Terror in the City of Champions (35 page)

In early December former heavyweight champ Max Schmeling of Germany turned up at Pompton Lakes to watch Joe Louis train. The undefeated Louis was a worldwide sensation, the “uncrowned champion” of boxing. He was preparing for a December 13 match against Paulino Uzcudun of Spain. Jimmy “Cinderella Man” Braddock remained champion. Louis, at 22–0, ranked as the top contender. Schmeling was behind him.

Schmeling studied the Detroit boxer as he punished a series of sparring partners. He claimed to be unimpressed, but he was just playing mind games with Louis. Schmeling said he worried that Uzcudun or Charley Retzlaff, Louis’s January opponent, might land a lucky punch, floor Louis, and derail their plans for the summer bout to determine who would face Braddock. Paul Gallico asked Schmeling what Hitler would do if “Massa Joe” defeated him. Schmeling laughed and said Hitler had greater concerns.

On Friday, December 13, Louis knocked out Uzcudun in the fourth round before 19,900 fans at Madison Square Garden. Schmeling was in the crowd. Afterward Uzcudun said, “Nobody can hit like Louis, and nobody can lick him. That goes for Max Schmeling, too. I know. I fought both.” Meanwhile boxing legend Jack Dempsey was looking to train a man who could take on Louis. “There isn’t a fighter in the game right now who can lay a glove on Joe, so I’m going out and find me a white hope to develop,” he said. “Do you know how long Max Schmeling will last with Joe? . . . Less than one round.”

Four days before the football championship between the Lions and the defending title-holding New York Giants, tickets went on sale at three locations: the cigar counter at the Book-Cadillac Hotel, the University of Detroit Stadium, and Watkins Cigar Store in the Fisher Building. They went quickly, but the game did not sell out. For the first time the Lions sequestered themselves for practices, holding sessions in secret at the State Fair Grounds. The title game would mark the return of Harry Newman, the onetime star quarterback of the Michigan Wolverines. Prior to Hank Greenberg, Newman had been the state’s best-known Jewish athlete. He now played in New York’s backfield.

On Sunday it snowed, sleeted, and rained at the football stadium, making the field a muddy, slippery mess. The poor weather held down attendance, listed at 12,000 in one account and 17,000 in another. Before the game one Lions team owner announced that a bonus of fifty-five dollars would be paid to any Lion who blocked a kick. (Three would.) Fans endured a cold, wet two hours in the open-air bleachers.

The lighter, younger, quicker Detroit team scored minutes into the game when Art Gutowsky spun into the end zone untouched. The game was lopsided, more so on the field than in the score. The Lions won 26–7. “New York was no match,” said Salsinger. The victory, following the Tigers’ title and the announcement by the Associated Press that Joe Louis was Outstanding Athlete of 1935, added to the city’s momentum. Organizers of the annual Goodfellows Christmas newspaper sale capitalized on the attention, bringing together Cochrane, Louis, and Lions coach Potsy Clark to sell papers to benefit poor children.

“Detroit is a City of Champions,” trumpeted a
Free Press
editorial. “And so are we all proud to be citizens of a city that has so justly vindicated its name of Detroit the Dynamic.” The only thing that could make it better would be for the hockey team to win.

Frank Navin’s gift to Mickey Cochrane of a cow pony arrived weeks after his death. It came from Beaumont, Texas, where the Tigers had a minor league team. His name was Texas Ranger. In autumn Cochrane had been hunting on horseback in Wyoming and had discovered he enjoyed riding. Convinced Cochrane needed a horse, Navin had vowed to buy him one. In Michigan, before the baseball season, Cochrane put on his jodhpurs and rode Texas Ranger daily. He boarded the animal at Detroit Riding and Hunt Club, traversing the same trails where his friend, boss, and mentor had died.

The outdoors appealed to Cochrane. He liked wide-open spaces. He and his wife bought a 224-acre farm on a lake in Commerce Township, thirty miles from their city home. He hoped it would be a refuge during the hot, hectic days of the baseball season. He would need one.

Cochrane was intent on acquiring his friend and former Philadelphia teammate Al Simmons from the White Sox, who were managed by another of his Philadelphia teammates, Jimmy Dykes. Cochrane and Simmons were pals. They were so close that after the 1934 World Series Mickey and Mary, along with Cy Perkins, went with Al and his new wife on a meandering cross-country drive from Arkansas to Los Angeles and then by boat to Hawaii for a belated honeymoon. Cochrane evidently doubted the stories coming out of Chicago about Simmons being a bad influence on other players. But Dykes would be happy to be rid of him, recalling how Simmons had demoralized the younger men as the team departed on a road trip while in first place. “When we got on the train,” Dykes recalled, “Al came into the dining car, looked around, and with a broad grin said to those kids, ‘Well, we’re going east in first place, but we’ll be coming home in last.’ Wasn’t that a hell of a thing for an old timer to tell a bunch of kids?”

Simmons was born Aloysius Szymanski. If, as was sometimes reported, he changed his name to cover his Polish ancestry, like little Joey Roginski, he failed at it, for references to Simmons often described him as a Pole, usually prefaced by a modifier: the Milwaukee Pole, the grinning Pole, the swaggering Pole, or whatever other descriptor flashed in a writer’s mind. In his prime Simmons rated with the best hitters in baseball. For eleven straight seasons he had driven in at least one hundred runs. Twice he had won the batting title. Four times he had been a top-five vote getter in Most Valuable Player balloting. Since the advent of the All-Star Game he had been selected every year. But last year with Chicago his production had plummeted. Cochrane hoped his chum would show a bit of his former brilliance. Simmons would be turning thirty-four soon and his best days were likely behind him.

The Tigers’ purchase of Simmons, rumored for a year, materialized in late 1935. Walter O. Briggs spent $75,000 to get him. Though the club cut his salary from $25,000 to $15,000, Simmons would still make more than almost anyone else on the team, save for Cochrane and the unsigned Hank Greenberg. He would make more than Charlie Gehringer, and more than Pete Fox and Gee Walker combined. Cochrane felt Simmons would strengthen the club in its pursuit of a third straight pennant. Other teams had bolstered their rosters. The Red Sox had added Jimmie Foxx. The Yankees had promoted a phenom named Joe DiMaggio. Simmons was Detroit’s answer.

But his signing stirred dissension. Many Tigers expected to be rewarded handsomely for their championship season. What if their pay didn’t rise to the levels they anticipated? What if the team claimed poverty after shelling out big money for Simmons? What of the three outfielders—Fox, Walker, and Jo-Jo White—who had played significant roles and who would be losing playing time? And what about Simmons’s close relationship with Cochrane? How would all of this work?

In late December Charles Lindbergh and his family left New York in secret, sailing to England under aliases because he felt unsafe in America. Col. Pickert weighed in on this bit of international news. “Had I known he was moving to England,” Pickert said, “I’d have asked him to come to Detroit. Hoodlums and their ilk will not be permitted to operate here and they know it.”

Not two weeks earlier Rudolph Anderson had turned up dead. Anderson had worked at the Mistersky power plant with Dayton Dean and Harvey Davis. The plant was where Davis had put in motion the joy killing of Silas Coleman. Anderson was discovered outside his car, a bullet through his heart, a rifle and a spent shell at his side. His body was found along the edge of Baby Creek Park, where police had disrupted plans for the Albert Bates death parade. Col. Pickert’s detectives ruled Anderson’s death a suicide.

The Black Legion was getting braver and brasher. Police had twice arrested legionnaires with robes and guns in August 1935. Both times the charges had disappeared. Such developments reinforced members’ beliefs that the legion had well-placed friends. Maybe talk of a September 16 government takeover was more than bluster.

P
ART
III
:
J
OY AND
T
ERROR

1936

Case Closed

As the Ecorse, Michigan, elections approached, the Black Legion stepped up activities against Mayor Voisine. The odd couple of Dayton Dean and Harvey Davis went to Hartridge’s Beer Garden one night to meet with township clerk Jesse Pettijohn. A group of fifteen to twenty legion members gathered at the bar. They pushed together several tables. Dean had agreed to kill Voisine, but the specifics hadn’t been fleshed out. The general plan called for Dean to shoot Voisine and for legionnaires to block streets and traffic, allowing him to escape after the assassination. Downstairs in the men’s room Davis was chatting with Pettijohn. Both stopped talking when Dean appeared in the doorway. Pettijohn had never met him. Davis introduced Dean as “the one that is here to do the job.” Dean asked if Voisine had been located. He hadn’t. This news allowed Dean to play the tough guy.

“I did not come here to fool,” he said. “All these men are in town here. I have orders to kill Voisine. It has got to be carried out. I do not want to be coming down here and putting ourselves on the spot . . . all the time. You are the man that wants him killed. He is your man, and it is up to you to find him. And we will do the job down here.” Pettijohn went upstairs and made phone calls trying to get a bead on Voisine. The plot didn’t come together that night.

On another evening Davis and two legionnaires accompanied Dean to a village council meeting. They pointed out Voisine. Clarence Oliver, one of his black supporters, gave the mayor a glowing endorsement that night. Afterward the legionnaires fired a bullet into Oliver’s home. Davis thought Dean should bomb the mayor in a public place. Dean rejected that scheme, fearing he would be caught or injure himself. Shooting was the way to go, they agreed. They hoped racketeers would be blamed for Voisine’s murder.

Whenever Dean went to Ecorse he was accompanied by at least one and often two or three other legionnaires. They tried Hartridge’s Beer Garden several times. They tried the Rumanian Hall, also known as the Seventh Street Hall. They tried Bill Boyne’s place close to the shipbuilding yards. They could never locate Voisine. Nearer to the election Pettijohn, Davis, and a third man, whose wife was working as a nurse in the Voisine home, showed up at Dean’s house. By this point Dean, permanently separated from his wife, was staying with his mother and stepfather at their place on Twenty-Third Street. Dean’s two children lived with them. Dean came out to the car and was told this would be the night. Voisine would be at a budget meeting. Later Dean and company headed to Ecorse again. They stopped at Pettijohn’s grocery. Dean met with him in a small back room where he learned the budget meeting had been canceled. It was almost as if Voisine knew ahead of time when Dean was coming to town. Possibly Voisine’s spy was tipping him off. They drove past Voisine’s house repeatedly. Dean got out with his guns once and knocked on the door. No answer. He looked in the windows but Voisine wasn’t home.