Detroit Tigers replacement players (May 18, 1912)

The Detroit Tigers replacement players represented the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball (MLB) in a May 18, 1912 game against the Philadelphia Athletics.

On May 15, 1912, after a game against the New York Yankees in New York, Tigers star Ty Cobb was taunted by a fan named Claude Lueker. According to several accounts, Lueker triggered Cobb's anger by calling him "a half nigger". According to another version, Lueker also yelled at Cobb, "your sisters screw niggers" and "your mother is a whore." Cobb leapt into the stands where he assaulted Lueker. Lueker was unable to defend himself, having lost one hand and three fingers from the other hand in an industrial accident. When fans yelled at Cobb that the man had no hands, Cobb shouted back, "I don't care if he has no feet!" American League president Ban Johnson responded by suspending Cobb indefinitely.

Cobb's teammates voted to strike, declaring that they would not take the field until Cobb was reinstated. It was the first strike in baseball history. Johnson refused to back down and told Detroit owner Frank Navin that the team would be fined $5,000 for every game in which they failed to field a team.

Navin ordered manager Hughie Jennings to find players willing to take the field. The Tigers were on the road in Philadelphia, and so Jennings recruited eight replacement players from a neighborhood in North Philadelphia. Each man was paid $25 or $50. The Athletics set a team scoring record in defeating the replacement Tigers by a score of 24 to 2, tallying 26 hits, 42 total bases, and ten stolen bases (five by Eddie Collins). The Tigers' starting pitcher, Allan Travers, was a college student who became a Catholic priest and later confessed he had never pitched in his life.

The Tigers' manager Hughie Jennings (age 43) and coaches Joe Sugden (age 41) and Deacon McGuire (age 48), each of whom previously had long and distinguished careers as players, also played in the May 18 game for the Tigers. For all three men, it was their only playing appearance of the 1912 season. Jennings played in only one more major league game, in 1918. It was the final game of both Sugden's and McGuire's careers. The unplanned appearance raised McGuire's career total to 26 seasons, a record that was not surpassed until 1993 by Nolan Ryan. McGuire, who became the last player born during the American Civil War to appear in a major league game, recorded two fielding assists in the game for a career total of 1,859, which remains the all-time record for catchers.

After the embarrassing display, Johnson met personally with the striking players and told them they would be banned for life if the strike continued. Cobb urged his teammates to end the strike, and they complied. Accordingly, the major league careers of the replacement Tigers players lasted one game.