Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen.
“The source of my trouble with Cobb was simple,” Donie Bush, one of Cobb’s former Tigers teammates, explained. “He expected me to do the things he did, and I just couldn’t be so perfect. Who could?” Leerhsen’s engaging “exhumation” of Cobb and his reputation reveals that the man who most people today regard as “the most hated man in baseball” was a complex person whose relationships with his teammates, the fans, and African Americans are not what you might think. Leerhsen claims that Cobb’s standing was poisoned by stories passed around by sportswriters and biographies written after his death.
For instance, it’s common wisdom that Cobb was an ignorant racist. Yet he employed African Americans to assist him both in Detroit and in the Deep South. Hardly a Klansman, Cobb came from a liberal family whose grandfather was an abolitionist and whose father was more akin to Atticus Finch than a supporter of Jim Crow. Neither was Cobb, according to Leerhsen, a “rube,” but the son of a state senator and something of an intellectual himself. What about the stories of Cobb intentionally spiking opponents? If you actually asked his opponents—and Leerhsen does the research—they are quiet on the issue. Leerhsen reveals how rumors like these ones got started and, using assiduously researched sources, pokes holes in many of the anecdotes that people use to support their view of Cobb.
Cobb, of course, was a sumbitch. Growing up, he was a little guy who had to beg his way on to the local team (at age twelve!). A “born battler,” he was also raised in what the author calls “fighting times,” and if you have ever read anything about sports in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, you already know that most ballplayers were used to brawling (and drinking and cheating). Simply put, he had a short fuse. And though Cobb wouldn’t spike anyone simply to hurt the other player, but I can’t imagine that anyone has ever played harder. Think of a competitor on Michael Jordan’s level—yet twice as driven. The author describes Cobb as “hypersensitive.” If you criticized him, he would get in your face. “Don’t get Cobb mad,” Connie Mack warned others. What made Cobb great, though, is what makes so many other people wilt: He liked opposition. He liked being challenged. It sounds odd that someone who was hypersensitive would enjoy being prodded, but Cobb was complex. He was a strange mixture of insecurity and confidence, emotional fragility and resilience.
He was so sensitive because, like so many other people, he never quite felt he was good enough. He never thought he was (like Shoeless Joe) a natural, meaning that he worked harder than anyone. Most forget that speed was the name of his game, and he worked on his speed as much as he worked on his hitting. He also was a cerebral player, Leerhsen argues, trying to distract pitchers when he was on base, feigning stealing and using any advantage he could. He was an irritant—yet one who batted .367 and stole nearly 900 bases.
Remarkably, his career almost fizzled before he got the chance to become a superstar. During his first few two seasons, he was hazed by several other Tigers, and while Cobb fought back, the players who bullied him tried to ostracize him from the team. This bullying went on longer—much longer—than the usual rookie hazing. Why? Leerhsen explains that Cobb’s teammates hated his “Southernness . . . his bookishness (and) his popularity.” At the time, Southerners in the North were still expected to “display sufficient deference,” and Cobb, who had an “aristocratic” way about him, did not. Plus, it became clear by Cobb’s second season that he was good—too damn good, in fact. In short, Cobb was a target and his teammates nearly destroyed his career.
At about the same time, during his second season, Cobb’s mother was being tried. Cobb witnessed her shooting and killing his father. His mother was not convicted, but Cobb was devastated. This, along with the hazing and his status as an outsider in the North among a bunch of rough characters, led to what Leershen suggests was a nervous breakdown. Cobb left the Tigers in his second season for several weeks for a local sanitarium. Apparently, he healed himself well, because when he came back, he went on a twenty-year tear.
Why did some people during his time despise him? They didn’t quite despise him as we might think. He was the game’s biggest draw before Ruth (who was also booed on the road). He irritated other players with his intensity, talent, and brainy approach to the game. (He wanted to be a “mental hazard” for his opponents.) He took every advantage possible, and people like that can be tiring. However, many of his actions—including the photo of Cobb sliding into the catcher Paul Krichell, a photo in which Cobb appears to be spiking Krichell out of spite—were taken out of context. By playing hard, Cobb found himself involved in various controversies. But since whatever Cobb did was news, those stories were blown out of proportion. “Cobb was the roughest, toughest player I ever saw, a terror on the basepaths,” said former adversary Burt Shotten. “He was not dirty, though. . . . But if you ever got in the way of his flying spikes, brother, you were a dead turkey.” Opponents generally respected him.
Previous biographers simply assumed that Cobb was racist. He did beat a black man senseless in Detroit, but the two seemed to egg one another on. In another incident a few years later, Cobb got into a fight with a bellboy who one biographer assumed was black, though Leerhsen finds no evidence of that. In fact, given the times, Leerhsen argues that since the bellboy’s race was not mentioned, it is probably safer to assume that he was white. In any case, the biographies of Cobb written after his death ruined his reputation; even writers like Bill Bryson speak confidently of Cobb’s psychopathic tendencies. And by today’s standards, Cobb might appear that way; in truth, he was a tightly-wound and often violent person. But, according to Leerhsen, he was no psychopath.
All in all, this is a fantastic read. Leerhsen has done exhaustive research. What’s more, he’s an excellent writer; the book is clear, engaging, and often hilarious. It’s a dense 400 pages, but worth the read.
His grandson hershel cobb had a book out a few years ago about him. he said he turned the corner when it came to African American's and supported Jackie Robinson's admission to baseball.
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