If the late Frank J. Navin had any confidence in William Yawkey's knowledge of baseball, Walter Johnson would have joined Detroit instead of Washington. Yawkey, who owned the Detroit club at the time, walked into Navin's office one morning and handed him a letter from a friend of his, advising Yawkey to buy the "best pitcher in the country." Navin scoffed.
"Where is this phenom pitching?" asked Navin.
"It says here in the letter that he's pitching independent ball out in Weiser, Idaho," Yawkey told him.
"This friend of yours, what does he do?"
"He's a cigar salesman. He travels all around the west."
"So you want me to go to the expense of sending a scout out there on the word of a cigar salesman?" said Navin as he pigeon-holed the letter. Navin never ignored a tip after that, but unfortunately there were no more Johnsons setting the prairie leagues on fire.
--H.G. Salsinger, "Tigers Spurned Johnson For Free," Baseball Digest, August 1946
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Amidst pennant fever, there appeared in Washington in his big league debut a gawky, six-foot, two-inch right-hander who had started in southern California as a catcher and ahd been discovered in the Idaho bushes by a traveling cigar salesman. The cigar drummer had passed word that the hayseed, now a pitcher, had thrown 72 innings without allowing a run. Walter Perry Johnson was extremely long-armed and with his slingshot delivery had shocking speed, along with good control. At nineteen he broke in against the Tigers on an August day.
Routinely Cobb inspected all new players, even rookies, before facing them. After watching Johnson warm up, he told Jennings, "Have everybody stand deep in the box today. This farmer throws out of his hip pocket so fast that you can't follow it."
As for Cobb, he bunted, and the rookie misfielded the bunts. Cobb also did the usual on the base paths, and Detroit beat Johnson, 3-2. That night, Cobb said, he urged Navin as follows: "Get this kid even if it costs you twenty-five thousand dollars. That's the best arm I've ever seen. He's so fast it scared me. When he learnes a curve, nobody can stop him."
Big Train Johnson never did find an outstanding curve, yet the quiet man became a pistonlike career winner of 416 games [he actually won 417 games], threw 110 shutouts , and once rang up 16 consecutive decisions. "All he did for the next twenty years was beat Detroit," said Cobb, sarcastically, long afterward. "Jackass Navin did nothing to sign him when Johnson was still available."
--Al Stump, Cobb: A Biography, 1994
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Tigers staff ace Wild Bill Donovan after witnessing Walter Johnson's debut:
"It is no wonder to me that Johnson pitched 85 innings without allowing a run and struck out 166 men in twelve games up in Idaho," he said. "It is only a wonder to me that he didn't strike out every one of those bushers up there. He has remarkable speed and a great shoot on his fast ball, and to tell you the truth, he is the best raw pitcher I have ever seen. If nothing happens to that fellow, he will be a greater pitcher in two years than Mathewson ever dared to be. Mark that prediction. Look at that build. Nineteen years old. Well, I guess that fellow won't improve within a year or two."
Several of the Tigers went to Frank Navin, the team's president, urging him to buy Johnson at once. "Even if he costs you $25,000, get him." Cobb told Navin, but the frugal ex-accountant just looked at his star as though he were crazy.
--Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, 1995