Baseball Drives Couple To Divorce

While researching the previous story about traffic signals, there was this unusual story in the New York Daily News of February 16, 1920.

Baseball Leads to Split in Cohn Household
Stamford, Conn. Feb. 15

BASEBALL shattered to smithereens domestic felicity In the Cohn household: it has developed in the Superior Court at Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Mildred Cohn, of Norton, Conn. in suing her husband, Edwin E. Cohn of New York (ed. – actually Stamford, CT) , for divorce, stated in affidavits that his overwhelming love for the great national pastime caused him to desert her, and that in order to find him she was compelled to tour the entire major league circuit and watch the ball park exits in hope of picking up her husband’s trail, Mrs. Cohn hald that after November, 1915, when her husband first deserted her, she wrote to numerous major league club presidents with whom Cohn was acquainted, and that finally Connie Mack informed her Cohn was in the Sleepy City (Philadelphia). There she found him.

Mrs. Cohn obtained her divorce.

4 points on lax journalism:

a) It was probably more than baseball that caused Cohn to abandon his wife.

b) With thousands of fans, how in the world did Philadelphia manager and club president Connie Mack know Edwin Cohn?

c) With 16 teams, how could Mildred Cohn afford to go in person to check on 14 ballparks around the country? (The Yankees and Giants shared the Polo Grounds and the Cardinals and Browns both used Sportsman’s Park)

d) What did Mr. Cohn do for a living enabling him to spend his daytime hours watching baseball?

The answers are all lost to history.

The Chicago Tribune’s Mark Anthony published a poem to Edwin Cohn a week after the divorce.