Sport: Cubs v. Tigers

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Pennant winners four times, the Detroit Tigers have never won a World Series Last year they led the Cardinals three games to two, then lost two. In 1907 and 1908 under Hugh Jennings they played the Cubs under Frank Chance. The Cubs won the first Series in four straight games, the second four games to one (in the last of which a Detroit crowd of 6,000 set a World Series record for low attendance). Whether this indicates a long-standing Chicago jinx or whether it is a circumstance calculated to increase the efficiency of the Tigers' current campaign for revenge was another problem which last week remained unsolved. One of the few known World Series factors was that this year the Tigers are stronger than they were in 1934. The team has gained confidence and cohesion. A new pitcher, Roxie Lawson, bought by Manager Cochrane in August has pitched two successive shutouts. The team's fielding average is .979 compared to .974 last year. Its batting average is 289, exactly the same as the Cubs . Both the Tigers and the Cubs have topnotch infields. The Tigers have a super-star Hank Greenberg, on first base. Their pitching ace, Schoolboy Rowe a lanky Arkansan like Lon Warneke last year won 16 games in a row. Until Aug 3 this year he won only half his games then took nine out of his next eleven. Furthermore, in Mickey Cochrane the Tigers possess not only the best catcher in either league but one who is apparently on his way to proving himself the ablest major-league manager since the late John McGraw. In keeping with his disbelief minthe baseball taboo against mentioning a pennant before winning it, Cochrane made his speech in August: "Last year we had the jitters because only two of us—Goose Goslin and I ... had ever played in a World Series before. This year it will be a different story. ..."

Gordon Stanley ("Mickey") Cochrane was born in 1903 in Bridgewater, Mass. Mickey and his brother Archie (who now plays on a Ford Motor Co semiprofessional team) learned baseball almost as soon as they learned to walk but, partly because Harvard's Eddie Mahan was a hero to all New England urchins in 1915, football was Mickey Cochrane s first specialty. At Boston University his exploits of a dozen years ago are still legend. His method of practicing was to divide the squad into two sides—eleven men on one, himself on the other—and call for a kickoff. If he failed to run back for a touchdown, he became exasperated, had the ball kicked off again. The Brunswick Hotel, baseball headquarters was near Boston University. Cochrane met the players who stayed there, decided it was a pleasant way to live. He joined the Saranac Lake team in 1923. Dover, in the Eastern Shore League, bought him and got rich by selling him to Portland, Ore. for $15,000. From Portland, Cochrane went to the Athletics. Experts generally considered him the spark plug of the team with which Connie Mack won the pennant three times in a row.

In 1933 Connie Mack was selling players and Detroit needed a new manager. Owner Frank J. Navin called in Sportswriter H. G. Salsinger of the Detroit News and said: "I can get Babe Ruth from the Yankees for practically nothing or Mickey Cochrane for $100,000. Which would you take?"

"I'd take Cochrane." said Sportswriter Salsinger.