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| Classic Ty Cobb, sliding into home plate, sharpened spikes flying. |
Ty Cobb is covered in baseball glory. Revered as one of five original inductees
into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, he received more votes
than Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy
Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. He earned 98% of the eligible votes cast. He was simply the greatest all-around player
of all time. Still is. And everyone knows it.
More
astonishing, it is likely that not one of the voters in that historic balloting
would have had a good word to say about Cobb as a human being. He was one of the meanest, most miserable human
beings imaginable. He had admirers. He was respected. But he had absolutely no friends. His own team mates feared and loathed him.
Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born on
December 17, 1886 in Narrows, Georgia.
His father, William Herschel
Cobb was a stern Calvinist who
demanded much of his eldest son yet never offered a kind word or encouragement. When headstrong you Ty defied his father’s
demands that he complete school, go to college, and become a lawyer by running away to join semi-pro small town teams in his home state, the old
man coldly told him, “Don’t come home a failure.” Yet the young man idolized his father anyway.
Cobb’s
mother, Amanda Chitwood Cobb had
been only 12 years old when she was married and only 15 when Ty was born. Shortly before Cobb’s contract was bought by
the Detroit Tigers, Amanda shot and
killed her husband on August 8, 1905.
She claimed he was skulking by her window and she mistook him for a burglar. In fact the insanely jealous man was
convinced his wife was cheating on her and was spying on her trying to catch
her in the act. She was charged with
murder and brought her to trial, but the local jury, knowing about William’s
brutal reputation, acquitted her.
Young
Ty, however, never forgave her. He
packed his bags for Detroit and was on the field that September determined to
make his father proud at all costs.
In
the memoirs that he dictated late in life, Cobb claimed that he had joined the
Detroit as a nice Sunday School boy but that the customary, if harsh, hazing all
rookies then experienced, changed him. “These
old-timers turned me into a snarling wildcat,” he wrote. Among the taunts he endured was being called
the Georgia Peach for the light fuzz
on his 18 year old cheek.
But
it is doubtful if Cobb was ever a sweet or pleasant young man. He had been carefully schooled by his father
to hate Yankees, Catholics, Jews, the very rich, the poor whites below him, and
above all Blacks. And after the murder, women as well. Cobb hated
everyone who was not exactly like him in every regard and was eager to act
physically on that hatred on the slightest of pretenses.
Yet
there was no denying his talent, in his first at bat he doubled off of the ace
of the New York Highlanders and
finished the last 41 games of the season with a respectable .270 batting average. That was enough to get
resigned for the full 1906 season for a very hefty $15,000, almost unheard of
for a rookie.
Cobb’s
career achievements kept pace with his vicious attacks off the field, and
sharpened-spikes-held-high style of sliding into base meant to maim defenders
or scare them off the bag. As the starting
center fielder, Cobb .316 in 98
games and never hit below that for the rest of his career. He was in numerous
altercations with his team mates and opposing players both on and off the
field.
In
1907 he hit .350 becoming at age 20 the youngest player ever to win an American League batting championship. He
also batted in 115 runs and stole 49 bases, including for the first time in his
career steeling second, third, and home after getting on base with a hit. He would duplicate that feat four more times
in his career. During Spring Training that year in Augusta, Georgia he assaulted and nearly beat to death a black groundskeeper and
was choking his wife, who came to the rescue of the fallen man, when his teammates
pulled him off of her screaming curses and threats.
Those
kinds of numbers propelled the Tigers to the AL Pennant. With Cobb setting
the pace they would win again in 1908 and 1909. They could never win the World Series, however, losing to then Chicago Cubs the first two years and Pittsburg Pirates in 1909. In each case Cobb’s post season numbers
failed to match those during the Pennant races.
In
the midst of this steak, Cobb found a woman who would abide him. In 1908 he married Georgian heiress Charlotte “Charlie”
Marion Lombard. At first they lived on her father’s estate near Augusta until he built a comfortable
mansion in town. During their marriage
Cobb was in several brawls over alleged offences to her status as Southern
Gentlewoman.
His
fortune also improved with a relationship with Atlanta based Coca-Cola. He endorsed the beverage in print ads and
soda shop posters and took part of his pay in company stock. Eventually he became owner of bottling
franchises. His pay checks, investments,
and his wife’s eventual inheritance made him a wealthy man. But he could have earned many times more
money if he were not so universally detested outside of Detroit and Georgia.
Although the Tigers
never again won a Pennant, Cobb kept producing year after year piling up accomplishments
and baseball records, many of which stand to this day.
In
1911 had a 40 game hitting streak and he hit for his top average, an
astonishing .420 narrowly beating out Shoeless
Joe Jackson of the Cleveland Naps
for the batting crown. Jackson was a fellow southerner and as
close to a personal friend as Cobb had in baseball. Cobb “psyched him out” by shunning him on and
off the field. Cobb claimed in his
memoirs that Jackson’s anguish at the unexplained rejection sent his batting
into a tail spin.
But
he was always in trouble. In an early season game in 1912 against the
Highlanders at the Polo Grounds Cobb
charged into the stands and beat a heckler, Claude Lueker who had allegedly
called Cobb a “half-nigger.” Lueker was
missing one hand and several fingers on the other due to an industrial
accident. As fans tried desperately to
call Cobb off pleading that his victim had no hands, he snarled, “I don’t care
if he has not feet.” Cobb was suspended
and heavily fined by the League. But his
teammates swallowed their person distaste for Cobb and went out on strike in
his defense claiming that the League had not acted to protect the player from
an abusive fan. Because Detroit was once
again in a Pennant race, ownership actually made some concessions and the
players returned to work. The Fraternity of Professional Baseball Players
of America, an early incarnation of what is now the Major League Baseball Players Association, grew out of this
episode, although Cobb himself was bitterly anti-union.
There
were other incidents almost too numerous to mention. He challenged umpire Billy Evans to settle thing in a post-game fight under the
stands. Members of both teams attended
the event at which eye-gouging and kicking Cobb quickly had the upper
hand. He pinned the ump and was choking
him when he was finally dragged off.
In
another incident, Cobb slapped a Black elevator operator for “being uppity” and
stabbed a Black janitor who came to his aid with the switch blade he always
carried. This case was hushed up by
Detroit management which paid the victims to go away and keep quietly.
Year
after year he produced. He won the
batting championship eight of nine years and racked up records for stolen
bases.
Baseball
was suspended for the 1918 season. Cobb
and several other major leaguers including Christy Mathewson enlisted in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and served in France under Major Branch Rickey, the St.
Louis Cardinals President. They trained
men in gas mask usage and exposed them to gas in special chambers. Cobb was made a captain. After oversees duty of 67 days, the war ended
and he was honorably discharged and
returned to the states.
When
play resumed in 1919, Cobb was back playing furiously as always, racking up
hits and flashing along the base paths, maybe a touch slower, but every bit as fearsome. In August of the ’21 season he got his 3000th hit, at 36
the youngest man ever to accomplish that and he did it in the fewest at bats—8,093.
That
same year the baseball world was shocked when he was named to replace the
beloved Hughie Jennings as Detroit
manager. Although naming a long time
star as a player manager was still a common occurrence in the major leagues,
Cobb was so disliked by his team mates that no one thought it would work
out. Although in his five years at the
helm he earned a winning record of 479 wins and 444 losses, he was never able
to pilot his team to higher than third place in the American League. He blamed parsimonious ownership which would
not invest in the top players he tried to recruit and on the “softness” of his
squads. His unremitting harshness and martinet style of leadership led to
understandably poor team moral.
But
his biggest problem was the rise of Babe
Ruth who had abandoned a career as an ace pitcher for the Boston Red Sox to become a new kind of slugger hero for the suddenly powerful New York Yankees—the formerly
undistinguished Highlanders. Cobb hated
everything about Ruth. He resented the
emphasis on homeruns, which he though sullied the “beautiful” game of
baseball. Even worse, Ruth was a beer
swilling, hot dog munching, skirt chasing fat guy with a happy-go-lucky outlook
on life, the antithesis of Cobb’s insistence of puritanical self-denial, discipline,
and seriousness. Worse yet was the ascension
of New York, which he regarded as a vipers nest of Jews, Catholics, Wets, and Communists.
Not
only were Ruth and the Bronx Bombers winning,
they became fan favorites, eclipsing Cobb’s personal glory and demanding a change
in the way the game was played.
In
1925, Cobb got fed up. On May 5 he told
reporters that he could do anything Ruth could do and would prove it by
swinging for the fences. In that game he
went 6 for 6 at the plate with three homers, a double, and two singles. The next day he clobbered two more homers and
added another single. Not even Ruth had
ever slammed five round trippers in two days.
The total of 16 bases in two days was a record that lasted until this
last May when Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers hit four home runs and a
double for a total of 18 bases. Having
proved his point, Cobb returned to his old hit, run, steal kind of play with a
high batting average and lofty Runs Batted In (RBI) count.
For
his part, Ruth was generally generous to his rival, but later did say “I could
have a lifetime .600 average, but I would have had to hit them singles. The
people were paying to see me hit home runs.”
Cobb
career as a manager came to an abrupt stop when he announced his retirement in
November of 1926 at age 39 after 22 years as a Tiger. The news stunned baseball, as did the nearly simultaneous
announcement of the retirement of another player manager and baseball legend, Tris Speaker of the Cleveland Indians. Both had been forced into retirement because
of allegations that they had been involved in rigging a Detroit win in a 1911
game between the two squads. The charges
were leveled by a former Tiger pitcher Dutch
Leonard, angered that Cobb had benched him.
He produced two semi-incriminating telegrams which Cobb and Speaker
insisted concerned a horse racing wager, not a baseball game. Leonard refused to testify in court and no
charges were filed. Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis held a secret
hearing into the affair, then cleared both men and allowed them to return to
their teams.
Both
teams, having moved on with younger players and new leadership allowed the two
aging stars to become free agents. Cobb
went to Philadelphia Athletics, a
hot young team in 1927. Speaker went to Washington, but joined Cobb for the ’28
season. He collected his 4,000 hit back
in his hold stomping ground in Detroit in July.
The young team finished second to the most famous and successful of
Yankee teams.
Cobb
was back the next year but beginning to feel his age. And with so many young players he was used
sparingly as a fill in, utility player, and pinch hitter. Still Cobb hit over 300 again in ’28 for the 22nd
time, one of those baseball records that will probably never be broken. He collected his last hit doubling as a pinch
hitter against the Senators on September 3 and retired for good after the end
of the season.
Although
extremely wealthy through his ownership of stock in Coca-Cola and General Motors as well as other securities
speculations and real estate deals, Retirement did not sit well with Cobb. He tried travel with his family to Europe,
and especially to Scotland. He hunted, fished, played polo, and took
up golf. And the former proponent of “clean
living” began drinking and smoking heavily.
His
family life was in a shambles. In 1930
he moved to a mansion outside San Francisco
while his wife and children stayed behind in Augusta and she filed the
first of several divorce actions made
and withdrawn over the next few years.
They finally split for good in 1941.
His
relationships with his children were cool, especially with his sons, on whom he
made the same, lofty and inflexible demands as his father had of him. After his son Ty Jr. failed at Princeton, his father drove across
country to whip him. The young man
re-enrolled at Yale, but later
dropped out causing a permanent rift between them. Them the younger Ty did eventually return to
school and became a successful pediatrician
who died at age 42 of brain cancer essentially un-reconciled with his father. The younger brother experienced similar, if
not as severe problems.
The
1937 Hall of Fame Election and 1938 induction were the highlights of his retirement. He occasionally socialized with the few old
timers who would speak with him. Sports
writer Grantland Rice, a golfing
buddy, was a close to a real friend that he had. He sometimes tried to befriend and mentor
young players of promise. He helped Joe DiMaggio negotiate his first
contract. But another notoriously
prickly personality, Ted Williams found
himself shut out of Cobb’s life for simply suggesting that Rogers Hornsby may have been as good a hitter.
In
1949 Cobb married for a second time to 40-year-old Frances Fairbairn Cass, a divorcee.
Their childless and unhappy marriage lasted until 1956.
That
year he began work on the first of two memoirs written with professional
reporters. The Tiger Wore Spikes: An
Informal Biography of Ty Cobb by John
D. McCallum. This book combined a
pep talk for young players with a flattering appraisal of his career glossing
over the harder edges. The book was a
success and Cobb had enjoyed the experience.
Without
a writer to talk to and his family estranged, he grew lonely, especially after
he was diagnosed with prostate cancer,
diabetes, high blood pressure and Bright’s
Disease in 1959. He spent his time crisscrossing
the country in search of a medical miracle and in unexpected charity as he
tried to secure a legacy. He endowed a
24 bed hospital in Royston, Georgia in honor of his parents and
endowed a Georgia scholarship fund for needy college bound students.
But
mostly he poured his heart out to Al
Stump, hired to ghost a new biography, in which he was defiant and unapologetic. Stump claimed he was also personally abusive
to him. My Life in Baseball: The True
Record was published shortly after Cobb died on July 17, 1961, at Emory University Hospital. Cobb had arrived at the hospital weeks
earlier in bad condition and carrying a paper bag with $1 million in cash and a
pistol. His one surviving son, three
daughters, and first wife were with him at his death. One said they just wanted to make sure he was
dead.
Cobb
was buried in the elaborate mausoleum he
built for his parents in Royston.
Nearly
ten years after Cobb’s death, Stump released a new book purporting to be even
more frank and unflattering. It became
the basis for Cobb, a 1994 biopic starring Tommy Lee Jones.
Maybe
Cobb summed up his life best “In legend I am a sadistic, slashing,
swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport,” he told Stump.
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