World Series

Henry Ford, who had paid $100,000 for radio-broadcast rights, changed seats in his family box to avoid photographers. Babe Ruth sat in the Press box with a white carnation in his buttonhole. In Detroit, Matthew Golden, of Old Saybrook, Conn., proudly announced that he was 72 and had not missed a game since 1903. In Chicago, one George Alms slept on the sidewalk in a tar-paper bag to keep his place at the head of a ticket line. It was the "World Series," between the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, for the professional baseball championship of the U. S. Before it was over it had set three records for events of its kind. It was the coldest anyone could remember. It drew such huge crowds-close to 50,000 for each game-that players got a bigger bonus than ever before: $6,831 for each of the winners. It produced the weirdest alibi ever offered by a losing team: "demoralization," brought on by abuse from an umpire.

The umpire was big, beefy, loud-voiced George Moriarty, one of the four chosen for the event each year (two from each major league, to insure impartiality). The team was the Cubs. In the sixth inning of the third game, played in Chicago, Umpire Moriarty, who functions in the American League during the regular season, called the National League Cubs' First Baseman Phil Cavarretta out in a close play at second base. When the Cubs protested. Umpire Moriarty retaliated by roundly abusing the whole team, ordering Manager Charles Grimm off the field. After the game Manager Grimm made the remark that came closest to being the 1935 World Series classic: "If a manager can't go out and make a decent kick, what the hell is the game coming to? I didn't swear at him but he swore at us." Said Coach John Corriden: ''He was guilty of antagonizing and demoralizing our ball club. . . ." Coach Roy Johnson accused Umpire Moriarty of making improper reflections on the Cubs' ancestry. Said the National League's President Ford Frick: "Moriarty used blasphemous language. . . ." Next day, baseball's Tsar Kenesaw Mountain Landis held a conference with all principals involved, announced he might do something when the Series ended.

It started in Detroit. The Cubs won the first game, 3-to-0, behind the able pitching of Arkansas' Lon Warneke, who allowed only four hits, equaled a World Series record by making eight assists. The Tigers won the second, 8-to-3, in an icy wind. Next day, in Chicago, the Cubs' demoralization ended in the nth inning, 6-to-5 for the Tigers. When, behind the expert pitching of Alvin Crowder. a seasoned, crafty right-hander who had pitched in two World Series before but never won a game, the Tigers took the fourth game, 2-to-1, on Chicago errors, gamblers made them a 6-to-1 favorite. Needing three games in a row to win, the Cubs took the fifth, like the first a pitching duel between Warneke and Detroit's famed Arkansan, Schoolboy Rowe, 3-to-1, mainly on the strength of a homerun by their Right Fielder Chuck Klein, and the teams moved back to Detroit to end their business.

In the first half of the ninth inning of the sixth game, Detroit's skinny little right-handed Pitcher Tommy Bridges got into a tight spot when the first Chicago batter made a three-base hit. He wriggled out of it by getting the next three men out in order. In the last half of the inning, with one out, Detroit's Catcher-Manager Mickey Cochrane cracked out a single, reached second while the next man was being thrown out. With two out and the score 3-3, Detroit's Left Fielder Goose Goslin then hit a single into right field. Ending inning, game and Series, Cochrane ran home with the winning run: the first World Series won by Detroit in baseball history.

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