Sport: The Guileful Magician - TIME
John Parsons
Updated on March 22, 2026
It was the year the largest diamond was discovered, yellow fever broke out in New Orleans, and George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession was banned from Broadway. But in the inbred lore of baseball, 1905 will always be the year in which Manager Bill Armour of the Detroit Tigers, on a sultry afternoon in August, beckoned to a gawky, 18-year-old rookie who had arrived just the day before from Augusta, Ga. "Hey, Cobb," he shouted, "look alive, and start warming up. You take Dick Cooley's place in centerfield today.'
The first time he came...
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