Born in Norcatur (population approximately 500) in rural Kansas on September 21, 1910, Elden was an only child. Surrounded by farms sprawled over the prairie, downtown Norcatur was just two blocks long. The town’s only saloon shut down during Prohibition and never reopened. By the time he was six weeks old everyone in town knew Elden. His father, Fred, was the town’s only postman, and his mother took him along on his father’s route and introduced Elden to all the postal patrons. Initially Fred delivered the mail on horseback, but before Elden was born he was using a motorcycle in the more temperate months and a horse-drawn wagon in the harsh winter. The family income was supplemented by marketing milk and eggs. Elden’s mother was in charge of this effort. His first job was to deliver these products in his red express wagon. At an early age Elden had instilled in him by his parents a respect for the value of money.

Norcatur High School didn’t have a baseball team, so beginning at age 15, Auker played on the town team with the men. After graduating from high school in 1928, he attended Kansas Agricultural and Mechanical College (today Kansas State) in Manhattan, Kansas. Charlie Corseau, who recruited him, was the varsity basketball and baseball coach there, and arranged part-time jobs for Elden so he could pay his way. Auker’s goal was to become a medical doctor and he took the appropriate courses in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, psychology, etc., to prepare for that profession.

While in college, Auker played varsity football (quarterback), baseball (pitcher), and basketball (guard and team captain). He was voted All Big Six in all three sports. This resulted in a college nickname: Big Six. But in his autobiography, Auker wrote that no one in major-league baseball ever called him that. 

Football was his favorite sport. Ironically, in his first college football game, Auker permanently injured his right shoulder. This prevented him from ever throwing overhand. To compensate for the shoulder separation, he learned to pitch with a slightly underhand motion. 

Auker always took on extra jobs to earn money, which was in short supply in the 1930s. In the summer of 1931 he pitched for pay on a town team, the Manhattan Travelers, and faced Satchel Paige, who was pitching for the legendary Kansas City Monarchs. Auker beat Paige, 2-1, the Monarchs’ only run coming on a home run by catcher T.J. Young. This loss broke the Monarchs’ 33-game winning streak. Later that summer Auker played for another town team in Oxford, Nebraska, but under the name Eddie Leroy to preserve his college eligibility. Once more his team faced Kansas City, but this time a pitcher named Andy Cooper was on the mound for the Monarchs. Auker threw a shutout, winning 1-0. Auker thought Cooper had a sharper curveball than Paige, and was at least as good a pitcher as Paige, if not better.

After graduation in 1932, Auker was scouted by football great Bronko Nagurski and turned down an offer of $6,000 from the Chicago Bears to play pro football. Instead he signed with the Detroit Tigers for $450. He decided to play baseball because he would start getting his paychecks instead of waiting until the fall, when the football season started. Auker’s intention was to play pro baseball as a means of earning tuition money for medical school. But he made such good money at baseball that he couldn’t afford to give it up. Besides, the Depression was in full force and both jobs and money were scarce.

At one of his first minor-league stops, Decatur of the Three-I League in 1932, Auker’s manager was Bob Coleman, who had caught perhaps the most famous submarine pitcher to ever work in the majors, Carl Mays. Coleman suggested that Auker modify his slightly underhand throwing motion even more, and throw directly underhand. Before the 1933 season ended, Auker, who was 16-10 with Beaumont of the Texas League, was called up to “The Show” by the Detroit Tigers. He started six games and relieved in nine others, going 3-3 overall. He pitched a total of 55 innings.

Also in 1933, Elden married Mildred Purcell, a college classmate. In their senior year Elden was voted “Joe College,” and Mildred “Betty Coed.” Although they knew each other in college they didn’t date until after graduation. Their only child, a son, James, was born in 1939. Their marriage was better than any Hollywood love story and Elden and Mildred were devoted to each other for their entire lives.

After the 1933 season, Mickey Cochrane replaced Bucky Harris as the Tigers’ skipper. Cochrane was a dynamic playing manager who infused a winning spirit in the club by constantly exhorting his players to do better. The talent was there, and the club responded. The Tigers had an outstanding pitching staff, led by Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe and Tommy Bridges (24-8 and 22-11, respectively), and ably supported by Auker’s fine 15-7 season, along with another 15 wins from Fred (Firpo) Marberry. The Bengals coasted to victory with a record of 101-53, seven games ahead of the aging Yankees. 

The ’34 Tigers were a powerhouse team and boasted an infield that combined to drive in an astonishing total of 462 runs. Four members of the team would be elected to the Hall of Fame: Cochrane, Charlie Gehringer, Goose Goslin, and Hank Greenberg.

In the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals won their fourth pennant since 1926 —behind four different managers. The latest version of the Cards, known as the Gas House Gang, was led by another playing manager, Frankie Frisch. The Cardinals’ roster included five players destined for the Hall of Fame —Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Frisch, Joe Medwick, and Dazzy Vance. They had a 95-58 record and the ’34 season would be their finest moment, as the fabled Gas House Gang never won another pennant. 

The 1934 Series opened in Detroit, and the Cardinals took the opener, 8-3, with Dizzy Dean besting Alvin “General” Crowder. In the second game Schoolboy Rowe went all the way as the Tigers scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to pull out a 3-2 victory. Bill Walker took the loss for the Cards.

The Series shifted to St. Louis, where the Cardinals won the third game, 4-1. Paul Dean beat Tommy Bridges, who was knocked out in the fifth inning after facing three hitters without retiring anyone.

The Cardinals now led two games to one and the Tigers needed a win. Auker was matched against Tex Carleton in the fourth game. Elden pitched a complete game as Bill Walker again took the loss in relief. Auker gave up 10 hits and three earned runs in a 10-4 Tigers victory.

At the end of six games the Series was dead even. Auker started the crucial Game Seven at home, opposing Dizzy Dean. Auker pitched well enough for the first two innings, allowing three hits, but Dizzy Dean kept the Tigers from scoring, too. After Auker got the first out in the top of the third, Dean doubled to left. Pepper Martin then beat out a slow roller to first, giving the Cardinals runners on first and third. Martin promptly stole second, and outfielder Jack Rothrock walked, loading the bases. The next batter was the switch-hitting Frisch. He fouled off four pitches and then doubled to right field, clearing the bases. 

Cochrane removed Auker in favor of Rowe, who got Medwick to ground out to short, with Frisch taking third. St. Louis kept hitting, though, and by the time the inning was over, the Cardinals had scored seven runs. It was quite a game, and Tigers fans displayed their frustration after Joe Medwick and Tigers third baseman Marvin Owen tangled in a fight on the field. The crowd pelted Medwick with bottles, food, and all sorts of trash as soon as he took his position in left field. The mob was in such an uproar that the game had to be halted. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ordered that Medwick be removed from the game “for his own safety.” The final score was 11-0, bringing the championship home to St. Louis.

Auker got some measure of revenge by winning the first major-league baseball players’ winter golf tournament in Lakeland, Florida, in January 1935, defeating Dizzy Dean and Babe Ruth, among others. 

The Tigers picked up in 1935 right where they left off in ’34, winning the AL pennant with a record of 93-58. The team was largely unchanged, but General Crowder, at 16-10, improved greatly over his 1934 season (he was a combined 9-11 with Washington and Detroit). Auker was also better, at 18-7, and led the league with a winning percentage of .720. It was his best season ever. In the World Series the Tigers faced the Chicago Cubs, who had compiled a record of 100-54 under Charlie Grimm. 

With the Series tied at one game each, Auker started Game Three in Chicago against Bill Lee. Auker gave up a solo home run to Frank Demaree in the second, in addition to a scratch run. The Cubs squeaked out another run in the fifth, and the Tigers got on board in the sixth on a Pete Fox triple that scored Goslin. The top of the seventh started with Marvin Owen flying out to right field. When utility infielder Flea Clifton walked, manager Cochrane saw a chance to ignite a rally and sent Gee Walker up to bat for Auker. Walker promptly hit into a double play, ending the rally and the inning. But in the eighth, the Tigers scored four runs, getting Auker off the hook. They won the game by a score of 6-5. It was Auker’s only appearance in the 1935 Series. The joy in Detroit knew no bounds when the Tigers went on to win their first-ever world championship. But that powerhouse Detroit team was not able to win another pennant until 1940. By then Auker was no longer part of the team. 

Auker’s years in Detroit were happy ones. It was a close-knit team and produced lifelong friendships. But the idyllic situation came to an abrupt end after the 1938 season, when Auker was traded, along with reserve outfielder Chet Morgan and pitcher Jack Wade, to the Boston Red Sox for third baseman Mike Higgins and pitcher Archie McKain. Detroit felt this trade was necessary because Marv Owen was in poor health and ready to retire. Over his five-plus seasons with Detroit, Auker started 136 games and completed 70 of them, compiling a record of 77 wins and 52 losses.

In Boston, according to Auker, manager-shortstop Joe Cronin called each pitch for all his pitchers except Lefty Grove. Auker didn’t learn of this until well into the season. He complained bitterly about not being allowed to pitch as he thought best, but to no avail. Auker dealt with this situation by disregarding the catcher’s signals. Cronin responded to this rebellious act by temporarily taking Auker out of the pitching rotation. Auker’s performance suffered in 1939 as he lost 10 games while winning 9. He completed only six of the 25 games he started.

On the bright side of this unhappy year, Auker became lifelong friends with Ted Williams. They truly loved each other. Years later, at events hosted by the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame in Citrus Hills, Florida, Williams and Auker would discuss the fine points of hitting and pitching. Whenever they disagreed on some particular, Ted would look Elden right in the eye and bellow out, “Goddammit Elden, pitchers are dumb, dumb, dumb.” Elden didn’t take this personally, as it was Ted’s universal judgment of all pitchers.

Auker roomed with Jimmie Foxx while on the road in 1939, and came to respect and admire Double-X so much that he named his only child James Emory in his honor. Fortunately, the child was a boy.

At the end of the 1939 season, Auker told Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey he couldn’t play for Cronin and would retire if Yawkey didn’t trade him. After being assured by St. Louis Browns manager Fred Haney that Auker could call his own game, Yawkey sold the pitcher to St. Louis for $30,000.

The Browns simply didn’t compare with either the Tigers or the Red Sox. They were not contenders, and finished a dismal sixth in 1940 and 1941. Luke Sewell took over as manager in 1942 and the Brownies rose to third place, winning 82 games. Auker won 14 of those games and earned a substantial salary. World War II was now raging, and Auker felt he had to devote full time to what up until then had been his offseason job.

Auker realized that his career as a ballplayer wasn’t going to last forever. In 1938 he began to prepare himself for life after baseball. He and Mildred stayed in Detroit that winter instead of going to Florida to chase a little white ball around the golf links. A Detroit friend, Jim Jackson, offered him a job at his small firm, the Midwest Abrasive Company. Auker learned the abrasive industry from the ground up by working in all departments. The next year he moved into the sales department, and then learned how the abrasive was employed in the honing process that removed all the microscopic rough spots from the interior of 20mm and 40mm anti-aircraft gun barrels —a critical step in fabricating accurate gun barrels. By the end of 1942, Auker was a vital link in the production of defensive armaments for the Navy and he believed his country needed him more than baseball. Although offered a lucrative contract by St. Louis, he decided not to return for the 1943 season. He was 32 years old, and was fully aware that by the time the war ended he would be too old to resume his career on the diamond.

Abandoning baseball and committing himself to the war effort was a noble, patriotic decision. It was also a very expensive one, as his annual income was greatly reduced. Ultimately, Auker was rewarded; by the time he retired in 1975, he had risen to be president of what was then the industry’s second largest firm, and was very well off financially.

As Auker rose up the executive ladder, he and Mildred were obliged to relocate to Massachusetts. There, in addition to his corporate responsibilities, Auker became the vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and president and chairman of the board of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a manufacturers’ trade group. In this role he met Joseph Kennedy (father of the president), Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater, played golf with Gerald Ford and Tip O’Neill, and interacted with numerous other important people.

Immediately after his retirement in 1975, Auker was hired by Dresser Industries, the parent company of the division from which he had retired, as a consultant to evaluate its Washington office. He and Mildred had just purchased a home in Vero Beach, Florida, but Auker accepted the offer and commuted by air each weekend to Florida for a year. 

Auker and Mildred became full-time residents of Vero Beach when he completed the consulting agreement in 1977. In his 80s, he joined the Society for American Baseball Research in 1997 and attended every meeting of the Central Florida Chapter. Andy Seminick, a resident of Cocoa, Florida, also became a chapter member. In 1998 the chapter was renamed the Auker-Seminick (alphabetical order) Chapter in their honor. The chapter celebrated Elden’s 90th birthday in 2000 and hosted a party for him. When asked how he spent his time, he replied that he played golf two or three times a week. Naturally, someone asked him about his score. With a smile Elden softly said that it was less than his age.

Typically, a chapter meeting centered on one of the members making a presentation of their latest research findings. Then the meeting took the form of an open discussion. Both Auker and Seminick freely participated and candidly shared their baseball experiences. Elden’s tales from the diamond were enthralling, as was his entire life story. Just possibly the experience of talking about his career, and the enthusiastic reception to it, led him to write his autobiography, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms.

In his book, Auker made it quite clear that he didn’t put up with cheaters, or rule violators like Pete Rose. Although Elden was a soft-spoken and gentle man, it was evident that he was made of iron when it came to his moral code.

It was also clear that he thought current pitchers were not up to the physical standards of his day. Typically, Auker reported, the day after pitching a game he would do some easy throwing and a lot of hard running in the outfield. The following day he would throw batting practice from the mound. And Auker threw hard stuff, no creampuffs or meatballs. He worked to improve the command of his pitches, and didn’t care to be hit hard by his teammates. A teammate had to earn a solid hit, even if it was just BP. After throwing batting practice, Auker would do more hard running in the outfield. He religiously ran hard every day. He was convinced that a pitcher’s strength came from his legs. Simply doing wind sprints didn’t improve leg strength and Auker was an advocate of running as hard as possible. 

The major change Auker observed in pitching technique had to do with brushing back a hitter. He said emphatically, “The plate is mine. If a batter gets into my territory I’m going to make him eat dirt.”1 Auker said he never threw to hurt a hitter, but plunking him in the ribs to back him off the plate was acceptable. In Auker’s opinion, the rule change that prevented a pitcher from doing this tipped the balance sharply in the hitter’s favor.

When Tiger Stadium was “retired” at the end of the 1999 season, Auker participated in the solemn ceremony. As the senior Tiger in attendance he stood at the head of a line of 60 Tigers players, arranged in order of seniority, anchored at the other end by the current team captain, catcher Brad Ausmus. Auker’s remarks over the public address system clearly indicated that in his heart and mind he was still a Tiger. The flag was lowered, folded, and passed from the center-field flagpole from one player to the next until it reached home plate. It was then put into storage until Opening Day of the 2000 season, when the process of passing the flag from home plate out to the center-field flagpole was repeated by the same players at the new home of the Tigers, Comerica Park. Elden’s son, James, arranged to get a copy of the video and Elden showed it at the next meeting of SABR.

Another honor came to Auker on May 27, 2000. His home town of Norcatur dedicated a park in his name. The land was donated by Jim Nelson, a boyhood buddy of Elden’s. It was a very emotional moment for Elden and Mildred, as the entire town turned out for the ceremony, highlighted by a band playing the national anthem as the flag was raised.

Elden had a long history of heart problems —he was on his third pacemaker —and on August 4, 2006, he died from heart failure. A memorial service celebrating his life was held at the First United Methodist Church of Vero Beach. It was attended by a huge throng of relatives, friends, business associates, and fellow SABR members. His son, James, and two grandsons eulogized Elden. Their tender, loving words moved the audience greatly. Immediately following the service his family hosted a reception in the Christian Life Center Fellowship Hall.

Sources

Auker, Elden, with Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001). 

Bucek, Jeanine, ed., The Baseball Encyclopedia.  Tenth Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1996).

Cohen, Richard M., and David S. Neft, The World Series  (New York: Dial Press, 1979).

Levenson, Barry,  The Seventh Game (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).

Schaefer, Robert,  personal notes taken at meetings of the Auker-Seminick
SABR Chapter, 1996-2006.

Van Brimmer, Kevin, “Auker was ‘Treasure to Game, Humanity.’ ” TC Palm (Obituary), August 5, 2006.

Notes

1 Author’s conversation with Elden Auker at a SABR Regional (Central Florida) Chapter Meeting, 1997.

In 1892, Delmer David Baker was born in Sherwood, Oregon, then a small rural community a few miles southwest of Portland. According to a 1938 story in The Sporting News, Baker’s father owned an 86-acre farm, a portion of which he cleared for a baseball field where Del and his four brothers played each summer; the Baker boys anchored the sandlot Sherwood White Sox. For some years after making baseball his profession, Baker would return to Oregon during the offseason and tend the family’s hops crop (with plenty of time for hunting, his favorite hobby). Later, San Antonio would become his offseason home.

It doesn’t seem that the young Del Baker was counting on baseball, though. After attending Portland’s Benke-Walker Business College, he went to work in 1909 as a bookkeeper in tiny Wasco, Oregon, on the other side of the Cascades from his boyhood home. “Between times, while keeping books in Wasco, he caught for the town team. There, Bunk Holman, a scout for Spokane, signed Baker to a contract with Spokane.”1

According to the published record, Baker’s first professional engagement came in 1911, with the Helena Senators if the Class D Union Association (Organized Baseball’s lowest level). After another season there, Baker moved up to Class A in 1913 with the Western League’s Lincoln Railsplitters. He batted .260 with Lincoln and must have impressed someone important, because in August he was “released to” the Detroit Tigers, and would spend each of the next three seasons backing up the Tigers’ first-string catcher, Oscar Stanage.

After those three seasons, Baker’s career batting average in the majors stood at .209 … and he would not get a chance to better that mark. Before spring training in 1917, the Tigers farmed him out to the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. He would later credit manager Harry Wolverton with teaching him “more baseball than any other man.”2 Back in the minors, Baker hit the way he’d hit in the minors before: decently. But in 1918, he didn’t hit much of anything; instead he served in the US Navy, as so many other professional baseball players did. In 1919 Baker returned to the Pacific Coast League, but this time with his hometown team, the Portland Beavers. After three seasons there, Baker spent a season with Mobile in the Southern Association, then returned to the PCL for three more seasons, this time with the Oakland Oaks.

Baker was back in Oakland in 1928, but spent most of that season as player-manager with the Ogden Gunners in the Utah-Idaho League. The Gunners finished 57-59, and the next season Baker returned to merely playing; this time with Fort Worth in the Texas League.

In 1930, though, Baker got another shot at managing. Staying in the Texas League, he was the player-manager of the Beaumont Exporters, one of Detroit’s top farm clubs.

That season, Beaumont finished without many top prospects (although the Exporters did feature Ox Eckhardt, one of the great minor-league hitters of all time). In ’31, though, with Baker still running the club, future major-league star Jo-Jo White anchored the lineup and the Exporters finished 94-65. The best was yet to come. In 1932 Schoolboy Rowe and Luke “Hot Potato” Hamlin anchored the pitching staff, outfielders Pete Fox and Paul Easterling starred in the outfield … and young Hank Greenberg topped the league with 39 home runs, garnering MVP honors. The Exporters, the youngest team in the league, went 100-51 in the regular season, then swept Dallas for the Texas League championship.

In 1933 Greenberg, Fox, and Rowe all graduated to the major leagues, and Del Baker was right there with them, in the majors for the first time since 1916 and coaching third base for his old club. Greenberg didn’t open the season as the Tigers’ everyday first baseman, though. That job was held by Harry “Stinky” Davis, and manager Bucky Harris wasn’t ready to make a change. Maybe he didn’t trust Greenberg’s bat, or maybe he didn’t trust his fielding; by all accounts, Greenberg was a mess at first base.

But Greenberg worked hard on his defense, and Baker was right there with him. “He couldn’t catch a pop fly when he first came up with the Tigers,” Tigers pitcher Elden Auker recalled in his memoir. “Every time he would try to catch a pop fly, he would throw his head back. Those pop flies gave him fits. … Hank went to the ballpark at 9:00 every morning and had Baker hit him pop flies with a fungo bat. I bet Baker hit Hank Greenberg a million pop flies. Hank was determined to perfect the art of catching a pop fly, and he worked so hard he got to the point where he could catch those things in his jockstrap.”3

Whatever the reason —and it probably had a lot to do with Davis’s stinky hitting —Harris finally relented in May, with Greenberg taking his place in the annals of the franchise.

Not that Del Baker was finished helping Greenberg.

As a rookie, Greenberg hit only a dozen home runs. As a sophomore, he established himself as a star with 26 homers and 63 doubles. And in 1935, his third season, Greenberg finished with 36 homers and 170 RBIs; both figures led the American League, and Hank took Most Valuable Player honors. The next spring, he held out during spring training. In late March, the New York World-Telegram’s Joe Williams reported a hotel-lobby conversation he’d overheard in Sarasota:

“ ‘The Tigers didn’t have any trouble signing Del Baker, did they?’ asked Mr. Herb Pennock, the old pitcher, lifting a provocative eyebrow.

“‘What’s Baker got to do with Greenberg?’ grumbled Jimmy Foxx. ‘He’s just a third base coach.’

“ ‘Just this,’ answered Pennock. ‘Baker called almost every pitch for Greenberg last season, and if he’s holding out for more dough Baker ought to hold out.’

“It then came out that from his position in the coacher’s box back of third base, Baker, most expert of modern signal stealers, would inform Greenberg what the pitch was going to be —a fast ball or a curve.

“If it was to be a fast ball Baker would bark, ‘Come on Hank, paste this one.’ The word ‘come’ always denoted a fast ball. If the pitch was to be a curve ball he would yell, ‘All right, Hank, get on now!’ In this case the word ‘get’ was the tip-off.

“Of course there were some pitchers who covered up so well that Baker couldn’t discover what they were going to throw, but the athletes are pretty well agreed he was able to find out what most of them were going to throw and that this information was of great help to Greenberg, who is known as a guess hitter, anyway.”

That might have been the first time that Greenberg’s heroic slugging was publicly credited, at least in part, to Baker’s uncanny ability to read pitchers. It was hardly the last. And Greenberg eventually tired of it. Shortly into 1938, a piece by Dan Daniel in the World-Telegram included these astonishing quotes from Greenberg:

“I think I have reached the point in my career at which in justice to myself I must break down some misinformation. Time and again you have written that I am strictly a guess hitter. Writers all over the circuit have spread a similar impression. And all of you have given to the fans the idea that I wait for Baker’s dope on every pitch, and unless I get the right tip from Del I do not swing.

“For this condition I am 75 per cent self-responsible. Up to now I have been quite content to let folks think I was a sort of Charley McCarthy, with Baker pulling the string. If I hit one over the fence and the boys in the dugout asked, ‘Did you get it from Del?’ I invariably replied ‘Yes.’ I believed it was helping Baker and not doing me any harm.

“But the importance of such information as I have accepted has been exaggerated. If I am to win a high place among the stars of the game it must come with the breaking down of this untrue conception of my batting policy and ability and your telling the fans the truth. In short, I am nobody’s dummy and I ask you to write that in the World-Telegram.”

Greenberg went on to say that while he’d gotten a few tips from Baker in 1937, he was the only Tiger who did. What’s more, with Baker, the Yankees’ Art Fletcher, and other coaches looking for clues, the “older hurlers” weren’t giving anything away, leaving only “an occasional rookie” as victims.

While Greenberg’s reliance on Baker’s tips had probably been greatly overstated, it’s probably also true that Greenberg —or maybe Daniel; you never know about these things —was understating Baker’s impact, generally. Shortstop Dick Bartell would join the Tigers in 1940, and later wrote that Greenberg, Rudy York, and Pinky Higgins all wanted Baker’s tips. Bartell also suggested that the Tigers hit Bob Feller well in 1940 because Baker was reading all of Feller’s pitches.4

By the time Bartell arrived in Detroit, Baker was actually managing the Tigers.

Back in 1933, Baker had unofficially filled in as manager for two games. In 1936 he officially managed the Tigers for 34 games while Mickey Cochrane recovered from what’s been described as a nervous breakdown. But Baker actually took over the club starting on the 10th of June, managed for more than a month in Cochrane’s absence, and —after Cochrane returned just briefly in mid-July —took over for most of the rest of the season.

Cochrane came back strong in 1937, as both the Tigers’ manager and No. 1 catcher. But on May 25 he suffered the terrible beaning that ended his playing career. Baker took over again, and (again, officially) he managed 64 of the Tigers’ remaining games (unofficially, it might well have been more than that).

In 1938 Cochrane returned to the dugout. But after getting blown out by the Red Sox on August 6, the Tigers’ record stood at 47-51 and owner Walter Briggs concluded a tense meeting with his manager by firing him. Del Baker, with a winning record in each of his interim stints, would take over immediately. And true to his history, Baker guided the Tigers to a 37-19 record the rest of the way, for a first-division finish. The next season would be relatively uneventful, as the Tigers again finished with a winning record but fell to fifth place.

Some owners might have fired Baker right then. In fact, at least one owner never would have hired him in the first place. Frank Navin had owned the Tigers before being killed in a horse-riding accident shortly after the 1935 season. According to Joe Williams, Navin once turned to American League President Will Harridge and said of Baker, “See that fellow at third? Well, that’s the smartest man in baseball.” Still, Baker said in 1941, “Navin once told me I never should be a manager. Even now I don’t think I’m a manager. I can’t go in there and pitch for the pitchers, and I can’t go in there and hit for the hitters. I am just a guy who is sitting in the dugout with the other fellows, trying to figure out how we can get in the World Series. If that makes you a big-league manager, I am a big-league manager.”5

But Briggs had no such qualms about Baker’s worthiness as a manager, and stuck with him despite the fifth-place finish. Which would pay off in a big way.

Heading into 1940, Baker had a big problem: One of his best hitters was Rudy York, a catcher. But York was a lousy catcher. And of course Baker already had, in Hank Greenberg, the best first baseman in the world. Tigers general manager Jack Zeller had an idea. If Greenberg would agree to play left field —which he did, in return for a healthy bonus —York could shift to first base.

It was a brilliant move. Greenberg wasn’t a disaster in left field, while York played in every single game and drove in 134 runs. It’s not clear that Baker was a big fan of the switch, though; in Greenberg’s autobiography, he tells a story about getting pulled from a game after muffing a play, and telling Zeller that if Baker did that again, he just wouldn’t play out there any more. It didn’t happen again.6

Bartell wasn’t a big fan of Baker’s, either. He wrote in his book, “I learned that you couldn’t always believe what he told you. He would go behind your back, talking about you to other players. He asked me so many times what I thought about somebody or some situation. I didn’t like that.”7

Billy Rogell, Bartell’s predecessor at shortstop, also didn’t seem to have gotten on well with Baker.8 Nor did Jo-Jo White or Rudy York. On the other hand, Charlie Gehringer would later recall, “He was the last manager I played for. I liked to play for him. He was all baseball, morning, noon, and night.”9

In July 1939, Baker’s wife, Mamie, had a dream. “It was clear as day,” she said a year and a half later, “and I saw Detroit winning the game that gave them the pennant. I woke up half choking, but fully convinced that the boys couldn’t miss —after that.”10

Mamie Baker’s dream came true in 1940, on September 27. Not that it was easy. With three games left on their schedule, the Tigers held a two-game lead over the second-place Indians. The Tigers and Indians were slated to end the season with a three-game series in Cleveland. There could be no tie; if the Tigers could win just once, they would clinch the pennant, but the infamous “Cleveland Crybabies” could still take the pennant with a sweep.

Bob Feller would start the series opener for the Indians. But who would start for the Tigers? Two days earlier, 21-game winner Bobo Newsom had won both games of a doubleheader (he went two innings in the opener, and tossed a complete game in the nightcap). But Schoolboy Rowe and Tommy Bridges, the Tigers’ other top starters, were both well-rested. Still, there was some reluctance to start anyone good against Feller, who had already won 27 games and was widely considered the best pitcher in the league. So who should start?

To help him decide, Baker convened a meeting. Accounts differ regarding the location and what was said, but we know there was a meeting the night before the game, perhaps in the team hotel or perhaps in a local bank, to which all of the club’s nonpitchers were invited. Some Tigers favored one of the veterans, and some favored 19-year-old Hal Newhouser or 20-year-old Fred Hutchinson. And some favored a 30-year-old rookie named Floyd Giebell, who’d pitched just once since joining the club earlier in the month. On the 19th he’d tossed a complete game to beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 13-2.

Baker listened, and later that evening he told Giebell to get ready to pitch the next day. “The next day at the ballpark,” Giebell would recall, “when it was time for the pitchers to warm up —Feller and myself —they thought that maybe it was a farce or something, but it didn’t turn out that way.”11

Feller pitched well, except for Rudy York’s two-run homer in the fourth inning. But that was enough for Giebell, who —with Newhouser essentially warming up in the bullpen throughout the game —never got into serious trouble and wound up pitching a shutout to clinch the pennant. He would never win another game in the majors. (Including that loss, Feller went just 3-5 against the Tigers in 1940, with a 5.33 ERA that was far higher than his mark against any other club in the league. According to Bartell, Baker had been calling Feller’s pitches all season, having noticed that Feller gripped his fastball and curveball differently.)

The Tigers faced the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, and took the opener in Cincinnati behind the strong pitching of colorful Bobo Newsom. That night, though, Newsom’s father suffered a fatal heart attack in the team hotel. Back in Detroit a few days later, the Tigers held a two-games-to-one edge and Newsom wanted to start Game Four, for his father. Baker instead selected Dizzy Trout, who’d gone just 3-7 during the regular season. Trout, Baker later explained, “showed me stuff in a late-season game that could have beaten any team in baseball.” Baker also noted that if he’d lost with Newsom in Game Four, “where would I have been?”12

Well, he lost with Trout, who gave up two runs in the first inning as the Reds eventually won, 5-2. Newsom pitched a three-hit shutout in Game Five, but Baker asked him to pitch Game Seven on short rest, and the result was a 2-1 Tigers loss. On the one hand, Baker’s explanation for holding Newsom for Game Five is questionable; if he was willing to pitch him on just one day of rest in Game Seven —the Series was scheduled for all seven games in seven days —why not pitching on two days’ rest in Game Four? On the other hand, the Tigers scored just one run in Game Seven, so it probably would haven’t mattered how much rest Newsom had.

In 1941, with Hank Greenberg in the US Army and Rudy York slumping, the Tigers fell from first in the American League in scoring to sixth, and first in the standings to a very distant fourth. The next season didn’t go any better, and Baker was fired shortly after the World Series. In his 1946 history of the Tigers, Fred Lieb simply wrote, “Baker had done a good job as Cochrane’s successor, was a handy man around pitchers, but lacked fire.”13

There had been rumors about Baker taking the helm in Cincinnati, but instead he signed on as a coach with the Indians, working under young manager Lou Boudreau. After two seasons there, Baker took the same post with the Boston Red Sox, remaining there through 1948. From 1949 through ’51, Baker was back in his old Pacific Coast League stamping grounds, managing Sacramento for a season and then San Diego for two. His ’51 Padres finished well out of the money, and Baker scouted for the Indians in 1952. But in 1953, he returned to the job for which he was probably born: coaching the bases and reading the pitchers and catchers, once more with the Boston Red Sox.

Baker’s reputation as a sign-stealer remained largely intact. Ted Williams told the following story in his 1969 memoir: “Talk about stealing signs. I was stealing Berra’s from first base one day. He was getting kind of careless with his right knee, and I was taking a pretty good lead off first so I could see him flash the signs. I’d pass it on to Del Baker coaching first, and Baker would relay it to the batter. When I got up the next inning, Berra was fuming. ‘Boy, what a bunch of dumb-ass pitchers we’ve got,’ he said. ‘Baker knows what they’re going to throw every time.’”14

Okay, so that story’s more about Williams and Berra than Baker. But Baker’s reputation might well have led to one of the more famous games in World Series history: Don Larsen’s perfect game. As Larsen wrote in his memoirs:

“During the 1956 season, I struggled with my control from time to time. I had a so-so 7 and 5 record going into the last month of the season. In a ball game against the Red Sox in Boston, late in the season, I noticed that their third base coach, Del Baker, was watching me very closely. Del had a great reputation for being able to somehow steal pitching signs, and relay them to his hitters. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that with my full pitching delivery, he was gaining an advantage for the hitters by homing in on how I held the baseball before I threw it to the plate.”15

Famously, Larsen adopted a no-windup delivery, which he used in the 1956 World Series and threw his perfecto against the Dodgers in Game Five.

There is one “problem” with Larsen’s story: He pitched against the Red Sox twice in August, and held them to just two runs in 19 innings. By his own account, though, he started using the no-windup delivery on September 3, and he did go 4-1 the rest of the way, with a 0.52 ERA.

In 1960 Baker was temporarily handed the reins of his club because the manager was suffering from “nervous exhaustion” —just like in 1936 —and needed some time off. This time the exhausted manager was Billy Jurges, who was actually fired two days later. After Baker ran the club for a week in which the Sox went 2-5, Pinky Higgins took over (for his second stint as Boston’s skipper). On the same day that Ted Williams grabbed all the headlines by homering in his last at-bat at Fenway Park, then announcing his immediate retirement, Del Baker also announced that he wouldn’t be back in 1961. He was 68, and ready to retire to San Antonio for good. He’d been in professional baseball for more than half a century.

In 1973 Baker died at his home after a long illness. According to his obituary in The Sporting News, Baker never really cared much about managing and once said, “The fate of nations doesn’t hang on the outcome of a baseball game.”

In preparing this biography, the author relied primarily on a sizable stack of clippings from Baker’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York. Dick Bartell’s and Hank Greenberg’s memoirs were particularly helpful, as was Richard Bak’s history of the period, Cobb Would Have Caught It (both books cited below in source notes).

Notes

1 Rud Rennie, “Baker Says Tigers Must Get Good Pitching to Defeat Reds,” New York World-Telegram, Sept. 29, 1940.

2 The Old Scout; unidentified clipping, National Baseball Hall of Fame Baseball Library.

3 Elden Auker with Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001), 104.

4 Dick Bartell, with Norman L. Macht, Rowdy Richard (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1987),  273.

5 Joe Williams, “Detroit Manager Admits He’s Just Another Guy,” New York World-Telegram, March 28, 1941.

6 Hank Greenberg and Ira Berkow, Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life (New York: Times Books, 1989), p. 128-130.

7 Bartell, with Macht, 260-261.

8 Richard, Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 277.

9 Bak, 277.

10 “Meet the Missus,” December 5, 1940, otherwise unidentified clipping, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

11 Brent Kelley, The Pastime in Turbulence: Interviews With Baseball Players of the 1940s (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2001), 45.

12 Frederick G. Lieb, The Detroit Tigers (New York: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1946), 248.

13 Lieb, 254.

14 Ted Williams, as told to John Underwood, My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 264-265.

15 Don Larsen, with Mark Shaw, The Perfect Yankee: The Incredible Story of the Greatest Miracle in Baseball History (Champaign, Illinois: Sagamore Publishing, 2001), 95.

In 1929 Tigers scout Billy Doyle signed Bridges to his first pro contract. Pitching that summer for Wheeling in the Class C Middle Atlantic League, Bridges went 10-3 with a 3.14 ERA. In 1930 Bridges moved up to Evansville in the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League. When the Three-I League finished its schedule, Bridges ranked just 28th in the league with 140 innings … but first in the league with 189 strikeouts. He was 23 by then and playing a different game than everybody else. Well before Evansville ended its season, the Tigers had summoned Bridges to the majors.

His first outing with the big club came on August 13 against the New York Yankees in the Bronx, and it was a humdinger. According to columnist Sam Murphy, manager Bucky Harris asked Bridges, “Tom, you think you’d be ready to face those fellows the next inning?”

Bridges nodded.

“You know who you’re going to face, don’t you,” said Harris. “Well, Babe Ruth, (Lou) Gehrig, and (Tony) Lazzeri are going to come up. It is a hard test.”

“I’ll be ready,” Bridges said.

It all sounds a bit fanciful. But the record does show that in the sixth inning, with the Tigers trailing the Yankees 10-6, Bridges did face those three future Hall of Famers in order. He got Ruth on a pop fly, gave up a single to Lazzeri, struck out Gehrig, and retired Harry Rice to end the inning.

Twelve days later, Bridges made his first major-league start, in Detroit against the St. Louis Browns, and he beat them 7-5 despite walking a dozen batters. Bridges never walked 12 in one game again, but he did struggle with his control. In 1931, he walked 108 in 173 innings; in ’32, 119 in 201 innings. So in 1933, Bucky Harris told Bridges to avoid throwing his curveball until he was ahead in the count. As Ralph Cannon later wrote, “It is easier, of course, to control a fast ball, and so by relying more on it—and he has a very good fast ball, too, as well as a good change of pace—Bridges gradually acquired the control that was all he needed to make him a great pitcher.”

History is rarely so tidy. Bridges’ control did improve in 1933, but he also continued to walk his share of batters. And it was back in ’32 that Bridges had pitched the greatest game of his major-league career.

On August 5, pitching against the Washington Senators in Detroit, Bridges sailed through the first eight innings. On the advice of Harris, he relied mainly on his fastball and set down the first 24 Washington hitters in order. Meanwhile, the Tigers were building a huge lead, the score 13-0 after eight innings.

In the ninth inning, Bridges retired the first two Senators. Due next was Bob Burke, a pitcher. Would manager Walter Johnson send up a pinch-hitter for Burke? He did: Dave Harris, a good fastball hitter. Would Bridges continue to rely on his fastball? He did, and Harris lined Bridges’ first pitch over shortstop Billy Rogell’s head for a clean single. Bridges got the next guy, but the perfect game was gone.

There were people who thought it something less than sporting for Johnson to send up a pinch-hitter with the Senators so far behind. Bridges wasn’t having any of it. “I didn’t want the perfect game given me on a platter,” he said. “I wanted it with the opposition doing its best to keep me from winning.”

If Bridges didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the perfect game that wasn’t, he did continue to worry about throwing strikes. According to a 1941 article in Baseball Magazine, “Being a college man, Bridges is only moderately superstitious. He carries only one luck piece and that is a constructive item. It contains the story of a ball game he lost to Oglethorpe College while he was pitching for the University of Tennessee. Tommy lost that game on a wild pitch. During the years he was struggling to perfect his control with the Tigers he would occasionally take that yellowed clipping out and look at it. He never again wants to lose a game on a wild pitch.”

Bridges pitched two famous games in his career. The first was that nearly perfect game against the Senators. The second was Game Six of the 1935 World Series. Heading into the ninth, the Tigers and the Chicago Cubs were tied, 3-3. Stan Hack led off for Chicago and drove Bridges’ second pitch to the flagpole in Navin Field’s deepest center field for a triple. Man on third, nobody out. As Joe Williams wrote in the New York World-Telegram, “The odds were 5 to 1 that at least one run would score. Under the circumstances, what with more than $2,000 riding on every thrown ball, that being the difference between the individual winners’ and losers’ share, the odds were probably 25 to 1. A passed ball, a wild pitch, an ordinary fly, an infield error—any of these could produce a run.”

Billy Jurges came up next. Bridges threw three curveballs. Jurges swung three times and missed three times. One down.

Cubs pitcher Larry French came up next—and yes, manager Charlie Grimm probably should have considered a pinch-hitter, but baseball was different then—and French swung at three straight curveballs, the last resulting in a weak grounder back to Bridges. Two down, and Hack was still standing on third base.

Augie Galan came up next. A ball, a strike, a ball, “and then Galan lifted an easy fly to old Goose Goslin out in left, and to all intents and purposes the series was over.”

Not quite. The Tigers still had to score. Which they did, thanks to Goslin’s RBI single with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Bridges missed it. In the locker room after the game, Mickey Cochrane, who’d scored the winning run, asked Bridges, “Boy, did you see that hit Goslin got?”

“No, I didn’t,” Bridges replied. “I was hunched down in the dressing room tunnel having a smoke. I heard the roar of the crowd when you got a hit and I decided to stay put for the rest of the inning just for luck.”

A few minutes later, Cochrane said of Bridges, “Just look at him. That’s what I said, just look at him and feel proud you were ever on the same team with him. I can say it only one way, he’s 150 pounds of sheer guts.” Decades later, old teammate Doc Cramer would say, “Tommy Bridges was 150 pounds of guts.”

Baseball players in the 1930s weren’t nearly as big as they are today, but even then, few could write about Bridges without mentioning his slight build. In just the first few years of his career, he was described at various weights ranging from 144 pounds to 165 pounds. In 1940 Ed Bang noted of Bridges, “It has been said of him, most of his weight is heart.” After the war, Red Smith described Bridges as “a wry-necked, thin-featured old gentleman about as big as 80 cents worth of liver.” Back in 1933, Tigers manager Bucky Harris said, “Honestly, he has more sheer courage than any ballplayer I ever saw.” In 1939, W.R. Hoeffer wrote in Baseball Magazine”:

“Oh, the big and husky hurlers are impressive blokes to view
whenever they get out there fogging hooks and fast ones through.
But when you gotta have that game, with big dough on the line,
it’s little Tommy Bridges that I’ll take out there for mine.”

Thanks to all those guts and curveballs, the Tigers were World Series champs for the first time in franchise history in 1935, and the party in the city’s streets and taverns lasted until dawn the next day. As Fred Lieb wrote, “Detroit had a terrible hang-over, but, gosh, it was worth it.”

Just a year earlier the Tigers had lost the World Series. Bridges had pitched well in that one, too. He’d been knocked out early in Game Three, but came back in Game Five and pitched a complete game to beat the Cardinals, 3-1. He also pitched an inning in the Tigers’ Game Seven blowout loss.

What was the key to Bridges’ performance in Game Six of the ’35 Series? According to a press release sent out by the Cincinnati Reds, “He had been pitching fast balls all through the game and then, after Hack tripled, he changed to curve ball pitching and no pitcher ever broke sharper curves to three successive batters than Bridges did. For the space of the few minutes that it took him to retire three men he was unhittable by any three batters you can name.”

Bridges’ decisive Game Six performance merely solidified the reputation of his tremendous curveball, which was generally rated the best in the league, and perhaps the best anyone had seen since Three Finger Brown was pitching for the Cubs back in the Deadball Era.

In 1933 Ralph Cannon wrote, “Hitters say that Bridges has one of the best curves in baseball, a fast, sharp-breaking ball that drops down and out.” Also in ’33, Jimmy Dykes said, “He has a hook that is a hook, and when he’s on his game and can lay it where he wants to, you might as well bring a match up to the plate as a bat. Give Bridges control and he’ll curve you right back to the bench.” And in 1934, Dan Daniel wrote, “Bridges boasts the best right-hand curve in the American League.” Bridges might have thrown what today is sometimes called a “spike curve”; in ’33, Ralph Sampson wrote in The Sporting News that Bridges had “an unusual way of gripping the ball in his long, powerful fingers, using mostly the second finger instead of the first two fingers to grip the ball, and gripping it somewhat below the equator.”

As great as his curveball was, Bridges was far from a one-pitch pitcher. Contemporary stories about him rarely fail to mention his fastball—in fact, sometimes there’s no mention of his curveball at all—and Mickey Cochrane said that Bridges actually won more games with his fastball than his curve. Bridges himself said, “A curve isn’t worth a hoot unless they respect your fastball.”

Then again, Bridges’ curve was often so unhittable that it didn’t matter much if the hitters knew it was coming. As Birdie Tebbetts, who caught Bridges for eight seasons, remembered many years later, “Bridges won for 12 years with a curve every hitter knew was coming. He tipped off every curve, but if he got rid of the tip-off, he wouldn’t have been able to throw the curve.”

And like a lot of pitchers in those days, Bridges had a trick up his sleeve, which was especially useful after he’d lost the good zip on his fastball. Charlie Metro was a teammate of Bridges’ with the Tigers in 1943. Nearly 60 years later, Metro recalled,

“Tommy Bridges was in Detroit toward the end of his career. He had an absolutely great curve ball. Every once in a while, I would catch batting practice. Tommy would say, ‘Hey, Rook, get that glove.’ I’d get the glove, and we start warming up. Without telling me, he’d break off a curve that would drop down and hit me on the toes. Finally, he would let me know. Then he’d say, ‘Now watch this. You haven’t seen this.’ And he’d throw me the dangedest spitter you ever saw! That thing would hit me all over. I had a heck of a time catching it. I said, ‘When do you throw this?’ He said, ‘You watch. You just keep watching me. You’ll recognize it.’ Boy, if he’d get two strikes on a guy and maybe he had just one guy out or maybe this was the deciding hitter in the ball game, here would come that spitter. I never saw how he did it, and I watched him real close.”

How Bridges threw his spitball might have been a mystery, but that he threw it wasn’t much of a secret around the American League. Paul Richards told a story about catching Bridges one day against the Senators. Richards put down his signal for a curve. Bridges shook him off. Richards put down his signal for a fastball. Bridges shook him off. Richards put down his signal for a changeup. Bridges shook him off.

“Well,” Richards thought, “the only thing left is the spitter.”

Richards was right, and Bridges struck out Stan Spence with three straight wet ones. Spence flung his bat to the ground, protesting to umpire Bill Summers. Senators manager Ossie Bluege came out and joined the fray. After a bit of that, Bluege, Spence, Richards, and Summers all trooped out to the scene of the supposed crime.

“Tommy,” Summers said, “these gentlemen say you’ve been throwing spitters.”

“Why, Mr. Summers,” Bridges said, “don’t you know the spitter has been outlawed for years? How would I ever learn to throw one?”

Thus assured, the various actors headed back to their assigned places. Before they got far, though, Bridges put his glove next to his mouth and addressed Summers in a stage whisper: “Hey, Bill. Wasn’t that last one a sweetheart, though?”

A workhorse from 1934 through ’37, Bridges would never make 30 starts or pitch 200 innings in a season after that. He could still pitch, though, and feasted on the American League’s war-depleted ranks in 1942 and ’43, posting the lowest ERAs of his entire career. In both seasons (and also in 1941) he made exactly 22 starts, essentially starting once per week.

While Bridges might not have been durable enough to take his turn in the rotation every four or five days, he was healthy enough for Uncle Sam. In November of 1943, Bridges was inducted into the US Army and reported for duty at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. “I’m ready to go wherever the Army thinks I can be most useful,” he said.

That turned out to be Camp Crowder, Missouri, where Bridges did a lot of pitching. He was discharged in late August 1945, and just a few days later started for the Tigers against the White Sox. He got the victory but didn’t pitch all that well, and pitched only three more times, all in relief, the rest of the season. He also pitched a couple of innings in the World Series, with the Tigers topping the Cubs in seven games.

In 1946, with so many younger players finally back from the service, Bridges signed on with the Tigers as a coach. Or at least that was the plan. A couple of months before the season started, Bridges asked to be dropped as a coach and added as a player. Manager Steve O’Neill said, “I’ll use him as a spot pitcher. Tommy needs only seven more victories to break into the 200 victory class. He thinks he can make it, and so do I.”

Said Bridges, “I’m a cinch to do it.”

He didn’t. He won just once all season, in the second game of an early-May doubleheader, and he lost once (at Fenway Park just three days earlier, when Ted Williams homered in the bottom of the tenth inning). On September 16, having worked in only nine games all season, Bridges drew his release.

Like a lot of star pitchers in those days, Bridges went to the minors. In 1947, Bridges hooked up with the Pacific Coast League’s Portland Beavers, and in his first start he pitched a two-hitter. Afterward, manager Jim Turner said, “My intention is to use Bridges as our ‘Sunday pitcher,’ much as the Chicago White Sox used Ted Lyons so effectively for many years.”

Turner had his man. And on April 20, Tommy Bridges finally got his no-hitter. It was his first start in Portland, with the San Francisco Seals visiting. Bridges would allow just one baserunner, walking Bones Sanders in the eighth. Just like in 1933, Bridges faced a pinch-hitter with two outs in the ninth … but this time the pinch-hitter, Sal Taormina, tapped a grounder to the first baseman, and Bridges had the honor of recording the last out. After the game, Turner said, “In 24 years of professional baseball, and starting on my 25th, Tommy Bridges’ no-run, no-hitter Sunday was the best pitched game I have ever seen. Not one of the best—the best of all, by far. … I saw (Johnny) Vander Meer of Cincinnati shut out our Boston club in ’38, the first of his two consecutive no-run no-hitters and 21 no-hit innings … and it didn’t compare with Tommy’s game. … I said when we signed Tommy Bridges I felt sure he was still a major league pitcher, and repeated it emphatically after his first game in Los Angeles. Now let me add that Tommy could still take his pitching turn with any club in either major league and win his 15 games a season.”

Maybe he could have. But he never got the chance. Injuries limited Bridges to only 13 appearances with the Beavers in ’47. Healthy in ’48, Bridges went 15-11 with a 2.86 ERA, fourth-best in the league. In 2003 Charlie Silvera, Portland’s primary catcher in 1947 and ’48, told me that Bridges could have returned to the majors in ’48 … with the Yankees:

“Back in 1948, Portland had a partial agreement with the Yankees. The Yankees were in a pennant race in ’48, and in Portland we had a chance to get into the playoffs. Tommy missed his assignment, and I went to Turner and I said, ‘Jim, what’s wrong with Tommy?’

“ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll tell you what happened. The Yankees want to bring him back for the stretch drive, for the last month or so. Tommy’s been thinking about it, and I’m going to hold him out one more day and he’s going to give me his decision.’ And Tommy decided not to go.

“But Tommy still had great stuff. Still had the great curveball. He was a little erratic at that time, though, and his fastball was erratic. I don’t think he could see. Of all the pitchers I caught, Tommy Bridges crossed me up more than anybody else. I’d go out there sometimes and look at him, and I’d doubt where he could see. I think that’s one of the reasons that he didn’t want to go back.”

So Bridges stayed in Portland, and in ’49 he pitched again for the Beavers. He was 42 years old and went 11-11 with a 3.82 ERA. Late that season, a number of PCL players were asked about “their toughest things in baseball.” Bridges’ answer: “Trying to throw the same stuff as I did ten years ago.”

Bridges pitched again in 1950, but washed out after brief trials with both Seattle and San Francisco. The rest of his life seems to have been a trial. And probably for a few years before that, as well. Elden Auker wrote in his memoir, “Tommy and I roomed together on the road for six years with the Tigers. I didn’t see Tommy have a drop to drink in those six years. The bottle found him after we went our separate ways, and it never let go.”

In 1930, Bridges married college sweetheart Carolyn Jellicorse. Five years later, Carolyn gave birth to daughter Evelyn, the couple’s only child. “But in 1948,” according to one account, “the booze and another woman threw his life into a tailspin and his marriage fell apart.” According to Auker—a granted, he heard this secondhand from Charlie Gehringer—Bridges’ drinking problem began in 1939, when he began rooming with Al Benton. “Gehringer told me that they didn’t even come downstairs for dinner. They drank their meals.”

In 1950 Bridges married the other woman. At some point, the couple moved to Detroit. That’s where erstwhile Tigers shortstop Billy Rogell, by then a city councilman, came across his old teammate …

“When I’d drive down to council meetings, I’d go down First Street. That was a one-way street. There was a sporting goods shop. One day, as I was crossing Michigan Avenue, I noticed this guy lying by this store. I drove about two stores down and I thought, ‘Goddamn, that looked like Bridges.’ So I backed the car up and got out and sure enough, it’s Tommy Bridges. Jesus Christ, he looked horrible.

“So I took him over to City Hall, the old one, and got him cleaned up. Got him some coffee to drink, took him out to breakfast, talked to him. I said, ‘Tom, where the hell do you live? I didn’t know you were in Detroit.’ He says, ‘I live in Toledo.’ See, he’d gotten divorced from his wife and married this waitress he’d met in Seattle or some damned place. The husband was after him to kill him and all that crap. He came to Detroit looking for a job.”

Rogell got Bridges a job selling beer for a local brewery. Maybe not the best position for a fellow down on his luck. A few days later, someone called from the brewery: “Where the hell’s Tommy?”

As Rogell recalled, “Well, how the hell do I know where Bridges is? He never showed up. He went way down. It was terrible to see that. But nice guys go, too, you know.”

Auker tried to help Bridges, too. When Bridges knocked on Auker’s door one evening and asked for $125 to buy some new clothes and “get straightened away” for a job interview, Auker gave it to him, with the stipulation that if Bridges could go for six months without a drink, the loan would be forgiven.

The next morning, Bridges was found on his front lawn, passed out. He’d cashed Auker’s check at a local tavern, and drank the money away.

It’s not clear when these incidents occurred. Probably in the 1950s. From 1958 through ’60, Bridges worked for the Tigers as a scout and minor-league pitching coach, and he scouted for the Mets from 1963 until his death. During offseasons, he reportedly sold tires in Detroit and Lakeland, Florida.

In 1967 Bridges was diagnosed with liver cancer. He and his second wife moved from Lakeland to Nashville, and he died there in April 1968.

This biography is included in the book “Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers” (SABR, 2014), edited by Scott Ferkovich.

Author’s note

This article is a revised version of an article originally published in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (Fireside, 2004). For sources, I relied on a large number of newspaper clippings from Bridges’ file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library. Other key sources include Richard Bak’s Cobb Would Have Caught It (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), Elden Auker’s Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001), Portland newspapers in 1947, and the periodical Pacific Coast League Baseball News from the late 1940s. Ken Beck’s 2011 article in the Wilson (Tennessee) Post was the primary source of information about Bridges’ family and his life after leaving the major leagues.

Herman Clifton was born on December 12, 1908, in Cincinnati’s West End, an area that had known hardship both before and after the Great Depression. (During his playing career his year of birth was listed as 1911.) Herman remembered little of his father. He knew he was a tall man, 6-feet-2, and he weighed 175 pounds. His dad left Herman to go fight overseas in the First World War. In 1918 he fought in the Argonne Forest; the Argonne Offensive was the final battle of the Great War that led to Germany’s surrender. It also was the bloodiest battle in the United States’ history. Herman’s father was one of 26,277 Americans who never returned.

At the age of 9, Herman found himself without a father, but his tragedies were far from over. When he was 15, a “friend of the family” had been drinking heavily.1 The man was an acquaintance of Herman’s stepfather and ended up strangling Clifton’s mother with Herman’s own school necktie. The same man eventually killed another woman and was put to death for that murder.

Herman’s stepfather had never got along with his stepson and, in turn, Herman had little respect for the man. It wasn’t long after his mother’s death that Clifton found himself kicked out in the snow. He ended up crossing over into Ludlow, Kentucky, and lived behind a garage that had a potbellied stove. He ate whatever generous locals had to offer; whether they were willing donors didn’t always matter to the young teen.

Through it all, Herman continued to go to school. He loved school and he excelled athletically. It was at this period in his life that he found a direction from reading a book. As Herman would claim, he found his patron saint: Tyrus Raymond Cobb. A book on Ty Cobb became a major influence in his life.

Herman knew that Cobb was much bigger than the slight teen but Clifton’s goal was to match Ty in tenacity. In Herman’s own words, “My philosophy was to attach my wagon to a star.”2 Throughout Clifton’s career he would show a loyalty to “star” players. Whether it was his lifelong defending of Ty Cobb, or praising and supporting Mickey Cochrane or Rogers Hornsby, Clifton showed sincere loyalty to some of baseball’s biggest names. In defense of Hank Greenberg, Clifton once told teammates, “Where the hell would you guys be if it wasn’t for Hank up to this time? Hank has really been putting the bucks in our pockets. Hell, don’t kick the horse you’re going to ride.”3

Cobb has not always been considered the ideal role model, yet Clifton credited him with keeping his life clean and out of trouble. Herman chose not to drink, smoke, chew, chase women, or stay out late as he focused to pursue his goal of becoming a Detroit Tiger like Cobb.

In school he excelled in both football and baseball. With little outside guidance, it was a Ludlow High School teacher who instructed the teen to turn down football scholarships to Dayton, Iowa, and Purdue to pursue his dream of becoming a Detroit Tiger. Clifton claimed to have attended the “College of Hard Knocks” but others claim he played baseball for the University of Cincinnati.4 Regardless, he played sandlot and semipro baseball throughout Cincinnati and played shortstop for Cincinnati Pleasant Ride, a local team that won the 1929 National Baseball Federation championship. At the tournament, just months before the stock market crash that helped launch the Great Depression, Clifton’s life suddenly took an upswing.

Billy Doyle had a notable career as a longtime scout. He discovered or signed such players as future Hall of Famers Rick Ferrell, Hank Greenberg, Branch Rickey, George Sisler, and Billy Southworth, as well as notables like Tommy Bridges, Floyd Giebell, Hank Gowdy, Ray Hayworth, Sam Jones, Dickie Kerr, and dozens of other major leaguers. Yet in 1929, then a Tigers scout, Doyle must have thought he was dreaming when the all-tourney shortstop told him his ambition was to become a Detroit Tiger. Cobb himself might have questioned Clifton’s turning down more money from the St. Louis Cardinals, but to Clifton the decision was simple. He signed with Ty Cobb’s Tigers.

Clifton’s first stop was the Raleigh Capitals in the Piedmont League. It was there he met a fellow first-year professional named Hank Greenberg. Raleigh’s field was built on an old brickyard. The young shortstop committed 44 errors on the challenging field but still led the league’s shortstops in fielding. The following season in Raleigh was spent without Greenberg, who was already moving up. Still the Capitals saw a marked improvement, jumping from fifth place to second. Clifton’s batting average climbed to .301, good enough to find himself rejoined with Greenberg, this time in Beaumont, Texas.

The Beaumont Exporters gave Clifton a taste of what the big leagues would be like. The vast majority of the Exporters ended up with major-league experience and it showed as they won both the Texas League regular season and the championship series. Clifton played well in Beaumont, switching to second base in his second season in Texas. Once again he hit .301 and he added a Cobb-like 49 stolen bases to his 1932 totals.

The Exporters would also give Clifton the nickname that would be his moniker for the rest of his life. After a knee injury Clifton tried relentlessly to convince his manager, Del Baker, that he was fit to play. Baker finally responded that the annoying Clifton was worse than a sand flea. The days of “Herman” were over.

One assessment of Clifton’s skills stated, “Flea is a fightin’ man —Reports are that he has flattened many a foe who towered a foot above him.”5 An exaggeration for sure, but probably more because Clifton could not find a 6-foot-10 player to tangle with. In the minors he did enjoy a good scrape even if it was his own teammate —the 6-foot-4 Hank Greenberg. Not that fighting over who gets to practice first isn’t a worthy cause, but as Greenberg found out, it didn’t take much to set Flea off. Greenberg remembered another episode with Clifton’s bat: “Flea guarded that bat with his life: he’d fight anybody that came near it. He was a tough little guy, even though he weighed only about 150 pounds. On the road, he used to eat nothing but doughnuts and bananas. He said they were cheap and filling and they stretched his meal money. Flea was the only ballplayer who could show a profit on $1-a-day meal money.”6 To be sure, Ty Cobb always appreciated a fightin’ but frugal man.

In 1934 Clifton was finally called up to play with Detroit. “It wasn’t a very enviable position,” he recalled.7 In 1934 the Tigers had one of the greatest infields ever. Marv Owen and Billy Rogell handled third and short, and the right side of the infield was manned by future Hall of Famers Charlie Gehringer at second and Greenberg at first. Nicknamed “The Battalion of Death,” the 1934 Tigers infield still (as of 2014) holds the record for the most RBIs by a unit, 462. Clifton remembered, “There wasn’t anybody that’d have a chance to break in on that infield. But I practiced every day just like I was gonna play in every game.”8 He was aware that his chances of playing would be better outside of Detroit, but that was never the plan. With no regrets, Clifton reminisced, “Mickey [Cochrane] knew that. He knew that I would be playing second base for about four or five teams in that league, but they weren’t about to tell me at that time. I understood this, but that was my ambition —to play ball with Detroit and I was going to make the best of it.”9

Clifton was a utility infielder from 1934 to 1937. All of his time in the majors was with Detroit. He played in only 87 games over the four-year span, never hit a home run, and was a lifetime .200 hitter. His big year was 1935, when he started 30 games in the infield, usually for Owen at third base but occasionally spelling Gehringer or Clifton’s roommate Rogell. Three times he had three hits in a game, all in 1935. Clifton collected five hits in a doubleheader against the Yankees in which Lefty Gomez pitched the first game. Late in the season, against Washington, he led both teams with three hits and two runs in a 5-4 Tigers win.

Overall, Clifton had more of an “I’m just glad to be here” type of career. His favorite play was a Cobb-like moment he had in 1934 against the Washington Senators. He came in as a pinch-runner in the eighth inning. Tiger Jo-Jo White chopped one to second and Flea was off to the races. As the second baseman flipped the ball over to first to get the speedy White, Clifton was already rounding third and blowing through third-base coach Del Baker’s stop sign. By the time the relay came home, Clifton was already sliding in safely. Manager Mickey Cochrane greeted the daredevil in the dugout with a congratulatory pat and said something similar to, “You know, son, if you wouldn’t have scored I would have shipped your ass so far away it’d cost you $75 to send me a postcard to let me know where you were.”10 But, for that moment, Cobb and Clifton were one.

Clifton did not appear in the 1934 World Series. However, in baseball lore he will always be linked to Hank Greenberg and the 1935 Series. In Game Two Greenberg broke his wrist sliding into home. The devastated Tigers scrambled for a plan to try to replace their top offensive weapon for Game Three. Pitcher Schoolboy Rowe (Clifton’s roommate in Beaumont) volunteered to play first base. Manager Cochrane contemplated putting himself at first and letting Ray Hayworth catch. The Tigers rotated four outfielders on a regular basis. Maybe one of them could play first. Even Clifton was caught by Greenberg testing out Greenberg’s own glove just in case Clifton would be the fill-in at first. But it would be Tigers owner Frank Navin who made the decision. He ordered Cochrane to move third baseman Marv Owen over to first. The kicker was that Navin wanted Clifton to start the remaining games at third base.

For four games, Flea Clifton was a starter in the World Series. By the second inning of his first game, he had already committed an error. At the plate it was even worse: 0-for-16 in the four games that would define his career. But it didn’t matter. After those four games he would be known as “Flea” Clifton, 1935 World Series champion. Even Ty Cobb could never claim world-champion status.

Clifton never did like the scorer’s decision to give him what ended up being his only error as the Tigers won Game Three, 6-5. In Game Four he scored what proved to be the winning run in a 2-1 game after reaching second on an error, though he believed to the day he died that he had hit a double. He did draw a pair of walks in the Series, and even batted leadoff in the deciding game, but he was probably best known for his nonstop banter with the Cubs players and coaches. Ty Cobb would have been proud.

Over the next two years, Clifton played in just 28 more games in the majors. By the middle of 1937 he was back to the minor leagues for good. He went from Toledo to Toronto to Oklahoma City to Fort Worth before finally ending up in Minneapolis in 1943. Clifton had a good year in ’43. He considered managing the team in 1944 or even trying for a major-league comeback with so many younger players off fighting in World War II. But he was tired of traveling. He missed his wife, Marcella, and their kids. He missed Cincinnati. It was time to move on. 

Flea Clifton became an insurance salesman, retiring a second time 40 years later as a vice president of George R. Hammerlein Insurance. The hours worked well with coaching baseball, being a Shriner, gardening, and always graciously signing autographs. He continued to encourage others to read about Ty Cobb and ironically, stressed “manners first” to his teams that won several local as well as national championships.

In 1997 Flea Clifton was interviewed along with Billy Rogell for a documentary about Hank Greenberg, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. It was critically well received but Clifton never saw it. On December 22, 1997, he died from a stroke before the documentary was released in 1998. He was survived by Marcella, his Cincinnatian wife of 66 years, their three daughters, Arlene Nixon, Carol Couch, and Gwenn Smith, and their son, Kerry Clifton. He also had 15 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. He was buried in his coaching uniform in Bridgetown, Ohio, overlooking the local baseball field. The same Cincinnati Enquirer that had written a headline 62 years earlier calling Flea “Cincinnati Hero of Series” now wrote an obituary titled “Clifton Hero of ’35 World Series,” leaving Ty a little envious.

Sources

Bevis, Charles, Mickey Cochrane: The Life of a Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998).

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Second Edition (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 1997).

Lieb, Frederick, The Detroit Tigers (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946).

Rosengren, John, Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes (New York: New American Library, 2013).

Skipper, John C.,  Charlie Gehringer: A Biography of a Hall of Fame Tigers Second Baseman (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008).

Smith, Fred T., Tiger Tales and Trivia (Lathrup Village, Michigan: Fred Smith, 1988).

Baseball Hall of Fame Library, player file for Flea Clifton

Baseball-reference.com

Notes

1 Richard Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991).  243.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Brent Kelley, “Flea Clifton; Lifelong Disciple of Ty Cobb,” Sports Collectors Digest, July 15, 1994.

5 Russ Murphy Tiger Tales. (Your Plymouth Dealer, pamphlet, Detroit, 1934).

6 Ira Berkow, Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Books, 2009), 23.

7 Kelley, 137

8  Kelley, 137.

9 Kelley,  137

10 Bak,  249.

Cochrane wasn’t just a great baseball player, though. He was a hero and role model to millions of people during the Great Depression of the 1930s when as player-manager of the Detroit Tigers he led the downtrodden Tigers to their first pennant in 25 years. The combination of Cochrane’s fierce competitiveness on the field and his likable personality off the field, mixed with his successful rise from humble beginnings, helped Americans take their minds off the widespread unemployment during the Great Depression and encouraged them that they too could weather the economic times. Many parents named their children after Cochrane, including one Oklahoma family named Mantle.

Playing for the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers, Cochrane led five teams to American League pennants during the seven-year span from 1929 through 1935, an era most fans remember as being dominated by Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees. Three of these five teams went on to win World Series titles. Cochrane was the catcher on Connie Mack‘s Philadelphia Athletics team that won three consecutive pennants from 1929 to 1931. It was as player-manager of the Detroit Tigers, however, that Cochrane achieved national fame and adulation, leading the Tigers to pennants in 1934 and 1935, and to Detroit’s first World Series title in 1935.

Cochrane was born on April 6, 1903, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children of immigrants John and Sadie Cochrane. His parents were both of Scottish descent. John Cochrane was born near Omagh, Northern Ireland, where his family had relocated from Scotland, while Sadie Campbell was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where her family had emigrated from Scotland.

This Scottish heritage made it rather ironic that Cochrane would eventually be tagged with his nickname “Mickey,” based on the belief that he was just another Irish “mick,” when Tom Turner signed Cochrane in the fall of 1923 to play for Portland in the Pacific Coast League. Understandably, then, no one in the family or anyone who knew Cochrane well ever called him Mickey. Instead, he was known as Mike in his private life while the public called him Mickey. As for his given name Gordon, only his parents called him that when Cochrane was an adult.

On the sandlots of Bridgewater and the playing fields of Boston University, where he matriculated after graduating from Bridgewater High School in June 1920, Cochrane was known by the nickname “Kid” before he acquired the Mickey moniker. By his own admission and the observation of others, Kid Cochrane was a much better football and basketball player than he was a baseball player during his high school and college years. On the baseball diamond, Cochrane also rarely played catcher, but rather mostly played shortstop or the outfield.

While football may have been Cochrane’s passion, baseball was to be his meal ticket. He couldn’t support a family by playing in the fledgling days of professional football in the 1920s, but he could make enough money by playing baseball for a living. In 1923 while still in college, he played under the assumed name of Frank King for Dover in the Class D Eastern Shore League, filling a spot on the team that Dover was lacking: catcher. After batting .327 for first-place Dover, Cochrane signed to play in 1924 for Portland in the PCL. Cochrane dropped out of BU, batted .333 at Portland, and then joined the Philadelphia Athletics for the 1925 season.

“I didn’t want to be a catcher. It was thrust upon me, as they say in the classics,” Cochrane told New York Times writer John Kieran in 1931. “I was in a fever to get out from behind the plate. Oh boy, I was terrible back there.”

An unsung cast helped Cochrane learn the catching trade and shape him into a great catcher. His benefactors included Jiggs Donahue (manager at Dover), Tom Daly (catcher at Portland), and Cy Perkins (Athletics catcher), whose job Cochrane eventually took over before the 1925 season concluded. Ty Cobb, in his waning years playing for the Athletics in 1927-28, also had a hand in refining the tenacity that became a Cochrane hallmark.

Cochrane was one of the cogs in Connie Mack’s dynamite team that copped three consecutive American League pennants from 1929 to 1931. The Athletics won the World Series in 1929 and 1930, but were stymied by Pepper Martin and the St. Louis Cardinals in 1931. Unfortunately, the Great Depression forced Mack to sell off his star-studded lineup in 1932 and 1933 to pay the bills. Cochrane was sold to Detroit and became player-manager of the Detroit Tigers.

Without that transaction, Cochrane likely would have retired from the game as simply a very good catcher. The Detroit job propelled Cochrane into greatness, a role for which he was unprepared and, in many respects, ill suited. While Cochrane won two straight pennants in Detroit in his first two years there, 1934 and 1935, the success cost him his health and nearly his life in the process. Cochrane never liked the limelight in Detroit and was even burdened by it.

“When I was a player I worried only about myself. Good money and easy work,” Cochrane once said, according to a 1960 profile in Sport magazine. “Now I have to worry about everybody. I have to see that they’re in shape and stay in shape. If one of them eats something that makes them sick, I get sick too.”

Cochrane was perceived as such a civic savior that his picture graced the cover of Time magazine on October 7, 1935. Inside that issue was a story that noted, “Cochrane’s arrival in Detroit coincided roughly with the revival of the automobile industry and the first signs of revived prosperity. His determined jolly face soon came to represent the picture of what a dynamic Detroiter ought to look like.”

It was too much for Cochrane. Following the World Series victory in 1935, he suffered a breakdown in 1936 after being elevated to general manager in addition to his player-manager duties. On May 25, 1937, soon after his recovery from the breakdown, he was hit in the head by a pitch from Yankee pitcher Bump Hadley in those helmetless days and was nearly killed, ending his major league playing career. Cochrane came back as bench manager in 1938, but was ineffective outside his playing-field leadership and was fired on August 6, 1938. He was a great leader on the field, but cast as a “caged lion” bench manager, he never managed again in the major leagues.

His last managerial role was at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago, where Cochrane ran a baseball team for the Navy during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. Except for a brief stint as general manager of the Athletics in 1950 during Mack’s final days in Philadelphia, and brief outing as a scout with the New York Yankees in the mid-1950s, Cochrane never again worked in major league baseball.

Cochrane had all the attributes expected of a great catcher – mastery of calling pitches, good arm, and defensive capabilities – which he supplemented with a mastery of human nature. His psychological knack for handling pitchers, treating each one differently according to perceived needs, helped to maximize pitching efforts on the mound. He also had the attributes expected of any great ballplayer. He hit for average, drew walks, had above-average speed on the basepaths, and could hit for power when needed.

Over his 13-season playing career, Cochrane compiled a .320 lifetime batting average, best among all retired major league catchers (but not current-day receiver Mike Piazza) to rank among the top 50 of all players. His best season at bat was 1930 when he hit .357, good for fifth-best in the American League after having led the league in hitting at the end of June that year with a .404 average.

His exceptional batting eye was also reflected in his patience at waiting out pitchers, piling up 857 career walks and a top 60 ranking in walk percentage. Cochrane also struck out less than once in every 24 plate appearances – topped by just 8 whiffs in 514 at-bats in 1929 – to rank among the top 35 in at bats per strikeout.

Cochrane’s exceptional .419 career on-base average ranks in the top 20 among all players. While OBP has historically been an overlooked measure of baseball success, recent research now indicates how valuable the frequency of getting on base is to team run production, and consequently how OBP relates to team victories. Demonstrating how valuable he was to his teams, Cochrane ranks in the top 50 of Total Player Rating Per 150 Games with 3.22 additional team victories per season above the average player (compared to #1 Babe Ruth with a 6.53 TPR).

While hitting just 119 home runs in his career, Cochrane had 64 triples, the most among Hall of Fame catchers that played in the 20th century. His ability to launch doubles and triples lands him just outside the game’s top 100 in slugging percentage with his .478 average. Cochrane’s lack of home run production over his career – which wasn’t required because he batted in front of such sluggers as Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg – has somewhat unfairly diminished the luster of his contribution to the game.

In his first 11 years in the majors, Cochrane never caught fewer than 110 games in the then 154-game season. He perfected the one-hand catching style to help protect the fingers on his throwing hand from getting overly banged up. Cochrane assisted two pitchers to establish 16-game winning streaks, still the American League record, when Lefty Grove accomplished the feat with the A’s in 1931 and Schoolboy Rowe with the Tigers in 1934.

Cochrane was selected as American League MVP twice, in 1928 and 1934, primarily on his leadership abilities rather than his statistical accomplishments. On the field, Cochrane had a certain inspiration that infected other players to do their best. Cochrane never played on a team that finished worse than third place.

His happiest post-playing days were at his Montana ranch in the late 1940s, where he operated a dude ranch with his wife Mary and daughters Joan and Sara. His only son, Gordon Jr., died on a battlefield in Europe in World War II. At the ranch, Cochrane could be just plain “Mike,” his preferred nickname and what anyone close to him called him, rather than “Mickey” that was his baseball persona. Joining Cochrane in Montana were his father and two brothers Archie and Bert (his mother died in 1942), who lived there full-time while Cochrane divided his time between the 4K Ranch in the foothills of the Beartooth Range of the Rockies and his home outside of Chicago. One of the last vestiges of the Cochrane family in Montana is the Archie Cochrane Ford dealership in Billings.

The twin nicknames symbolized Cochrane’s dual nature, where he was tough on the ball field but gentle off it, sort of hard on the outside but soft inside. “Mickey” Cochrane was renowned for his on-field tenacity, playing baseball with a take-no-prisoners attitude. This was exemplified by the oft-reprinted photograph of his leaping through the air to tag a runner out at home plate – a feat that occurred during a 1933 exhibition game that had no impact in the league standings. “Mike” Cochrane loved music, dancing, playing the saxophone, and assisting friends and associates, especially financially, during the tough times during the Great Depression (although his generosity with money was often not repaid by its recipients).

These two aspects of Cochrane’s personality clashed several times in very public ways. In his later Detroit years, he picked up the less-than-esteemed nickname “Black Mike,” which in a positive way related to the gritty image of a hard-working catcher but also hinted at the dark side of the man. Cochrane had a difficult time coping with stressful situations where failure seemed imminent. In the 1931 World Series, after losing money in bank failure, he was embarrassed that Pepper Martin stole so many bases. In the 1934 World Series, he was hospitalized after the sixth game when the Cardinals rallied to overtake the Tigers who had been on the verge of winning the series. He came back for the seventh game, but the Tigers were already whipped and lost 11-0 in a game best remembered for the disappointed Detroit fans showering garbage on St. Louis left fielder Ducky Medwick, forcing Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to remove him from the game. Of course, the 1936 regular season breakdown was telling, after he assumed the duties of general manager in addition to his player-manager responsibilities. This element of his character likely resulted in his being left out of organized baseball following his 1938 firing in Detroit.

In the late 1950s, Cochrane developed lymphatic cancer, which claimed his life prematurely at age 59 on June 28, 1962, in Lake Forest, Illinois. His body was cremated. His wife Mary survived him by nearly 37 years, dying on June 16, 1999, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Unfortunately, many people perceive Cochrane subsisting on handouts in his later years from his old friend Ty Cobb, thanks to Al Stump’s 1994 biography of Cobb. Cochrane’s wife and daughter have denied the allegation, which was likely due to Cobb’s failing memory in his last years. A Cochrane biographer believes that Cobb remembered lending Cochrane some money, but apparently failed to recall its repayment after Cochrane sold his Montana ranch in the late 1950s.

Whether Cochrane is the greatest catcher in baseball history is of course subject to intense debate. Yogi Berra, Bill Dickey, and Roy Campanella are often selected to all-time teams although Cochrane has had his share of such honors, including the 1969 baseball centennial team. Cochrane is one of just 15 catchers enshrined in the Hall of Fame (following the 2003 induction of Gary Carter) and one of only eight elected by the baseball writers, so he is certainly one of the game’s greatest catchers — if not the best in the minds of some observers.

This biography is included in the book “Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers” (SABR, 2014), edited by Scott Ferkovich.

Sources

Bevis, Charlie. Mickey Cochrane: The Life of a Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998.

Cochrane family interviews, 1991-1996.

Dooly, Bill. “How Cochrane, Who Disliked Catching, Became One of Game’s Best Backstops.” The Sporting News, February 7, 1929.

Duncan, C. William. “Mickey Cochrane, Always a Fighter, Should Bring Back to Detroit Tigers Scrappy Ways of Ty Cobb.” The Sporting News, December 21, 1933.

Graham, Frank. “The Mickey Cochrane Story.” Sport, December 1955.

Kieran, John. “The Man in the Iron Mask.” New York Times, April 22, 1931.

Lane, F.C. “All the World Calls Him Mickey.” Baseball Magazine, August 1929.

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cochrane subject file.

Newcombe, Jack. “Black Mike of the Tigers.” Sport, April 1960.

Salsinger, H.G. “What Price a Pennant?” Detroit News, September 26, 1934.

Temple University Library, Urban Archives, Philadelphia newspaper clipping file on Cochrane.

Alvin Floyd Crowder was born on January 11, 1899, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to George and Emma (Munke) Crowder. Alvin, as his parents called him, grew up in Broadbay, about eight miles southeast of Winston-Salem in the heart of tobacco and cotton country. His father was a blacksmith and his mother tended to Alvin and his older sister, Maggie. He attended Eden Chapel grade school, where he played shortstop on the school team; he quit school after the fifth grade to help on the family’s farm. By the age of 14 Alvin was working at the South Side Cotton Mills and playing on their amateur baseball team. He later worked as a mechanic at the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company and as a riveter in the shipyards in Alexandria, Virginia. Though he continued playing amateur and semipro baseball, it wasn’t his passion. Limited by his education and restless from his prosaic surroundings, Crowder enlisted in the Army in 1919, hoping to travel the world.2

Assigned to the 27th Infantry, Crowder was stationed in the Russian seaport of Vladivostok and Lake Baikal in Siberia. When his division was transferred to the Philippines in 1920, he reluctantly volunteered for the baseball team in order to avoid the menial, mundane tasks of an enlisted soldier. The team recognized that the hesitant ballplayer had a strong arm. They asked him to pitch, and his new career was born. By 1922, when Crowder was assigned to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, he had already established his reputation as a hard-throwing right-hander. He supposedly won 19 consecutive games in a military league, and moonlighted with Bay Area semipro teams, making more money than he did in the service. When Crowder was discharged in June 1922, scouts from the Pacific Coast League were hot on his trail. Spike Hennessee, a freelance scout, signed him with the San Francisco Seals. But the inexperienced, 23-year-old Crowder had no chance to break into the rotation of the eventual league champions, making just one one-inning appearance.3

Released by the Seals in the offseason, Crowder signed with Bill Leard, manager of his hometown Winston-Salem Twins, of the Class C Piedmont League.4  He won 10 of 17 decisions and logged 146 innings in his first full professional season. He was purchased by the Rochester Tribe of the International League before the 1924 campaign. Still a green pitching prospect, Crowder struggled (8.36 ERA in 14 innings), and was farmed out to the Waterbury (Connecticut) Brasscos of the Class A Eastern League, where he went 11-13 in 208 innings. Described as a pitcher with “considerable promise,” Crowder was purchased by Birmingham of the Class A Southern Association.5 With the Barons in 1925, he proved to be a durable, rubber-armed pitcher, and led the league with 59 appearances, logged 226 innings, and won 13 times. Because he reported to service whenever called, teammates began calling him “General” after General Enoch Crowder, the provost marshal of the US Army who instituted the draft lottery during World War I.6

The “General” got his chance to realize his dream when the Pittsburgh Pirates purchased his contract in the offseason. At to the Pirates’ spring training site in Paso Robles, California, in 1926, it appeared as though he would make the team. However, Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss unexpectedly returned Crowder to Birmingham when the two teams could not agree on the terms of his option price. The Sporting News described Crowder’s situation as a “pity,” and added, “It remains to be seen whether Dreyfuss cut off his own nose, or some other person’s.”7

It did not take long for the 27-year-old to get another shot in the big leagues. After returning to Birmingham, Crowder showcased his talents as the “pitching ace of the Southern League,” winning 17 of 21 decisions and logging 178 innings in less than three months.8 The Washington Senators purchased his contract for an estimated $10,000 and sent two players (Curley Ogden and Emilio Palmero) to the Barons to complete the deal.9

Crowder reported to the reigning American League pennant winners in mid-July with the team fighting to remain above .500. At 5-feet-10 and about 170 pounds, Crowder did not possess an intimidating presence on the mound (though his tattoo of a naked woman draped over his shoulders and arms was often described as risqué). On July 24 the General made his big-league debut, tossing a complete-game eight-hitter against the Tigers in Griffith Stadium. A victim of two infielder errors leading to two unearned runs, Crowder picked up the 3-2 loss. Five days later, he earned his first big-league win by pitching ten innings (and also walking a career-high 10 batters) against the White Sox at Comiskey Park.  Crowder hurled a career-high 11-inning complete game to defeat the eventual pennant-winning New York Yankees, 5-4, on August 11. He finished the season with 12 starts in 19 appearances, compiling a 7-4 record in 100 innings.

Crowder’s sophomore season was as disappointing as his rookie year was promising. Senators manager Bucky Harris praised the General as “one of the best minor-league prospects to join [the team] in years,” and The Sporting News raved about the pitcher’s speed and physical condition.10 However, Crowder’s spring training was interrupted by an “ulcerated stomach” and a sore right arm.11 Reports surfaced that he had suffered from arm troubles in the minor leagues, and that he used a house recipe from an “old Negro washwoman” (in the insensitive parlance of the era) of applying a “gasoline-camphor gum mixture” to his arm to ease the pain.12 After tossing a complete game to win his first start of the year, Crowder was rocked in his next three starts (all losses), after which he was relegated to the bullpen. His losing streak reached five games before he won three of four starts in June, including a pair of impressive shutouts (a three-hitter against the White Sox and a two-hitter against the Red Sox). Crowder was “not always reliable,” reported The Sporting News.13 His feast or famine approach to pitching frustrated Senators owner Clark Griffith, who, in a surprising waiver deal on July 7, traded him to the St. Louis Browns for workhorse Tom Zachary. Crowder struggled after the trade, posting a 5.01 ERA in 21 appearances for the seventh-place Browns. He won only one of his eight starts, but it was a dominating two-hit shutout of the Philadelphia Athletics.

In his first full season with the Browns, Crowder unexpectedly transformed from a reliever assigned to mop-up duty to the hottest and one of the best starters in the American League. Inconsistent and wild in three starts in April, he was relegated to the bullpen in May. In his first start in four weeks, Crowder tossed a five-hitter over 6⅓ innings and worked his way back into the rotation. Commencing with a complete-game win over the White Sox on May 30, Crowder reeled off ten consecutive wins (nine by complete game). Often pitching on short rest, the General improved his record to 11-1 with a ten-inning complete game against his former team at Griffith Stadium on July 16. Described as the “mound star of the league,” he derived his success from improved control.14  The General suffered from poor control his first two seasons (144 walks in 241 innings) and it was one of the reasons he was traded to the Browns. Crowder worked closely with manager Dan Howley and his trusted coach Bill Killefer (both former catchers and respected developers of pitchers) to hone his control.15 En route to walking just 91 batters in 244 innings, Crowder concluded the 1928 season by winning 10 of 11 decisions, including his last eight in a row, and finished his “sensational” campaign with 21 wins against just five losses for a league-leading .808 winning percentage.16  The Sporting News described Crowder and right-handed teammate Sam Gray, himself a 20-game winner acquired from the Philadelphia Athletics in the offseason, as the “greatest pair of ‘discard’ pitchers” in baseball as they led the Browns to a surprising third-place finish.17

Crowder and Gray were the Browns’ workhorses for a second consecutive season in 1929. Crowder pitched better than his 17-15 record suggested. In ten of his losses, the Browns scored three runs or fewer (a total of 22 runs). The General pitched his best during the last two months of the season, completing 12 of his 14 starts (many on short rest) and logging 121 innings. In a six-week period, he tossed three complete-game victories over the eventual World Series champion Athletics (including a two- and a four-hitter) and shut out the second-place New York Yankees twice. The first shutout was a masterful two-hitter that took just 1:38 to play. Crowder amassed 266⅔ innings for the fourth-place Browns, completed 19 games for the second consecutive season, and led the junior circuit with four shutouts.

Two consecutive winning seasons gave fans of the perpetually cash-strapped Browns hope for 1930. However, in the season often remembered as the “Year of the Hitter,” when the AL hit a collective .288 and set numerous offensive records, the Browns hitters and pitchers struggled. Crowder lost six of his first seven starts (the only win was a six-hit shutout) and was shunted to the bullpen by new manager Killefer. But with no viable replacements (the team boasted a league-worst 5.07 ERA), Crowder regained his spot in the rotation and won two of three starts. Then, on June 13, in a startling move, Browns owner Phil Ball sent Crowder, along with outfielder and future Hall of Famer Heinie Manush, to the Washington Senators for another future Hall of Famer, outfielder Goose Goslin. The trade was universally considered a coup for Clark Griffith, who provided manager Walter Johnson with yet another arm for the most consistent and best staff in the AL. Given a new lease on life with a contender, Crowder responded by becoming the workhorse of the Senators staff. After the trade, he hurled nine consecutive complete games, winning six of them, while the Senators battled the Athletics for the lead. Philadelphia pulled away in late July and early August to win its second consecutive pennant, but Crowder proved to be a rubber-armed starter. Concluding the season with nine consecutive complete games for the second-place Nationals, Crowder was one of five Washington pitchers with at least 15 victories. The 31-year-old finished with an 18-16 record (15-9 with the Senators), completed a career-high 25 of 35 starts, and logged 279⅔ innings.

A notorious late starter, Crowder annually struggled to find his form in April and May. As if on cue, the General got off to a particularly brutal start with the Senators in 1931, posting a 0-4 record and 9.64 ERA five weeks into the season, prompting The Sporting News to call him “the biggest disappointment” in baseball.18 Crowder claimed that his woes stemmed from his fastball’s lacking its normal speed, but inconsistencies were the hallmark of his frustrating season. On two different occasions, manager Walter Johnson removed Crowder from the starting rotation for extended periods. However, the Big Train also recognized that any attempt to overtake the Athletics and Yankees required the General to be at his best. Crowder tossed a complete-game seven-hitter in a spot start against Philadelphia on August 30 to turn his season around. He won seven consecutive starts, including three complete-game victories against the Athletics. “[Crowder] cannot win until the weather gets warm,” noted The Sporting News, while other sportswriters sarcastically suggested that Crowder should start the season in June or get paid only in the summer.19 Despite his troubles, Crowder notched a team-high 18 wins and logged 234⅓ innings.

Contemporary sportswriters like Dan Daniel noted that Crowder had a pitching arsenal that included a fastball, a “corking change of pace,” a “baffling” curve, and a screwball, all of which made it difficult for hitters to predict what he would throw.20 From his lazy, slow, three-quarters-to-overhand delivery, his fastball had surprising movement (often called a “sneak”).21 He also possessed a deceptive throw to first base which discouraged base runners from taking large leads.

Named Opening Day starter in 1932, Crowder pitched a ten-inning, 1-0 shutout of the Red Sox. It set the tone for his career year, arguably the best season for a Senators pitcher not named Walter Johnson. On May 13 he tossed his seventh and final career two-hitter, shutting out the Tigers, 7-0. The General also went 2-for-3 at the plate with a triple, scored once, and knocked in a run. A capable hitter, Crowder batted .221 in 1932 and finished with a career .194 average (164-for-847). He followed his best start in the big leagues with one of his worst slumps, dropping 11 of his next 16 decisions. But after surrendering nine hits and six runs in an ugly five-inning loss to the lowly Browns on July 28, Crowder did not lose again all season. Typically starting on three days’ rest, he reeled off 15 consecutive victories, completed 10 of 15 starts, and proved to be the most durable pitcher in the major leagues, leading both leagues in wins (26), innings (327), and starts (39). Only teammate Firpo Marberry appeared in more games (54), though he relieved in 39 of them.

Despite winning more than 90 games for three consecutive seasons, Clark Griffith demanded more. Consequently, he made the controversial decision to replace manager Walter Johnson, the greatest player in the franchise’s history, with an unproven boy wonder, shortstop Joe Cronin. Just 26 years old, Cronin was a fiery, natural leader, who instilled confidence in his players. Once again the club’s Opening Day starter, Crowder held the Philadelphia Athletics to six hits over seven innings to earn the 4-1 win. It was his 16th consecutive victory to tie Smoky Joe Wood and Walter Johnson (both in 1912) and Lefty Grove (1931) for the longest winning streak in AL history, though the others accomplished the feat during one season. With the trade of rubber-armed Marberry for dependable lefty starter Earl Whitehill, Cronin relied on Crowder as a starter and regular reliever. The General led the majors with 52 appearances (35 starts).

Since the Senators’ two-year reign as the American League champions (1924-25), the Yankees and Athletics had captured every AL crown, and it appeared to be the same by June 1933. But the Senators overcame a six-game deficit to tie the Yankees behind Crowder’s tenth win in a slugfest against the White Sox on June 22. Washington went 62-30 after that to cruise to the pennant. Crowder and Whitehill formed the best pitching duo in the league. The General pitched consistently all season, won a league-high 24 games, and logged 299⅓ innings, second most in the league; Whitehill won a career-high 22 games. Respected by his fellow players and managers, Crowder was one of five pitchers (Crowder, Wes Ferrell, Lefty Gomez, Lefty Grove, and Oral Hildebrand) chosen by Connie Mack to represent the American League in the inaugural All-Star Game, held at Comiskey Park. The General pitched three innings, surrendering three hits and two runs in the junior circuit’s 4-2 victory.

The winningest pitcher in baseball from the previous two seasons struggled in the World Series against the New York Giants, “appear[ing] to be pitched out.”22 Crowder breezed through the first five innings of Game Two, but then yielded seven hits leading to six runs in the sixth inning and was tagged with the loss. Facing elimination in Game Five, Crowder failed to make it out of the sixth inning once again and was rocked for seven hits and three runs in 5⅓ innings. The Giants won the game and the World Series on Mel Ott’s tenth-inning home run.

Notwithstanding Crowder’s enormous success, he was the object of trade rumors throughout the offseason as owner Clark Griffith sought a solution to his mounting financial woes. Crowder appeared to be in good physical shape, but suffered through a dismal spring training. “His control has been off and he has not flashed the fastball he must have to make him a successful hurler,” said Griffith.23 Crowder began the season in the bullpen, was pummeled in his first start of the season, and never regained his form. Furthermore, The Sporting News reported that Crowder, along with other veterans, clashed with manager Cronin, ostensibly because of the benching of third baseman Ossie Bluege, but pointing at a deeper dissatisfaction with his managerial style. Described as the “mystery man” because of his sudden and unexpected pitching problems, the 35-year-old Crowder seemed washed up with a 4-10 record and an ERA approaching 7.00.24 Floundering in fifth place, well under .500, the Senators placed the General on waivers and ultimately sent him to Detroit on August 4. For the first-place Tigers, en route to their first pennant since 1909, Crowder transformed himself into a cagey veteran for player-manager Mickey Cochrane. Given extra time between outings, Crowder made nine starts and compiled a 5-1 record with a better-than-average 4.19 ERA.

Despite Detroit’s two 20-game winners (Schoolboy Rowe and Tommy Bridges), Crowder started Game One of the World Series against 30-game winner Dizzy Dean and the St. Louis Cardinals. In an especially sloppy game (the Tigers committed five errors) at Navin Field, Crowder surrendered six hits and four runs (only one earned) before he was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the fifth inning with the Tigers down 4-1, in an eventual 8-3 loss. His next appearance, a 1-2-3 ninth inning in the Cardinals’ crushing 11-0 defeat of the Tigers in Game Seven, offered no solace for his second consecutive World Series loss.

At the age of 36 and preparing for what eventually turned out to be his tenth and final full season in the big leagues, Crowder in 1935 relied on his pitching instincts, sliders, sinkers, and offspeed pitches, as well as his “cunning and methodical precision” for his success.25  With Bridges, Rowe, and submariner Elden Auker, the General formed the “Big Four Staff,” which accounted for 74 of the Tigers’ 93 wins and logged almost 1,000 innings. The reigning pennant winners got off to a slow start, but Crowder supplied “inspirational” pitching by overcoming a stomach virus that sidelined him for the first half of May to toss three complete-game victories (two of them against the Yankees) in two weeks.26 He seemingly turned back the clock in June, winning five of eight starts to help keep the team in contention. On July 24 at Yankee Stadium, Crowder cemented his reputation as a “Yankee-Stopper” by blanking New York on four hits for the last of his 16 career shutouts. “My success against them,” said Crowder, “came from … studying the pitchers around the league. I tried to see what type of pitch each Yankee hit well, especially what they didn’t pull, and used it against them.”27 More importantly, the victory gave the Tigers sole possession of first place for the first time that year, and they never looked back. Crowder won all five of his decisions in August, including a masterful ten-inning win over the Yankees, to push his record to 14-7, but experienced a reoccurrence of his lifelong battle with stomach ulcers. Physically drained, Crowder lost all three decisions in September while the Tigers limped to their second consecutive pennant with a 12-14 record in the final month of the season.

In search of an elusive first win in the World Series, the General took the mound in Game Four against the Chicago Cubs on October 5. On a chilly, windy afternoon at Wrigley Field, Crowder tossed the most important game of his life, limiting the North Siders to just five hits and one run (on Gabby Hartnett’s home run) en route to a complete-game victory to give Detroit a commanding three-games-to-one lead in the series. Two days later, Goose Goslin knocked in Mickey Cochrane in the bottom of the ninth inning for a dramatic, series-clinching 4-3 victory.

Crowder had little time to celebrate the crowning achievement of his baseball career, as his wife was gravely ill at their home in North Carolina. Crowder had married Ruth Livernash, originally of Rochester, New York, in 1924. The childless couple made their home near Crowder’s birthplace in Winston-Salem, where they owned a large farm. Since the early 1930s, Ruth had been in poor health (one paper referred to her as an invalid), needing constant medical attention.

Crowder’s big-league career came to a sudden and frustrating close in 1936. He developed ligament problems in his right shoulder in spring training and was a shell of his former self (8.39 ERA in 44 innings) in limited duty through June 22. Suffering from shoulder and stomach pain, Crowder was placed on the voluntarily retired list and returned to North Carolina and his ill wife in late June. She died several weeks later. Crowder was widely expected to return to the Tigers in 1937, but in the offseason he announced his intention to retire and was granted his unconditional release before spring training, signaling the end of his big-league career. He finished with a 167-115 record and 2,344⅓ innings.

Immediately after his playing career, Crowder led efforts to bring professional baseball back to Winston-Salem, which had been without a team since 1933. The General put together an independent team that was granted membership in the Class B Piedmont League as an unaffiliated team in 1937. The Winston-Salem Twins lost their first 28 games, but Crowder, who was the owner, coach, and even broadcaster, was not deterred. He secured an affiliation with the Dodgers the following season, and sold his majority stake in the team in 1939. He continued to play an active and leading role in team operations throughout the 1940s.

A lifelong resident of the Winston-Salem area, Crowder and his second wife, Joan Brockwell, a nurse from Chapel Hill, were involved in a number of business pursuits, including real estate, grocery stores, and a bowling alley. They had two children, Kathryn and Alvin Jr.  In 1967 Crowder was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. Self-described as “semi-retired” the last two decades of his life, Crowder died of heart disease in his hometown on April 3, 1972, at the age of 73. He was laid to rest at the Forsyth Memorial Park Cemetery.

Sources

Newspapers

New York Times

The Sporting News

Online sources

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.com

Other

General Crowder player file, Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

Notes

1] Dan Daniel, “Daniel’s Dope,” New York World Telegram, August 24, 1934. Player’s Hall of Fame file

2 A number of sources were used to sketch Crowder’s life: Ancestry.com; Al Nickerson, “Al’s Sport Sermonette,” Boston First Sunday Advertiser, April 7, 1929; “He Learned His Trade in the Philippines,” Baseball Magazine, January 1929, 359; The Sporting News, October 25, 1934, 8.

3 The Sporting News, October 25, 1934, 8.

4 The Sporting News, February 8, 1923, 6

5 The Sporting News, December 11, 1924, 6.

6 “He Learned His Trade in the Philippines,” Baseball Magazine, January 1929, 359.

7 The Sporting News, April 22, 1926, 3.

8 The Sporting News, July 22, 1926, 2.

9 The Sporting News, November 11, 1926; New York Times, July 19, 1926, 10.

10 The Sporting News, March 3, 1927, 1.

11 “Crowder Forced to Disabled Squad of Senators by Illness,” Evening Independent, St. Petersburg, Florida, March 31, 1927, 5A.

12 The Sporting News, April 7, 1927.

13 The Sporting News, June 30, 1927, 3.

14 The Sporting News, July 19, 1928, 1.

15 The Sporting News, August 2, 1928, 1.

16 The Sporting News, November 1, 1928, 5.

17 The Sporting News, August 2, 1928, 1.

18 The Sporting News, May 14, 1931, 3.

19 The Sporting News, October 29, 1931, 1.

20 Dan Daniel, “Daniel’s Dope,” New York World Telegram, [Undated], 1934. Player’s Hall of Fame file.

21 Shirley Povich, Washington Senators, quoted from Bill James and Rob Neyer, Neyer/James Guide to Pitching (New York: Foreside, 2004), 175.

22 The Sporting News, October 12, 1933, 1.

23 The Sporting News, April 12, 1934, 1.

24 The Sporting News, June 28, 1934, 1.

25 The Sporting News, October 10, 1935, 1.

26 The Sporting News, May 23, 1935, 1.

27 Al Laney, “He punched ‘3-Year Hole” in N.Y. Domination. Yanks ‘Terrified’ Crowder but General Had Their Number,” New York Herald Tribune, January, 29, 1961, 3.

Charles William Fischer was born in the town of Ridgeway on November 5, 1905, the only child of Charles H. Fischer and his wife, Minnie, who had emigrated from Germany. Young Charles was nicknamed Carl to distinguish him from his father. When Carl was 3 years old, his family relocated to the village of Medina, where his father worked as a laborer.

Fischer attended Medina public schools and developed into such a talented baseball player that he was drafted as an eighth-grader to pitch for the high-school team. Fischer starred on the mound throughout high school, and as a junior was hurling for the local town ball team. His success prompted him to forgo a high-school diploma and start earning money by pitching in the area’s semipro leagues. There he caught the eye of another Medina resident, Ed “Bing” Cleary, an umpire in the International League who was visiting home. Cleary told Fischer to set his sights higher, and passed his name along to Jack Egan, who managed Scranton in the Class B New York-Pennsylvania League. Encouraged, Fischer wrote to George Stallings, manager of the Rochester club of the International League. Stallings placed Fischer with the Cambridge (Maryland) Canners of the Class D Eastern Shore League for the 1925 season. Fischer pitched well for Cambridge and Cleary continued to urge Egan to snag the youngster for his Scranton squad. Egan eventually took the advice, signing Fischer for the 1926 campaign.

Fischer quickly established himself as one of the best left-handers in the NYP League, fashioning a 7-1 record with a sparkling 2.15 ERA. After another solid season in the lower minors, the 22-year-old moved up to within one rung from the big leagues, hurling for Walter Johnson’s Newark Bears of the International League. In stark contrast to the mild-mannered Johnson, who was one of the game’s great control pitchers, Fischer’s fiery disposition and frequent wildness on the mound often led to trouble. Trying to harness them was one of Johnson’s more challenging jobs as manager. He met with moderate success, as Fischer finished the season with an 11-8 record, while walking nearly five batters a game.

The following season, Johnson returned to Washington to manage the Senators, leaving Fischer in Newark to work under another future Hall of Famer, manager Tris Speaker. Speaker used Fischer exclusively as a starter and gave him a longer leash than Johnson had. The hard-throwing southpaw responded by twirling 248 innings, winning 18 games and fanning a league-leading 198 batters. Fischer continued his big year by marrying Grace Reynolds of Middleport, New York, in the fall of 1929.

Despite the breakout campaign, Fischer again found himself back with the Bears for the 1930 season. Although he was not as effective as in the previous year, he showed enough that in mid-July the Senators outbid a number of other teams for his services. Team owner Clark Griffith gave Newark $20,000 and two players for the rights to the “Medina Mauler.” The deal reunited Fischer with Walter Johnson, who had recommended him to Griffith and was in his second season at the Nats’ helm. As he had in Newark, Johnson used Fischer in a swingman role, working him out of the bullpen and as a spot starter.  Since the Senators were on the fringes of the pennant race, the newcomer saw limited action, taking the mound only eight times in his ten weeks with the Senators, who finished the American League campaign in second place.

Entering 1931, Washington was widely considered to have the strongest stable of pitchers in the league. Despite the stiff competition, Fischer headed north from spring training in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the Senators’ roster. Early in the season he was one of the team’s most effective pitchers and by mid-June sported a 7-1 record and the best winning percentage in the American League. Included in this span of games was an outing that Fischer considered the highlight of his career. In the first game of a May 30 doubleheader against the New York Yankees at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, Senators starter Sad Sam Jones began the ninth inning by giving up a home run to Tony Lazzeri and a single to Earl Combs. With nobody out and Washington clinging to a 3-2 lead, Johnson summoned Fischer from the bullpen to face the heart of the Bronx Bombers’ lineup. Fischer proceeded to strike out Sammy Byrd and Babe Ruth, and then coaxed Lou Gehrig to pop out to end the contest. Fischer claimed he got a $1,000 bonus for his game-saving act.

Fischer couldn’t maintain his performance over the rest of the campaign, but still finished with 13 wins against 9 losses while logging over 190 innings. After the season, The Sporting News named him as one of three pitchers on its 1931 All-Star Major Recruit Team, a predecessor to today’s All-Rookie Team.

Expectations were high for Fischer entering the 1932 season. However, he did not get off to a good start and there were whispers that he had lost his fastball. The Senators, widely expected to battle for the pennant, were thin on patience and in early June traded him to the St. Louis Browns for pitcher Dick Coffman. Things went even worse for Fischer in St. Louis. He finally revealed months afterward that he had lost 25 pounds over the course of the season due to “influenza and infected teeth.”1 That December the Browns pulled the neat trick of trading him back to Washington for … Dick Coffman! Fischer may not even have known he was property of the Senators again, as 24 hours later Griffith sent him to Detroit in a multiplayer deal.

After finishing one game above .500 in 1932, the Tigers headed into 1933 believing their offense would improve with the addition of Hank Greenberg, and that they were only a couple of quality starters away from being contenders. After trading longtime Bengal Earl Whitehill to Washington for Fischer and pitcher Firpo Marberry, manager Bucky Harris thought he had those starters. Harris had had his eye on Fischer for three seasons and said that the talented lefty was “due to deliver.”2

Fischer arrived at spring training back at his normal weight and in top shape after an offseason of hunting in the woods around his hometown. He followed up with the best year of his major-league career, throwing over 180 innings and ranking ninth in the league in ERA. But with Whitehill having a career year in the nation’s capital, the Senators won the pennant while Detroit finished in the second division, prompting Harris to resign. The Detroit newspapers and Tigers management focused on Fischer’s 11-15 record and considered him a disappointment.

During the offseason Tigers owner Frank Navin purchased star catcher Mickey Cochrane from the Philadelphia Athletics for $100,000 and assigned him double duty, installing him as player-manager. Cochrane had no allegiance to Fischer and, as his batterymate, may not have appreciated the left-hander’s flashes of temper on the mound. Whatever the reason, Fischer pitched infrequently during Detroit’s pennant-winning 1934 season, appearing in only 20 games. Though placed on the World Series roster, Fischer didn’t see action in the fall classic, which the Tigers lost in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang.

Although there were rumors that he would be released, Fischer was in Tigers flannels for Opening Day 1935. Three weeks later the rumors came to pass, and he was sold to the Chicago White Sox for $4,000. Afterward, sportswriter Dan Daniel summed up the general feeling around the league about Fischer: “If you look at this Fischer, big and strong, then watch him warm up —fast ball, curve ball (sic) and everything —you say, ‘Here is a hurler which is another Grove.’  But when you examine the guy’s record, you say, ‘It must be his disposition.’” 3

White Sox player-manager Jimmy Dykes gave Fischer a new beginning, immediately inserting him into the starting rotation. After six starts, in which he posted a 1-3 record with a 7.28 ERA, Fischer was sent to the bullpen. Overall, the portsider’s stint in the South Side was forgettable —with one glorious exception. Starting against the Senators on July 20 at Griffith Stadium, Fischer took a no-hitter into the ninth inning before Ossie Bluege singled to center field with one out. Fischer retired the next two batters, finishing off the 1-0 whitewashing.

When the season ended, the White Sox demoted the struggling 30-year-old to their Kansas City affiliate in the American Association. Fischer fared poorly with Kansas City and then St. Paul, causing Chicago to sell him to Buffalo of the International League in June 1936. Perhaps inspired by the home cooking, Fischer did an about-face. In four months with the Bisons, he fashioned a 13-2 record and led the team to the Junior World Series with a 15-strikeout performance in the playoffs. Suddenly, the Mauler was a hot commodity again, and the Cleveland Indians’ sizable bid of $10,000 secured his services for the 1937 campaign.

With the Tribe, Fischer and manager Steve O’Neill never saw eye-to-eye. Fischer didn’t think O’Neill knew how to handle a pitching staff, and the skipper’s plan to have his starters start only once a week merely confirmed his thinking. Relegated to the back of the bullpen, Fischer was called on just twice in the opening three weeks of the season.  While facing his second hitter in his second appearance, he allowed the Yankees’ Tony Lazzeri to steal third base. O’Neill charged from the dugout, yanked him from the game and told him he was through in Cleveland. The next day Fischer was handed his walking papers.

The Senators, who were without a left-handed starter, claimed Fischer off waivers almost before he could clean out his locker. Bucky Harris was now managing Washington and Fischer had turned in his best big-league season under Harris in Detroit. Over the next two months, Fischer seemed to solidify his roster spot with some good outings. However, when Washington traveled to Cleveland in mid-July, an incident involving O’Neill turned things sour. After one of the games, the loquacious Fischer lobbed a wisecrack in O’Neill’s direction. Not amused, O’Neill offered to knock his head off and had to be pulled away by Washington players. It proved to be Fischer’s final act in the majors when a few days later he was sold to Baltimore of the International League.

For the next 3½ years, pitching for Baltimore and then Toronto, Fischer was one of the better left-handers in the league. This included a 2.53 ERA (second-best in the league) in 206 innings toiling for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1940. However, in his return trip north of the border in 1941, his ERA more than doubled and he went 0-17 (!) for a club that finished 47-107 and 53 games out of first place. At the age of 36, with diminished velocity and coming off one of the most miserable seasons imaginable, it looked for all the world as though the curtain had dropped on Carl Fischer’s professional baseball career. But on December 7, 1941, the world changed.

War requires able-bodied young men, and Organized Baseball was not spared the call when the US entered World War II. Scrambling for pitching, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League acquired Fischer in a footnote trade with Toronto in January 1942. As they had always done, Carl and Grace set off in their automobile and drove to the next stop in their baseball odyssey, which this time was almost 3,000 miles from their Medina home.

Seattle manager Bill Skiff was considered a keen judge of pitching talent, and his belief that Fischer still had something left in the tank was quickly shown to be correct. The southpaw sparkled in spring training and became a mainstay in the Rainiers’ starting rotation. The team won its third consecutive Governor’s Cup in 1942, with Fischer the pitching star of the playoff run.

In December 1942 Fischer, married but with no children, was classified 1-A by his draft board and was ordered to report for service. His stay in the Army was brief, though, as he was honorably discharged in May 1943 because his legs couldn’t handle the rigors of marching. Back in Seattle for a full season in 1944, Fischer won 16 games and his 1.85 ERA was third-best in the PCL. Fischer rated Skiff, who caught in the minors over a span of 20 years, as the finest handler of pitchers he ever worked for, and won 56 games in the equivalent of four seasons under his watch. The wave of players returning after the war coincided with the disappearance of Fischer’s mound mastery in 1946. He played for two other minor-league clubs and even tried his hand at managing in 1947 before retiring from the game at age 41.

Returning to his western New York home, in 1949 Fischer opened Fischer’s News Room, a newspaper and tobacco shop, in the county seat, Albion. As of 2014 the business still operated under the same name. He was active in the local Elks Lodge and the American Legion, and was honorary president of the Little League Association.

Fischer never lost his thrill for the game, and made a yearly trip to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. He frequently visited Bill Skiff, who had become the Yankees’ head of Eastern scouting. The friends he made over the course of 20 years in professional baseball helped lure many of the game’s top stars to the annual Albion Knights of Columbus Sports Night, including Bob Feller, Denny McLain, and Hank Aaron.

Fischer died of a heart attack on December 10, 1963, at his home at the age of 58.  He was buried at the Royalton Mount Ridge Cemetery near Gasport, New York. His wife, Grace, who was always by his side in his journeys, joined him 32 years later.

Sources

In researching this biography, the author relied heavily on The Sporting News historical archive accessed at paperofrecord.com, and Fischer’s clipping file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown.

Other important sources included:

Seattle Times Historical Archives, 1941-1946, via the Seattle Public Library online.

Undated and unsourced clippings from the Carl Fischer binder at the Lee-Whedon Memorial Library, Medina, New York.

Baseball-reference.com

Retrosheet.org

Notes

1 Sam Greene, “Fischer Will Blaze Tigers’ Camp Trail,” The Sporting News, February 9, 1933.

2 Ibid.

3 Dan Daniel, “Rambling Round the Circuit,” The Sporting News, May 23, 1935.

Ervin “Pete” Fox was born on March 8, 1909, the fourth of six sons of Evansville Fire Captain Henry Fox. He was labeled early on as “Ab Fox’s brother”; locals predicted that the older Ab was the one who would rise to the major leagues.3 However, Ab never made it past the low minors. Pete was determined to succeed in baseball, concentrating solely on the one sport. After elementary school, he graduated from Bosse High School and played on multiple local independent teams. 

He married his wife, Elizabeth, at the age of 18, and worked in a furniture factory while pitching for industrial-league teams on Saturdays and playing outfield on Sundays.4 In 1928, as both a pitcher and batter, Fox led Huntingburg to the championship of the semipro Indiana-Kentucky League. The next year, playing for Boonville in the Southern Indiana League, he bested local legend “Big Six” Leimgruber in an 11-inning duel in which he struck out 12 and helped win the 1-0 game by scoring after hitting a triple. In late 1929, as a 20-year-old, Pete smashed two successive homers, each estimated at 350 feet, during an Industrial League championship game at Bosse Field in Evansville. Afterward, Gilbert Evans of the Evansville Hubs of the Class B Three-I League, a Detroit farm team, signed Fox to a $250-a-month contract, a considerable increase from his $18-a-week factory job. 

The following year, Fox made his professional debut in his hometown, but after a slow start with Evansville, he was sent down to the Wheeling Stogies in the Class C Middle Atlantic League. Evansville manager Bob Coleman advised Fox, “I am afraid that you might be too nervous trying to make it make good as pro before your own town folks…If you make good I will spring you on your friends next year: But just forget about pitching, you’re an outfielder.”5  Fox proceeded to have an excellent season in Wheeling, batting .339 with 27 stolen bases. Returning to Evansville in 1931 and joining forces with Hank Greenberg for the first time, he hit .302 while stealing 27 bases.

Fox advanced in 1932 to the Beaumont Exporters of the Class A Texas League, playing for manager Del Baker. There he teamed with Greenberg and future roommate Schoolboy Rowe to lead the Exporters to a first-place finish. It was at Beaumont that Fox first acquired the nickname Pete. Impressing the locals with his speed on the basepaths, he was dubbed Peter Rabbit, which was later shortened to Pete. He led the Texas League in batting (.357) and had 19 home runs. He scored 103 runs and had 30 steals before going down for the season in early August with a bone chip in an ankle. Scoring from second on a single, he caught a spike in home plate. Fox lamented, “When they picked me up I found out that the throw from the outfield had been cut and I could have scored standing up. Think of that!”6 Pete was later named league MVP in a close race with Ducky Medwick.

Fox made the long jump from Single-A to the majors in 1933. The Detroit outfield needed strengthening that year. In spring training, Fox made an impressive over-the-shoulder catch in deep center that H.G. Salsinger of the Detroit News labeled  “worthy of Tris Speaker at the height of his career.”7 Manager Bucky Harris was equally excited, exclaiming, “That Fox looks like an answer to my prayer.”8    

Fox opened the season in center field. He singled in five at-bats against Clint Brown in a 13-inning home-opener loss to Cleveland at Navin Field on April 12. Five days later, on the 17th, Fox, in dramatic fashion, hit his first major-league home run, off Vic Frazier in the tenth inning for a walk-off 8-5 victory over Chicago.  

Early in the season Fox’s speed and fielding continued to amaze sportswriters, one of whom commented that “the center field berth has not been patrolled so efficiently since the heyday of Ty Cobb.”9 At 5-feet-10 and 165 pounds, Fox was known more as a “chop hitter” who sprayed line drives. However, he initially struggled against big-league pitching and near midseason his average was down to .212. His hitting then improved dramatically. Fox later recalled that he “discovered there was a big difference between pitching in the minors and the pitching in the majors…I decided to do a little experimenting.”10 Against harder-throwing pitchers he used a lighter, shorter bat, and against others a heavier, longer one. These adjustments began to pay off; Fox hit .427 on a 19-game road trip. He finished the season with a respectable .288 average with a .320 on-base percentage and led the team with 13 triples. Fox was named to The Sporting News All-Star Freshman Team of 1933, along with teammate Greenberg.

In the offseason, the fifth-place Tigers fired Bucky Harris, acquired catcher Mickey Cochrane from Philadelphia, and made him the player-manager. That December Cochrane expressed his satisfaction with Fox playing center field. Cochrane proceeded to win the 1934 American League’s Most Valuable Player award, while leading the team to its first AL pennant since 1909. As the Tigers finished with 101wins and 53 losses, Fox was a key contributor. His batting average declined slightly, to .285; but he scored 101 runs, had 25 steals, and increased his on-base average to .351. He tied for the league lead with four double plays from the outfield.

Detroit came up short in the World Series, losing to St. Louis in seven games, with an 11-0 home-field drubbing in the final game. In that game the Cardinals scored seven runs in the third inning, in which Fox accidentally kicked a ball while falling down. It rolled into a drain in front of the St. Louis dugout as three runs scored.11 Fox finished with a .286 average (8-for-28), the the record-setting six doubles.

The 1935 season was one of redemption for Fox and the Tigers. Fox had been offended by a teammate’s offseason comments. Over the winter he read in an Evansville newspaper that Goose Goslin, the Tigers’ left fielder, had made disparaging remarks about Fox’s abilities as a hitter, runner, and fielder. Fox vowed to outperform Goslin in all categories in the coming year. He did not speak to Goslin the entire season.12  

Fox’s season did not start well. In the spring he suffered from a sore arm and was displaced in center field by Jo-Jo White. In the first month he played sparingly in right field and was hitting a paltry .111 while watching Goslin get most of the playing time in that spot. 

Detroit was below .500, five games out of first, and was looking for more production from the outfield. A trade was proposed with Washington, swapping Fox for outfielder Fred Schulte.  Both teams agreed, but at the last minute Senators owner Clark Griffith asked that the Tigers add pitcher Elden Auker to the deal. Detroit refused. Almost immediately, Fox went on a hitting rampage, putting together hitting streaks of 29 and 17 games as the Tigers began their climb to the top of the standings. From June 13 until July 11, when his 29-game hitting streak was snapped, Detroit won 22 of 29 games. Only a sterling play on Fox’s eighth-inning hot smash by Oswald Bluege, a late-inning insertion at shortstop, prevented the streak from continuing. On June 30, 500 fans from Evansville journeyed to St. Louis to watch their hometown boy in action. Fox proceeded to have the best day of his career, with eight hits in the doubleheader, including a grand slam, nine RBIs, and another home run. Fox later told sportswriter Sam Greene, “I talked with some of them before the game and I knew their eyes would be principally on me…I was anxious to show…that I belonged in the big leagues.”13

Detroit again finished first with 93 wins, three games ahead of the New York Yankees. The almost-traded Fox hit .321 with a career-high 15 homers and scored 116 runs. As vowed, he bested Goslin in almost every offensive and defensive category. In the World Series the Tigers defeated the Chicago Cubs in six games with Fox leading his team in batting (.385). Goslin had some consolation by knocking in the Series-winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Six.

In January 1936 Fox spoke at the Detroit Yacht Club while being honored as the “individual who contributed most” to the Tigers’ pennant and World Series.14 He predicted another pennant championship in the coming season. Pete’s prognostication would not hold true for the next four seasons, during which his team chased the Yankees. The 1936 season was one of disarray and disappointment for the Tigers. Injuries to key players and illness to manager Cochrane plagued the team. Fox was in and out of the lineup due to a series of injuries and appeared in only 73 games. He still hit .305 while the Tigers finished second 19 1/2 games out.  

Despite having hit over .300 in the past two seasons, Fox faced an uncertain future in Detroit.  In the offseason his name surfaced in trade rumors. At the beginning of the1937 campaign, he was relegated to a reserve role. The Tigers faltered, again finishing second. Cochrane’s playing career came to an end when he was beaned and suffered a fractured skull in May. Fox, on the other hand, went on to experience perhaps his best season. He scored 116 runs while batting .331. He hit 12 home runs and had a career-high 208 hits. 

In 1938 Fox was securely entrenched as the right fielder. Del Baker, his former minor-league mentor, had replaced Cochrane as manager the previous season. Fox’s His batting average declined to .293, but he had other major achievements. He played in every inning of every game, knocked in a career-high 96 runs, and led AL outfielders with a fielding percentage of.994.  Fox was voted the right fielder on the national All-American popularity poll team. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed, “Fox, many believe, is the most underrated player in baseball. His value to the team is inestimable.”15

The next year Fox remained firmly established as the Tigers’ right fielder. He played in 141 games and batted.295, but the team slid to fifth place. Its makeup had changed dramatically since its championship days. By the end of the 1939 season, only Fox and five others remained from the 1935 team.

In 1940 playing time in the Detroit outfield became more competitive. In a move to get the bat of promising slugger Rudy York a permanent slot in the lineup, Hank Greenberg agreed to move from first base into the outfield. The Tigers had also acquired the left-handed-hitting outfielder Bruce Campbell from Cleveland. The switch at first base worked, as the hitting of both Greenberg and York propelled the Tigers to the pennant. Fox, on the other hand, had his playing time reduced, appearing in only 93 games and batting .289. It was his fewest games played since his injury-plagued 1936 season. The World Series was a disappointing one for him; he got only one hitless at-bat as a pinch-hitter. His replacement in right field, Campbell, hit .360 in a losing effort against Cincinnati.

In December Fox was sold to the Boston Red Sox. Detroit general manager Jack Zeller said, “Pete wasn’t a regular here last season and we didn’t figure he would make the grade in 1941.”16 The 1941 season belonged to Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. Fox had a front-row seat as his teammate, Williams, hit .406. He also became a footnote in DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. In game 16 of the streak, Fox lost DiMaggio’s fly ball in the sun, and Joe D was credited with his only hit of the day. Fox played in 73 games for the Red Sox, hitting a very respectable .302. In 1942 he continued in his part-time role, playing in 77 games while hitting only .262, a new career low.

As the US stepped up its war effort, more players were called to military duty. After teammates Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio left for the military, Fox again became a regular in 1943, playing in 127 games. At 34 he was above draft age, but was youthful enough to steal 22 bases. His .288 batting average was tops on the Red Sox and ninth in the league.  

The 1944 campaign was an exciting one for both Fox and the Red Sox. Boston contended for first place most of the season as the team led the AL in hitting. The loss of key players to the military as the season progressed ultimately doomed the Red Sox’ pennant hopes. Fox began the season with a ruptured blood vessel in his left arm and did not appear as a starter until early May. However, at the age of 35, he made the All-Star team for the first time. For much of the season, Fox and two Red Sox teammates, Bobby Doerr and Bob Johnson, contended for the AL batting title. Fox led the league as late as mid-September with a .328 average when he pulled a back muscle. After he returned to the lineup, his average slid to .315. The Red Sox lost 14 of their final 18 games and finished in fourth place, 12 games back.

The 1945 season was Fox’s last in the majors. He played in only 66 games and had career lows in all offensive categories, including a .245 average. The next season players returned from the war and Fox was released by the Red Sox at the end of spring training. Not finished, Fox landed with the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League. There he played in 57 games while hitting .258 in his final season as a player.

For the next three years, Fox managed: Pawtucket (New England), Waterloo (Three-I), and Hot Springs (Cotton States). He then served as a scout for the White Sox and the Tigers. When Fox experienced vision problems, he became a manufacturer’s representative with the R.B. Harper Company of Detroit.

Pete Fox died on July 5, 1966, in Detroit at the age of 57 after a three-year struggle with cancer. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife, Helen, and three children, Don, who pitched in the Red Sox farm system; James, who was an all-city football player at Evansville’s Bosse High School; and Mrs. John Markey of Evansville. Fox was a member of the Evansville Sports Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980.

Last revised: July 12, 2021 (zp)

Sources

Auker, Elden, and Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms  (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001).

Cava, Pete, The Encyclopedia of Indiana-Born Major League Baseball Players (Published by the author, 2007).

Greenberg, Hank,  Hank Greenberg, The Story of My Life (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001).

Rosengren, John,  Hank Greenberg, The Hero of Heroes (New York: New American Library, 2013).

Associated Press, “Tigers Sell Pete Fox to Red Sox,” Washington Post, December 13, 1940.

Burns, Ed, “From One Feller to Another at New York Meetings,” The Sporting News, December 17, 1936.

“Daniel’s Dope,” New York World-Telegram, April 19, 1933.

Greene, Sam, “Big Day at Bat Before Fans From Home Thrilled Fox,” Detroit News, September 15, 1935.

Malaney, Jack, “Flag Bid of Cronin’s Battling Bosox Gradually Cracking Up Under Breaks,” The Sporting News, September 21, 1944.

Robertson, Bill, “Detroit’s Favorite Tiger Was a Fox Named Pete,” Evansville Press, July 6, 1966.

Salsinger, H.G.,  “Bluege Stops Pete’s Streak,” Detroit News, July 12, 1935.

Salsinger, H.G., “Fox Answers Harris’ Prayer,” Detroit News, May 11, 1933.

Salsinger, H.G., “Salsinger Compares Tigers of Present With Game’s Heroes of Past —Today: Pete Fox,” Detroit News, September 15, 1935.

Salsinger, H.G., “The Umpire,” Detroit News, December 24, 1933.

Shaver, Bud, “Fox and the Goose,” Detroit Times, October 9, 1935.

Williams, Joe, “Tiger Club to Be Stronger Than Last Year; Two Kids May Break In,” New York World-Telegram, March 17, 1934.

“Pete Fox Dies in Detroit at 57,” Evansville Courier, July 6, 1966.

“Pete Fox Voted Most Popular Right Fielder,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 4, 1938.

baseball-reference.com

ondeckcircle.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/baseballs-surprising-stats-joe-dimaggio/

Pete Fox’s file, Baseball Hall of Fame.

 Case, George III, “Ballfield to Battlefield and Back, from FDR to JFK” (DVD), 2012.

Edwards, Henry P., American League Service Bureau news release, December 24, 1933.

Notes

1 “Ballfield to Battlefield and Back, from FDR to JFK.”

2 Bill Robertson, “Detroit’s Favorite Tiger Was a Fox Named Pete,” Evansville Press, July 6, 1966, 24.

3 Robertson, 24.

4 Henry P. Edwards, American League Service Bureau, December 24, 1933.

5 Ibid.

6 Pete Fox file, Baseball Hall of Fame.

7 H.G. Salsinger, “Fox Answers Harris’ Prayer,” Detroit News, May 11, 1933. 

8 Ibid.

9 “Harris Draws a Pair of Aces,” The Sporting News, May 11, 1933, 1.

10 Henry P. Edwards.

11 Elden Auker and Tom Keegan,  Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms, 55.

12 Bud Shaver, “Fox and the Goose,” Detroit Times, October 9, 1935.

13 Sam Greene, “Big Day at Bat Before Fans From Home Thrilled Fox,” Detroit News, September 15, 1935.

14 Charles P. Ward, “Pete Fox Bats 1.000 in Debut as Speaker,” The Sporting News, February 6, 1936, 7.

15  “Pete Fox Voted Most Popular Right Fielder,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 4, 1938, A2.

16 “Tigers Sell Pete Fox to Boston Red Sox,” Washington Post, December 13, 1940, 24.

Charlie Gehringer was a model of consistency throughout his major-league career with the Detroit Tigers. This Hall of Fame second baseman finished with a career average of .320, failing to hit .300 in only three of his 16 full seasons. His quiet demeanor and modesty were noted by contemporaries, as was his grace in the infield.

Charles Leonard Gehringer was born on a farm in Iosco Township, Livingston County, Michigan, on May 11, 1903. (Livingston County is midway between Detroit and Lansing.) He was the third of four children (and second son) of Theresa and Leonard Gehringer, who were both born in Germany; he also had seven step-siblings from his father’s first marriage and one from his mother’s.2 The family moved to the Ed Angel farm, just south of Fowlerville in Livingston County, when he was young.3 Young Charlie did not like farm work.

“It was a dairy and grain farm; we raised corn, oats, wheat, barley – everything,” he said in an interview in the 1980s. “It seemed that I had all the hard jobs – the weeding, shocking up the wheat, digging potatoes – mostly the hand work. Milking cows was the hardest, especially early in the morning.”4

Baseball was different – from the start.

“I think it was Lefty Gomez of the Yankees who gave me the ‘Mechanical Man’ name,” he told an interviewer. “He made a statement to the papers once that ‘you wind Gehringer up in the spring and turn him off in the fall and in between he hits .340.’ Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. Like anything, it’s a lot of hard work and practice.”5

Charlie often played with older boys and held his own. “I just kept working at it every chance I got,” he remembered.6 He played infield and pitched for Fowlerville High and lost only one game in three years.7 The baseball complex is now called Gehringer Field.8

His parents did not share his passion for baseball. “My father generally accepted it, but my mother heartily disapproved,” he recalled. “Every time I wanted to go off and play a high-school or sandlot game, there’d be a battle. She got to be a great fan eventually, but it was hard going for a long while. My father died in the middle of my first year in professional ball, and never saw me play except in high school or at the fairgrounds.”9

By 1922, besides his older brother, who handled the tough farm work, his parents had a hired man, freeing Charlie to leave the farm for the University of Michigan to study physical education.10 He earned a freshman letter in baseball11 and worked part-time in an ice-cream plant. By then he had graduated from the Fowlerville town team to an independent team in Angola, Indiana.12

Gehringer’s chance to leave the farm permanently came in the fall of 1923. A local man who hunted with Bobby Veach told the former Tigers outfielder about Charlie and arranged for a tryout in Detroit.

“Ty Cobb was the manager then, and apparently he was so impressed he went up in his uniform to Mr. Navin, the club owner, and got him out of his office to take a look at me,” Gehringer later told an interviewer. “I signed a contract with the Tigers, and I can’t remember if I got a bonus. Maybe five hundred dollars. But I would’ve signed for nothing. …When I was a kid, you see, I used to keep a kind of scrapbook. I used to paste newspaper pictures of Cobb and Veach and Harry Heilmann, and here I was going to play with them.”13

The road to the Hall of Fame wasn’t as straight as it looks now.

The American League’s first All-Star second baseman had never played the position before signing with the Tigers. He was a third baseman at Michigan and reported to Detroit as a third baseman, but Cobb, who had Bobby Jones and Fred Haney at third, moved Gehringer to second (behind Del Pratt, Frank O’Rourke, and Bucky Burke) and sent him to the minors.14

He spent 1924 with London of the Class B Michigan-Ontario League, batting .292 in 112 games, and played five games with the Tigers in September. He was promoted to Toronto of the Double-A International League for the 1925 season, batting .325 in 155 games, and played eight games with the Tigers.

Gehringer made the big-league roster in 1926 but started on the bench, which was not where he had figured to be. “I had every assurance that I would start the season at second base, but at the last minute I was benched for O’Rourke. I never got my chance until O’Rourke came down with the measles when the season was about a month old,” he recalled in 1941. “I owe everything to O’Rourke’s measles and to the advice on batting that I got from Cobb.”15

But the relationship with Cobb was bumpy. “Cobb was a hateful guy. Nobody liked him as a manager. He was such a great player himself, he figured that if he told you something, there was no reason why you couldn’t do it as well as he did. But a lot of guys don’t have that ability. He couldn’t understand that. …

“But he was super for the first couple years I was up. Golly, he was like a father to me. … Then all of a sudden he got upset with me about something. To this day I don’t know what it was. He would hardly speak to me. He wouldn’t even tell me what signs I was going to get from the coaches. Weird. But he kept playing me, so it didn’t really matter whether he talked to me or not.”16

Gehringer appeared in 123 games as a rookie and hit .277. The Tigers released Cobb that winter and named George Moriarty manager. Moriarty got Marty McManus from the St. Louis Browns to play second, and Gehringer was moved to third as a backup to light-hitting Jack Warner.17

Again, Gehringer started the season on the bench as the “utility third baseman” while McManus was at second, but again Gehringer got a break. “Marty was taken ill and since I was the only one who could play second base, Moriarty substituted me for McManus. I didn’t miss a game at second until my arm went bad in St. Louis in 1930.”18

In 1927 Gehringer hit .317, beginning a run of 13 .300-plus seasons in 14 years, spoiled only by a .298 in 1932. His breakout season as a hitter was 1929, when he hit .339 and led the league in hits (215), runs (131), doubles (45), triples (19), and stolen bases (27). In 1930, he hit .330 with 201 hits and 47 doubles. He hit .311 in an injury-marred 1931 season; the player who four times led the league in games played appeared in only 101. The following year he played 152 games but hit only .298; he had 44 doubles and 107 RBIs.

The offseason often meant barnstorming, traveling with teams of stars from the major leagues and the Negro leagues, playing in small towns. Gehringer described one such tour: “We went up through the Dakotas and Minnesota and Kansas. Got to bat against Satchel [Paige] every other day, which wasn’t much fun.”19

Paige returned the compliment in his autobiography: “Gehringer was real tough for me, the toughest of all those stickers.”20

The first All-Star Game was held in 1933, and Gehringer was a star among stars. By 1938 he was the only player to have been selected as a starter for every game.21 In the 1934 game, when Carl Hubbell famously ended the first inning by striking out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx, Gehringer had led off the game with a single. He moved to second on an error before Heinie Manush walked. (Hubbell made it five straight future Hall of Famers by striking out Al Simmons and Joe Cronin to start the second.) Gehringer holds the record (as of 2013) for the highest All-Star batting average, .500 in six games (10-for-20, nine walks, and two stolen bases, including the first in All-Star competition).

In 1934 the Tigers, under new player-manager Mickey Cochrane, bounced back from a fifth-place finish with a 101-53 record and their first World Series appearance since 1909. Gehringer led the AL in runs (134) and hits (214) and was the Tigers’ leader with a .356 average (second to Gehrig by seven points). That was the year the infield combined for 462 RBIs (first baseman Hank Greenberg 139, Gehringer 127, shortstop Billy Rogell 100, and third baseman Marv Owen 96). The Tigers lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. They made 12 errors in the Series, and Gehringer, who had made only 17 during the season, had three of them. After the season, he was part of the all-star team that toured Japan.

Gehringer led the 1935 Tigers with a .330 average and 123 runs as Detroit returned to the World Series and beat the Chicago Cubs in six games. Gehringer batted .375 in the Series.

The following year, a second-place season for Detroit, Gehringer led the team in batting (.354), runs (144), hits (227), and triples (12), and was the AL leader in doubles (60).

In 1937, at the age of 34, Gehringer became the third Tiger in four years to be selected as the AL’s Most Valuable Player (Cochrane won in 1934 and Greenberg in 1935), finishing four points ahead of 22-year-old Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees. Gehringer led the league in batting at .371, 20 points ahead of Gehrig and 25 ahead of DiMaggio. He had 209 hits, 133 runs, and 96 RBIs, the only year from 1932 to 1938 when he failed to reach 100.

The 1938 season was Gehringer’s last as an All-Star; he batted .306 with 107 RBIs and 174 hits. It was also the year he teamed with Ray Forsyth to start a business as manufacturers’ representatives to the auto industry. In previous winters, he had worked in a Detroit department store as a sporting-goods clerk and sold coal wholesale. At one point, he leased two gas stations and hired others to run them.22

Gehringer’s career was winding down; in 1939, he played in only 118 games, hitting .325 on just 132 hits with 86 RBIs. The following year was the last time he hit over .300 (.313); he had 161 hits, walked 101 times (second-most in his career), scored 108 runs and batted in 81 as the Tigers went to the World Series. He played all seven games, batting .214 (6-for-28 with two walks) in the seven-game loss to the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1941 Gehringer played in 127 games, but his average slipped to .220, although he walked 95 times. By 1942, he was a player-coach, posting a .267 average (12-for-45 in 45 games with seven walks) before enlisting in the US Navy in September.23 He served as baseball coach of the St. Mary’s College naval preflight school in California.24 He was discharged in November 1945 with the rank of lieutenant commander.25

“I came out of the service in such good shape that I felt I could’ve played a few years,” Gehringer told an interviewer. “But we had a good business going by that time. Rather than get involved in baseball again and more or less start over with new management, I decided to stick with what I got. So I retired.”26

Gehringer’s bottom line: a .320 average with 2,839 hits, 1,186 walks, 1,774 runs, and just 372 strikeouts in 10,244 at-bats. Seven of his 184 home runs were inside the park. At the end of the 1942 season, he ranked 37th in average and sixth in doubles (574).27 He rated Lefty Grove as the toughest (as well as the fastest) pitcher he faced in his career.28 He hit for the cycle May 27, 1939. He holds the longest consecutive-games-played streak in Tigers history (511 games from September 3, 1927 to May 7, 1931).29 He ranks second in assists by a second baseman and seventh in double plays by a second baseman.

Gehringer was named the second baseman on a fan-selected all-time Tigers team in 1999 when Tiger Stadium closed.30 In 1983 his number 2 and Hank Greenberg’s number 5 were retired by the Tigers.

And he made it look easy.

“I could never figure out when to go for ground balls and when to leave them for Charlie,” recalled Greenberg. “I would dive for one and it would bounce off my glove. Charlie would be standing there, right behind me, and he’d say, ‘I could’ve gotten that one.’ The man was amazing.”31

“He had an uncanny knack for positioning the hitters, and the hands of a magician. No such thing as a bad-hop grounder in the vicinity of Gehringer,” recalled pitcher Elden Auker.32

“Everything he did was so fluid. It looked so easy and yet he covered so much ground. I’d be pitching and a ball might be hit between first and second and I’d say to myself, ‘that’s a base hit into right field.’ Next thing you know it was fielded so easy and the man was thrown out. You wonder how Charlie got there,” Hal Newhouser said.33

As a businessman, Gehringer also had an accomplished career. Forsyth sold him several cars, became a friend and then a business partner. Gehringer and Forsyth sold parts and accessories to the auto industry. Their first success was upholstery buttons, which at the time never held and tore people’s clothing. A woman in New York, Ann Friedolph, had patented one that held, and her patent attorney was a friend of Gehringer’s and Forsyth’s. Ford and Chrysler signed up, and General Motors followed. “We sold a jillion,” Gehringer said. They added other products, including upholstery material, carpeting and other interior materials.34 He retired in 1974.35

“The name would get you in, but it wouldn’t get the job done. I put in an eight-hour day and worked hard,” Gehringer said. “Some of those prospective customers in the automobile industry were really tough. They’d say to me, ‘What do you know about this business?’ I’d say, ‘Maybe not much, but I didn’t know much about baseball either when I started.’ ”36

Although he was retired, Gehringer wasn’t finished with baseball. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1949 but did not attend the induction ceremony on June 13 because he was preparing for his wedding. The voting had taken place in January with no one elected; Gehringer was elected in a runoff, but his wedding plans had been made well in advance and he told Cooperstown he had “pressing business.”

Despite being one of Detroit’s most eligible bachelors, Gehringer had not married. He had moved his diabetic mother into the first house he bought, in 1934; because she needed some care, Gehringer did not want to bring a wife into the mix.37 He met Josephine Stillen when he made sales calls to Nash-Kelvinator, where she worked in the purchasing department. She knew he had been a ballplayer, and especially remembered him from the 1934 and 1935 World Series. He gave her tickets to a game, and she went with a friend, but the game was rained out. Then she went to a game with him. “I never dreamed we’d be a twosome,” she recalled. “I’m glad that we met. … I knew he liked his privacy and could protect him over the years.”38

That started with the wedding. The plan was for a small one in Santa Clara, California, where Marv and Violet Owen lived and no one knew the Detroiters. Gehringer had been the best man at their wedding. However, word got out and people started camping out at the church. Owen contacted the priest, who suggested a church in San Jose, six miles away, and they sneaked in the back door.39

Gehringer was in Cooperstown the next year, and almost every year thereafter. He missed only ten ceremonies in the ensuing 42 years, nine of them while he was still working full-time.40 He served on the Hall of Fame’s veterans committee from its creation in 1953 until 1990 and was a member of the Hall’s board of directors until 1991.41

Gehringer returned to the Tigers as general manager from August 1951 until the end of the 1953 season and was a vice president until 1960. His baseball encore was not pleasant.

“I did not enjoy it. I had been away for nearly ten years and I didn’t know the leagues. I was more or less forced into it,” he recalled. “W.O. (Briggs) told me he needed me and then he stuck his hand out. I couldn’t turn him down.”42 He inherited a team that had been rewarded with high salaries after just missing the pennant in 1950, and he was forced to make trades to pare the payroll. Those 1952-53 Tigers finished a combined 110-198-6. However, Gehringer did sign future Hall of Famer Al Kaline in 1953.

Gehringer was a regular at the Yankees’ Old Timer’s Days, and it was the 1965 game, at the age of 62, that truly finished him as a player: “I hit a ball between the center fielder and right fielder, and was going to stretch a triple into a double, but I fell right across first base.”43 It was his first at-bat, against Jim Konstanty. He had surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon the following week.44

Golf was his game by then, anyway. In 1929, the people of Fowlerville held a day for Gehringer at Navin Field and presented him with a set of matched Spalding woods and irons in a leather bag. “They were also right-handed, and of course I’m left-handed,” Gehringer recalled. “But I learned how to play the game right-handed.”45

Gehringer was visibly active in the March of Dimes, serving 20 years as Wayne County chairman,46 the Big Brothers, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Oakland University.47 He held many autograph sessions for the March of Dimes in what his wife recalled as “dives,” and was a popular speaker for years, telling one interviewer, “I think I’ve been in every church basement in the city of Detroit.”48

Despite having been out of the game for decades and being an intensely private person, Gehringer was not forgotten by fans and autograph hounds. The Gehringers’ home was on a large, secluded lot in a Detroit suburb, but many meals were interrupted by people ringing their doorbell, demanding time and/or an autograph, simply because they had “driven all the way from Chicago.”49 “I don’t know how they found out where we lived,” Josephine said, adding that he was often accosted at restaurants and asked if he were the former ballplayer. His reply? “My name is Schultz.”50

Then there was the mail, which increased as Gehringer became one of the oldest living Hall of Famers. Former baseball writer Jim Hawkins met him at a baseball card show in the 1980s and worked with him when Gehringer decided that the requests were overwhelming. Hawkins called it a “feeding frenzy.”

“Ninety-five percent of the requests were from people planning to resell Charlie’s autograph,” said Hawkins. Just getting the hundreds of items home from the post office each week was a challenge, as was keeping the requests straight, many of which came without return postage. Hawkins took over after the Gehringers returned from a two-week vacation in 1990 to find more than 500 pieces of mail at the post office – balls, bats, baseball cards, photos.51

“That was when and why Charlie began charging for autographs and requesting that all such mail be sent to me,” said Hawkins. “We did so until the end of his life. But believe me, he didn’t do it for the money. He did it for his quality of life and peace of mind.”52

Gehringer died on January 21, 1993, of complications from a stroke he had suffered a month earlier. He was 89. He had no children.

This biography is included in the book “Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers” (SABR, 2014), edited by Scott Ferkovich.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Josephine Gehringer, Mike Grimm, and Jim Hawkins for their time and help, and Bob Byrnes for his encouragement.

Sources

Auker, Elden, with Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001), 113.

Bak, Richard, Cobb Would Have Caught It (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 190-207.

Hawkins, Jim, and Dan Ewald, The Detroit Tigers Encyclopedia (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing LLC, 2003), 58, 283-284.

Paige, Leroy (Satchel), as told to David Lipman, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 1993), 103.

Winegar, C. Henry, and George O. Winegar, Descendents of Adam and Maria Gehringer (Saline, Michigan: McNaughton & Gunn, Inc., 1993).

Michael Grimm, “Charlie Gehringer,” Fowlerville History fowlervillehistory.org/baseball/charliegehringer/

Baseball-reference.com

“Roll call of past induction ceremonies,” Baseball Hall of Fame baseballhall.org/sites/default/files/all/Documents/roll_call_of_past_induction_ceremonies.pdf

navymemorial.org/navy-log‎

Baseball Hall of Fame Library, player file for Charlie Gehringer.

Notes

The festivities were far, in both time and place, from Salem, New Jersey, where Leon Allen Goslin was born on October 16, 1900. The family owned a working dairy farm, consisting of over 500 prime acres in nearby Fort Mott. Leon attended Sleepy Hollow rural school and was expected to do chores each day after dismissal. He loved baseball, and after-school games routinely kept him from his chores, angering his father. It was a time when young George Herman Ruth started making headlines and young Leon couldn’t help but notice and emulate the Babe on the field.

Parents James and Rachel Goslin were of English descent; their oldest child was Russell, born in 1895, followed by Mary in 1896, Leon in 1900, and James in 1912. Leon’s dad took ill, providing young Leon the responsibility of milking 25 cows each morning and evening. The strenuous farm work helped Leon grow to a solid 5-feet-11½-inches tall and 185 pounds.

Leon took a part-time job with DuPont, repairing elevators, on the condition that he play for the company team, and he eventually became the star right-handed pitcher. Bill McGowan was umpiring in a local factory league, and was impressed by young Leon’s raw ability the first time he saw him pitch. McGowan wired Zinn Beck, manager of Columbia in the Sally League, about the “can’t-miss” prospect. McGowan’s recommendation led to a signed contract. Goslin and McGowan became fast friends, with the umpire tutoring his young protégé in regard to proper dress and conduct during the train trip to South Carolina. Goslin later returned the favor by recommending McGowan for a promotion to the major leagues.

He was signed as a pitcher (winning six and losing five in 18 games), but Goslin’s bat prompted a move to the outfield, where he hit a league-leading .390 for Columbia in 1921. Jack Dunn, owner of the International League Baltimore Orioles, was ready to sign him for $5,000. Washington owner Clark Griffith caught wind of the plan and, surmising that Dunn knew talent, Griffith tricked a golfing buddy into revealing the prospect’s name and location. Griffith rushed to South Carolina and hurriedly signed Goslin for $6,000. Griffith, known as the Old Fox, pocketed the paperwork, climbed into the stands, and saw his new charge get conked on the head by a fly ball.

Despite fielding mishaps, Goslin earned a call-up to the Senators in the waning days of 1921. His nickname, Goose, was credited to Denman Thompson of the Washington Star, who observed the unorthodox flapping arms and erratic path taken as the young outfielder tracked fly balls. Washington skipper Clyde Milan was irritated with Goslin’s inept glove work and habitual breaking of training rules. Milan believed the touted youngster was not a shoo-in for a regular outfield position. But Goose’s bat kept him in the lineup; he played in 101 games and hit .324 in 1922.

Donie Bush took over as manager in 1923 and Goslin hit .300 while leading the league with 18 triples. Clark Griffith astutely noted that “good defense was just as important” and that Goslin “was severely lacking in that department.” The Nats owner considered “poor fielding to be a liability not compensated by a proficient bat.” Griffith prophetically commented: “Good hitters who were suspect fielders wouldn’t do on a championship- bound team.”4

Early in 1924, the Senators were languishing in seventh place under new manager Bucky Harris, then pulled up to .500 in June and won ten in a row (including eight on the road) to move into first place. The lead seesawed until late August, when the Nats took three out of four from the Yankees to establish a 1½-game lead over the defending American League champions. The Senators prevailed, copping their first AL flag. Goose hit .344 with a league-leading 129 RBIs. The Nats took the World Series in seven games over the New York Giants; the decisive game was a 4-3 thriller lasting 12 innings. Wrote W.O. M’Geehan in the Washington Post: “For the country at large the eagle may remain the national bird, but for the National Capital the greatest bird that flies is the goose.”5

The Senators repeated in 1925 and battled the Pittsburgh Pirates in the fall classic. Washington was favored to win, but it wasn’t meant to be as the Pirates took the title in seven games. The 1926 season saw Washington drop to fourth, with Goose contributing 109 RBIs, 17 homers, and a .354 average. The 1927 Senators finished third; Goslin knocked in 120 runs and hit .334. He swung from his heels and his left-handed power was complemented by an exaggerated closed stance in which he turned almost 180 degrees completing his swing. His stroke was fun to watch, whether he homered or struck out.

Spring training 1928 took place at the fairgrounds in Tampa, Florida, a location providing ample diversion for the fun-loving Goslin. A high-school track team was working out and Goose delighted in challenging runners to impromptu races. He approached a group of teens practicing the shot-put, picked up a 16-pound weight and proceeded to toss it like a baseball – for the next 30 minutes. The next morning his right arm was so strained that he couldn’t comb his hair.

The arm was swollen and discolored as the season opened. Goslin was sent to Atlantic City for salt-water baths, followed by ice packing, massaging, rest, and even a cast (although x-rays showed no break). Another diagnosis revealed that his collarbone was out of placement, prompting a trip to a bone-setter in Michigan. To Griffith’s chagrin, nothing worked. Goose’s throwing arm remained a liability all season and it became a ritual for infielders to run deep into the outfield to retrieve his weak throws. Despite the arm woes, his average was as high as.432 in late June.

Goslin’s.379 average ultimately beat a .378 mark posted by the St. Louis Browns’ Heinie Manush. In The Glory of Their Times, Goslin provided author Lawrence Ritter insight into his quest for the title – right down to his last at-bat. Goose realized that if he got a hit, he won; if he was out, he lost. Confronted with this dilemma, Goslin thought seriously about sitting it out, but teammates insisted he’d hear accusations of “being yellow if you win the title on the bench.”6

Goslin decided to take his licks, and quickly looked at two strikes. He decided to try to get thrown out of the game. Umpire Bill Guthrie read through the ruse and told Goslin: “You’re not going to get thrown out of this ballgame no matter what you do.” The ump added that a walk was out of the question too. Back in the box, Goslin got what he termed a “lucky hit” and won the title fair and square.7

Goslin’s average shrank to .288 in 1929, with 18 homers. The incredible power generated by his muscular shoulders was illustrated by a home run that cleared the high right-field fence at Griffith Stadium. It traveled an additional 75 feet into the backyard of a home where it struck the unsuspecting homeowner, who was hanging laundry. The ball struck with such force that it dislocated the woman’s shoulder.

Shirley Povich of the Washington Post commented: “Even when Goslin wasn’t meeting the ball, he was an exciting hitter. He emulated the Ruthian custom of swinging himself off his feet and depositing himself in the dust when he whiffed. He was the least plate-shy guy who ever lived. Umpires used to threaten to banish him unless he stopped crowding the plate.”8 He also had remarkable hand-eye coordination: so good that he once beat the New Jersey skeet shooting champ by hitting 50 out of 50 clay pigeons during a match.

After a salary dispute, Goose was shuttled to the St. Louis Browns on June 13, 1930, for Heinie Manush and General Crowder. Both teams were in St. Louis when the news broke and traveled like wildfire. Goose was greeted with “go to your own clubhouse” when he sauntered in from his pregame constitutional. A bellman handed him a telegram advising him of the trade; he read the correspondence and said: “They weren’t kidding, were they?”9

The trade was considered one-sided by St. Louis fans: a strong-hitting outfielder and a starting pitcher were shuttled for the services of just a hard-hitting outfielder. The reported circumstances precipitating the trade offered a clue to the imbalance. Before making the deal Browns owner Phil Ball visited the team hotel, intending to speak with Manush. He called Heinie’s room on a house phone and the operator told him, “Mr. Manush was tired and didn’t want to be disturbed during breakfast.” Incensed, the short-tempered owner stormed out.

Still seething from the Manush incident, Ball attended the afternoon game with friends. Crowder was pitching and after a bad call by the plate umpire, dispelled his anger by hurling the ball into the stands behind first base. The ball hit a railing, just missing Ball and his entourage. Phil got up, left the stands, went directly his office, and called his old pal Clark Griffith. Ball asked if he’d make an offer for Manush and Crowder. The stunned Griffith fumbled to think of a suitable player and quickly offered Goslin. While Griffith paused to think of another player to sweeten the trade, Ball quickly replied – “deal.” And so it was completed – straight up, with no cash involved. Clark Griffith and Goose Goslin had enjoyed what was referred to as a “father/son relationship,” but now it was over.10

The move invigorated Goose, who was having a subpar year. His average climbed to .308 and his home-run total increased to 37 with the two teams; it was the highest seasonal total of his career. The next season he hit .328 with 24 homers.

Goslin made headlines in 1932 when he attempted to use a camouflaged bat sporting black and white zebra stripes that ran its entire length. It was designed by Browns secretary Willis Johnson to annoy opposing pitchers. When Goslin came up in the first inning of the April 12 contest against the White Sox at Comiskey Park, umpire Harry Geisel ruled the bat illegal. Switching to a conventional piece of lumber, Goose proceeded to go 3-for-4 on the day. All told, he produced 104 RBIs for the 1932 Browns.

The minute Goslin heard that Walter Johnson had been fired as the Nats manager, he knew he’d end up back in Washington. On December 14, 1932, he was traded back to the Senators with left-hander Walter Stewart and outfielder Fred Schulte. The Browns received outfielders Sam West and Carl Reynolds and pitcher Lloyd Brown. When he traveled to Washington to sign his 1933 contract, sportswriters immediately noticed how he had changed during his tenure in St. Louis. The years away from Washington matured him; he was no longer as loud or boisterous as previously remembered.

Goslin fancied himself a managerial candidate and reportedly thought he’d be in line for the Senators’ top job; however, Joe Cronin was appointed the new skipper. Washington won the 1933 pennant, but was defeated in the World Series by the New York Giants.

Goslin never agreed with Cronin’s management style and the differences resulted in a trade to Detroit after the season. Coming off a subpar 1933 season (.297, 64 RBIs) and thought to be washed up, he was swapped for outfielder John “Rocky” Stone. On the surface the edge in the trade appeared to go to the Senators; however, the Tigers specifically sought a more powerful left-handed bat to complement the right-handed power of young Hank Greenberg.

Mickey Cochrane became player-manager of the Tigers in 1934, and Goslin further helped the pennant-bound Tigers by recommending that Cochrane deal for General Crowder to strengthen the pitching staff. The addition of both Goslin and Crowder helped the Tigers secure the 1934 flag, their first pennant since 1909.

Teammate Elden Auker recalled Goose as one to keep the players loose by clowning around. “He was some character, a really great guy,” Auker recalled. “He was just happy-go-lucky, always laughing and joking and pulling pranks.”11 On April 28, 1934, Goslin set the unenviable record of hitting into four consecutive double plays as the Tigers beat Cleveland 4-1. He enjoyed a productive 30-game hit streak and compiled a .305 batting average with 13 home runs. The Tigers finished seven games ahead of the Yankees, with the G-Men (Greenberg, Gehringer, and Goslin) leading the way.

The World Series pitted the Tigers against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Gas House Gang defeated Detroit in seven games; Goose drove in the winning run in Game Two. Just before the start of the seventh game, he remarked, “Everybody seems to be mad at everybody else in this Series, with all hands sore at the umpiring, which has been terrible, so watch out for fireworks today.”12 His prediction came true in the sixth inning when Joe Medwick slid hard into Tigers third baseman Marv Owen, causing a near riot among Detroit fans. When Medwick took his position in left field for the bottom of the sixth, the fans showered the field with debris. Judge Landis, watching from his third-base box seat, summoned the involved parties and removed Medwick from the game. The Cardinals went on to post an 11-0 win to cap the World Series.

The day after the Series Goslin became responsible for the first fine Commissioner Landis levied against a major-league umpire. The brouhaha erupted in Game Five when Goose referred to Bill Klem as Catfish, a name the ump detested. Commissioner Landis later determined that Klem had used “over-ripe language” to lecture Goslin on proper field conduct, and fined the umpire $50.13 Klem never forgave Goslin, even years later when the Goose tried to apologize for the incident.

The 1935 Tigers repeated as American League champs. The team started slow, lagging in sixth place through May, when suddenly the defending champs got hot. Although Goslin hit only .292, he provided a spark in the World Series against the Chicago Cubs. The Goose brought a rabbit into the clubhouse as a good-luck charm, thinking it would work better than just a rabbit’s foot. Indeed it did, as the club prevailed in six games.

Elden Auker recalled Game Six and the decisive Series win: “I was sitting on the dugout steps at the start of our half of the ninth and Goose was sitting beside me. Goose hadn’t had a hit all day and was the fourth hitter due up that inning. He turned to me and said something I’ll never forget: ‘I’ve got a hunch I’m going to be up there with the winning run on base and we’re going to win the ballgame.’ ” Mickey Cochrane singled and moved to second on Charlie Gehringer’s groundout. Goslin came up to the plate, facing left-hander Larry French. Goose fouled away the first pitch, then lined the next offering to right-center, scoring Cochrane and giving the Tigers a 4-3 victory – and their first World Series title. Auker and Goslin embraced, with Goose shouting: “What’d I tell ya? What’d I tell ya?”14

None other than Goslin’s old pal Bill McGowan was the first-base umpire for the decisive Game Six. McGowan later wrote that when Goose came off the field after the top of the ninth, he passed the umpire and remarked: “Go in and get your shower – I’m gonna dust one.”15

In 1936 Goslin was still solid for the second-place Tigers, contributing a .315 average and a team-leading 24 home runs. One homer came on September 18, when Goose welcomed Bob Feller to the major leagues by becoming the first player to hit one out against the hard-throwing rookie.

Spring training 1937 in Lakeland, Florida, started off on a good note for Goslin. He took a side trip to Miami Beach, and columnist Leonard Lyons reported that “rolling the dice at a gambling club, (Goslin) won more in one week than he’ll receive from the Detroit Tigers for a full season’s play.”16 Goslin’s salary that season was $12,000,17 and it would be the last season he’d draw a salary from the Tigers. The Tigers finished second to the Yankees. After playing in 79 games and hitting .238, Goslin was released on October 3, the day the season ended. Owner Walter Briggs thanked Goose for his contribution to the team and acknowledged that he’d become one of the city’s most popular players. Briggs hinted at helping the veteran find a spot as a coach or manager.

Early in 1938, Goslin left New Jersey for sunny Florida, with golf clubs, sport clothes, and scissors, hoping to catch on with another club. The former farmboy had become quite the fashion plate and habitually dressed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Golf was his second-favorite sport and the scissors were needed to clip coupons.18 Although one of the wealthiest players in the game, the thrifty Goslin was frugal and saved an extra few cents to keep expenses down as he looked for a job. During the heyday of his career, he earned a top salary of $16,000 and was estimated to have pocketed more than $35,000 alone from World Series money. These funds were carefully invested, enabling him to make his South Jersey farm a showplace.

Apparently Goslin was bitter after the Tigers prevented him from talking to Cleveland about a managerial spot. “I’m sore at the Detroit club,” he told columnist Shirley Povich. “You’d think after the time I spent in the league they’d give me a break if I could land a manager’s job. And then after the season closed, they let me go without any warning at all. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that they gave me my release a day after I had buried my father. That seemed kind of harsh to me.”19

Just before the 1938 season began, Goslin unretired and signed with Washington – his third stint as a Senator, but the hits were few; he batted only.158 in 38 games before age and injury finally caught up with him. Hitting against Lefty Grove, Goose swung so hard that he wrenched his back and was unable to complete the plate appearance. It was the only time in his career that a pinch-hitter took his place. Goslin retired, having posted a career average of .316, with 2,735 hits, 500 doubles, 1,483 runs, 173 triples, and 248 home runs.

The next season Goslin became the player-manager of the Interstate League’s Trenton Senators. In 1940 he wed Marian Wallace, a Philadelphia social worker. Marian died in 1960; the couple had no children. By August 1941, in the midst of a 15-game losing streak, he abruptly quit as Trenton manager and retired from the game. In addition to devoting time to his farm and boat business, Goslin continued to golf, fish, and bet on horseraces.

The Veterans Committee elected Goslin to the Hall of Fame in 1968. At the induction ceremony, in a stirringly emotional speech, Goslin wept when he recounted: “I have been lucky.” His eyes became wet with tears, as he tried to continue – “I want to thank God, who gave me the health and strength to compete with these great players.” He then began to cry uncontrollably, until he felt the steady hand of Commissioner William Eckert on his shoulder. Heartfelt applause from the audience gave him the confidence to continue, “I will never forget this. I will take this to my grave.”20

Goslin died in Bridgeton, New Jersey, on May 15, 1971, at the age of 70. He had been in declining health since 1969 when he was hospitalized for burns that resulted when he fell asleep while smoking. He was survived by his two brothers and his sister. He was buried at the Baptist Cemetery, near Salem.

Goose Goslin never truly earned the respect due a player of his caliber. He was generally acknowledged as a “money player,” evidenced by his run of World Series appearances in 1924, 1925, 1933, 1934, and 1935. Goose referred to himself as a farmboy having fun playing the game he loved. His contemporaries felt he hadn’t taken the game seriously and never lived up to his full potential. Even on the day of his Hall of Fame induction, Goslin wasn’t shown the proper respect. On what should have been the greatest day of his life, he and his party were summarily ushered out of the hotel right after the ceremony, because the hotel needed their suite. Apparently Goose never responded to an inquiry from the hotel regarding the number of nights he and his party intended to stay.

An updated version of this biography is included in the book “Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers” (SABR, 2014), edited by Scott Ferkovich.

Sources

Auker, Elden, and Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2006).

Golenbock, Peter, The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

Luke, Bob, Dean of Umpires: Bill McGowan (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2005).

Ritter, Lawrence, The Glory of Their Times. (New York: William Morrow Co., 1992).

Thomas, Henry W., Walter Johnson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).

Daly, Arthur, “Sports of the Times, Two For Cooperstown,” New York Times, February 2, 1968.

Ward, Arch, “And What if He Had Used It?” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 13, 1932.

“Goslin’s Home Run Ball Fells Woman,” Washington Post, August 29, 1929.

Notes