Mickey Cochrane (left) and Joe Louis
Pete Fox doubled home a run in the bottom of the 1st inning, to put the Tigers ahead. Billy Herman singled home a run to tie it in the top of the 3rd. Tiger pitcher Tommy Bridges helped his own cause with an RBI groundout in the 4th. Herman hit a home run in the 5th, putting the Cubs up, 3-2. In the 6th, Billy Rogell doubled, and was singled home by Marv Owen, tying the game.
With the game still tied 3-3 going into the top of the 9th, Cub 3rd baseman Stan Hack led off with a triple. Bridges struck out Billy Jurges. Cub manager Charlie Grimm let pitcher Larry French, who was sitting on a complete game, bat for himself.
This might not have been a terrible decision: He had singled in the 5th, and scored on Herman's homer. Although he batted just .141 in the regular season, he did have 5 RBIs, and all he had to do was get the ball out of the infield. But he grounded back to Bridges, who held Hack at 3rd, and threw French out. To this day, no pitcher has driven in the winning run in the 9th inning of a postseason-clinching game.
Bridges then got Augie Galan to fly to left. The Cubs had 3 chances to score Hack from 3rd, 2 of them without a hit, and failed. In the Cubs' 108-year World Series drought, this failure is not one of the more well-remembered. It should be.
With 1 out in the bottom of the 9th, Mickey Cochrane, the Tigers' manager and catcher, beat out an infield single to 2nd base. Charlie Gehringer grounded to 1st, allowing Gehringer to advance. And Goose Goslin singled to right, scoring Cochrane, to win 4-3, giving Detroit its 1st World Championship in any sport.
Together, Gehringer, Goslin, and slugging 1st baseman Hank Greenberg were known as the "G-Men," in reference to their initials, and also to the "Government Men," as agents of the newly-prominent FBI called themselves.
The World Series win was a long time in coming for Frank Navin, the Tigers' owner. He had been appointed the team's bookkeeper in 1902. The following year, with money supposedly won in a card game, he bought $5,000 worth of stock in the team, and made himself, effectively, the general manager, building a team that won the Pennant in 1907, 1908 and 1909 -- but lost the World Series each time.
Main owner Samuel Angus got tired of losing money, and told Navin to find a buyer. He found William H. Yawkey, and, together, they bought the Tigers from Angus. Yawkey became a silent partner, and let Navin run the team, until Yawkey died in 1919. He left his vast lumber-company fortune to his adopted son, Tom Yawkey, who later bought the Boston Red Sox.
In 1927, Navin sold Yawkey's interest in the team to automaker Walter Briggs. Navin built the Tigers into Pennant winners again in 1934, losing the Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. Their 1935 win was especially sweet to him: Of the AL's charter franchises, only the Tigers and the St. Louis Browns had never won a World Series. The Browns wouldn't until 1966, after having been the Baltimore Orioles since 1954.
On November 13, 1935, just 37 days after winning the title, Navin was riding a horse at the Detroit Riding and Hunt Club, and fell. It's not clear whether he would have lived if he hadn't fallen from the horse. He was dead at age 64.
Briggs bought out Navin's heirs, expanded Navin Field, and renamed it Briggs Stadium. Under his tenure, they won the Pennant in 1940 and the World Series in 1945. He died in 1952. His son, Walter "Spike" Briggs Jr., sold them to John Fetzer in 1956. In 1961, Fetzer renamed the ballpark Tiger Stadium, and oversaw their 1968 World Series win.
Their 1935 World Series win was followed on December 15 by the Detroit Lions winning the 1935 NFL Championship. And that was followed on April 11, 1936, by the Detroit Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup. So, in a span of a little more than 6 months, Detroit won the titles of all 3 major league sports at once.
The addition of the NBA in 1946, making 4 major league sports, might have made winning 3 of the 4 more likely, but it's still an incredibly rare achievement. The only other time it's happened was in New York: The Yankees won the World Series in October 1927, the Giants won the NFL Championship in December, and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in April 1928.
(The Jets won on January 12, 1969, and the Mets on October 16, 1969; but by the time the Knicks won on May 8, 1970, the Jets had already been succeeded as World Champions. Still, 3 titles in 16 months is an extraordinary achievement.)
Baltimore almost did it in 1971, with the Colts winning the Super Bowl while the Orioles were titleholders, but the Bullets lost the NBA Finals. Boston almost did it in 2008: The Celtics won while the Red Sox were titleholders, but the Patriots lost the Super Bowl. Tampa Bay almost did it in 2020-21, as the Buccaneers and Lightning won, but the Rays lost the World Series.
Pittsburgh has never done it. The Pirates and Steelers both went all the way in 1979, but the Penguins didn't cooperate. The Steelers and the Penguins did it in 2009, but not the Pirates. Philadelphia has never done it: The city reached all 4 finals between May 1980 and January 1981, but only the Phillies won. Chicago has never done it: The Bears won the title in December 1933 and the Black Hawks in April 1934, but neither the Cubs nor the White Sox could win the Pennant.
Los Angeles has never done it: For all the titles the Lakers have won, only 3 have come in years when another L.A.-area team has won: The Dodgers in 1988 and 2020, and the Angels in 2002. The San Francisco Bay Area has never done it. The Oakland Athletics won in October 1974, and the Golden State Warriors in May 1975, but the Raiders lost the AFC Championship Game in January 1975. Both the 49ers and the A's won in 1989, but the Golden State Warriors could not oblige. The San Francisco Giants won in October 2014, and the Warriors in June 2015, but both area NFL teams flopped.
The Red Wings added another Stanley Cup in April 1937. Two months later, the Alabama-born, Detroit-raised boxer Joe Louis won the Heavyweight Championship of the World. So Detroit became known as "The City of Champions," long before that tag was given to Pittsburgh in the late 1970s and Boston in the 2000s.
The last survivor of the 1935 Tigers was Elden Auker, a submarine-style pitcher, who lived until 2006, enabling him to write the last baseball memoir of the period, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms; and to give interviews to Major League Baseball Productions that were used for the 1999 Major League Baseball All-Century Team broadcast, The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players special the same year, the 2001 special honoring the 100th Anniversary of the American League, and various YES Network Yankeeography installments.
UPDATE: The Cubs have a team Hall of Fame. Inducted from their 1935 Pennant winners have been catcher Charles "Gabby" Hartnett, 1st baseman Phil Cavarretta, 2nd baseman Billy Herman, 3rd baseman Stan Hack, right fielder Hazen "Kiki" Cuyler, pitcher Charlie Root, manager Charlie Grimm, team owner Philip K. Wrigley, executive Margaret Donahue, and public address announcer Pat Pieper.
The Tigers do not have a team Hall of Fame, but they honor their Hall of Fame players on the outfield wall at Comerica Park. From the 1934 Pennant winners and the 1935 World Champions, they honor 1st baseman Hank Greenberg, 2nd baseman Charlie Gehringer, left fielder Leon "Goose" Goslin, and catcher-manager Gordon "Mickey" Cochrane.
Along with 3rd baseman Billy Rogell, pitchers Tommy Bridges and Lynwood "Schoolboy" Rowe, team owners Frank Navin and Walter Briggs, scout Wish Egan, and broadcaster Edwin "Ty" Tyson, they are also in the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.
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October 7, 1935 was a Monday. It was the 1st Monday in October, the beginning of the annual session of the Supreme Court of the United States. They had just moved into their present building. I have a separate entry for that event.
But the World Series clincher was the only score on this historic day. The NBA hadn't been founded yet, the NHL season's start was a few days away, and the NFL did not play. There would be no Monday Night Football for another 35 years.
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