Who Was Ty Cobb? the History We Know That’S Wrong Charles Leerhsen Author, Ty Cobb: a Terrible Beauty
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE ImpOVERr 3,400,000imi READERS MONTHLYs March 2016 • Volume 45, Number 3 Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong Charles Leerhsen Author, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty CHARLES LEERHSEN is a journalist, author, and adjunct professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. He has been an editor for Sports Illustrated, People, and Us Weekly, and spent eleven years as a senior writer at Newsweek. He has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, and Money. He is the author of several books, including Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America and, most recently, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, which won the 2015 Casey Award for best baseball book of the year. The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on March 7, 2016, during a program on “Sports and Character” sponsored by the College’s Center for Constructive Alternatives. Ty Cobb was one of the greatest baseball players of all time and king of the so- called Deadball Era. He played in the major leagues—mostly for the Detroit Tigers but a bit for the Philadelphia Athletics—from 1905 to 1928, and was the first player ever voted into the Hall of Fame. His lifetime batting average of .366 is amazing, and has never been equaled. But for all that, most Americans think of him first as an awful person—a racist and a low-down cheat who thought nothing of injuring his fellow players just to gain another base or score a run. Indeed, many think of him as a murderer. Ron Shel- ton, the director of the 1995 movie Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones in the title role, told me it was “well known” that Cobb had killed “as many as” three people. It is easy to understand why this is the prevailing view. People have been told that Cobb was a bad man over and over, all of their lives. The repetition felt like evidence. HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844 It started soon after Cobb’s death in reporting I had learned working at 1961, with the publication of an article Newsweek in its heyday—it didn’t even by a man named Al Stump, one of sev- take me ten minutes to find something eral articles and books he would write that brought me up short. about Cobb. Among other things, Stump Cobb being from Georgia—he grew claimed that when children wrote to up and is buried in Royston, a town in Cobb asking for an autographed picture, Georgia’s northern hills—I had begun he steamed the stamps off the return by searching old issues of the Atlanta envelopes and never wrote back. In Journal-Constitution. I quickly came another book—this one about Cobb’s across a curious article written in late contemporary Tris Speaker—baseball 1911, after the baseball season had historian Timothy Gay wrote (implau- ended, when Cobb was touring in a sibly, if you think about it) that Cobb three-act comedy called The College would pistol-whip any black person he Widow. (In those days, ballplayers were saw on the sidewalk. And then there were tied to their teams by the reserve clause the stories about how Cobb sharpened and couldn’t sell their services for their his spikes: before every game, numer- true market value; to make extra money, ous sources claim, he would hone his they often capitalized on their fame by cleats with a file. In the 1989 film Field appearing in plays or vaudeville.) The of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson says writer of the article was recounting a that Cobb wasn’t invited to the ghostly backstage visit with Cobb, and described cornfield reunion of old-time ballplayers him as a man who very much wanted because “No one liked that son of a bitch.” to please the audience. Cobb was also The line always gets a knowing laugh. going out of his way to accommodate When I pitched my idea for a book the interviewer (who was asking tedious on Cobb to Simon questions) while and Schuster, I was simultaneously being −´ squarely in line with Imprimis (im-pri-mis), hospitable to a second [Latin]: in the first place this way of thinking. guest—a catcher he I figured my task EDITOR had played with in the Douglas A. Jeffrey would be relatively DEPUTY EDITORS minor leagues—who easy. I would go back Matthew D. Bell showed up in the Timothy W. Caspar to the original source COPY EDITOR small dressing room material—the news- Monica VanDerWeide smoking a cigar. It ART DIRECTOR paper accounts, doc- Angela E. Lashaway was like the crowded uments, and letters MARKETING DIRECTOR stateroom scene in that previous biogra- William Gray the Marx Brothers’ PRODUCTION MANAGER phers had never really Lucinda Grimm A Night at the Opera, looked at. I would CIRCULATION MANAGER and meanwhile the find fresh examples Wanda Oxenger play was in progress, STAFF ASSISTANTS of Cobb being mon- Robin Curtis Cobb was trying Kim Ellsworth strous, blend them Kathy Smith to make costume with the stories that Mary Jo Von Ewegen changes, and the stage Al Stump and oth- Copyright © 2016 Hillsdale College manager was barking ers wrote, and come The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not at Cobb to be on his necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. up with the first Permission to reprint in whole or in part is mark in 30 seconds. major Cobb book in hereby granted, provided the following credit What did this line is used: “Reprinted by permission from more than 20 years. Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” story say about Ty But when I started SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. Cobb? On the one in on the nuts-and- ISSN 0277-8432 hand, he was just Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. bolts research with Patent and Trademark Office #1563325. doing what any original sources—the decent person would kind of shoe-leather do—being as polite as 2 MARCH 2016 • VOLUME 45, NUMBER 3 < hillsdale.edu possible under trying circumstances. men. So how did such a distinguished But on the other, Cobb’s ordinary author make such obvious mistakes? decency was exactly the point. For me, When I asked Alexander about this, with this one story, the myth of the he simply replied, “I went with the best evil Ty Cobb began to crumble. information I had at the time.” As I proceeded I found many more But what about Cobb’s 19th-century stories contradicting the myth. Was he Southern roots? How could someone widely hated? An old newspaper clip- born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? ping reported that the Chicago White What I found—and again, not because Sox gave Cobb an award—remark- I am the Babe Ruth of researchers, but ably, a set of books; Cobb was known because I actually did some research—is as a voracious reader of history—for that Ty Cobb was descended from a long being Chicago’s most popular visit- line of abolitionists. His great-grand- ing player. And it turns out that when father was a minister who preached the Detroit Tigers were in town, Ring against slavery and was run out of town Lardner, Chicago’s smartest and best for it. His grandfather refused to fight sportswriter, bought cheap seats in the in the Confederate army because of the outfield so he could spend the game slavery issue. And his father was an edu- bantering with Cobb. cator and state senator who spoke up for Did he steal stamps from children? his black constituents and is known to Letters in museums and private collec- have once broken up a lynch mob. tions make abundantly clear that Cobb Cobb himself was never asked about responded to his young fans, sometimes segregation until 1952, when the Texas with handwritten letters that ran to five League was integrating, and Sporting pages. And he always told them he was News asked him what he thought. “The honored by their autograph requests. Negro should be accepted wholeheart- What about race? It is “common edly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The knowledge” that Cobb was “an avowed Negro has the right to play professional racist”—but when and where did he make baseball and whose [sic] to say he has such a vow and where is it recorded? not?” By that time he had attended A 1984 biography of Cobb, written many Negro league games, sometimes by a college professor named Charles throwing out the first ball and often Alexander, is typical. It describes three sitting in the dugout with the players. people who fought with Cobb—a night He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays watchman, a bellhop, and a butcher—as was the only modern-day player he’d being black. Such evidence was enough pay to see and that Roy Campanella for documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, was the ballplayer that reminded him whose made-for-PBS series Baseball most of himself. described Cobb as an embarrassment to Cobb was, like the rest of us, a highly the game because of his racism and cast imperfect human being. He was too Cobb as the anti-Jackie Robinson. quick to take offense and too intolerant But Burns, like so many others, of those who didn’t strive for excellence was letting himself be misled by the with the over-the-top zeal that he did.