Background
Lynwood Thomas Rowe was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Thomas D. Rowe, a circus trapeze performer and railroad man. He grew up in El Dorado, Arkansas.
Lynwood Thomas Rowe was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Thomas D. Rowe, a circus trapeze performer and railroad man. He grew up in El Dorado, Arkansas.
He attended Hugh Goodwin Elementary School and El Dorado High School, where he was All-State at basketball, football, and baseball, and interscholastic golf champion, before embarking on a career in baseball. In a Church League semipro game he bested his high school coach, Alva Waddell, which prompted a headline in the El Dorado Daily News: "Schoolboy Beats Teacher. " The nickname "Schoolboy" followed him throughout his career.
In 1932, Rowe was signed by Eddie Goosetree, scout for the Detroit Tigers. In his only minor-league season, at Beaumont of the Texas League, the six-foot, four-inch right-hander compiled a 19-7 record. He joined the Tigers in 1933 and played under Bucky Harris. His first major-league game was a 3-0 shutout of the Chicago White Sox. Rowe finished his first season in the majors with a 7-4 record and a 3. 58 earned run average. The following season proved to be his finest in the major leagues; he led the Tigers from a fifth-place finish to the World Series, the highlight of the season being his sixteen-game winning streak, which tied an American League record shared by Walter Johnson (1912), Joe Wood (1912), and Lefty Grove (1931).
On August 29 his attempt to break the record, by recording a seventeenth consecutive victory, brought 33, 318 to Shibe Park in Philadelphia. But Rowe lasted only six innings and lost the game. His season record was twenty-four wins and eight losses. In the second game of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, he won in twelve innings and retired twenty-two consecutive batters, a World Series record that stood until New York Yankee Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956. On the morning of the sixth game he showed up with a swollen pitching hand and proceeded to lose the game, 4-3. Throughout the game he was harassed by the Cardinal players because of a statement he had made on a local radio interview. At the end of that radio program, he had asked, "How'm I doin', Edna?" In 1935, Rowe, with a record of 19-13, again led the Tigers to the World Series and, this time, a world championship.
In 1936 he won nineteen games but developed a sore arm that plagued him for the rest of his career. After a dismal season in 1937 and two ineffective starts in April of the following season, he was sent to Beaumont, Tex. He completed a successful comeback with Detroit in 1940, when he led the American League with a 16-3 record. He also pitched in his third and last World Series, dropping two games to the champion Cincinnati Reds.
His career with the Tigers ended in April 1942, when he was sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers for $15, 000. After spending most of that season in the minors at Montreal, he was sold to the Philadelphia Phillies. He had a 14-8 record with the Phillies in 1943 and then spent two years in the navy. After the war Rowe returned to the Phillies for the final four years of his major-league playing career. In 1949 he asked for his release. The following year he played his last baseball game, for the San Diego club of the Pacific Coast League.
In 1951 he managed an Eastern League farm club at Williamsport, Pa. During the 1954 and 1955 seasons Rowe served as a pitching coach with Detroit. Beginning in 1957, he was a scout for Detroit in charge of locating talent in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and eastern Texas. Rowe died in El Dorado, Ark. His death was reported with front-page headlines in Detroit.
Rowe was extremely superstitious. He carried amulets and talismans, and, although a right-hander, would always pick up his glove with the left hand. His "color" was epitomized by his constant talking to the baseball. Before delivering a pitch, he was known to wrap his fingers around the ball and say to it, "Edna, honey, let's go. " He rode an overpowering fastball, a quick-breaking curve, and a change of pace through fifteen seasons in the majors. Much of his success he credited to his confidence in catcher Mickey Cochrane.
On October 11, 1934, Rowe married Edna Mary Skinner. They had two children.