ty cobb in cuba, 1910

This is a Baseball Chronology entry for November 29, 1910, describing the Detroit Tigers’ visit to Havana that fall:

It’s the Cuban’s turn today as Cuban ace Jose Mendez shuts out the Tigers‚ 3-0.  On steal attempts‚ Ty Cobb is thrown out three times by Bruce Petway‚ who played last year for the Chicago Leland Giants‚ and Gervasio “Strike” Gonzales.  On his last attempt‚ Cobb argues that the bag is three inches too far.  When measured‚ Cobb is proved correct‚ but is still out stealing. A frustrated Cobb will cut short the tour and return to the U.S.  The Tigers will end their Cuban swing at 7-4‚ with a tie. This is a reversal of last year’s 4-8 record‚ when they played the Cuban teams without Cobb and Sam Crawford. The champion A’s also played in Havana at the same time‚ finishing with a 4-6 record.

Nearly everything in the first five sentences is wrong: 

--There were games played on November 27 and 28, but not on November 29.  Detroit indeed won on November 27, 4-0 over José Muñoz and Almendares. 

--On November 28 Habana, with Luis González (not José Méndez, who played for Almendares) on the mound, defeated the Tigers 3-0.

--Bruce Petway and Gervasio González were not on the same team, as this implies.  Petway caught for Habana, González for Almendares.

--Cobb was not thrown out stealing three times in the November 28 game against Habana (see below). 

--The tape measurement incident did not happen at all, as far as I can tell (also see below).

--Cobb did not cut the tour short in frustration.  He arrived late, after his teammates had already played seven games, going 3-3-1.  With Cobb, the Tigers won four of five games, and became the first major league team to win a series in Cuba since Brooklyn swept its four games in 1900.  “Taken all in all,” La Lucha said, “the Detroit bunch is going away well pleased” (December 6, 1910).

To expand on two points:

First, Cobb’s basestealing troubles in the series, specifically the November 28 loss to Habana.  In that game, Cobb tried to bunt his way on with two outs in the first, but Petway pounced on the ball and tossed him out.  And in the fourth inning Cobb walked, then Petway cut him down at second (the account doesn’t say who took the throw).  In his other two plate appearances he rolled out to the pitcher, Luis González, and popped up to second baseman Home Run Johnson.  So Petway did, in fact, throw him out twice in the game, but only once on a steal attempt.  Here is La Lucha’s English page on Cobb’s (and John Henry Lloyd’s) performance in this game:

La Lucha printed play-by-play accounts for three of Cobb’s five games; in those games, the only other incident on the basepaths involving Cobb occurred on November 27 game against Almendares, when Cobb tried to score from first on a hit by Sam Crawford, but was out at home (manned by González).  The accounts I have don’t give the play’s details, so I don’t know who threw him out.

It’s quite possible Cobb tried to steal unsuccessfully in the two games that lack play-by-play accounts.  In the 3-2 Tigers win over Almendares on December 1, Cobb went 1 for 5, and González had three assists.  And in the Tigers’ 12-4 trouncing of Habana on December 4, Cobb went 2 for 5 with three runs scored, while Petway had two assists.  But if Cobb tried to steal in these games, there is no indication of it in any of the game stories I have.

Second, there’s nothing in Diario de la Marina or La Lucha (including the English-language page) about Cobb stopping the game to have the base path measured.  Billy Evans, who was the umpire for the series, wrote several articles about it for American newspapers, and didn’t mention the incident at all.  It doesn’t appear in any of the Cobb biographies, or in Cobb’s own memoir in 1961 (which, as far as I can tell, makes no mention of his Cuba trip whatsoever).  Aside from The Baseball Chronology, which was originally published in 1991, the earliest English-language source I’ve been able to find for this story is Michael and Mary Oleksak’s El Béisbol: Latin Americans and the Grand Old Game, published in the same year (p. 21):

Cobb’s visit is remembered in Cuba not for his outstanding play, but for his wily twist of an umpire’s arm.  In one of the games, Bruce Petway threw Cobb out on a steal attempt.  Cobb protested that second base was implanted farther than the standard 90 feet from first base.  Cobb insisted that the umpire measure the base path.  Cobb was proved correct when the tape measured 90 feet, 3 inches.  The story lived on for years in Cuba, a famous footnote to the major league barnstorming tours.

This anecdote, unfortunately, isn’t footnoted.  At best, then, we have an oral tradition of unknown provenance surfacing some eighty years after the fact.  I’d be very interested if anyone knows of an earlier appearance for this story, especially in Cuban sources.

By the way: Ty Cobb, as it happens, did give thought to the advantage a few inches could represent—for him.  In his chapter on base-stealing in My Life in Baseball he (or Al Stump) wrote (p. 171):

The base itself, for instance, often wasn’t strapped down tight.  The writers used to mention my “superstitious” habit of kicking the bag after I’d arrived at a base.  Others thought it a nervous habit.  What they didn’t know [was] that with each kick, I moved that bag a few inches closer to me, after I’d taken my lead-off. If I had to dive back, that inch or two could be the difference.  Never overlook the smallest percentage.

UPDATE 10:58 p.m.  I forgot to mention that I also discussed the 1910 Detroit Tigers series in this post on Carlos Morán.

Comments

[Gary Ashwill]

Hi John, sorry, didn't see your comment until now. No, I don't have the 2nd Cuban Esso guide. I do have 45/46, 46/47, and 48/49 Cuban guides with complete box scores for all the Cuban League games in those seasons (but nothing on Mexico).

Yeah, I've seen the '53 Jet article, and know about Downer (he managed the 1921 Pittsburgh Keystones). The Cobb matter is too complicated to go into further for the moment (I guess I should write something longer about it, although I don't really want to). Suffice it to say there are some social media (and regular media) takes out there I don't like at all, and I'm not a big fan of having my stuff dragooned into supporting them.

[JohnR]

Gary,
Ty Cobb may have a Dirty Harry defense (in one of those Clint Eastwood movies there is the line: "He's not a racist, he hates everybody equally).
However, all jokes aside, google "Baseball History Daily" and "Fred Downer" for a fascinating story about Ty Cobb printed in a 1953 Jet Magazine. Cobb was in Chicago watching a Chicago Cubs/Brooklyn Dodger game. While there, he was apparently interviewed by Wendall Smith and spoke glowingly of Roy Campanella. He was also seen meeting and hugging Fred Downer.
Downer, who operated a newstand in Chicago at that time, had grown up around the Cobb household in Georgia. Downer, of course, was black and had played briefly in the Negro Leagues.
Makes you wonder...
Addendum: Just wanted to check if you had the complete 1944 & 1945 Mexican League statistics (including complete pitchers' batting statistics) printed in the 2nd Cuban Esso Guide.

[Gary Ashwill]

Well, my account here is based on Cuban newspapers published at the time, specifically La Lucha and Diario de la Marina. They gave fairly lavish coverage to the Tigers series, and to Cobb in particular, since his presence in Cuba was a very big deal. That series was also covered in the United States, including in The Sporting Life and in newspaper columns written by Billy Evans, who was an umpire for the series. Honestly there is no mystery about what happened. It’s just that over the years the details grew fuzzy, Cuban newspapers were hard to come by in the United States, and some distortions crept into the story.

Remember that Bruce Petway did throw out Cobb twice in one game, on November 28, 1910. He threw Cobb out trying to bunt his way on, and then later he cut him down trying to steal. Also, check out this passage in the original post:

It’s quite possible Cobb tried to steal unsuccessfully in the two games that lack play-by-play accounts. In the 3-2 Tigers win over Almendares on December 1 Cobb went 1 for 5, and [Gervasio] González [Habana’s catcher, who was Black] had three assists. And in the Tigers’ 12-4 trouncing of Habana on December 4, Cobb went 2 for 5 with three runs scored, while Petway had two assists. But if Cobb tried to steal in these games, there is no indication of it in any of the game stories I have.

So it could be that he was thrown out stealing in those games, too—we just don’t know. Also, Cobb was thrown out at home trying to score from first in the November 27 game (González was the catcher), and the fact is that he failed to steal a single base in the whole series. I wrote the original post 11 years ago; hopefully more Cuban papers or baseball magazines will become available someday with more details.

By the way, my impression is that in Cuba at the time it was considered a much bigger deal that José Méndez struck out Cobb in the final game.

As for Larry Brown—I’m aware of that story. Brown certainly played in the Cuban League, a lot—fully six seasons, from 1924/25 through 1930. But Ty Cobb didn’t play any baseball in Cuba in the 1920s. If it was major news for Cobb to play in Cuba in 1910, if anything it would have been an even bigger event in the 1920s. To my knowledge, nobody has ever been able to substantiate the story that Brown played against Cobb.

You might want to check out this post as well:

https://agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2019/04/cobb-redding-1916.html

I’m aware that on some social media (and in some newspapers and websites) there’s been an attempt to claim that Ty Cobb has been “proven” not to be racist and that his racist reputation is some sort of horrible injustice that needs to be rectified. This is apparently based on a book by Charles Leerhsen called Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. I haven’t read it, but to be clear, I find many of the ideas and impressions that it has inspired to be superficial and misleading at best and deeply wrongheaded at worst, and I hope nobody is trying to conscript my research into this effort.

[tee]

Click Link https://amzn.to/2XWvRUN. To Order or Review Voices From the Great Black Baseball Leagues.

1926 - Larry Brown, the great defensive Negro League catcher, 1919-1949, tells of a story about Ty Cobb. He says that while he was a member of the Detroit Stars in 1926, he went to Havana, Cuba to play ball there that winter. He says that Ty was there and that he threw Ty out 5 times in succession. After the game, he alleges that Ty offered to try to introduce him to the MLB and pass him off as a Cuban. Brown says he passed on the idea, due to the fact that he was so very well known all around the US as a member of the Detroit Stars. But this story is insisted on by Larry Brown himself. (Voices From The Great Black Baseball Leagues, by John Holway, 1975, pp. 207-209)

[tee]

Gary Ashwill why are you trying to rewrite history. The Cuban papers and many of the Negro League books state Cobb was thrown out 3 times in a row trying to steal and they had no idea about all of the attention given to Cobb as he was average if not below average player in those leagues. He did leave early out of frustration. It's a shame the way the media tries to protect their white heroes. It's sad and pathetic.

[Gary Ashwill]

No, I don't think they ever faced each other--see my latest post.

[Bob Poet]

Gary, do you have anything that details Cobb facing Dick "Cannonball" Redding? Perhaps after Cobb's retirement from baseball (1928) or in Georgia during his brief 1913 holdout.
Or another time if/when Cobb was in Cuba??