Ty Cobb’s Legacy
 

This may be an old subject to some, but as a newer T206 guy, I had this initial impression of Cobb being a great ball player, but dirty and selfish.

Curious on everyone’s opinion here- where do you stand on his legacy as a person and ball player?

Watched a fantastic lecture from the guy who wrote on Cobb that changed my mindset. I now stand in the camp of… “Amazing player, somewhat decent guy”

Interview here:
https://youtu.be/OjbPzoboilM

Thoughts? Maybe a poll would be cool here.

Matt

Indisputably great ballplayer, rightly an inner-circle hall of famer. He played in an era where the sport was more violent and rough, and was an intense competitor who wouldn't back down from anyone.

Off the field, I think he was a product of his era. Raised in the post civil war south, he was probably on some level a white supremacist. I'm not sure his views on race were any worse than most of his teammates or peers. I've heard interviews where he spoke highly of Willie Mays, and have seen the famous picture of him speaking to Hank Aaron about hitting. That said, I don't think he was a saint either.

I think he was a complicated man, probably a cold and unfriendly person, but not the monster portrayed in Al Stump's biography. In terms of baseball villains, I certainly wouldn't raise him to the level of Cap Anson

Maybe not a supervillain?
 

Part of the fun is that most of us weren't around at the time. And those of us that were actually around probably weren't personal social intimates with Tyrus. So we're left to sort through various 2nd or 3rd party accounts, which at times may be conflicting.

Certainly I've read one or more books (one of which I think you cited) that suggest that the prevailing historical narrative around Cobb was based on one journalist's sloppy/outright fake news reporting, in which the reporter fabricated a lot of the racism, both because he was too lazy to get the real story, and possibly also in an attempt to increase readership by injecting scandal. Once this story was out there, it seems to have gone viral, with basically every other journalistic source repeating it as gospel.

The author in the book that I read makes the point that although Cobb was from the south, his father was a university professor, which for a ballplayer at that time would be a unique and rather sophisticated background, perhaps therefore being less likely to be as prone to some of the prevalent and prevailing racial attitudes in the south. It's been a while since I read it, but I also recall the author spending some time to look into the details around how Cobb comported himself with minorities, as well as evaluating some of his written letters and correspondence to suggest that Cobb was not the raging racist that the press has labeled him to be.

My takeaway after reading the book was that, if the author's arguments were true, then Cobb had been mislabeled as a racial supervillain. But there's no question that history has not been kind to Cobb, and most people find it easier to just repeat what they've heard rather than considering the possibility that it might not be accurate.

Cobb is one of my favorite players, he was actually quite a complex individual, highly intelligent, a good businessman, not well liked by his teammates or many in the league but quite generous as a human later in life.

I don't think he cared much whether he was liked by his peers, he wanted to win baseball games not popularity contests.

With a fortune acquired mostly through shrewd investments in real estate, General Motors and Coca Cola, donated $100,000 in his parents’ name for his hometown to build a 24-bed hospital, Cobb Memorial Hospital, now part of the Ty Cobb Healthcare System. He also established, in 1953, the Cobb Educational Fund, which awards scholarships to needy Georgia students bound for college, endowing it with a $100,000 donation.

Today, the Ty Cobb Healthcare System is a private self-supporting nonprofit health care organization consisting of Cobb Memorial Hospital, Cobb Memorial Outpatient Diagnostic Center, Brown Memorial Convalescent Center, Cobb Health Care Center, Home Base Health Services, Hart County Hospital, Cobb Center Apartments, Inc.

And every card needs a thread-

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I think Skelly nailed it with "I think he was a complicated man, probably a cold and unfriendly person, but not the monster portrayed in Al Stump's biography."

Cobb
 

Unquestionably one of the best small ball / contact hitters of all time. When we look at other feared hitters in the pre-war era only a few others rise to the same level in my opinion…Wagner, Jackson and Ruth. That said, Cobb had a appetite for victory and could single handedly turn games in favor of his team by being in it to win it. That came in several forms…would have loved to watch him play.

Cobb was not a racist. He was actually a very progressive guy and not at all like the caricature that was invented for him. Here is a quote from Cobb cited in the Independent Journal in January of 1952:

"Certainly it is O.K. for them to play," he said, "I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man, in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life.”

There is nothing in the historical record to suggest Cobb was the racist of Stump’s novel. His father was an abolitionist as was his grandfather. Fierce competitor, yes. Fierce racist, no.

From what I understand, history has been rough on Cobb.

His mom shot his dad when he was 18.

Yes, he could be nasty on the diamond during his playing days. And the reputation followed him through life.

He gave money to needy retired ballplayers. He funded a new hospital. He established a Foundation to assist deserving residents of Georgia who needed financial assistance for college educations.

Late in life, Cobb commented that if he had his life to live over again, "I would have done things a little different... I would have had more friends."

Don't forget Cobb lived and played with the awful memory that his mother shot and killed his father, thinking that he was an intruder (maybe). I believe he spent his whole life, on and off the diamond, trying to show his father that he was a worthy son.

In 2010, an article by William R. Cobb (no relation to Ty) in the peer-reviewed The National Pastime, the official publication of the Society for American Baseball Research, accused Al Stump of extensive forgeries of Cobb-related baseball and personal memorabilia, including personal documents and diaries. Stump even falsely claimed to possess a shotgun used by Cobb's mother to kill his father (in a well-known 1905 incident officially ascribed to Mrs Cobb having mistaken her husband for an intruder). The shotgun later came into the hands of noted memorabilia collector Barry Halper. Despite the shotgun's notoriety, official newspaper and court documents of the time clearly show Cobb's father had been killed with a pistol. The article, and later expanded book,[5] further accused Stump of numerous false statements about Cobb, not only during and immediately after their 1961 collaboration, but also in Stump's later years, most of which were sensationalist in nature and intended to cast Cobb in an unflattering light.[1] Cobb's peer-reviewed research indicates that all of Stump's works (print and memorabilia) surrounding Ty Cobb are, at the very best, called into question and, at worst, "should be dismiss[ed] out of hand as untrue".[1]

The best book I've read yet on Cobb and written by his grandson. Highly recommended to anyone who has a negative opinion of Ty Cobb.

Stumps book might be the actual worst non-fiction volume I have ever read. Not only is it wrong and a load of garbage, the author just completely made it all up himself. It’s not poor sourcing, or a hot take that ruins it, but the very direct and intentional lies by the scumbag who wrote it.

Too much is made of how Cobb might fit into current political correctness, and not enough about the actual assault and batteries he did commit.

I am hard pressed to think of a non political figure who has been smeared by so many lies after his life as Cobb has.

Best player of his time. Possibly the second greatest hitter ever. He has a legitimate case for it.

Richard Ben Cramer really trashed DiMaggio, seemingly unfairly, in HIS book.

Cramer, and it has been awhile since I read it, used poor sourcing and printed every bad thing he could find about DiMaggio. His book is in that genre of Seymour Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot, the gossipy ‘print every bad thing and eye catching dramatic claim’. As I recall it, Cramer has not been shown to have completely made everything up himself. His book I would also classify as hot garbage, but it isn’t the same as Stump. Stump didn’t report what any random woman claimed had happened and failed to question it because it suited his purpose (many are guilty of this), but invented lies himself that he knew were lies because he made them up.

From the interviews with his contemporaries that I've read it sounds like he was more misanthrope than anything else.

He was actually, according to a well researched biography, a warm and friendly guy - even magnanimous to some extent. I can back that up by the fact that Cobb lobbied for Crawford to be elected to the Hall even though Crawford was envious of Cobb and not friendly toward him at all throughout their career together on the Tigers team. Cobb was also good friends with Honus Wagner as well as other well known players of his day. Yes, he was a fierce competitor, but was evidently able to leave those emotions on the field.

Worth the read.
https://syndication.bleacherreport.c...acist.amp.html

A lot of the myth surrounding Cobb is based on stupid made up BS that was started by one writer who hated him. I've always liked Cobb, and proud to own a baseball signed by him, Ruth and Gehrig.

Here’s a great radio interview of Ty Cobb with Leo Cloutier of Manchester, NH in 1958.

Ty is certainly humble in the recording.

https://youtu.be/Vm1lY8UeMN4

Sir, I believe it’s a rule that if you’re going to refer to having such a cool item that pics must be displayed for others enjoyment.

Difficult right now, it's in a safe deposit box.

I think Larry Ritter's interviews in "The Glory of Their Times" provide a well-rounded picture of Cobb as told by his contemporaries. He had bad impulses and good impulses (especially later in life); could be loutish and paranoid or warm and gracious; was driven to win at all costs but not unfair how he went about it; Tried to beat the daylights out of some who had aggrieved him but helped thousands with his generosity; was neglectful of his training but kept in good enough shape to have been possibly the greatest player of all time over a 23-year career; had good friends and hunting buddies but also players, including long-time teammates, who didn't have a good word to say about him personally. Read, or better yet listen to, Sam Crawford and Davy Jones, who observed and interacted with Cobb so closely over such a long period, and you have to ask yourself if it really was just jealousy that had them painting such a dark picture of the man from a vantage point where most are willing to give some slack, if not completely forgive and forget? Well into their 80s, and they are still scathing and unrelenting in their assessments. I think it's great that more scholarly efforts are undoing the damage to his reputation done by Stump and other early chroniclers with a sensationalist agenda, and I hope we end up with a better rounded picture of a complex man who lived a complicated life. He deserves no less than an accurate portrayal.

I'm reading a book on Cobb and apparently most of the brawls he got into early on were other teammates pounding on him. He was just defending himself. Also knowing your mom accidentally shot and killed your dad at 17 years old would harden your soul a little.

A Terrible Beauty
 

I thought “Ty Cobb - A Terrible Beauty” by Charles Leerhsen was a well researched and fair portrayal of Mr Cobb.

Cobb legacy:

As a ball player, Cobb was one of the greatest. As a person, he was a product of his time.

In 1910 Cobb was on track to win the AL batting title and with it would have won a car. He was disliked by the Browns players enough that they purposefully let Lajoie go 8-8 in a doubleheader to try to prevent Cobb from winning the batting title. Take it for what it’s worth but I doubt he was a nice guy if players had that much disdain for him. All time great none-the-less

Snapshot of Cobb during the groundbreaking ceremony for Cobb Memorial Hospital…

https://photos.imageevent.com/docpat...A13072D14.jpeghttps://photos.imageevent.com/docpat...E5684F1AD.jpeg

I am not a fan of Ty Cobb. I think he is the epitome of a romanticized player. I believe that most of the bad things that were said of him are likely to have been at least some flavor of the truth. I also believe that he was a complex person whose heart likely softened as he aged and that he was also a product of his time and his environment. Losing his father as a teen likely didn't help.

I own zero Ty Cobb cards.

I'm not well read on Cobb. But the supposition that education decreases racism is flat wrong. It is not based in fact, especially for Gilded Age America. Academics supported and bred racism throughout US higher education. Our college elite often focused on maintaining white hierarchy. There is a reason we have Historically Black Colleges in this country. Further, academics ate hook-line-and-sinker the overt lie of Social Darwinism. My US History MA thesis was about a turn of the century artist who found his direction at the 1914 World's Fair in SF. There, Blacks were publicly battling overt racism not only in the Fun Zone, but also in academic buildings where they were pushing Social Darwinism as well as eugenics. These concepts were Coast to coast.

In 1917, our elite were scared to intermingle blacks and whites in the US Army. West Point graduates were scared to give blacks guns. They sent black soldiers to France to dig ditches and drive horses. The French, taking massive losses, asked to use the black soldiers and US leaders were OK with that suspecting they would die. But many survived and displayed extraordinary heroism, and some earned the equivalent of the Medal of Honor in France. When they came home, they came home to find that their efforts in France were buried and forgotten by the US media. Many of the leaders of the national media were college graduates.

Today, many people believe colleges are liberal bastions. Maybe they are. But let's not reflect our modern lens onto a completely different era that operated under completely different social orders.

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Just wanted to say thanks for the great post

He may have improved with time. However, his fellow players didn't paint him in a good light.

But PWCC Is innocent. This really takes the cake

Unlike many, he understood that the world was bigger than he. A brilliant man financially, he amassed a fortune and was generous with it in both large ways and smaller ways, such as helping out former players who were down on their luck. Here's a decent article (sorry for the popups)

https://www.wealthmanagement.com/phi...philanthropist

Should you be inclined to remember Ty Cobb on this Giving Tuesday, might I suggest you give a gift to the Ty Cobb Educational Foundation:

https://tycobbfoundation.com

Read the book on line
 

After the 2010 SABR article was published https://sabr.org/journal/article/the...e-storyteller/, I added the results of some follow-on research and printed it in book form. This book can be read on line at https://issuu.com/ty_cobb/docs/the_g...storyteller_-2

In 2020, SABR selected this article "for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game."

Would be nice if Ken Burns dedicated a documentary on Cobb since his Baseball series put it out there that he was racist. How many young kids are going to watch that and see it as fact when it obviously wasn't? I'm sure many collectors chose not to collect him because of all the stuff said about him. It's the least he could do.

Agree with complexity. To assume people as a caricature of their society makes an ass of you and me. I can think of many other people who should be viewed as complex rather than how history has painted them.

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That's a good lecture, but I highly recommend reading/listening to Leershen's book on Cobb.

While I do believe Stump's book to be a hackjob, after reading Leershen's book, it is also filled with non-factual assumptions to help prove the the author's point that Cobb wasn't a monster. It's also filled with great information that debunks a lot of the Stump book.

I believe the truth likely lies somewhere in-between. I don't think Cobb was a monster, but I also don't think he was a particularly great person. I believe he softened as he grew older as most of us do, but there is no doubt that he was a fierce competitor who would go to great lengths to win. He was a great player, no question, and his contemporaries back that up all day long.

Our teaching from our parents strikes me as meaningful. I guess your mileage may vary depending on your view of academics historically. Considering that most ballplayers came from the fringes of society at the time, Cobb's background seems like it could have an impact, although your contention is that it might not be positive on this specific issue.

Naturally, this is just one data point, among many outlined by others in this thread. And potentially it is a less important data point than some of the others shared. Whether there is a correlation or connection between them I suppose is in the eye of the beholder. Is it possible that Cobb bucked the trend in spite of his father being a raging academic who must therefore have been an incorrigible racist due to his profession? It's possible that I'm misremembering, but my recollection from my readings is that Cobb's father was both an academic and believed in equality of the races. So perhaps it was Cobb's father who was himself an outlier in the world of racist academia.

Larry Ritter: "Evidently, he mellowed as he got older."
Sam Crawford: "Mother nature mellowed him, that's all."

Like I said, I am not well read on Cobb. My contention was that the assumption that Cobb's father was an academic and therefore less racist had no merit in the discussion. We should not assume one's profession makes them something or does not. It's stereotyping, and this thread is trying to break through the stereotypes and fabricated narratives that have been painted about Cobb. If Cobb's father was an outlier in the world of racist academia, it was because of his personal experiences.

Let's take for example a current stereotype = Public school teachers are liberals. Are many teachers liberal? I don't know. Where I work 70% of the population is conservative. So in my dealings, I know just as many teachers who are Republican as I know Democrats. So the stereotype is wrong in my neck of the woods.

I'm just a simple caveman, but doesn't this demonstrate the liberal teacher bias (although in an antidotal, non significant sample size?)

If 70% of the population is conservative, wouldn't you expect about 70% of teachers to be Republicans? The fact only 50% are Republicans means a higher percentage of the liberals in your population are teachers, compared to conservatives.

I think I’m less focused on the stereotype of liberal v conservative, racist or nonracist, and more focused on the fact that a university professor will expose their kids to different experiences, intellectual theories, and ideas as opposed to say your average coal miner. Nothing against coal miners!

Whether that has an impact on one’s racist bent is, of course, subject to debate.

Respectfully, this sounds to me like a stereotype as well.

Interesting.

I guess we can agree to disagree.

I see what trail you were trying to take us down. Like how Indiana Jones father tried to influence him. I think if the evidence shows that Cobb's father took an active role in his life, than this could certainly be true.

And I do agree with you on this point. Lots of data shows that being introduced to more ideas can have a moderating effect. For instance, 70% of this nation's Mormons vote Republican. But polls have shown that their international missionary experiences tend to swing them to moderate Republicans. Are there still deep red Republicans in the Mormon faith? Yes. But when polls question them on their views on immigration it's much more moderate/liberal than compared to others who haven't traveled internationally.

However, how someone interacts with experiences is very personal. My wife is the only sibling (she is one of five) who votes Democrat. Her father was an aluminum worker and proud steel workers union member. He had a two year long lockout when my wife was 10-12 yo. She experienced the lockout very differently than her three older siblings, and her younger brother who can hardly remember it. She told me she votes Democrat because of how the lockout shaped her views on capitalism.

Did Cobb leave any memoires or journals that historians use when writing his biographies?

To put education in perspective at the time of Ty Cobb.

In 1910 less than 10% of Americans graduated high school.

College was for the elite. Less than 3 percent of the US population had a bachelor's degree in 1910.

Interesting data point there!

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and having served a mission in Taiwan, I suspect those observations aren't far off. At the same time, I have some close acquaintances who are also of my faith, who are even married to immigrants, and yet are pretty strongly against immigration. Go figure!

But now we're getting a long ways away from Cobb.

I do think that there is room to question how much of an influence his father had considering his untimely death when Cobb was ~19 years old.

I'm not deep enough into the weeds to attempt to draw any conclusions here. But the author from the book that I read on Cobb did assert that it was meaningful in this context (and my subconscious generally concurred), which is why I mentioned it in the first place.

I'm not sure if Cobb left any additional memoirs or journals, but initially he worked with Stump on the original book, then once it was released and was full of BS he objected loudly, then unfortunately, passed away and the book was published as is.

I tend to view Cobb the same way I view Tris Speaker. They both softened and even completely turned around their viewpoints as they aged and ended as somewhat sympathetic figures at the end. Cobb being vocal about baseball integration, and Speaker mentoring Larry Doby and singing his praises.

Tim Hornbaker's book on Cobb is far superior. Heck, there's a book whose name escapes me that's basically dedicated to debunking the Leerhsen book.