Ty Cobb’s Legacy

[Yoda]

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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

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]

[TRC4191]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

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]

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."

[Tomi]

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.