The Tiger Wore Spikes: An Informal Biography of Ty Cobb

By John McCallum

The Tiger Wore Spikes, first published in 1956, is an insightful, down-to-earth look at the career of baseball great Tyrus “Ty” Cobb (1886-1961), who spent 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers (the last 6 years as the team’s playermanager), followed by several seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics. Written by sports writer John McCallum, the book is based on the author’s interviews with Cobb as he reflected back on his long and sometimes controversial career. Included are 41 pages of photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742095

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE TIGER WORE SPIKES

An informal biography of Ty Cobb

By

JOHN McCALLUM

The Tiger Wore Spikes was originally published in 1956 by A. S. Barnes and Company, New York.

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 4

Dedication 5

Foreword 6

Part I — The Gaslight Era — 1890-1906 9

Preface 9

The Early Years 12

The Big Leagues Are Calling 22

Part II — The Cobbian Age — 1905-1912 27

Preface 27

Early Days in Detroit 31

The New Deal 36

Ty Meets The Train 40

The Home Run Baker Incident 46

A Lesson in Psychology 50

Part III — At the Peak — 1912-1919 55

Preface 55

The Phantom Mercury 58

Ty’s Training Tips 71

Trouble in the Grandstand 82

Part IV — The Golden Era — 1918-1929 87

Preface 87

The Generalissimo 91

The Battle of Minds 99

Back for Mr. Mack 104

Part V — The Passing Show — 1929-1956 112

Preface 112

Life Goes On 114

A Word About the More Moderns 122

The Clock Ticks On... 125

Appendix — Baseball’s Most Fascinating Figures 132

ILLUSTRATIONS 143

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 184

Dedication

To the keepers of the records of the Baseball Hall of Fame whose dedication and devotion share a vital role in keeping alive the spirit of the game’s immortals.

Foreword

by Ernest J. Lanigan

Baseball Hall of Fame’s Official Historian

Putting my memories of Tyrus Raymond Cobb into the Foreword of a book about his spectacular baseball career is as natural as breathing. I have been writing about the Georgia Peach for so long, now, I feel as though I practically invented him.

Tyrus Raymond, come to think of it, was only two years old when I got my first baseball writing job. That was with the Sporting News, in 1888. I was made baseball editor of the old New York Press in 1907, the season Cobb won his first of nine straight American League batting championships. Four years later I became secretary of the Eastern League. During the World War I years, I put in tours of duty with the Cleveland Leader, Boston Record, and Boston American. I’ve been the Hall of Fame’s Historian since 1946. All told, I have been associated with baseball in one capacity or another for 68 years—which should qualify me to say a few well-chosen words about the main subject of this book.

I suppose I knew Tyrus as well as any man writing baseball in the old days, and I feel elated that he still numbers me among his closest friends in the sporting world. To me, he will always be far and away the greatest ballplayer who ever lived. He was truly all competitor, in every meaning of the word.

I recall that when he first started on his 24-year march as the master of them all, folks commented on his extreme nervousness. He was always kicking at the bags strapped onto the bases. It was years before it dawned on anybody that he was kicking the bags a few inches closer to where he might be if he needed to reach them.

In his early seasons Cobb never thought anything of himself or his records, if the Tigers could win a ball game. The team came first. He’d sacrifice himself every time to get that extra run across the plate. If there was a runner on third and Tyrus was on first, he’d go down to second, even to be thrown out. But the shortstop or second baseman who went over to tag him found himself all tangled up as though in a rassling match, so that there was no chance to throw to the plate.

After Cobb hung up his spikes for good, I must admit that the game was never quite the same for me. I never see a runner rounding second anymore, hesitating and dancing back to the bag like a scared bird whose Maw is trying to push him out of the nest, without recalling what Tyrus would have done in the same situation. It was really something to see the way Cobb worked those bases. Tom Sheehan pitched for the Yankees when he was young, and he told me that Tyrus would make a grab at a base with his right hand and when the fielder started to tag his arm, Cobb would suddenly lash out with his other paw and tag the base.

Tyrus came clattering up the pike from Dixie in an era of giants, and by dint of his persistency, driving ambition, he fought his way, literally fought, to the top of the heap to stand alone, unbeatable and untouched. Pop Anson, who played against the cream of the Old Guard and saw the best of the Cobb Era, admitted to me one time that there was no question about it—Cobb was the king of them all. Charley Comiskey, for 30 years the most prominent owner in baseball, told me the same thing.

Well, when you study the records, an almost irrefutable case can be made out in Cobb’s behalf, as the most superior ballplayer of all time. And I know a little bit about the significance of baseball figures. I invented such columns in the official record book as Runs Batted In, Times Thrown Out Stealing, and had John Heydler add first and middle names in the averages. I spent three years figuring out Cobb’s lifetime batting average against individual big-league pitchers, published for the first time in this book.

Life itself, or Fate or Circumstance, made Tyrus one of the most dramatic, exciting and courageous athletes ever to stride across the great American sport scene. He was a hero drawn from our national life, for like the early pioneers who battled their way West, he had to conquer life’s many handicaps, overcome emotional conflict, to scale the heights. Sure, Tyrus made enemies, lots of them, along the way, but even his detractors had to admire him and all that he stood for.

I was happy to assist the author in every way, to fill him in on certain phases of Cobb’s background, for any book on the playing career of Tyrus is a valuable contribution to baseball history. The younger generation, especially, will enjoy meeting the immortal Georgia Peach for the first time here.

The author has depicted Cobb as the great talent he was via the most microscopic of methods. Tyrus is excellently analyzed, psychologically and spiritually, and fans will learn just why Tyrus must be rated above all others. His theories on training, batting, running, fielding and team psychology are told expertly in a neat package of the best on diamond philosophy.

Tyrus has shied away from publicity in more recent years, but historians will be writing about him for as long as the game of baseball is played. No study will cover his tremendous career more excitingly or comprehensively than it is covered here.

One aspect of Cobb’s career was not touched upon, however—his acting career! Perhaps it was just as well. He played the role of Billie Bolton in a stage comedy called The College Widow, and as I told Ward Morehouse, the drama critic and a native Georgian, it was probably the worst production I ever saw in my 83 years. In those days Tyrus needed the money and would do anything.

Tyrus Raymond has never been a great one to talk about his personal life, but he will gab for hours about baseball to anyone. In 1936, I remember, he journeyed all the way from Menlo Park, California, to Cooperstown for the formal dedication of the Hall of Fame. He brought his son, Howell, then 17, and daughter, Beverly, then 19, along with him. Incidentally, his other daughter, Shirly, now the proprietor of a thriving book store in California, confesses that she knew very little of her father’s baseball career—until, one day, she started pasting up his scrapbook!

Anyway, Tyrus was the man of the hour at that Hall of Fame dedication. Old opponents and fellow H of F tenants rushed to greet him. There was moisture in his eyes as he embraced Connie Mack. Cobb always has been a sentimental man, though the public seldom sees this side of his personality. Tyrus must have signed a thousand autographs that day. As Larry Lajoie signed his name for an admirer, he pointed to Cobb and said, Now, son, go over there and get the champ.

One of Cobb’s biggest complaints down through the years is that the boys in the press coop have all too often made him look like a villain, frequently misquoting him and failing to get his side of the many controversial issues identified with his name. Well, the author here is not guilty of that. John McCallum spent many hours in the summer of 1955 at Cobb’s home, and Tyrus filled him in on many of the facts. The author also talked to many of Cobb’s contemporaries—men like Larry Lajoie, Cy Young, Ed Walsh, Honus Wagner and Mickey Cochrane—to compare notes and thus get an honest, fair study of the old Detroit star.

In 1914, Tyrus wrote a book titled Busting ‘Em, sort of a semi-autobiography. He was only 28 years old then, still a long way from the end of the line. There since have been two other tomes written about him, neither of which could compare with this latest one. Tyrus has been saying for years that one of these days he is going to sit down and write another book, clearing the record.

When you get my age (69), he told a gathering at Cooperstown last summer, you get on the square. You tell the facts. You tell the way it really happened.

Well, until he does get around to writing that book—though he admits the very thought of tackling such a monumental project tires him out—John McCallum’s portrait of the greatest baseball player that ever lived greatly covers the subject, and then some. I’m sure you will agree after you have read—The Tiger Wore Spikes.

Part I — The Gaslight Era — 1890-1906

Preface

The Gay Nineties and those years on the early edge of the Twentieth Century had their own special blend of color and charm. A sort of Victorian composure gripped the nation, but the Union was showing flutters of emerging from its cocoon. Historians gently refer to the period as the good old days—the age of the tiny-waisted Gibson girl, hoop skirts, bustles. The handle-bar mustache, slick-parted hair, high-buttoned jacket and tall stiff collar. Days when a free lunch went with a beer, when Dad rode Mom on a bicycle built for two—and two could live as cheaply as one without both working.

Despite this cloak of conservativeness, however, America’s pulse beat was speeding up. Out at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, the Seventh Cavalry was bringing to a close gory-pitched battles between redskins and whites by kicking hell out of 200 Indians in the Army’s revenge for the massacre of Custer. The first major industrial strike in U.S. history shut down the Carnegie Steel empire. Benjamin Harrison was finishing his term as President. Grover Cleveland, William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt were warming up in the bullpen.

They called it the Gay Nineties, but a tourist’s view of the times would indicate that there were also many not-so-gay moments.

Between the years 1889 and 1906, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, suffered a disastrous flood, Chicago a horrible fire, and San Francisco a devastating earthquake. While the populace from the shattered areas recovered from these holocausts, the rest of the country plunged on. The Duryea, a 4-h.p. automobile, one of the first, made its appearance. Edison built his Kinetographic Theatre, the initial movie studio. Vaudeville boomed. Buffalo Bill Cody, western hero of the day, toured the theatre circuit. Joseph Jefferson III enthralled audiences with his characterization of Rip Van Winkle. Millions flocked to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.

But there was trouble abroad. The U.S. had to send relief corps to the Far East to suppress the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China. The Maine, American battleship, was blown up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 men, and igniting the Spanish-American fracas. Teddy Roosevelt led a charge of his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, Cuba; later he won the Nobel Peace Prize for settling the war between Russian and Japanese troops, in 1905. Leon Czolgosz, a young anarchist, shocked the world by assassinating President McKinley, September 6, 1901, at Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition—and Teddy Roosevelt peeled off his spurs and took over the Chief Executive’s chair.

The Wright brothers, on December 17,1903, made the first successful airplane flight, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. John D. Rockefeller struck oil, amassed a fortune of more than 300 million at the turn of the century. Edison’s movie of The Great Train Robbery was the first film to tell a story.

John L. Sullivan went around shouting, I can lick any guy in the house! And most of the time the Boston Strong Boy was right. Jim Corbett knocked him out in twenty-one rounds in New Orleans, September 7, 1892, the first heavyweight championship match in which the combatants wore gloves.

The diversity among pugilists added tremendous spice and drama to the sport—the flamboyant John L., the clever Gentleman Jim, the sullen Jim Jeffries, the shuffling Bob Fitzsimmons, the intemperate Stanley Ketchel.

Harvard men dominated the national tennis picture. The game was beginning to change from patty-pat to hard-socking play. Terms like passing shot, twist service, drop shot, and lob were used more commonly. The original Davis Cup team, three Harvards, startled the world in 1900 by crushing a trio of British, 5 to 0.

Walter J. Travis was the demon of golf, winning the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur, the first American to bring the latter title to this country.

Sports had advanced tremendously since the Civil War, but we were only emerging from swaddling clothes. Basketball was just eight years old in 1900; most speed swimmers used the side stroke; track athletes won Olympic titles in times that schoolboys would scoff at today; and horse racing was about to see a reform wave which would close every track except those in Kentucky and Maryland.

Football, still dominated by Yale, Harvard and Princeton, was a push-and-pull business based on power and brawn. Old Back Number, Pudge Heffelfinger, was leading the way at New Haven, an active playing career that was to last for half a century.

Baseball in the Nineties was still creaking along on legs as unsteady as a new-born colt s. Fans rode to the ball parks in horse-drawn buses. John J. McGraw was then a five-foot-six, 121-pound third baseman, the brain and sparkplug of the championship Baltimore Orioles, considered by some to be the greatest ball club of all time. These were the early days, when a ball park was a rough, uncultivated lot, a grandstand was a jumble of rickety slats, and a club payroll looked like the wage list of a logging camp.

John J. McGraw and others were playing exhibition contests in Havana, Cuba, and touring with ball clubs through the south and middle west when baseball was in its infancy, making a bid to become our national game.

In those days, the game had only one umpire.

The feats of the old Orioles have become legend. Their skill, their flaming courage, their team spirit, has never been surpassed. McGraw played third base on the 1894 championship Oriole team. Hugh Jennings was at short, Brouthers at first, Reitz at second. In the outfield were Steve Brodie, Joe Kelly, and the hit-’em-where-they-ain’t guy, Wee Willie Keeler.

In 1902, John McGraw was to cuss out Ban Johnson, president of the year-old, upstart American League, and jump as manager to the Giants, taking along with him Iron Man McGinnity, Roger Bresnahan, Dan McGann and Jack Cronin from the Orioles. John J. was destined to take the Giants from the cellar in 1902 to second in 1903. In ‘04, he was to bring the Giants their first modern pennant.

There was also to come a day in ‘02 when Bones Ely of the Pirates complained of a sore finger and refused to play shortstop. Manager Fred Clarke turned to a top-heavy, clumsy-looking giant and said, All right, you play in Ely’s place.

Hell, I’m no shortstop, the giant said. I’ve never played it in the majors. The giant was to become the greatest shortstop in the history of man. His name?—Honus Wagner.

Baseball fans, in ‘03, would witness their first World Series on record. Deacon Phillippe, pitching for Pittsburgh, was to defeat the Red Sox three times in the first four games. And two Fall classics later, the big right arm of the magnificent Christy Mathewson, rising and falling, was to fashion one of baseball’s all-time individual Series performances, pitching three shutouts against the Athletics to hang up a record that still stands.

Baseball was getting a New Look. Ban Johnson organized the American League on the basis that honesty and gentlemanliness was its slogan, and that umpires were inviolate, sacrosanct, and must not be kicked, punched, mobbed or spat upon, as was the good old custom of the National League.

A French-Canadian hack driver—Larry Lajoie by name—was the sensation of the new league. As far as the box office was concerned, he was responsible for pulling the AL through its infancy. Larry was such an idol that the crowds followed him down the streets, and kids worshipped him. When he endorsed a certain brand of chewing tobacco half the kids of the nation got sick giving the foul weed a trial in the hope it would make them sluggers, too.

Other et ceteras who helped to pack the hatbox-sized parks in those dear old golden days were Connie Mack, Eddie Plank, Cap Anson, Billy Sunday, Charley Comiskey, Old Hoss Radbourn and Clark Griffith...Big Ed Delahanty, King Kelly and Dan Brouthers...Louie Sockalexis, Iron Man McGinnity, Turkey Mike Donlin, Rajah Bresnahan, Jimmy Collins and Happy Jack Chesbro.

America had yet to get its first real glimpse of the young man who was to eventually become the champ of them all—

Tyrus Raymond Cobb.

The Early Years

On the morning of December 18, 1886,