Ty Cobb – A Terrible Beauty

By Charles Leerhsen

A review

Many years ago I viewed the 1994 film Cobb starring Tommy Lee Jones. At that time, knowing very little about the life of Ty Cobb, I found the film to be believable and compelling. The film portrayed Cobb as a sadistic racist. This opinion came from a biography written by Al Stump who interviewed Cobb while he was alive.

Charles Leerhsen has written a new biography of Ty Cobb that shatters many of the myths about his life. In the process, I believe Leerhsen has shown that the 1994 film Cobb was a complete fabrication.

However, I also believe that Leerhsen’s biography is incomplete. In order to get a better view of Ty Cobb as well as the history of baseball, I think we need to take a closer look at the time when Ty Cobb lived.

In my readings of history, I’ve seen that most of history is an unimaginable horror story. The facts Leerhrsen has uncovered supports this conclusion. So, in order to understand my point of view, I will first look at the life of Ty Cobb.

Ty Cobb was born in 1886 in Georgia and for most of his life made his home in that state. Cobb’s family wasn’t like most in the state of Georgia. He had a relative who was an abolitionist, and another who intervened to stop a mob from lynching a Black man. His father was one of the few people in his community who had a college education and opposed the vicious discrimination against Black people.

We might consider that the year 1886 was around the time when the reconstruction governments were being overthrown by racist mobs of the Ku Klux Klan. Ty Cobb’s family had sympathized with the reconstruction governments that worked to bring about democratic reforms in the former slave states. However, unlike many who felt the need to leave the South with rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Ty Cobb’s family continued to live in Georgia.

From an early age Ty Cobb was fascinated with the game of baseball. His father wanted the young Cobb to follow in his footsteps and go to college. The father and son had several lengthy discussions where the father encouraged the son to give up baseball and get a college degree. Eventually Ty Cobb’s father gave him the money he needed to begin his baseball career, and believed that career would only last a few months. The father was almost right in that opinion.

Ty Cobb had a difficult time when he started to play baseball. It took him a while to be recognized and join the major league team of the Detroit Tigers. While rookie ball players need to prove themselves in the majors, the treatment of Ty Cobb in his first few years in the majors was clearly abusive. This kind of treatment was given to any rookie who demonstrated a talent for the game. Mediocre players did not experience this kind of harassment.

The young Ty Cobb was assaulted by his teammates routinely. When the team was on the road his teammates conspired to keep him from using a shared bathroom. While Cobb persevered through this routine harassment, these experiences would sensitize him to any slights against his personality.

We can also say that in those years fans routinely jeered at players from opposing teams. These fans threw garbage onto the field to distract an opposing player. Occasionally and umpire would end a game because of unruly behavior by fans.

We might consider that Black players like Jackie Robinson and Dick Allen experienced a similar kind of harassment because they were Black. Ty Cobb became a target of unruly fans because of his exceptional abilities.

While Pete Rose has been kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his gambling, in Ty Cobb’s era this kind of gambling was routine. The scandal with the Chicago Black Sox was one of the few where players were severely punished for participating in betting schemes.   

Leerhsen argues that Ty Cobb was the best baseball player of all time. This opinion is largely based on his lifetime batting average. While most professional ball players would do well to have a .300 batting average, Ty Cobb hit over .400 for a few years and had a lifetime batting average of about .380.

Pitchers usually have an advantage over batters. However, when Ty Cobb came to the plate, pitchers feared him. They knew that if Ty Cobb was on first base, he could disrupt an entire game. The following passage is from the New York Times in 1915 in a game he played against the Yankees. This quotation gives a flavor for why Ty Cobb was feared by opposing teams.

“Ty Cobb is loose again on a base-galloping spree. He romps to first on a single. Slim Caldwell pitches to Nunamaker, and the ball nestles in his big mitt. Cobb, a few feet off first suddenly bolts into action and races to second. Nunamaker, amazed at the Georgian’s daring, stands dumbfounded.

“He throws the ball to Dan Boone just as the Southern Flyer jumps into second base. The steel spikes flash in the waning sun and Cobb is lost in a cloud of dust. Ninamaker’s nervous toss rolls to center field, and the Georgia Gem bounds to his feet and tears to third. He’s as safe as the Bank of England. Cobb’s sarcastic smile angers his hoodwinked opponents.

“Now the speed-crazed comet dashes up and down the third-base line, trying to rattle Caldwell. Will Cobb have the nerve to try and steal home? You said it; he will. Caldwell doesn’t think so. No one thinks so, but Cobb. The Yank’s lanky pitcher hurls the ball at the batsman like a rifle ball. As the ball left his hand Cobb bounded over the ground like a startled dear.

“At the plate crouched Nunamaker. He was so surprised that he didn’t know his name. Cobb dashed through the air toward the scoring pan. His body swerved away from Nunamaker’s reach and clouds of dirt kicked up by his spikes blinded the eyes of Nunamaker, Caldwell, and Silk O’Loughlin.

“The umpire ruled that the catcher didn’t touch Cobb. He also ruled that Cobb hadn’t touched the plate. While the Yankees players were protesting, Cobb sneaked around the bunch and touched the plate.

“A smart young feller, this same Cobb. Caldwell threw his glove high in the air in derision at O’Loughlin’s decision. Cobb pulled the wool over their eyes like a ‘sharper’ unloading mining stock on a Rube. Caldwell was put out of the game for being mad that Cobb had outwitted him.”

This passage shows many of Ty Cobb’s strengths in playing Major League baseball. While other players liked to enjoy themselves between games, Cobb was usually alone in his room studying opposing teams, thinking about their strengths and weaknesses. The above passage shows how he routinely did things on the field that his opponents didn’t expect. Ty Cobb stole home base around 50 times in his career. The player who had the second most steals of home had about 30.

Al Stump argued that Cobb routinely spiked opposing players when he would slide into a base. The Times reporter doesn’t even allege this happened in the above passage. Cobb routinely attempted to avoid contact with players who attempted to tag him out. However, Cobb also felt that he had a right to a part of the base and collided with players who attempted to block his path. Ty Cobb also sent a letter to the league arguing that umpires should be required to inspect the cleats of players, so no player would sharpen their cleats in order to deliberately injure another player.

Leerhsen gave evidence that Cobb gave assistance to several Black people and went on record of welcoming Jackie Robinson into the Majors in 1947. These facts counter the argument that Ty Cobb was just another racist from Georgia.

The problems with Leerhsen’s biography

While Charles Leerhson unravels many of the myths about Ty Cobb, I don’t agree with all of his conclusions. First, Leerhsen argued that Cobb was the best baseball player of all time. The problem with this argument is that Cobb never needed to compete against players from the Negro League. Critics of baseball in those years argue that the Negro Leagues were as good or better than the Majors. So, how can we say that Cobb was the best of all time, if he never played against some of the best players of that era?

We might also think about the fact that Ty Cobb’s father encouraged him to pursue a college career. Most Black ball players of that era didn’t have this option. They either made it in baseball, or they would need to work at some of the worst jobs in this country. This state of affairs doesn’t imply that Cobb was a racist, but it points to the fact that he had advantages that Black players didn’t have.

I think that Leerhsen made a convincing argument that Ty Cobb was not an overt racist. However, we might consider what happened to professional athletes who actively challenged racial discrimination in this country.

Jack Johnson was the first Black person to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. He did this decades before Jackie Robinson broke the color line to play baseball in the Major Leagues. Johnson had a reputation for speaking his mind and ridiculed those who defended the Jim Crow segregation of his day.

   

In those years, the United States government was appalled at the fact that a Black person was heavyweight champion of the world. The government used their power to conspire to charge Cobb with violation of the Mann Act, a law most people today don’t even know existed. Cobb served about one year in prison for violation of this law. His real crime was in being a Black man who was outspoken in defending his people and the heavyweight champion.

Mohammed Ali was also a heavyweight champion of the world. He refused to fight in the war against Vietnam. He argued that no Vietnamese ever called him the n—word. He was stripped of his title, prevented from boxing, and threatened with prison. The Supreme Court ruled that Ali’s reasons for objecting to the war were legitimate and this decision kept him out of prison. We might also consider that the Supreme Court has ruled many times against Black people’s justifiable demands for equal treatment under the law.

Curt Flood was a fifteen-year outstanding veteran of Major League baseball. He challenged the reserve clause that tied professional players to teams and restricted their salaries. He was motivated to do this because of the civil rights movement. He felt that tying players to one team made them, in essence, slaves to that team. His case lost in the Supreme Court and flood was blacklisted from major league baseball. Years after Curt Flood made his stand, the reserve clause was no more in major league sports and professional ball players became highly paid athletes.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were medal winners in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. They protested the treatment of Black people in this country by raising their black gloved fists during the playing of the National Anthem. They were kicked off the US Olympic team and told to go home. Both Smith and Carlos were blacklisted from many jobs in this country because of their stand at the Olympics.

Colon Kaepernick was a pro-football quarterback who protested police brutality by refusing to stand during the National Anthem at football games. Although Kaepernick was good enough to compete in a Super Bowl game, no team has drafted him and he isn’t playing professional football, in all probability, because of his stand against police brutality.

These examples demonstrate that when people who happen to be athletes take stands against racism in this country, there are severe consequences. While Ty Cobb may not have been an overt racist, challenging the systematic racism in this country, clearly would have ended his professional baseball career.

Ty Cobb was an excellent baseball player. He had numerous fans that looked forward to seeing him compete and upsetting opposing teams with his daring play. Contrary to Al Stump’s arguments in his book, Cobb had a deep respect for the game and in most cases made a real effort to be fair.

Clearly Ty Cobb was in many physical altercations. While I’m not defending Cobb in these altercations, I think we need to look at his life in the context of the times when he lived. When someone is routinely assaulted by teammates for years, this doesn’t create an atmosphere of passivity. Yet, Ty Cobb persevered and became one of the most popular baseball players of his day.