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New Baltimore, Michigan Excerpt from Ty and The Babe - Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press WHEN HE FIRST MET BABE RUTH on a sparkling Michigan day in the spring of 1915, Ty Cobb reigned as the unconquerable king of baseball. He was the game's premier warrior, fiercest competitor, smartest hitter, most ingenious player, strongest drawing card, highest-paid performer, brightest base-path terror, and an inspiration to boys throughout the nation. He also was the owner of one finely shaped head, the beauty of which could not be easily appreciated, one admirer would lament, because of "the way he wears his cap on the ball field - down over his eyes." Cobb was twenty-eight and beginning his eleventh season, once again the defending batting champion of the American League. The year prior, he had won his eighth straight title. "Cobb has no superior," said Walter Johnson, the much-loved pitcher. Baseball Magazine agreed. "There is no player on the diamond today, there has never been a player of any age, to equal Cobb in versatility, in all around excellence," its pulpy pages proclaimed. Tobacco manufacturers and bat makers and purveyors of products of all types clamored for Cobb's endorsement, and he obliged for a sum: "The World's Greatest Ball Player Smokes the World's Best Tobacco" ... "I drink Coca-Cola Regularly Throughout All Seasons of the Year" ... "Ty Cobb, Super-Man, World's Greatest Baseball Player, Tells How Nuxated Iron Gave Him New Life." Cobb had starred in a traveling stage production, been celebrated in song ("They All Know Cobb" and "King of Clubs"), and would soon be showcased in a feature film, Somewhere in Georgia. Presidents invited him for visits, newspapers paid him to share his expertise in guest columns, and newspaper poets, like John H. McGough, heralded his qualities in rhyme: "... A whip of steel, eye for the pill, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill / A perfect player, nobly planned, to belt the bulb, to beat the band..."  On a sun-kissed May 11 afternoon in Detroit, as latecomers filtered in to Navin Field from the streetcars along Michigan and Trumbull avenues, the sprite Donie Bush stirred the crowd by opening the first inning with a single. Manager Hughie Jennings, a once-sharp leader now dimming in the grip of alcoholism, stood along the first base line, where he often raised his fists and let loose his familiar rally cry. "Ee-yah!" Jennings would call, and inevitably fans would parrot him. "Ee-yah! Ee-yah!" After Oscar Vitt, a snazzy dresser and a survivor of the San Francisco earthquake, moved Bush to second, the on-field announcer bellowed the name of the next hitter through his megaphone. As if Ty Cobb needed any introduction. As if they didn't know him instantly, didn't realize who batted third, didn't recognize him twirling three bats as he strutted to the plate - a routine that served two purposes: to lighten his swing and to intimidate the pitcher, on this day a brash kid from Baltimore. The mind's eye pictures such moments in the gray palette of the black-and-white photos of the era. But the scene burst with color: the yellow slat seats of three-year-old Navin Field, the forest green fence in center, the red-banded socks tight around George Ruth's muscular calves, the blue Old English D across Cobb's heart, the kaleidoscopic panels advertising taxi services and chewing tobaccos and shaving creams along the outfield walls, the sunlit sky streaked with streams of smoke from nearby stacks, the brick church towers rising beyond home plate along Michigan Avenue, the speckled fabric of the audience, some 4,385 fans, mostly men, their heads topped in checked caps, brown derbies, beige panama hats, and an occasional burgundy bowler. Cobb nailed his eyes on the pitcher, a platter-faced, gray-flannelled twenty-year-old. Though roughly Cobb's size, George Ruth wore a broader build, with wide shoulders and a globe of a head that balanced precariously on his neck. He looked like a grown street urchin, not a Herculean figure destined to alter the history of the game. The left-hander was making only his fourth start in his first full season. To Cobb, he was just another kid, a prospect who might fizzle like wet fireworks.
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