Essay/Term paper: Ty cobb

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Research Papers

Ty Cobb


"Baseball," Ty Cobb liked to say, "is something like a war...Baseball is a red-
blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's not pink tea, and mollycoddles had
better stay out of it. It's...a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the
fittest" (Ward and Burns 64). Although Ty Cobb was possibly the greatest player
in baseball history, many people would consider him its worst person. Tyrus
Raymond Cobb was born December 18, 1886 in The Narrows, Georgia. His parents
named him after the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, which stubbornly refused to
surrender to Alexander the Great. From the very beginning, he took after the
city and became one of baseball's most stubborn and hated men. The Georgia Peach,
so-called, was a creature of extremes. Ty Cobb is, by bald statistics,
measurably the greatest hitter ever; he was, by the reckoning of virtually
everyone who met him, personally the most despicable human being ever to grace
the National Pastime (Deford 56). Cobb's playing career, with the Detroit Tigers
and the Philadelphia Athletics, was arguably the best anyone ever had. He won
twelve batting titles in thirteen years, including a record nine in a row. He
also holds the records for the most runs scored with 2,245 and the highest
lifetime batting average at .367, a number nearly unreachable even in just one
season by today's standards. Other records he set that have since been broken:
3,034 games played, 4,191 hits, 892 stolen bases, 392 outfield assists, 1,136
extra base hits, and 1,961 runs batted in. He also struck out just 357 times in
11,429 times at bat, a phenomenal achievement. After his career ended, in 1936,
he was the leading vote-getter of the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame,
beating even Babe Ruth. However, Cobb's career was marred with controversy and
scandals. He was hated by nearly every player in the league, including his own
teammates. When he was first called up to play with Detroit, he was extremely
unpopular with his teammates. They locked him out of the bathroom, tore the
crown out of his straw hat and sawed in half the bat that had been especially
fashioned for him by his hometown coffin maker. He did not take any of it with
good humor and could not bear to be the target of the mildest joke. He fought
back with his fists, refused to speak to his tormentors, developed ulcers, took
to sleeping with a revolver under his pillow, and soon began to display an
obsessive animosity toward blacks. One day when a black groundskeeper tried to
shake his hand, Cobb slapped him, chased him into the dugout and then tried to
strangle the man's wife when she came to his aid (Ward and Burns 64). In 1926
retired pitcher Dutch Leonard told American League president Ban Johnson that
near the end of the 1919 season, Leonard and Tiger teammate Cobb, along with two
Cleveland Indians, had arranged to throw a game and bet on it. According to
Leonard, Cobb was planning to bet $2,000 on the game, but apparently didn't get
his money down on time. Therefore, when Johnson turned the case over to
commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Landis exonerated all parties involved,
stating the case to be "rather old" and sensing overwhelming public support for
Cobb and Tris Speaker, another Hall-of-Famer involved in the incident ("The Cobb
Gambling Scandal" 20). One day, after a crippled New York heckler called Cobb "a
half-nigger" in 1912, he climbed into the stands and savagely beat the man.
When an onlooker pleaded that the heckler had no hands, Cobb replied, "I don't
care if he has no feet" (Wulf 45). When Cleveland catcher Nig Clarke kidded Cobb
that he had once applied a phantom tag to nail him at the plate, Cobb grabbed
Clarke's throat with such fury that it took three men to pull him off (Wulf 45).
Before he even reached the majors, Cobb tried to attract interest in himself by
writing false pseudonymous letters and postcards to famous sportswriter of the
time Grantland Rice, praising himself in an effort to be noticed and get called
up to the majors (Wulf 45). Cobb knew he was hated by most players around the
league, and on October 9, 1910, he found out just how much. Cobb and
Cleveland's Nap Lajoie were in a dead-heat tie for the American League batting
title. Cobb sat out that day's doubleheader. His teammates were angry at him,
knowing he was just trying to keep his average high by sitting out. Nearly all
players in the league were rooting for Lajoie to win. The St. Louis Browns, who
were playing Cleveland that day, let every ball hit by Lajoie to fall in for a
hit, giving him the title. Afterwards, eight of Cobb's own teammates sent
Lajoie telegrams congratulating him (Kramer 33). Off the field, Cobb was his own
worst enemy. On the field, there was no question whose enemy he was--anyone who
presumed to get in his way. The cruelty of Cobb's style fascinated the
multitudes and made him baseball's first true superstar. He played in a climate
of hostility, friendless by choice in a violent world he populated with
enemies....But not even his disagreeable character could destroy the image of
his greatness as a ballplayer (Ward and Burns 64). Cobb was famous for his style
of sliding into a base, "steel showing" as he called it. He would come in full
speed and put his spikes, which he was rumored to have sharpened especially for
the occasion prior to each game, high enough to bloody the opposing player up.
The player had two options: either tag Cobb out and take the punishment or get
out of the way and allow Cobb to reach the base safely. More took the latter
option than not. However, more than a few fights were ignited when the opposing
player would choose to tag Cobb out and cry foul when he did get injured. Many
people thought of Cobb as a conniving cheater with his way of intimidating
opponents, but he just shrugged off his critics, believing that he did nothing
wrong. "I just play hard," Cobb said, "and if playing hard means getting a
little rough sometimes, then I'm sorry, but I can't help you" (Montville 63). At
least part of Cobb's ugly torment may be explained that, although he revered his
schoolmaster father above all men, the father disapproved of baseball, thinking
it too frivolous for his son. Unfortunately, the boy's determination to prove
his worth to his father ended at age 18, when the elder Cobb was shot dead...by
his wife, Ty's mother (Deford 56). "William Herschel Cobb was shot twice, once
in the stomach and once in the head," said Eugene Phillips, who is the
unofficial historian of Cobb's hometown, Royston, Georgia. "Amanda Chitwood
Cobb's explanation was that she had heard a noise, saw someone trying to get in
her house and used the gun that her husband had given her for protection. A
terrible case of mistaken identity. This explanation was believed by a jury and
Amanda was acquitted. It has never been believed in Royston" (Montville 63).
Residents of Royston over the years have devised several theories as to the
nature of the shooting. The most commonly accepted story is that because Ty's
father was out of town on business about five days a week, his mother had been
having an affair for years. The father had suspected it, so went he went away
this time he came back early to check on his wife and came in secretly. Then it
becomes fuzzy as to who actually shot William Cobb. Many believe that Amanda's
lover actually killed him, others believe Amanda did (Montville 63). The
complexity and mystery of this tragic incident continued to have an enormous
effect on Ty's life until his dying day. "My own father had his head blown off
when I was 18 years old--by a member of my own family," Cobb told a writer in
the latter years of his life. "I didn't get over that. I've never gotten over
it" (Ward and Burns 64). Cobb became the first millionaire athlete, although
baseball was not the primary reason for his wealth. He was a smart investor in
business. In 1908, he invested in a small Georgia soda company. No one outside
of Georgia had yet heard of Coca-Cola, but Ty liked its taste. When Coke became
America's favorite soda, Ty became a millionaire (Kramer 28). He made other
investments throughout his lifetime that made him even wealthier. Cobb, although
worth millions late in his life, was as cheap with them as he was dangerous with
his spikes during his playing days. He was outraged at having to pay twelve
dollars a year after a Cornelia, Georgia, Kiwanis Club asked him to be a member
(Wulf 45). Sydell Kramer describes the extent of Cobb's cheapness in his
biography of Cobb. "Money was extremely important to Ty. It was a way of
showing off his success. But even though he was rich, he was very cheap. When
he got older, he used candles instead of electric lights. He wouldn't pay for a
telephone, or buy firewood if it was cold. At times, Ty burned his fan mail for
heat" (Kramer 31). As with all bad boys, there was a good side to Ty Cobb,
although few ever saw it. Despite his inability to spend money on himself, he
did give a lot to others. He gave money to needy retired ballplayers, helped
build a new hospital in Royston, and started a fund for poor college students
(Kramer 44). While giving money, Cobb still felt unliked and remained virtually
alone for the rest of his life. What money he did spend on himself was almost
exclusively towards the use of alcohol, which he became heavily dependent on.
He said he would have given up his money if only he could change the way players
felt about him. He knew nobody forgot how nasty he always could be in his
playing days (Kramer 45). Cobb died of cancer July 17, 1961, a sad and lonely
man. Only 400 people, most of them little-leaguers who only knew him as a name
from baseball's past, showed up at his funeral. Just three ballplayers from his
era bothered to attend. Near the end of his life, Cobb commented to a caller
that if he had his life to live over again, "I would have done things a little
different...I would have had more friends" (Ward and Burns, 65).