Cobb Caught
Tigers at White Sox, April 16, 1908
Cobb Caught
You can’t win them all. Cobb certainly didn’t in this one.
Ty Cobb was caught stealing no less than 2 times in this thriller. One wonders if the Tigers would have broken it open had he been a little bit less eager to run.
The White Sox took advantage of poor Tiger pitching to take an early lead. Patsy Dougherty came up with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the 3rd and managed to draw a walk.
Cobb’s Revenge
You can never keep Cobb down, though. After being caught stealing twice, Cobb came up in the top of the 6th with a runner on second and two outs. He hit one so wickedly to Ed Hahn in right that he caused an error, allowing Boss Schmidt to score. And now we were tied at 1.
Detroit got that final run over in the top of the 7th on a single by Germany Schaefer. True to today’s theme, Schaefer was then thrown out trying to steal second in an attempt to open up a larger lead.
And that was it for this one — a close game, but a quiet one at that.
7 men were caught stealing in this one, with only 1 successful steal. Both pitchers went the distance. And, true to form, we saw 2 sacrifice hits — though that’s probably low for me in the deadball era.
Real Life
The Tigers won this one in 10 innings in real life, in a game that was downright cold. Here’s a snippet from the original Chicago Tribune article:
Of course, no 1908 reporting would be complete without our favorite cartoons. This one gives you an idea of just how cold it really was:
Real fans have always been real fans, even as far back as 1908.
Daniel, interesting and well-written post. I appreciate your research into original newspaper source material from the 1908 season. I have set-up a replay of another dead ball season--1916 AL--using NP III. With one exception, so far the results are pretty much on target.: low scoring game with dominant pitching. The one exception is that a disproportionately large percentage of runners are caught stealing . In real life, according to both Baseball Reference and Retrosheet, the stolen base success percentage was 76.7%. In my replay, it's only 38.9%. Even accounting for the possibility of data challenges from that era, this does seem to be off significantly. It looks like the same thing may be happening in your 1908 replay. Comments?
Daniel, your points are well taken. My sample size is certainly small, only 8 games. So, it's possible that things could change as I play more games. You're also correct, that record keeping way back in the early 20th century was less than perfect.
My only dead ball replay experience prior to this one was of the 1908 AL in Diamond Mind (v7) using an excellent home brewed database put together by Chris Joyce and Norm Price. As with all of my season replays, I managed for both teams (except for base running on hits and fly outs). I called stolen bases myself. In that replay there were 1316 successful steals out of 1882 attempts (69.9% success rate). That comports very closely with the 1350 in the AL in "real life"according to Baseball Reference and DMB's estimate of a 67% success rate for the "average" runner. Baseball Reference has no caught stealing numbers for the AL in 1908. Apparently, that stat was not kept in 1908. It appears that it was added by 1916.
Of course, even when specific stats were officially tabulated, imperfections sometimes occurred. Ten or 15 years ago I attended a panel at a SABR convention in which an author presented a paper indicating that Hack Wilson's record-setting RBI total in 1930 was actually 191 rather than the 190 it was thought to be for decades. The author combed box scores and newspaper accounts of the Cubs' games in 1930 and was able to convince the powers that be that Wilson had previously been shorted an RBI and the record was officially changed thanks to his efforts.
Daniel, I'm sure you'll agree that we baseball season replayers are a rare breed indeed. At age 79 (I'll turn 80 in July) I just hope that we're not also a dying breed. Before I retired, I conducted market research in the TV industry. Once before I moderated a focus group I showed my client (a dedicated baseball fan, but not a replyer) what I was doing with DMB. Coincidentally, I was engaged in my 1908 AL replay. He could only describe it as "dead man's rotisserie baseball."