May 6, 1925: Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann both reach 100 career homers as Tigers dominate Browns

Taking the field May 6, 1925, for the third game in a four-game set against the St. Louis Browns, the Detroit Tigers had reason to feel optimistic. Though still in the American League cellar with a 5-14 record, a 14-8 victory the day before – thanks in large part to the six-hit, three-homer barrage of player-manager Ty Cobb – hinted that better days might be ahead. A win could boost Detroit out of last place and push the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox to the bottom.1

Fresh off a 17-hit showing, the Tigers hoped to make it back-to-back wins for the first time all season. After starting the 1925 campaign on the disabled list with influenza, Cobb had appeared in only seven games heading into the St. Louis series. Cobb’s first of three home runs on May 5 was his first of the season and the 96th of his 24-season career. He followed with numbers 97 and 98 later in the game.

In addition to Cobb’s six hits, the team had gotten key offensive support on May 5 from second baseman Frank O’Rourke (three hits) and right fielder Harry Heilmann (two hits). Two-time AL batting champion Heilmann, who had debuted in 1914, was one career homer ahead of Cobb with 99.

 Dave Danforth took the mound for St. Louis to face Bert Cole for Detroit in the Wednesday afternoon game at Sportsman’s Park. As they did the day before, the Tigers scored in the first inning, taking a 1-0 lead on a triple by O’Rourke and a single by Cobb, who had previously accused Danforth of illegally doctoring the ball.2 Cobb reached base 11 times over three games.

The Browns tied the score in the bottom of the first, but the Tigers took the lead for good with a run in the second. In the third inning, Cobb flied out to center, ending his streak of nine straight hits.

In the bottom of the third, the 38-year-old Cobb preserved the lead with a dazzling catch in center. Danforth and third basemen Gene Robertson began the inning with singles and right fielder Joe Evans hit what the St. Louis Globe-Democrat described as a “torrid, low-line smash” to left-center. Cobb chased after it and “dived into the ball, clutched it 2 inches from the ground, rolled over, and hung on.” “It was the greatest catch the writer has ever seen Cobb make,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat asserted.3

“His fielding feat killed a three-base hit and two runs – at least two runs, probably more,” the Detroit News wrote.4 The Browns did not score.

The Tigers made it a 5-1 game in the fifth inning when O’Rourke singled and Cobb followed by pulling a home run into the right-field bleachers, his fourth round-tripper in two days, tying the post-1900 record of four homers in consecutive games. It was Cobb’s 99th career blast.

 Heilmann followed Cobb’s shot with a solo homer, an opposite-field shot to right,5 giving him 100 for his big-league career.

Heilmann again connected off Danforth with a one-out homer to right in the top of the seventh, but the Browns responded in the bottom of the inning on Robertson’s solo home run.

In the eighth, St. Louis kept the pressure on. First baseman George Sisler, who had singled in the fifth inning to extend his hitting streak to 21 games,6 led off with another single and scored on left fielder Ken Williams’s double. Tigers third baseman Bob Jones turned Marty McManus’s liner into a double play, causing the Browns to protest that Jones had trapped the ball.

“[A] long argument followed, with both sides participating heartily in the general wrangle,” the Detroit News reported.7

After the umpires – George Hildebrand, Pants Rowland, and future Hall of Famer Billy Evans, who had famously brawled with Cobb after a 1921 game – consulted and upheld the out call,8 Baby Doll Jacobson drove his second home run in two games into the left-center-field seats.9 It had become a close game, but the Tigers still led, 6-4, going to the ninth.

With 19-year-old reliever Chet Falk appearing in his second big-league game, the Tigers put the game away in the ninth. Four singles netted a pair of runs. Then Cobb followed with a three-run homer – his 100th career round-tripper and his fifth homer in two games. When Cole closed out St. Louis in the bottom of the ninth, it was an 11-4, 18-hit win for the Tigers, and their second victory in a row.

Based on press reports at the time,10 Cobb’s five homers over two consecutive games was considered the biggest story. Not since Cap Anson of the National League’s Chicago White Stockings in August 1884 had a National or American League player connected for five home runs in just two games. Since Cobb was better known for his batting and stolen-base titles, the feat highlighted his power in a way that his eight seasons of leading the league in slugging percentage could not. It was 41 years between Cobb’s and Anson’s record-breaking blows, and it took until 1936 for Tony Lazzeri of the New York Yankees to duplicate the achievement.11

Heilmann became the 17th player in AL or NL history to hit 100 career homers, and Cobb was the 18th.

As it happened, neither Cobb’s nor Heilmann’s milestones were mentioned in the daily press. Writers were likely unaware of the statistic or perhaps didn’t deem it newsworthy enough to mention. Cobb finished his career with 117 home runs while Heilmann retired with 183 homers.

Instead, most of the talk in the press was of Cobb’s total bases and five homers, and of how he was crowding Honus Wagner out of the record books. Cobb claimed the obscure mark of the “lifetime number of extra bases on hits to 1,456.”12 Wagner’s previous mark had been 1,448. Cobb’s 989 extra-base hits, as of May 6, brought him to within 10 of the major-league mark also held by Wagner.

The press, which had been pessimistic at the Tigers’ poor start, was boundless in its praise of Cobb after the two victories. “From every compass point of the country came the yellow [telegrams] paying tribute to the Georgian’s wonderful batting streak here that shattered records until there remain but two for the Peach to break and hold them all,” commented a Detroit sportswriter.13 In addition to surpassing Wagner’s total for extra-base hits later in the season, he also surpassed the Pirates great in career at-bats later in 1926.

Cobb ended the 1925 season with a .378 batting average and his 12 home runs matched his career high set in 1921. Heilmann finished with 13 homers and a .393 average, tops in the AL and the third of his four batting titles.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bill Marston and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ty Cobb, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Total Baseball.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLA/SLA192505060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1925/B05060SLA1925.htm

John Thorn, Phil Birnbaum, and Bill Deane, eds., Total Baseball, 8th Edition (Toronto: SPORT Media Publishing, 2004).

Notes

1 The May 6 victory did push the Tigers ahead of the Yankees and Red Sox but only by percentage points. Detroit was still 7½ games back of the league leaders while New York and Boston trailed by 7 games. “Today’s IF Table,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 7, 1925: 30. A loss by the Tigers in their final game in St. Louis pushed them back into the cellar. Herman Wecke, “Davis and Wingard Stop Cobb; Tigers Fall Back into Cellar: Williams’ Hit in Ninth Inning Wins Game; Sisler Gets Homer and 2 Singles,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 8, 1925: 34. The Tigers ended the 1925 season with a record of 81-73, good for fourth place but 16½ games behind the American League champion Washington Senators.

2 Steve Steinberg, “Dave Danforth,” SABR Biography Project, accessed June 2, 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dave-danforth/.

3 Martin J. Haley, “Tigers Slug Danforth and Falk to Win from Browns, 11 to 4: Cobb and Heilmann, With Two Home Runs Apiece,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 7, 1925: 12.

4 H.G. Salsinger, “Cobb Takes Two More Batting Records from Wagner’s List: 5 Home Runs in Two Days Equals Pop Anson’s Feat,” Detroit News, May 7, 1925: 44.

5 Haley, “Tigers Slug Danforth and Falk to Win from Browns, 11 to 4.”

6 Sisler eventually extended his consecutive-game hitting streak to 34 before it was ended when the Browns faced Lefty Grove and the Philadelphia Athletics on May 20. Jim Kaplan, Lefty Grove, American Original (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2000), 90.

7 Salsinger, “Cobb Takes Two More Batting Records from Wagner’s List.”

8 Salsinger, “Cobb Takes Two More Batting Records from Wagner’s List.”

9 Haley, “Tigers Slug Danforth and Falk to Win from Browns, 11 to 4.”

10 “Ty Cobb Surpasses Record Set by Mighty Honus Wagner,” Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer, May 7, 1925: 15.

11 “Consecutive Home Run Records: Major League Baseball Record for Home Runs in Consecutive Games,” Baseball-Almanac.com, accessed April 24, 2024, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb hr5.shtml.

12 “Ty Cobb Surpasses Record Set by Mighty Honus Wagner.”

13 Harry Bullion, “Fans Pay Tribute to Cobb, Notables Send Telegrams,” Detroit Free Press, May 8, 1925: 17.