Last spring, I made a deal with my middle-school student. If he turned out a decent essay about a historical sports figure, I’d publish it on my blog. It took a while, but he did it. Today, I’m fulfilling my end of the bargain. With no further ado, here is today’s guest post by budding blogger Steven VeeGee.
Ty Cobb slides into third base, 1924. Image public domain, courtesy National Photo Company.
Ty Cobb was a baseball great whom everyone thinks they know. A super star in the early 1900s, he set 90 records. To this day, some have never been broken. He held the record for the most stolen bases until 1977. He still holds the record for stealing home.
According to my grandpa, “He was known for sliding into bases with his feet up in the air, the spikes high. And they were sharp of course. You had to watch him. If you were going to tag him out, you might get hit by the spikes.” The story goes that when they opened the Hall Of Fame, somebody took a pair of spiked shoes, hung them up, and said, “That takes care of Ty Cobb.”
That’s the reputation of Ty Cobb: a rough, tough jerk who didn’t mind hurting people. He has been accused of being a racist and beating up handicapped people, in addition to the sharp-spikes yarn. Digging for the truth, however, yields a slightly different story.
Ty Cobb had a complicated relationship with his ‘friends.’ A fellow player, Boss Schmidt, showed his friendship by blindsiding him. He would often come around the corner and flatten Cobb with a flying tackle.
Meanwhile, Cobb had known the stadium’s black groundskeeper, Bungy Cummings, for years. One day, reporters saw the man walk up to Cobb. Cummings looked drunk. He shouted, “Hello, Carrie!” (No one knows what he meant.) Then he tried to hug Cobb. The reporters saw Cobb push him away. The next thing the reporters saw was Cobb and Schmidt fighting. They broke it up, and Cobb walked away.
That was a mistake. Schmidt stayed behind and told the reporters what happened. Of course he made himself look good. He said Cobb attacked Cummings and his wife. (I wonder how the woman got in the story.) Schmidt claimed he fought Cobb to defend them. If Cobb had stayed, another story might have been told. It is highly likely that Schmidt had blindsided Cobb right after Cummings left. But this story led to Cobb being labeled a racist.
Speaking of being a racist, another story often told is that he beat up a couple of black guys in an elevator. Cobb was staying in a Cleveland hotel with his team. His friends were playing a card game on an upper floor, but the elevator operator said that he could only take him to his room. Cobb demanded, but he wouldn’t do it, so Cobb started beating him up. Then a security guard came and got in the fight. Cobb got in trouble for brawling, but it’s important to know that both the guard and the elevator guy were white.
By now you might be thinking this guy got in a lot of fights, but that was normal for the culture of the early 1900s. Even the baseball icon, Babe Ruth, got into fights with hecklers in the stands a time or two. Ty Cobb might have taken things too far, but his critics took them even farther.
One day, Cobb did his best to ignore a heckler named Claude Lucker. He had lost some fingers in an accident, but that didn’t stop his mouth. He insulted Cobb through several innings, but when he insulted Cobb’s mother, the player came unglued. He climbed in the stands and punched him. It was later reported he beat up a handicapped man, as if the guy was in a wheelchair.
With that kind of a reputation, it’s no wonder as the spiked shoe story stuck. (All puns intended.) Now days athletic cleats are made out of rubber or plastic. Back then, they were made out of metal spikes. It was dangerous for any player to tag someone out; he might get hit in the face with the spikes. Ty Cobb got cut himself, when the third baseman tried to tag him. Cobb never sharpened his cleats; he asked the league to make players dull their spikes and get them inspected, because it hurt!
It didn’t help Cobb’s reputation that his authorized biography didn’t sell well. His ghost writer, a newspaperman named Al Stump, wrote another biography after Cobb died. He changed the story completely to sell more books, highlighting all the sensational parts of Cobb’s reputation. He made lots of money by smearing Cobb. It wasn’t until recently that researchers have dug deeper and uncovered the truth. It all goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read.
Bibliography:
Grandpa Ben
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Cobb
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-was-ty-cobb-the-history-we-know-thats-wrong/
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