Posted on 06/18/2015 8:23:19 AM PDT by bkepley
Among the entries in a 1999 anthology called The Best American Sports Writing of the Century is a profile of Ty Cobb (1886-1961). It was originally published in True magazine the year of Cobb’s death. The writer, Al Stump, recalls the last, bleak days of the great ballplayer’s life and makes him into a bitter, violent, alcoholic monster. In one passage, he describes a visit to the graveyard in the town of Royston, Georgia, where Cobb had grown up. Cobb wanted Stump, who was ghostwriting his autobiography, to go with him, on Christmas Eve, to see where he would soon be buried. ....It is nicely melodramatic stuff, but there is a problem. As Charles Leerhsen writes in Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, “It didn’t snow that day in Royston or for hundreds of miles around.” That might have been the least of Stump’s assaults on the truth and Cobb’s reputation. But like so many other slanders, it has stood, until now, because it fits the narrative of Cobb as a violent, racist near-psychopath. He may have been the greatest pure hitter in the history of baseball and a driven, complicated man. But that is somehow insufficient.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
When I was a kid, I used to read bios of all the great baseball players. I always read that Cobb was the “most hated man” in baseball. I figure he was the Pete Rose of his day.
Ty Cobb was a hell of a ‘ball player. By modern standards he was also one hell of a racist SOB. Such contradictions are part and parcel of human nature.
CC
Stole home 54 times. That must have made pitchers nervous...
Heck, it probably caused the whole infield to shift positions.
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