A moment later, Cobb was attacked by a catcher on his own team, a much larger man who had a habit of beating up Cobb. ![]() There is no indication that race had anything to do with the encounter. In 1907, on his way to the clubhouse, Cobb shoved a black groundskeeper who, under the influence of alcohol, got in Cobb’s face and made a jokey greeting that the latter evidently found annoying. On the Bowery in the early 1900s, “black-eye repair shops” offered makeup treatments to men bruised in barroom battle.įor his first couple of seasons on the Tigers, Cobb was subjected to sustained hazing by his teammates, several of whom despised him. Spock actually recommended little boys enjoy at least one fight a day and the head of the American Psychological Association encouraged fights. One of several blacks employed by Cobb, Alex Rivers, named his son after the ballplayer and said, “I love the man.” The hitter Ty Cobb in 1925 APĬobb did brawl often - a pastime so common in his era that Dr. He called Roy Campanella a “great” player, said Willie Mays was “the only player I’d pay money to see” and after Campanella’s crippling car accident, praised Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley for holding a candlelit tribute “for this fine man.”Įven back in the 1920s, Cobb would befriend Negro League ballplayers such as Detroit Stars infielder Bobby Robinson, who said “there wasn’t a hint of prejudice in Cobb’s attitude.” He told The Sporting News, “The negro has the right to compete in sports and who’s to say they have not?” Cobb stole easily on him after that.Ĭobb enthusiastically supported the integration of major league baseball when he was asked about Jackie Robinson in 1952. He noticed a tell in Cy Young’s pickoff move: The pitcher would hold his hands up close to his chin when he was going to throw to first. ![]() Cobb, noted baseball legend Casey Stengel, was the only player who could steal home on an infield pop-up: He’d make his break when the guy who caught the ball was lobbing the ball back to the pitcher. Johnson, afraid of beaning Cobb, would walk him instead.Ĭobb once scored the winning run by stealing third and home when the Yankees were busy arguing with an umpire. Cobb noticed, for instance, that Walter Johnson was visibly upset whenever he hit a batter - so he stuck his skull out over the plate. In a hilariously unprofessional era when ballplayers would chase umpires they didn’t like off the field, Cobb took careful notes exploiting the weaknesses of other teams. “He didn’t outhit the opposition and he didn’t outrun them,” said a teammate. You might call Cobb the inventor of Moneyball - roughly, the idea that baseball is about smarts. Washington Senators player Walter Johnson (left) and Ty Cobb AP When Cobb was 18, his mother shot and killed his father, mistaking him for an intruder after he returned unexpectedly from an out-of-town trip. His father, a state senator and “something of a public intellectual,” in Leerhsen’s words, once broke up a group of men plotting a lynching and was an outspoken advocate for the public education of black Americans. The thinkerĬobb, contrary to legend, was not a Southern redneck but an upper-middle-class boy, often derided for acting aristocratic in the locker room, where he would read literary novels and biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon. In Ken Burns’ “Baseball,” Cobb is called “an embarrassment to the game.” Most notoriously, we all know that Cobb stabbed a black waiter in Cleveland and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.Įxcept none of these allegations is true. ![]() “On several occasions he brutally pistol-whipped African-American men whose only offense was to share a sidewalk with him,” wrote a biographer of Hall of Famer Tris Speaker. and ended up choking the man’s wife when she intervened.” in 1907 Cobb fought a black groundskeeper. Was he a wife-beater? “He was an everything beater,” offered comic Jim Norton. In his new biography, “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” (Simon & Schuster), Charles Leerhsen opens with a comedy routine that details some of the many myths about the Detroit Tigers superstar. And far from being the most notorious racist in baseball history, he was an early and vocal supporter of integrating the big leagues. 366 lifetime batting average, could be rude, but not nearly as nasty as you think. The two things everyone knows about Ty Cobb are that he was a phenomenal baseball player and that he was the worst racist ever to play the game.Ĭobb, the first player voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the holder of more than 90 records upon his retirement and still the pace-setter with a.
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