{"id":34716,"date":"2025-11-02T14:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T19:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/?p=34716"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:00:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T19:00:50","slug":"cobb-duels-sisler-for-king-of-the-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/02\/cobb-duels-sisler-for-king-of-the-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Cobb Duels Sisler for King of The Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GeorgeGiven George Sisler<\/a>\u2019s 15-year career and lifetime .340 batting average, it is a bit surprising that he had but two American League batting championships \u2013 and he had to hit more than .400 (.407 in 1920 and .420 in 1922) to obtain them.\u00a0 The competition was stiff in those days, and one of Sisler\u2019s regular competitors was Ty Cobb<\/a>.\u00a0 Their careers overlapped from 1915 through 1928.\u00a0 But the competition wasn\u2019t limited to what they did in the batting box.<\/p>\n

In 1918 Cobb won the AL batting title with a .384 average.\u00a0 Sisler was in third place at .341, just a tad above his career average of .340.\u00a0 (If you\u2019re wondering, George Burns of the A\u2019s was second at .352.)\u00a0 The 1918 season deserves an asterisk, as the season had been shortened due to World War I.\u00a0 The season ended on Labor Day, by which time Cobb had clinched the batting title.<\/p>\n

In 1918 the Red Sox won the pennant by 2.5 games over the Indians.\u00a0 For the other American League teams, Labor Day weekend was merely a matter of playing out the schedule.\u00a0 The Tigers would finish in seventh place, 20 games out.\u00a0 Thanks to making up rainouts, they had to end the season with back-to-back double-headers against the Browns and the White Sox.<\/p>\n

On the second game of the Sunday, September 1st<\/sup> double-header against the Browns, the remaining fans of the estimated 8,000 fans at Sportsman\u2019s Park in St. Louis got to witness a rarity.\u00a0 With the Browns ahead 5-2 at the 7th<\/sup> inning stretch, starting pitcher George Cunningham trotted out to center field.\u00a0 This was not without precedent, as Cunningham appeared in the outfield 20 times in 1918.\u00a0 What was unprecedented was his replacement.\u00a0 Center fielder Ty Cobb swapped places with Cunningham and took the mound.\u00a0 What was manager Hughie Jennings thinking?\u00a0 Well, he still had a double-header to play the next day, so perhaps he was just trying to save wear and tear on the pitching staff.<\/p>\n

\"TyCobb had been known to pitch batting practice now and then, but he had never appeared as a pitcher in 14 seasons with the Tigers.\u00a0 Fans thinking of leaving early might have changed their minds.\u00a0 After all, Ty Cobb on the mound was something no one had ever seen before.<\/p>\n

The results were not that bad.\u00a0 Cobb pitched two innings, giving up three hits and one earned run.<\/p>\n

After 8 innings with the hometown team ahead 6-2, Brownie nation was in for yet another treat.\u00a0 In the top of the 9th<\/sup> inning, first baseman George Sisler came in to nail down the victory for the Browns.\u00a0 He gave up one hit and no runs.\u00a0 So the fans still on hand at Sportsman\u2019s Park by the end of the second game could tell their grandkids that they saw Ty Cobb and George Sisler on the mound in the same game.\u00a0 This was not Sisler\u2019s first appearance on the mound in 1918, as he had pitched 7 innings in a losing (but no-decision) effort against the Yankees just four days before.<\/p>\n

In 1918 some of the Browns fans were surely aware that Sisler had started out as a pitcher.\u00a0 In his rookie year of 1915 he was mostly a position player but he had logged 70 innings on the mound.\u00a0 In 1916 he hurled 27 innings.\u00a0 In 1917 he was strictly a position player.\u00a0 So his 1918 appearances on the mound might have been a bit of a surprise, but they were not unprecedented.\u00a0 Sisler hurled no more that season, but Cobb was not finished.<\/p>\n

The next day the Tigers would close out the season with a double-header at Navin Field (aka Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.\u00a0 If it had been a disappointing season in Detroit, the same was surely true for their opponents, the White Sox.\u00a0 After winning the World Series in 1917, they were well below .500.\u00a0 At day\u2019s end they would finish the season with a 57-67 record, good for 6th<\/sup> place.<\/p>\n

Retrosheet includes a curious editorial comment on the second game.\u00a0 At the beginning of the play-by-play log, it says \u201cFarcical final game of season.\u201d\u00a0 Now what does that mean?\u00a0 My guess would be that with nothing to play for and anxious to get the season over, the pitchers were throwing only fastballs and batters were swinging at anything they could reach.\u00a0 A short game time would verify that, but the box score does not include that statistic.<\/p>\n

Or it could refer to the Tigers starting pitcher, 41-year-old \u201cWild Bill\u201d Donovan, who had been a mainstay of the Tiger pitching staff, winning 140 games from 1903 through 1912, including the Tigers\u2019 pennant years from 1907 through 1909.\u00a0 Managing the Yankees from 1915 through 1917, Donovan pitched in 9 games in 1915, 1 in 1916 and none in 1917.\u00a0 In 1918 he returned to the Tigers as a coach.\u00a0 He pitched in one game, hurling one inning in relief against the White Sox in a July 4th<\/sup> contest at Comiskey Park.<\/p>\n

Donovan\u2019s opposite number was Ed Cicotte, who went the distance, giving up 21 hits but only 7 runs.\u00a0 At day\u2019s end his record was 12-19, but he finished the 1918 season with his integrity intact, which would not be the case in 1919.<\/p>\n

After five innings, Donovan was doing surprisingly well.\u00a0 He had given up just one earned run and the Tigers led by 4.\u00a0 Since he was long past his prime, it was not surprising that he came out of the game, but his replacement was probably a surprise.\u00a0 Tiger fans had likely read about Cobb\u2019s pitching performance in the morning papers.\u00a0 If they wished they could have seen him in action, now they had their chance.<\/p>\n

It was almost a carbon copy of his previous appearance.\u00a0 Two innings pitched, one earned run.\u00a0 Cobb\u2019s back-to-back appearances were highly improbable, but so was the appearance of the next pitcher, Bobby Veach, the Tiger left fielder, who had been with the team since 1912 and had never pitched in a game before.\u00a0 The results were similar to Cobb\u2019s: two innings pitched, just one earned run.\u00a0 In the player shuffling that went on after the 7th<\/sup> inning, Cobb was moved to third base for the first and last time in his long major league career.<\/p>\n

Now let us flash forward seven years.\u00a0 Unlike the 1918 season, the 1925 season was comprised of the usual 154-game schedule, but once again, most teams were just playing out the schedule by the final weekend of the season.\u00a0 That was the case on October 4, 2025, when the Tigers closed out the season with a double-header against the Browns in St. Louis.<\/p>\n

On paper, the two teams were evenly matched.\u00a0 The Browns (82-69) had clinched third place.\u00a0 There was no way they could overtake the second-place A\u2019s, who had already finished the season at 88-64.\u00a0 On the other hand the Tigers (79-73) were in\u00a0 a battle with the White Sox (78-75) for fourth place.\u00a0 No big deal, but by finishing fourth they could stay they were in the first division, which used to mean something in an eight-team league before divisional play came along.<\/p>\n

But there was more at stake.\u00a0 In those days the first division teams shared in the proceeds of the World Series.\u00a0 They second, third, and fourth-place teams might have been also rans, but they were competing for 7.5%, 5% and 2.5% of the take, respectively.\u00a0 Given major league salaries at the time, it was not a bad year-end bonus \u2013 particularly for fringe players.<\/p>\n

After a 10-4 victory in the first game of the October 4th<\/sup> double-header, however, the Tigers were 80-73 and had clinched fourth place.\u00a0 So there was nothing left to play for in the second game.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how many of the estimated 12,000 fans were still around by the end of the second game, but those who stuck it out saw a unique moment in baseball history.\u00a0 Detroit starter Lil Stoner and Browns starter Ed Stauffer had been swapped out for a couple of rookies, Ownie Carroll for the Tigers, Chet Falk (brother of Bibb Falk) for the Browns.\u00a0 In the top of the 7th<\/sup> inning, the Tigers had a lead of 11-5.\u00a0 It\u2019s possible a number of fans were getting up to leave and head home for Sunday dinner.\u00a0 If so, a lot of them probably changed their mind when they saw who was coming in to pitch for the Browns.\u00a0 George Sisler pitched the seventh and eighth innings, yielding just one hit, one walk and no runs.\u00a0 But that was not the only surprise of the day.\u00a0 In the bottom of the 8th<\/sup> inning, Ty Cobb took the mound for the Tigers.<\/p>\n

Of course, today we marvel at the fact that two Hall of Famers \u2013 position players, mind you \u2013 were competing against one another as pitchers.\u00a0 Of course, the Hall of Fame didn\u2019t exist in 1925, so the fans in attendance at the game couldn\u2019t conceive of that.<\/p>\n

But there was more.\u00a0 In 1925 both Sisler and Cobb were player-managers. \u00a0One wonders if Cobb would have taken the mound if Sisler had not done so.\u00a0 Cobb hit into a double-play to end the top of the 8th<\/sup>, so perhaps he was hoping to face Sisler.\u00a0 The Browns went three-up, three-down in the bottom of the 8th<\/sup> and Sisler was due up in the 9th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the game was curtailed on account of darkness, so we\u2019ll never know how that Cobb versus Sisler confrontation would have played out.<\/p>\n

So the fans in Sportsman\u2019s Park who stuck it out had seen a game unique in baseball history.\u00a0 Two player-managers, both former batting champions, both of whom had hit .400 twice, had inserted themselves into the game as pitchers.\u00a0 How many fans were aware that the two men had also appeared as pitchers in the same game in 1918?<\/p>\n

The lesson for baseball fans is clear.\u00a0 Don\u2019t turn your nose up at \u201cmeaningless\u201d games.\u00a0 On any given day you might witness baseball history.<\/p>\n

It was true 100 years ago and it\u2019s true today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given George Sisler\u2019s 15-year career and lifetime .340 batting average, it is a bit surprising that he had but two American League batting championships \u2013 and he had to hit more than .400 (.407 in 1920 and .420 in 1922) to obtain them.\u00a0 The competition was stiff in those days, and one of Sisler\u2019s regular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-top-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34719,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34716\/revisions\/34719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}