Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
No one is disparaging Cobb? Doubting him hitting 5 home runs in 2 games whenever he simply decided to do so is hardly disparaging, unless one feels Cobb has superhuman powers and could homer purely at will. Yes, a story that traces it's first telling to Stump is a story that is almost certainly untrue. Yes, I'd check the game logs to see if it even happened as a first step. I'm happy to stand corrected if someone has earlier documentation on this tale before Stump. I've not seen any. I doubt it's veracity.
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First of all, I wasn't saying that YOU doubting Cobb hitting 5 homers in two games was disparaging. The reason I put that in my post was as a pre-emptive strike against someone else posting and saying that Cobb's 5 homers probably included ones that were inside-the-park homers or had bounced over the fence and counted as homers, and that therefore his piece of this MLB record was tainted because they weren't all hit over the fence on a fly like they had to be after 1930 to count as a home run.
Cobb had hit 12 homers in a season only twice in his career, once in 1925, that included the 5 he hit over a two day period, and also in 1921. In 1921 however, 4 of those were inside-the-park homers. And back in 1909 when Cobb actually won the MLB Triple Crown, he did so hitting a total of 9 home runs, all of which were inside-the-park homers, not a single one over the fence. Supposedly all 12 of Cobb's homers in 1925 were the "over the fence" variety.
I figured I'd save myself time and not have to respond to posts from people who would just jump on and question Cobb's home runs without doing their own research first, but that doesn't appear to have worked. So, here are some articles/sources out there that include info on Cobb's home runs and also info about the story of him telling people he was going to purposely hit home runs back in 1925. Though one of these stories does mention Stump's book, it also names of a couple sportswriters who supposedly heard Cobb's comments about hitting home runs. And it is even more interesting that one of those two sportswriters eventually became a Director of the baseball HOF in Cooperstown (and is therefore someone whom you would think and hope is a little more respected and reliable source than Stump ever would be), and yet he, nor the other named sportswriter, apparently never disputed the Cobb story. So it isn't all just coming from Stump. Even after all that, I too still wonder and doubt if Cobb ever really said he was going to purposely hit home runs all of a sudden, and lean towards the myth side of that story myself. Just like the Ruth called home run shot story.
However, that doesn't change the indisputable fact that Cobb did hit the 5 homers, so I'm not sure what you meant when you said, "Yes, I'd check the game logs to see if it even happened as a first step." Are these ESPN and Baseball Almanac articles and stories that follow good enough for you, or do you still need more authoritative collaboration?
https://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/...hree-home-runs
https://www.vintagedetroit.com/ty-co...s-well-anyone/
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...php?p=cobbty01
https://radicalbaseball.blogspot.com...ns-in-two.html
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/...nside-the-park
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_hr5.shtml
And this whole thing with Cobb and the home runs really goes back to an earlier poster talking about how singles were so less important than home runs. That is the reason I originally brought up the Cobb home run story to try and show another side to the argument. I thought it was kind of funny that someone would come out and actually say they cared so much less for singles than home runs. So here's Cobb, one of the greatest hitters in MLB history (if not arguably the greatest), who had by virtue of these two games in 1925, late in his career and at a somewhat advanced age for a ballplayer, shown that he apparently could hit homers if he wanted. And yet he still chose not to over his entire career, save for these two games. That earlier poster then went on in a later post to say - "They tell similar stories about Ichiro. Seems odd that a player would intentionally choose to be less successful. In other words, the story is nonsense." This was in reference to the story of Cobb supposedly saying he was going to hit home runs all of a sudden, and that was this guy's way of trying to dispute that story. But he missed my point entirely. It didn't have anything to do with the story of whether or not Cobb ever really said he was going to do it to a couple sportswriters, the truth is that he actually did it!!!! And for a hitter as good and as consistent as Cobb, over a career as long as his, to suddenly have a couple games like that out of nowhere means that he must have decided to go for the fences in those two games, whether he said he was going to beforehand to someone else or not. That was no dumb luck fluke, not for someone with Cobb's batting eye and hitting ability. So it had to be intentional on his part. And if it was intentional, my whole point was how ironic is it that this earlier poster would say it is odd for a player to intentionally choose to be less successful (meaning they would consciously choose to hit singles rather than home runs I believe) and yet it appears that is exactly what Ty Cobb chose to do throughout his career. So it seems to me that this earlier poster, to put it bluntly, is saying that if Ty Cobb could have hit more homers if he wanted to, but didn't, that he was basically stupid! And that is why I also said I wish Cobb were still around today for this earlier poster to have said exactly what he posted about choosing to be more successful to Cobb's face, as I think Cobb would would have taken it just like I bluntly put it. I can easily envision Cobb's reaction being on a level like Brett's pine tar incident, or worse!!!
Forget the story, Cobb's apparent choice to hit singles instead of going for home runs I felt was the biggest counter to the earlier poster's argument that home runs were so much more important than singles. I'm not saying that homers aren't more important than singles (just not at the disparity that that earlier poster seemed to imply) or that Cobb could have ever come close to hitting home runs like Ruth did. Just saying that he's one huge proponent for singles still meaning something pretty important to the game, and to therefore not discount them so quickly, even when compared to home runs.