Ty Cobb
Tyrus Raymond Cobb, nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American professional baseball center fielder. A native of rural Narrows, Georgia, Cobb played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball. He spent 22 years with the Detroit Tigers and served as the team's player-manager for the last six, and he finished his career with the Philadelphia Athletics. In 1936, Cobb received the most votes of any player on the inaugural ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 222 out of a possible 226 votes ; no other player received a higher percentage of votes until Tom Seaver in 1992. In 1999, the Sporting News ranked Cobb third on its list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players."
Cobb is credited with setting 90 MLB records throughout his career. Cobb has won more batting titles than any other player, with 11. During his 24-year career, he hit.300 in a record 23 consecutive seasons, with the exception being his rookie season. He also hit.400 in three different seasons, a record he shares with three other players. Cobb has more five-hit games than any other player in major league history. He also holds the career record for stealing home and for stealing second base, third base, and home in succession, and is still the youngest player to compile 4,000 hits and score 2,000 runs. His combined total of 4,065 runs scored and runs batted in is still the highest ever produced by any major league player. Cobb also ranks first in games played by an outfielder in major league history. He retained many other records for almost a half century or more, including most career games played and at bats until 1974 as well as the modern record for most career stolen bases until 1977. He also had the most career hits until 1985 and most career runs until 2001. His.366 or.367 career batting average ranked as the highest-ever recorded up until 2024, when MLB decided to include Negro Leagues players in official statistics.
Cobb's reputation, which includes a large college scholarship fund for Georgia residents financed by his early investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors, has been somewhat tarnished by allegations of racism and violence. These primarily stem from a couple of mostly discredited biographies that were released following his death. Cobb's reputation as a violent man was exaggerated by his first biographer, sportswriter Al Stump, whose stories about Cobb have been proven as sensationalized and largely fictional. While he was known for often violent conflicts, he spoke favorably about black players joining the Major Leagues and was a well-known philanthropist.
Early life
Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born on December 18, 1886, in Narrows, Georgia, a small, unincorporated rural community of farmers. He was the first of three children born to William Herschel Cobb and Amanda Chitwood Cobb. Cobb's father was a state senator.When he was still an infant, his parents moved to the nearby town of Royston, where he grew up. By most accounts, he became fascinated with baseball as a child, and decided that he wanted to go professional one day; his father was vehemently opposed to this idea, but by his teenage years, he was trying out for area teams. He played his first years in organized baseball for the Royston Rompers, the semi-pro Royston Reds, and the Augusta Tourists of the South Atlantic League, who released him after only two days. He then tried out for the Anniston, Alabama-based Anniston Steelers of the semipro Tennessee–Alabama League, with his father's stern admonition ringing in his ears: "Don't come home a failure!" After joining the Steelers for a monthly salary of $50, Cobb promoted himself by sending several postcards written about his talents under different aliases to Grantland Rice, the Atlanta Journal sports editor. Eventually, Rice wrote a small note in the Journal that a "young fellow named Cobb seems to be showing an unusual lot of talent." After about three months, Cobb returned to the Tourists and finished the season hitting.237 in 35 games. While with the Tourists he was mentored and coached by George Leidy, who emphasized pinpoint bunting and aggression on the basepaths. In August 1905, the management of the Tourists sold Cobb to the American League's Detroit Tigers for $750.
On August 8, 1905, Cobb's mother, Amanda, fatally shot his father, William, with a pistol that William had purchased for her. Court records indicate that William Cobb had suspected Amanda of infidelity and was sneaking past his own bedroom window to catch her in the act. She saw the silhouette of what she presumed to be an intruder and, acting in self-defense, shot and killed her husband. Amanda Cobb was charged with murder and released on a $7,000 recognizance bond. She was acquitted on March 31, 1906. Ty Cobb later attributed his ferocious play to his late father, saying, "I did it for my father. He never got to see me play... but I knew he was watching me, and I never let him down."
Cobb was initiated into Freemasonry in 1907, and he was a member of the Scottish Rite and completed the 32nd degree in 1912.
In 1911, Cobb moved to Detroit's architecturally significant and now historically protected Woodbridge neighborhood, from which he would walk with his dogs to the ballpark prior to games. The Victorian duplex in which Cobb lived still stands.
Professional career
Detroit Tigers (1905–1926)
Early years
Three weeks after his mother killed his father, Cobb debuted in center field for the Detroit Tigers. On August 30, 1905, in his first major league at bat, he doubled off Jack Chesbro of the New York Highlanders. Chesbro had won 41 games the previous season. Cobb was 18 years old at the time, the youngest player in the league by almost a year. Although he hit only.240 in 41 games, he signed a $1,500 contract to play for the Tigers in 1906.As a rookie, Cobb was subject to severe hazing by his veteran teammates, who were jealous of the young prospect. The players smashed his homemade bats, nailed his cleats in the clubhouse, doused his clothes before tying knots in them, and verbally abused him. Cobb later attributed his hostile temperament to this experience: "These old-timers turned me into a snarling wildcat." Tigers manager Hughie Jennings, who took the helm in 1907, later acknowledged that Cobb was targeted for abuse by veteran players, some of whom sought to force him off the team. "I let this go for a while because I wanted to satisfy myself that Cobb has as much guts as I thought in the very beginning," Jennings recalled. "Well, he proved it to me, and I told the other players to let him alone. He is going to be a great baseball player and I won't allow him to be driven off this club."
Within a year, Cobb emerged as the Tigers' regular center fielder and hit.316 in 98 games in 1906, setting a record for the highest batting average for a 19-year-old. He never hit below that mark again. After being moved to right field, he would lead the Tigers to three consecutive American League pennants in 1907, 1908 and 1909. Detroit would lose each World Series, however, and Cobb's postseason numbers were in sum notably below his career standard. It was his later contention that his youth at the time played a factor in this. In his remaining nineteen seasons, Cobb did not get another opportunity to play on a pennant-winner and thus in a World Series.
In a game in 1907, Cobb reached first and then stole second, third and home. a feat he accomplished four times during his career, still an MLB record. He finished the 1907 season with a league-leading.350 batting average, 212 hits, 49 steals and 119 runs batted in. At age 20, he was the youngest player to win a batting championship and held this record until 1955, when fellow Detroit Tiger Al Kaline won the batting title at twelve days younger than Cobb had been. Reflecting on his career in 1930, two years after retiring, he told Grantland Rice, "The biggest thrill I ever got came in a game against the Athletics in 1907 ... The Athletics had us beaten, with Rube Waddell pitching. They were two runs ahead in the 9th inning, when I happened to hit a home run that tied the score. This game went 17 innings to a tie, and a few days later, we clinched our first pennant. You can understand what it meant for a 20-year-old country boy to hit a home run off the great Rube, in a pennant-winning game with two outs in the ninth." In the 1907 World Series, after a suspended tie in Game One, the Tigers were outclassed and swept by the Chicago Cubs, with Cobb battling an anemic.200.
Despite great success on the field, Cobb was no stranger to controversy off it. As described in Smithsonian, "In 1907 during spring training in Augusta, Georgia, a black groundskeeper named Bungy Cummings, whom Cobb had known for years, attempted to shake Cobb's hand or pat him on the shoulder." The "overly familiar greeting infuriated" Cobb, who attacked Cummings. When Cummings' wife tried to defend him, Cobb allegedly choked her. The assault was only stopped when catcher Charles "Boss" Schmidt knocked Cobb out. However, aside from Schmidt's statement to the press, no other corroborating witnesses to the assault on Cummings ever came forward and Cummings himself never made a public comment about it. Author Charles Leerhsen speculates that the assault on Cummings and his wife never occurred and that it was a total fabrication by Schmidt. Cobb had spent the previous year defending himself on several occasions from assaults by Schmidt, with Schmidt often coming out of nowhere to blindside Cobb. On that day, several reporters did see Cummings, who appeared to be "partially under the influence of liquor," approach Cobb and shout "Hello, Carrie!" and go in for a hug. Cobb then pushed him away, which was the last interaction that anyone saw between Cobb and Cummings. Shortly thereafter, hearing a fight, several reporters came running and found Cobb and Schmidt wrestling on the ground. When the fight was broken up and Cobb had walked away, Schmidt remained behind and told the reporters that he saw Cobb assaulting Cummings and his wife and had intervened. Leerhsen speculates that this was just another one of Schmidt's assaults on Cobb and that once discovered, Schmidt made up a story that made him sound like he had assaulted Cobb for a noble purpose. In 1908, Cobb attacked a black laborer in Detroit who complained when Cobb stepped into freshly poured asphalt; Cobb was found guilty of battery, but the sentence was suspended.
In September 1907, Cobb began a relationship with The Coca-Cola Company that lasted the remainder of his life. By the time he died, he held over 20,000 shares of stock and owned bottling plants in Santa Maria, California, Twin Falls, Idaho, and Bend, Oregon. He was also a celebrity spokesman for the product. In the offseason between 1907 and 1908, Cobb negotiated with Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, offering to coach baseball there "for $250 a month, provided that he did not sign with Detroit that season." This did not come to pass, however.
The following season, the Tigers finished one game ahead of the Chicago White Sox for the pennant. Cobb again won the batting title with a.324 average. In the World Series, he performed well, batting a team-high.368 and starring in a Game 3 win, but Detroit suffered another lopsided loss to the Cubs. In August 1908, Cobb married Charlotte Marion Lombard, the daughter of prominent Augustan Roswell Lombard. In the offseason, the couple lived on her father's Augusta estate, The Oaks, until they moved into their own house on Williams Street in November 1913.
The Tigers won the AL pennant again in 1909. During the World Series, Cobb's last, he stole home in the second game, igniting a three-run rally, and also plated a team-high five RBIs for the series. Despite those highlights, he finished with a subpar.231 batting average, as the Tigers lost to Honus Wagner and the powerful Pittsburgh Pirates in seven games. Although the postseason was marred by another setback, he won the Triple Crown that year by hitting.377 with 107 RBI and nine home runs, all inside the park, thus becoming the only player of the modern era to lead his league in home runs in a season without hitting a ball over the fence.
In the same season, Charles M. Conlon snapped the famous photograph of a grimacing Cobb sliding into third base amid a cloud of dirt, which visually captured the grit and ferocity of his playing style.