Ty Cobb Essay -- essays research papers

Ty Cobb "Baseball," Ty Cobb liked to say, "is something like a war...Baseball is a red- blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's not pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out of it. It's...a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest" (Ward and Burns 64). Although Ty Cobb was possibly the greatest player in baseball history, many people would consider him its worst person. Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born December 18, 1886 in The Narrows, Georgia. His parents named him after the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, which stubbornly refused to surrender to Alexander the Great. From the very beginning, he took after the city and became one of baseball's most stubborn and hated men. The Georgia Peach, so-called, was a creature of extremes. Ty Cobb is, by bald statistics, measurably the greatest hitter ever; he was, by the reckoning of virtually everyone who met him, personally the most despicable human being ever to grace the National Pastime (Deford 56). Cobb's playing career, with the Detroit Tigers and the Philadelphia Athletics, was arguably the best anyone ever had. He won twelve batting titles in thirteen years, including a record nine in a row. He also holds the records for the most runs scored with 2,245 and the highest lifetime batting average at .367, a number nearly unreachable even in just one season by today's standards. Other records he set that have since been broken: 3,034 games played, 4,191 hits, 892 stolen bases, 392 outfield assists, 1,136 extra base hits, and 1,961 runs batted in. He also struck out just 357 times in 11,429 times at bat, a phenomenal achievement. After his career ended, in 1936, he was the leading vote-getter of the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame, beating even Babe Ruth. However, Cobb's career was marred with controversy and scandals. He was hated by nearly every player in the league, including his own teammates. When he was first called up to play with Detroit, he was extremely unpopular with his teammates. They locked him out of the bathroom, tore the crown out of his straw hat and sawed in half the bat that had been especially fashioned for him by his hometown coffin maker. He did not take any of it with good humor and could not bear to be the target of the mildest joke. He fought back with his fists, refused to speak to his tormentors, developed ulcers, took to sleeping with a revolver... ... Ty burned his fan mail for heat" (Kramer 31). As with all bad boys, there was a good side to Ty Cobb, although few ever saw it. Despite his inability to spend money on himself, he did give a lot to others. He gave money to needy retired ballplayers, helped build a new hospital in Royston, and started a fund for poor college students (Kramer 44). While giving money, Cobb still felt unliked and remained virtually alone for the rest of his life. What money he did spend on himself was almost exclusively towards the use of alcohol, which he became heavily dependent on. He said he would have given up his money if only he could change the way players felt about him. He knew nobody forgot how nasty he always could be in his playing days (Kramer 45). Cobb died of cancer July 17, 1961, a sad and lonely man. Only 400 people, most of them little-leaguers who only knew him as a name from baseball's past, showed up at his funeral. Just three ballplayers from his era bothered to attend. Near the end of his life, Cobb commented to a caller that if he had his life to live over again, "I would have done things a little different...I would have had more friends" (Ward and Burns, 65).