gawky-looking boy who seemed jittery,” reported the
Detroit News
next day. “Chesbro fired a high fastball and Cobb swung and missed. A fastball high is the one pitch that the majority of minor leaguers can't resist. While Cobb had seen many such pitches in the Sally League, he'd never seen one so sizzling fast as the one he missed.

“Chesbro followed with a waist-high curve that Silk O'Loughlin, the plate umpire, called ‘st-r-r-r-rike tuh.' Chesbro figured that Cobb would expect another high, fast spitter, but waist-high instead of letters-high. Cobb stepped into the pitch and blasted it deep past New York's center fielder, Eddie Hahn. Streaking to first, Cobb turned sharply without lessening his speed and easily slid safely into second.”

Pinky Lindsay trotted home to score and the Tigers led 2–0. It had been a clean, two-out, run-manufacturing base hit by the new boy, against prohibitive odds.

A very wary Chesbro walked the kid on his next time up.

In a close game, Cobb made no more hits that day, but prevented New York from scoring with a pair of catches in center field. On a double-steal attempt, Cobb was thrown out, through no fault of his. His legs sore from so much recent traveling, he limped to the bench when
it ended with a 5–3 Detroit victory. “You did well,” said Bill Armour, “especially working Chesbro for a walk.”

Nobody offered him a congratulatory dinner, so he dined alone that night, and moved out of Ryan's Bed and Board with its burlesque annex and sound effects into cheap housing closer to Bennett Park.

To reach the park by foot meant dodging a sputtering, smoke-belching variety of fifteen-mile-an-hour vehicles—Marvels, Reos, Hupmobiles, Aerocars, Buicks, Packards, and Model N Fords (the famous Model T type Ford, at $850, would not appear until 1908). As of 1905, Detroit had more than seventy firms producing 22,800 gas cars annually. Cobb envied the begoggled, duster-coated drivers. If ever he could afford to own one . . .

FOLLOWING HIS
first appearance, he read in Detroit's
Free Press
: “Cobb, the juvenile outfielder, got away well. Tyrus was well-received and may consider a two-base pry-up as a much better career opener than usually comes a young fellow's way.” Sportswriters also liked his stance at bat, marked by a slight crouch with feet close together, his rather heavy 38-ounce club (about 2.4 pounds) held steady at shoulder height and set to whip around in coordination with a short forward stride. His swing was a contained, economical one, not from the heels.

In a rematch with the New Yorkers the next day, August 31, the opinion of the press was split. Some observers cheered his two singles in four times up off right-handed change-up specialist Jack Powell, a 23-game winner in 1904. His base hits were a useful contribution to a 5–0 Tiger shutout of the Highlanders. But offsetting this was a first-inning headfirst steal attempt in which the catcher's throw easily beat him. That allowed baseman Kid Elberfeld time to slam his knee into the back of Cobb's neck and grind his face into the dirt. “The professional teach,” it was called—a naked attack on apprentice ballplayers to discourage stealing. Cobb's nose was skinned and he bled a bit. Bill Armour said, “I wanted to see what you could do against Red Kleinow's arm. It was damned dumb to go in leading with your head.” Down in Augusta, months earlier, George Leidy had warned him of the same error. After Elberfeld's roughing-up, Cobb rarely went into a base other than feet first, with neck muscles bunched. He filed away the name of Norman Arthur “Kid” Elberfeld for purposes of evening the score at another time—if there was another time.

Another bush-league exhibition came in the seventh inning of his second start. He violated the basic rule of never running through a stop signal given by a coach. Base runner Cobb tried to score from second base on a single to medium-deep center field. Ignoring Bill Coughlin's hold-up sign at third base, he was tagged out by a near body length and roundly booed. “Archie Hahn, the Olympic sprint champ,” wrote a critic, “couldn't have made that work.”

Evaluating afterward those break-in days, Cobb recorded, “I was riding high one moment, in the dumps the next. The worse thing was not knowing if I belonged there or not. It was all maybe. Maybe I did, maybe not. That put me into too much of a hurry to look good.”

His main handicap was that he felt inferior alongside mature big-leaguers: “I'd never dreamed that men could field and hit so wonderfully. Such speed, class, style, and lightning thinking. It was common then for games to be low scoring and close scoring—1–0, 2–1, 3–2—decided by gaining the last inch of advantage. Scientific ball at its best. It hasn't been matched since.”

In a Labor Day game came plays that he felt decided whether he would leave town or stay. Chicago's scrappy White Sox, bidding for the pennant in the late season, visited Bennett Park for a doubleheader. A turnout of seventy-six hundred rambunctious fans packed along baselines and outfield restraining ropes. Hazers yelled at Cobb in center field, “Hey, sprout, does your ma know you're out?” This was touching on sensitive ground. Cobb glared back. After that someone threw a cheap child's toy at him. He kicked it all the way to the ropes. Detroit's agitators were now aware of something—the new boy could not stand to be razzed.

Amidst an uproar, Chicago's Jiggs Donahue drove a ball deep to left center. It resembled a two-base hit until Cobb, racing under it at the last moment, speared the ball one-handedly, almost blindly, over his shoulder. He shot it back to the infield, saving two runs. A few innings later he again showed off his throwing arm. Donahue was at first base when Ty chased a long grounder, pocketed it, and fired two-hundred-odd feet on a line to third base. Donahue, out to stretch the hit into a two-base advance, was out sliding. Detroit beat the White Sox. Back on the bench, Germany Schaefer nudged Ty, saying, “Can't you hear the folks? Go out and take a bow.”

Cobb was unsure how a rookie should respond to cheers and just
sat there. Schaefer pushed him to his feet. For the next moments he heard his first big-time crowd salute.

Twenty-four hours later, he was in trouble. Against the White Sox, he took a bead on a fly ball and with no forethought went after it. The chance clearly was in left fielder Matty McIntyre's territory, of which McIntyre was highly possessive. A bad man to cross, McIntyre had batted a weak .254 and .265 in the past two seasons; his job was in danger. Cobb infuriated McIntyre by cutting in front of him, in what one sportswriter called “a high, senile prance, for one so young,” and causing him to drop the ball.

He was capable of worse gaucheries. At Washington he let three fly balls pop out of his glove for errors in two games, and missed a steal sign. His teammates gave Cobb a razzing. Armour replaced him in center field with McIntyre, sending the rookie to left field.

A few games later, Adrian “Addie” Joss was on the mound for Cleveland, mowing down Tigers with a curveball that gave him one of the lowest lifetime earned-run averages in history (1.88). After reaching Joss earlier for a single, Cobb came to bat in the ninth inning of a deadlocked game. He worked Joss to a full count before singling again.

In the press section, as Cobb later learned, Harry Salsinger of the
News
said, “Look at that idiotic lead Cobb's taking off first. Joss will pick him off easily.”

Instead, a sacrifice moved him to second base, where he once more took a lead bordering on the foolhardy. Joss whirled and threw to the bag. Cobb beat the tag by the smallest of margins. He darted back and forth, yipping at Joss. Batter Matty McIntyre hit a slow-bounding ball that took a last high hop and was barely knocked down by Cleveland's second baseman. Now Detroit had its first look at the advertised speed of the Georgian. Advancing to third base and beyond in a flash, while in full stride he glanced back at the second-base situation. The fielder momentarily did not have the spinning ball under control. Cobb saw him juggling it. Without a pause Cobb raced on. The play at home plate was tight, but he beat a hurried high throw to Cleveland's catcher, Nig Clarke, to win the game. The crowd yelled his name this time.

Bill Armour was impressed by the sight of a beginner successfully moving from second to home on a ball hit to the shallow infield.
“That's one of the best running jobs I've ever seen,” he told the press. “He must have traveled that last ninety feet in three seconds.”

By that impetuous final-inning dash, Cobb put the Tigers at the .500 mark for the first time since early season. They finished in third place with a 79–74 (.516) record, the best any Detroit team had done since 1901. By improving to third place, Armour had probably saved his job. Numerous managers had come and gone—George Stallings, Frank Dwyer, Ed Barrow, Bobby Lowe—since the century's turn. The authoritative
Reach Guide
of 1905 said, “Armour did an admirable job of managing and his colorful new second-base combination of Charley O'Leary and Germany Schaefer … and a young outfielder named Cobb … added new strength to the team.”

As the season's end neared, Ty was considered worth keeping on the roster, although seen as a hot-and-cold performer who could make teammates and fans tear their hair. He was notably deficient at fielding hard-bounding grounders, and weak against some forms of left-handed pitching. Guy “Doc” White of Chicago broke up laughing after striking out the youth four times in one afternoon. “I thought I'd be released after that game,” Cobb remembered. “By September I kept waiting for the ax to fall … why it didn't I still don't know.”

One answer to that might have been the home run he hit that late season against Washington. His first big-league home run was a three-run, inside-the-park job. The ball, pulled into the right-field corner, bounced away from the fielder and Cobb simply outran its return. “He went so fast,” commented the
Detroit News,
“that he almost ran over the two Tigers scoring ahead of him, Sam Crawford and Germany Schaefer. This kid can outleg the No. 1 horse hitch at the Central Fire Department.”

A strikeout victim too much of the time, he compensated to a degree by going on batting spurts. When Detroit finished its season at Cleveland on October 7, Tiger regulars urged Armour to bench the kid and let Jimmy Barrett, slowed by a knee injury, end the campaign at his former outfield position. Cobb had replaced Barrett back on August 30. “Can't do it,” replied Armour. “Frank Navin wants to see more of him. We're not sure what to do about him next season. He's got plenty of fight.”

Armour noticed how Cobb had handled the matter of Bill “Jap” Barbeau, Cleveland's second baseman. Barbeau one day had tried to
block Cobb's slide into the bag. A hurtling body, spikes extended, had hit Barbeau at the knees, sending him backward, stunned. Torn from his grip, the ball had rolled into the outfield. Cobb was safe, Barbeau's leg had been cut, and the game-winning run had scored.

To take a man out of a play by charging him at full force was a football tactic seldom used in this game. But an attitude was growing in Cobb that argued that while it was standard practice to impede a runner's access to a base by any means, fair or foul, there was a limit beyond which the defense should not go. Within baseline boundaries, access should be equal for offense and defense. The rulebook was vague on the subject. Cobb's interpretation was becoming one of
Give me room or get hurt.

Not until he grew to more than six feet and 185 to 190 pounds and was proficient in the use of momentum was he fully able to enforce his belief. As it stood now, he was making a start at confronting those who shut him off—at times by slamming balls into his face. “I have some loose teeth to prove it,” he pointed out that winter. Bloodying his spikes on basemen would in time involve him in more field fights and off-field brawls and inflame the national audience and press more than any other aspect of his play.

Along with handling Barbeau, he had two base hits against Cleveland on October 7. That concluded his tryout with the Tigers. He had appeared in all 41 games left on the schedule after he reported. Batting down the lineup in fifth place most of the time, he had produced 36 hits in 150 times at bat for a .240 average. Included were 6 doubles, no triples, and 1 home run. His runs scored came to 19, not a bad showing for so few games. Armour did not let him try for steals, and his bases stolen came to only 2. He had won at least 4 games with his bat and feet.

In the field, against the wind that whirled in Bennett Park, he had made 85 putouts and 6 assists with just 4 errors, for a .958 average—not bad at all. Through all of his years Cobb insisted that, at the outset, he was a poor fielder. His total of errors does not support that description. His reason for playing down his defensive work had to do with the Georgian's claim that he was in no way a natural ballplayer. He wanted it certified and understood that he succeeded only by detailed observation, application, and perseverance. “Not until 1907,” he said, “could I be considered sound in the field and beginning to understand hitting. I earned everything I did by damned hard effort.”