The Chris Moeller Archives

The Duke of the Dead-Ball Era

If you're a baseball fan, then run, don't walk, to read Charles Leerhsen's book Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. Leerhsen lays out the case that Ty Cobb was not really, as the author phrases it, "Ty Cobb," the Devil's child you know from several different historical tomes, from Ken Burns' PBS miniseries Baseball, or from the character spoken of in such nasty terms by a character in Field of Dreams.

While quite possibly the game's most hard-nosed player-- then or now, a man who played the game "something like a war" (on way to becoming still arguably its greatest player ever), and a man who went through periods of great loneliness and depression late in his life, Leerhsen explains that Cobb was viewed entirely differently in his day than he is now. He says that Cobb actually had many friends in baseball, participated in rage episodes that were actually not unusual at the time (such as brawling on the field or even going into the stands after fans that hurled insults). Most importantly to Cobb's long-lasting reputation of hideous thoughts, words, and deeds, the author explains that there is virtually no record of racism in Cobb's public record, relative to his time, and in little-known fact, he was even a defender of integration.


To the last point, Leerhsen believes that Cobb got saddled with the reputation he has in 2016 partially because he was the most famous Southern white man in American popular culture for decades, perhaps the most well-known prior to Elvis Presley. (Blogger's note: the author is from New York City.) It seems a mystery as to how skin color got attached to stories of Cobb's off-the-field brawling when the skin color of these people was not reported in the newspapers of the time-- and be mindful that this was a time when newspapers were not in the habit of suppressing the fact when a black person was involved in a scuffle. He investigates census records to confirm that many of these "victims" of Cobb's admittedly-violent outbursts that have been reported to be black were not at all. We just started accepting stories as facts. Cobb was not a man born of low birth, or of parents without means, and in fact, his scraps with teammates were more a product of his prideful bearing as a Southern gentlemen. He was standoffish and a voracious reader, which initially rankled his predominantly-Northern working-class teammates, many of whom were illiterate. His demeanor made him very susceptible to their Southern stereotypes early on, and his style of play made that reputation difficult to combat.

There is no public record of Cobb making any statements on race prior to the 1950s, by that time a man in his 60's, and when he finally did, it was to praise Jackie Robinson and all the Negro Leaguers that he felt were improving the game of baseball. His private attitude seemed to be even one of feeling grateful as the Negro League influence on the National and American Leagues was bringing back, to some degree, the "Cobb"-style of play that had been overwhelmed by the slugging exploits of Babe Ruth. Throughout his almost three-decade playing career, Cobb barnstormed in games against black teams. He grew up around black people, counted them as boyhood friends in Royston, Georgia, and employed black men as valets and domestics his entire life. While that last point is no indication of either a presence or lack of racist attitude, the men and women he employed expressed great admiration and even love for him before and after his death. So the world turns, however, and modern-era baseball fans are fascinated to contemplate the changing face of baseball and America, and to, as Leerhsen puts it, "imagine a racist psycho (once) at large in the major leagues."

I'm telling you that you need to read this book, and re-think everything you were ever told about Ty Cobb when you were growing up on the game of baseball. There are terrible ways in which one can depart this life-- violence, torture, pain, but high on that list has to be having Al Stump ghost-write your autobiography when you're in the late stages of terminal cancer. That man, who spent likely no more than a few days with Cobb between 1960 and 1961, really did a number on him after the baseball star's death occurred midway through the literary project. He wrote a fabricated history that is only now-- hopefully-- starting to be re-written. Stump wrote three different books on Cobb (each now discredited), and his fictionalized version of his time spent with Cobb became a motion picture a year before the writer's death in 1995. It starred Tommy Lee Jones as a bitter, penny-pinching, violent Cobb, and Robert Wuhl as the put-upon, altruistic author.

Babe Ruth was the first person to have a negative impact on the historical legacy of Ty Cobb. It was not purposeful. The Babe helped the game evolve away from Cobb's "scientific" approach beginning in 1920 by hitting prodigious and plentiful taters. From that year ever after, baseball has been a game for the mashers. Then, in the following sequence, the golden age of tabloid newspapers and lazy historians did the rest, imprisoning Cobb in hate-filled innuendo and misrepresentation that made for a more-colorful story than the real thing.

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Leerhsen leads us to the following clip on YouTube. AND IT IS MAGNIFICENT. It's Cobb appearing on the CBS television game show I've Got a Secret in 1955. Notice, first, how everybody smokes. Then, how the women are not blindfolded because it's automatically assumed that women, even with the benefit of sight, will not know who Ty Cobb is. (This is sexist, but... well, ultimately accurate.) None of the panelists recognize the elderly, heavy-set Cobb, and that's a solemn commentary on how far the Duke of the Dead-Ball Era had slipped in the public consciousness almost three decades after his final game, even as he was still the big leagues' all-time leader in hits, runs scored, and batting average.

Finally, notice his most-pronounced baseball characteristic on display, his pride, at the conclusion of the broadcast. As he exits, he has words, seemingly "corrective" ones, with the panelists Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan, who have just uttered to a TV audience, alternately, that Cobb "spiked a lot of second basemen, too," and "he was a mean one in his time." We can't hear what Cobb says to them as he greets them, but they appear repentant because we hear Morgan say, "Well, you're still okay, then."

There's no documented evidence that Cobb ever sharpened his spikes in order to inflict injury on his opponents, as has been often alleged, but his competitiveness was undeniable.

posted by CM @ 8:37 PM