10/10/2007 Ty Cobb, the Man Behind the Statistics In this age of athletes being vilified for taking performance enhancing substances, sports fans tend to look back to the good old days of the heroes who have been idolized over the now century of organized sports. One such hero, although many modern devotees of the game of baseball characterize him as an anti-hero, is Tyrus Raymond (Ty) Cobb. Ty Cobb began playing for the Detroit Tigers of the American League on August 30, 1905. He retired from the game in 1928 after playing for the Philadelphia Athletics for the last two seasons of his career. He is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time and received the most votes of any player on the ballot during the 1936 inauguration of the Baseball Hall of Fame, garnering 98.2 percent, or 222 of the 226 votes cast. His plaque in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown reads "Led American League in batting twelve times and created or equaled more major league records than any other player. Retired with 4,191 major league hits." He played in 3,035 games with 11,429 at-bats. Cobb was a contemporary of fellow baseball greats of the pre-World War I era, including Napoleon Lajoie, Charles Gehringer, Branch Rickey, Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker, George Sisler, Wee Willie Keeler and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. He and Babe Ruth were rivals in the Babe's early career. Cobb had joined Rickey, Mathewson and Sisler in enlisting in the Chemical Corps of the United States Army after the close of the baseball season in October 1918. He served in France for a total of 67 days, the armistice which ended hostilities having been declared on November 11. By 1920, his first year with the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth had established himself as a power hitter. Cobb had never aspired to hitting the long ball. His specialty, because of his speed along the base paths, was the bunt and the hit-and-run. His aggressiveness on the base paths earned him the reputation of ruthlessness as he slid into bases, both feet up with spikes aimed at the legs of the opposing baseman. Another instance of his aggressiveness, which did not endear himself to his fans, or even his teammates, was his assault upon a heckler in the stands in May 1912 as the Tigers were playing the New York Highlanders as the Yankees were then known. Cobb and the fan traded insults with each other throughout the earlier innings. The exchange climaxed in the sixth inning when the heckler alluded to the ball player's mother's "color and morals." The southerner Ty Cobb climbed into the stands and attacked the fan, who happened to be handicapped, having lost one hand and a portion of the other in an industrial accident. Cobb was suspended from the game but his teammates and other players went on strike to force the league to reinstate him. Cobb's actions were perpetually contentious throughout his career. After one game, Cobb and an umpire arranged to settle their in-game differences with a fistfight under the grandstand. The player knocked down the umpire, pinned him and began choking him, until his teammates who had gathered to watch the match pulled Cobb away. His prejudices are disclosed by these two incidents. In spring training of the 1907 season, he had fought a black groundskeeper over the condition of the Tigers' field in Augusta, Georgia. Ty also ended up beginning to choke the man's wife when she intervened in the fight. In another incident, Cobb once slapped a black elevator operator for being "uppity." When a black night watchman intervened, Cobb pulled a knife and stabbed him. On the field, he set batting records throughout his career, some of which having been exceeded only recently, such as most career major league hits, 4,191 held until 1985, and most career runs, 2,245 until 2001. He still holds the highest major league baseball career batting average of .366. A rebel since his rookie year of 1905 with the Tigers (he could not endure the traditional rookie hazing in good humor), Ty Cobb fostered a hostile temperament that alienated his teammates and often his fans. Yet he could be compassionate. In 1940, long after his retirement, Cobb stopped at a South Carolina liquor store. He recognized the man behind the counter to be "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, who had been banned from baseball more than 20 years earlier following the Black Sox World Series scandal of 1919. Jackson did not appear to recognize him. Finally Cobb asked, "Don't you know me, Joe?" "Sure I know you, Ty," replies Jackson, "but I wasn't sure you wanted to speak to me. A lot of them don't." Cobb was a complex man, eaten up by his prejudices, failed marriages and disappointments in the behavior of his children. Along the way he had amassed a fortune which at the time of his death in 1961 amounted to almost $12 million consisting mainly of $10 million in General Electric stock and $1.78 million in Coca-Cola. The ball player had been giving endorsements for drinking Coke since 1907. Baseball, and for that matter all organized sports in the early days, was not a beauty contest for its players nor was it sustained by public relations gimmicks. The sport, and the reputations of its teams and players, was based upon winning games, no matter how rough the tactics employed. Ty Cobb himself summarized the hardscrabble pre-World War I climate by stating "When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the groin."
By Tom Range, Sr.
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Uploaded: 10/12/2007
