War on the Basepaths Read online

  Little did people know, but significant good came from the Life magazine articles, as Cobb diverted the $25,000 he received as payment to the newly established “Ty Cobb Educational Foundation.” Announced on November 27, 1953, the organization was created to help qualified college students from Georgia with financial assistance, and planned to offer scholarships on an annual basis.58 Recalling the importance his father placed on education, Cobb had long been inspired to develop such a program, and was keenly enthusiastic about its growth.

  Cobb’s philanthropy didn’t end there. In 1945, he first publicly revealed his intentions of erecting a progressive hospital in his hometown of Royston. He discussed the project with local powerbrokers and personally donated $100,000 to ensure that his dream would become a reality.

  The moment finally arrived on January 22, 1950, when the doors of the Cobb Memorial Hospital swung open for the first time, and Ty couldn’t have been prouder. The building was dedicated to his parents, and during the dedication ceremony, Cobb became justifiably choked up. “This hospital belongs to all you people here where I used to live,” he announced, “and it’s for you people whom I’ve always had in my heart.”59

  While Cobb was known for his temperamental attitude, he managed to avoid hairy legal situations for the most part during his post-baseball existence. In fact, he was entangled with the law only here and there, and several of the incidents involved an automobile. On a highway south of San Jose in August 1935, his car accidentally hit a pedestrian, and Cobb immediately rushed the man to a medical facility. The police absolved him of any blame.60 Twelve years later, in Placerville, California, he was taken into custody for drunkenness on a public road. Infuriated by the matter, Cobb made things worse by speaking “too freely” to the judge and was jailed for a couple of hours, then released on bail. The situation was resolved after he paid a $25 fine.61 In 1954, he became the defendant in a lawsuit after an alleged drunken spat with a friend.

  Elbert D. Felts, a sixty-two-year-old former minor league ballplayer, was now a former friend of Cobb’s, and was pushing forward with a $100,000 civil suit, filed in Butte County (CA) Superior Court. He charged that Cobb, sixty-seven, “willfully and intentionally” assaulted him in the back of an automobile in April, causing “severe bodily injuries” to include swelling, lacerations, contusions, and nervous shock. Cobb denied the claims, maintaining that he only defended himself from Felts’ aggressiveness. The case played out over the next year, and in November 1955, a jury issued a verdict for Cobb after seven hours of deliberation.62 But things were far from over. Lawyers for Felts wanted to file an appeal and feature startling new testimony from Cobb’s wife Frances, who, for the second time in 1955, was pursuing a divorce. Her first attempt in January was settled amicably, but the relationship stalled out again by the summer.63

  Although the Felts’ appeal was denied, a detailed twenty-four-page statement of charges by Frances against Ty for their divorce proceedings was submitted into the record. Notably, the documents were reflective of only one side of the argument, but nonetheless provided a disturbing look inside their personal troubles. The reoccurring theme was Cobb’s drinking, and Frances revealed many broken promises to quit during the length of their marriage. When he was drunk, he was verbally abusive, cruel, and used vile language at the drop of a hat. He was suspicious and defensive, and at times, made horrid threats. Gentleman-like behavior was lost as he argued with women and men equally, and displayed his insecurities with a glaringly obvious jealous streak.64

  Cobb’s inner turmoil seeped into the letters he wrote, and he was a prolific correspondent with people all over the map. In an August 21, 1954, letter to Dr. Daniel Elkin, chairman of his educational fund, he divulged that he was “very prone to depressionist feelings” and that he tried hard not to inflict his “dark moments upon others.” He wrote about his alcoholic consumption, mentioning that Frances had helped him “wonderfully” in his ongoing battle.65 But with Frances now out the door, whatever assistance she provided was all but gone. Plus, his children were routinely estranged from him to some degree, leaving him lonelier than ever. His forlorn feelings were more prevalent at his large seven-bedroom home in Atherton than anywhere else, and he concluded that a significant change was necessary.

  “I’m going home,” he announced, signaling his intention to leave California for his birth state. “All my interests are on the other side of those mountains. My heart is in two things, the Cobb Educational Fund, with headquarters in Atlanta, and the Cobb Memorial Hospital, which I built in Royston. I have no business of any kind out here, and with my children married, I have no use for this big house. I want to go back to my own Georgia, back to my Georgia people, back to my Georgia relatives. I want to build a house, hunt birds, and just visit.”66 Cobb admitted that he hated to leave California, but things were much too fast for him nowadays. He wanted quiet and peacefulness.67 In the summer of 1957, he scouted potential properties and found a nice bit of land on Chenocetah Mountain, outside Cornelia, Georgia.68 From his towering vantage point, he could see the area in which he was born at Narrows and, upon realizing that, was taken by the sentimentality of the location, and shed a tear.69

  Unquestionably, Cobb still lingered in the consciousness of the public, but he was more known by name and accomplishment than by sight. He reportedly entered Yankee Stadium twice without being recognized and during an appearance on the popular game show I’ve Got a Secret in 1955, he managed to avoid being identified altogether, that is until the host revealed his name.70 In turn, the audience roundly applauded the baseball legend. Cobb always loved public fanfare. In Baltimore on August 24, 1956, he had to be impressed when he was given the loudest applause of the night during an appearance with eight other superstars prior to an Orioles game. He continued to be highly active, attending reunion events at Kansas City and New York, and made a sincere effort to return to Cooperstown on a yearly basis.

  Enjoying the nostalgia, he was showered by affection from Augusta baseball rooters on August 27, 1957, and the entire gate was donated to his educational fund. A speaker told the crowd that the venue they were in, Jennings Stadium, was just two miles from where Cobb slashed his first professional hit in 1904. Cobb was bowled over by the emotional response to his presence, and remarked, “I can’t tell you how deeply I feel about all this.”71 In July 1959, he made his way back to Navin Field (now known as Briggs Stadium) in Detroit, and his old haunts dredged up plenty of memories. He snuck down to the Tigers bench during a game against Washington and shook hands with players and manager Jimmy Dykes.72 Incidentally, Cobb never figured major league ball would make it to the California coast, but certainly relished attending the 1959 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox.

  As illustrated in Chapter One, the progression of Cobb’s cancer was swift and he shuttled back and forth between hospitals, enduring a massive treatment schedule. He wasn’t incapacitated by his health, and did the things he wanted to do, visiting casinos, attending spring training at Arizona, and made his final trip to Cooperstown in late June 1960. Acting out on occasion and drinking to excess, Cobb refused to curtail his behavior despite the circumstances. He persistently battled away at whatever issue was in front of him, no matter how trivial, and fought for his own set of principles. In May 1960, he filed a lawsuit against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which served his Atherton home, for inaccurate recording of his utilities and purposely went without power at his residence as a demonstration of his stubbornness.73

  A true track and field aficionado, Cobb was delighted to share a stage with four-time Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens for an event in Boston. The two ran into each other again at the airport the next day and Cobb put his arm around Owens and complimented his “great speech.” After a group of children came over to get an autograph, Cobb told them, “You want this man’s autograph, Sonny. Why boy, I’m just a ball player, this man is one of the great gentlemen of sports.” As Owens was leaving, Cobb said
, “Jesse, take care of yourself. Come see me, please.” Cobb then told sportswriter Bill McSweeney, “There goes a great man, Bill, a great man.”74 Having taken great pleasure from attending the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Cobb made hasty plans to venture to Rome for the 1960 Summer Games with a friend from Georgia. He spent seventeen liberating days overseas and continued to test his so-called health limitations.75

  The work on his autobiography was a heartening project for Cobb in his last months, and he truthfully believed he was going to straighten out the jumbled record of his career. Writing his memoirs was a dream of his, and had been on his mind for years. From what he was seeing so far, he was happy about the way it was coming together and the idea of submitting his version of history to the public was personally gratifying. On April 27, 1961, he turned up at the home opener for the debuting Los Angeles Angels, and to old friends like Fred Haney and J. G. Taylor Spink, it was evident that Cobb was in the advanced stages of his illness. According to The Sporting News, Cobb “received a tremendous reception” from the crowd, and that same day, attended a gathering at the famous Brown Derby in Beverly Hills. Comedian Groucho Marx was one of the notables to greet him, and hit the mark when he said, “Ty, many people think there have been greater outfielders, but in my book, you were the best.”76

  Cobb was admitted to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta several different times between 1960 and ’61, and employees who dealt with him remembered their encounters. Dr. Joseph E. Hardison was hammered by Ty’s irritable personality, and told that he was a “rank incompetent amateur” because he wouldn’t give him pain medication without an examination. But after his agony was reduced, the two talked baseball and “became friends.”77 Nurse Alice Kierspe said Cobb was “very charming to me,” but Dottie Wills admitted that he was “ornery.”78 Nevertheless, Ty signed baseballs for both and did likewise for others at the hospital. Medical student Rex Teeslink joined Cobb as his caregiver from May to July 1961, and witnessed Ty’s “hair-trigger temper.” No one could override his forceful personality when he was set in his ways, but Teeslink was exposed to the softer side of him as well. “All I want people to realize is that he was a fair and meaningful guy,” he later said.79

  When Cobb was hospitalized for good on June 5, his mountaintop home hadn’t yet been built and the strained relationships in his life were still to be mended. However, time was running out, and his family knew it. His two daughters, son Jimmy, and first wife Charlie raced from California to be by his bedside. Beverly expressed her father’s sentiment at the time, saying that “he recognized that he drove everyone very hard and he was sorry for the unhappiness that had gone on before.”80 In that regard, a level of peace had been made in a family who’d suffered unbearably for decades. Surrounded by his loved ones, Ty died on July 17, 1961. He was seventy-four.

  Condolence messages streamed in from across the baseball world, many with personal anecdotes about Cobb, and his reach as an influential player and mentor went farther than imagined. The Associated Press and United Press International, in reporting on his passing, specifically denoted that “private funeral services” were to be held, nixing any mass display of respect from the baseball community. A few close friends, including Ray Schalk and Mickey Cochrane, did make the journey, joining 150 others in Cornelia for the services at the McGahee Funeral Home chapel. Over two dozen cars entered in the procession headed for Royston, where Cobb was laid to rest in the family mausoleum next to his parents and sister.81

  Fittingly, the Hillerich & Bradsby Company, producer of the bats Cobb used to secure a majority of the record 4,100 hits during his career, fashioned a poetic tribute in his honor. It featured an image of Cobb in all his baseball glory and read:

  This was Ty Cobb.

  America has lost a great American.

  The World of Sport has lost its most spirited competitor.

  Baseball has lost its most brilliant player.

  We have lost a true friend.82

  19

  “I LOVED THE GUY”

  Of all the prevailing suppositions that have endured about Ty Cobb throughout history—and there have been many—the belief that he was a volcanic scrapper, itching to brawl at a moment’s notice, is certainly at the forefront of his reputation. Today’s representation of Cobb portrays him as one of the rowdiest rowdies of old-time baseball and a guy who apparently sought confrontation in each and every one of the 3,035 games he participated in. No one in the modern era can take credit for developing the fantastic notion of Cobb the pugilist, as Ty actually dealt with the allegation during his playing career. Sportswriters extended his willingness to fight to basically anyone in the majors, including his teammates, and exaggerated stories for maximum effect. Their efforts created a mythical aura around “Ty Cobb,” much like dime novelists did for Jesse James in the nineteenth century. The legend of Cobb was created on paper but, unfortunately, it read more like fiction than fact.

  Before baseball fans realized it, Cobb was bigger than life, and because of this had lost any say or control over his own reputation. It was a living, breathing entity all its own, and journalists ensured that it thrived within the spectrum of any given baseball season. In 1921, he addressed the libel commentary, stating, “A pet subject for writers has been to elaborate on my readiness to get into fisticuffs with other ball players.” He went on to explain that he’d been in a total of three scuffles since joining the majors in 1905, and two of them were in the infancy of his career against Ed Siever and Charley “Boss” Schmidt, with the third versus Buck Herzog in 1917.1 From his account, he hardly possessed an overpowering resume of warfare. However, there were many close calls, perhaps a thrown punch here or there, and rumors of clashes with George Moriarty and even Sam Crawford, but nothing demonstrating the fiendish storybook warrior he was made out to be.2

  In the years following Cobb’s statements, he had a well-known fracas with umpire Billy Evans, altercations with Howard Ehmke and Ray Francis of the Tigers, and near exchanges with Babe Ruth, which were perfect to keep to the narrative of his combativeness alive. Cobb, in 1946, told a reporter, “It’s a funny thing. People always want to talk about the fights I had in baseball. They seem to forget that I took time off from fighting to play a little baseball.”3 But Cobb did himself no favors. His reaction during the unfortunate Claude Lucker situation in 1912 played into the storyline flawlessly and also took its toll on his reputation. It didn’t take long for rival fans to go out of their way to antagonize him. They howled, yelled epithets, and intentionally worked to provoke him; all in the hopes of seeing the “hot head” explode. In a way, it was introducing a colorful vaudevillian aspect into the baseball realm, and to fans drinking in the bleachers, they wanted nothing more than to see an action scene break out before them.

  Cobb was perceived to be the kind of man who could be cracked by taunts and abuse, and, admittedly, his pride could only take so much. “Walking along the street, would a citizen allow another to call him vile and vulgar names?” he asked a reporter in 1916. “No, you bet he wouldn’t. Must the ball players allow the fans to hurl vulgar remarks at him? For one, I won’t.” Cobb acknowledged that there was little he could do under the rules, but said he’d rather leave baseball than tolerate the cruelty anymore. “I’ll quit the game; I’ll throw away the uniform and go back to my Georgia home before I will put up with this stuff. It isn’t in me.” He finally asked, “Do you ever see me abusing the fans?”4 At his weakest point, pushed beyond control, he had the ability to literally explode into an uncontrollable rage. He eventually learned to better control himself in those tense moments, preventing a slew of Lucker-like occurrences.

  The hostility of fans wasn’t limited to talking trash from the stands. For instance, outside Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Cobb was accosted by hostile thugs in 1913. Sensing the danger of the situation, he rushed onto a moving streetcar but his aggressors managed to halt the progress of the vehicle, yearning to continue their assault. It was only through the diligence o
f the conductor to get the vehicle moving again that Ty escaped harm.5 His fame brought other kinds of uninvited schemes as well, including the infamous “badger game,” which was perpetrated by a couple at a Philadelphia hotel. The ruse began when Cobb ran into a woman in need of assistance in the hallway near his room. He asked her inside, intending to summon a doctor by phone, but rather quickly, the woman’s husband burst in. She yelled, causing a scene, but Cobb was wise to things. He didn’t wait around to be blackmailed and simply punched the man, threw the woman from his room, and called it a night.6

  Cobb absorbed a lot of peculiar responses from audiences, including being booed on the road for not hitting, and then cheered once he got on base. Those same fans might also applaud if he was struck out, creating the oddest dichotomy in baseball. Sportswriters occasionally commented on the strangeness of Cobb being booed without any kind of trigger incident. Babe Ruth was treated similarly from time to time, though, and it seemed to be a kind of symbolic ritual for some fans toward baseball’s cream of the crop. In all honesty, people paid their hard-earned money to see Ruth power out home runs and Cobb run the bases with reckless abandon. Anything less was a disappointment. Tongue in cheek, Rogers Hornsby said in 1935 that fans went out to see Cobb “because they figured he’d be good for a couple of fights during the afternoon.”7

  The excitement that was generated by his hard play improved box office sales across the American League and, without a doubt, Cobb was a natural showman. He played to win at all times, never giving an inch and, to outsiders, his approach to the game appeared remarkably flamboyant. While spectators were thrilled by his furious antics, opposing teams were often embarrassed and, as a result, considerable bad feelings developed. Billy Evans wrote in 1916, “Any player who is a success, who is the big star that Cobb is, naturally must make a good many enemies,” and Ty positively didn’t have any trouble aggravating opponents to the point of dislike.8 He butted heads with other loud personalities in the league and traded insults with whoever wanted to engage him. His voice boomed from the dugout as he chided rivals, but on the field, he ably backed up his snarky arrogance.