No one liked that son of a bitch

April 11, 2016 10:00 AM

Charles Leerhsen, author of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, argues that, contrary to the popular perception, maybe Ty Cobb wasn't a complete asshole.

Cobb was, like the rest of us, a highly imperfect human being. He was too quick to take offense and too intolerant of those who didn’t strive for excellence with the over-the-top zeal that he did. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought too many others fools. He was the first baseball celebrity, and he did not always handle well the responsibilities that came with that.

posted by frimble (21 comments total)

Just a few notes about Leerhsen's downplaying of one of the more notorious things that Cobb unquestionably did:

And yes, he once went into the stands* and repeatedly punched** a man who had been heckling him for more than a year***, and who turned out to have less than the full complement of fingers****—hence the story***** of him attacking a handicapped fan. This is a mark against him.

* -- He went twelve rows up into the stands.

** -- He stomped the heckler, while still in cleats.

*** -- This happened in New York, while Cobb was playing for Detroit, which means "more than a year" meant somewhere between 20 and 30 games.

**** -- The fan had two fingers. When someone yelled "Cobb, that man has no hands!", Cobb replied "I don't care if he has no feet!" and continued to stomp him -- again, while still in cleats.

***** -- The "story" was 100 percent true, was reported in the papers of the time, and resulted in Cobb being suspended, at which point the rest of the team went on strike in protest.

Not a complete asshole? No, but then, no one is. He was certainly an asshole, though.
posted by Etrigan at 10:21 AM on April 11, 2016 [19 favorites]

Yeah, I'm willing to believe that he was a better guy that commonly portrayed in the "Ty Cobb: America's Surly Racist of the Deadball Era" perception, but he was unquestionably an asshole.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:24 AM on April 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

From the film, Cobb, a supposedly true story about Cobb being called on-stage at a Louis Prima show:

LOUIS PRIMA
My great pleasure, sir -- I've always wanted to ask you something, Mr. Cobb, with all the great ballplayers playing right now -- how well do you think you'd do against today's players?

COBB
Well, I figure against today's pitchers I'd only hit about .275, .280...

LOUIS PRIMA
That's amazing, Mr. Cobb, considering your lifetime average is nearly a hundred points higher. Why do you think you'd only hit .275 against today's pitchers?

COBB
Because I'm 72 fucking years old, that's why, goddammit.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:28 AM on April 11, 2016 [17 favorites]

But then to be fair, the guy who told that story was Al Stump, the source, according to the article, of many fictional Cobb-being-an-asshole anecdotes.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:34 AM on April 11, 2016

But then to be fair, the guy who told that story was Al Stump, the source, according to the article, of many fictional Cobb-being-an-asshole anecdotes.

Stump didn't write that Prima anecdote -- it was Ron Shelton, the writer and director of Cobb.
posted by Etrigan at 10:45 AM on April 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not a complete asshole? No, but then, no one is. He was certainly an asshole, though.

Yeah, but I'd still rather know that someone was an asshole for stuff they actually did, rather than stuff they didn't. The article seems to at least raise awareness that perhaps further study of Cobb's assholery is needed.
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:52 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Who, according to that book — which takes Stump's story as reliable — Shelton managed to make Cobb into more of an asshole than Stump did.

I knew that the stories of him killing people were likely false, but thought there was some documentation of him pistolwhipping a black guy on the sidewalk (apparently not). And I thought he was a virulent racist, despite having some black friends and speaking up for integrating baseball — but that seems to rest on misrepresentations of the race of people whom he fought with.

"Not a complete asshole? No, but then, no one is. He was certainly an asshole, though."

Worth noting that at the time fights with fans weren't uncommon — even Babe Ruth was known for heading into the stands to wallop people. There's a bit in Gem of the Prairie, by Herbert Asbury, about neighborhoods banning baseball diamonds since they were seen as magnets for violent drunks.
posted by klangklangston at 11:10 AM on April 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Shelton managed to make Cobb into more of an asshole than Stump did.

So, Cobb was the Yogi Bera of assholes?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:16 AM on April 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

But the million dollar question was did he take payments from gamblers?
posted by bukvich at 11:33 AM on April 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Bill James claims that Hal Chase was actually a bigger asshole than Ty Cobb.
posted by bukvich at 11:47 AM on April 11, 2016

There's a fairly long thing in the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract about Ty Cobb's being an asshole. I think what he finally surmised is that Ty Cobb was, like the article says, extraordinarily thin-skinned, and that moreover, he was extremely self-conscious about being, in many ways, a rube from Georgia hob-knobbing with college boys from the Northeast. He specifically points to this photo, contrasting how desperately uncomfortable Ty looks (in a laughably enormous suit, to boot) next to the effortless charm of Christy Mathewson. It looks like it's excerpted here.

I think there are two ways you can take that story. On the one hand, Cobb becomes a sympathetic figure, striving to come up from a tiny town in Georgia to be one of the most famous people in the US, and even if he often failed, as the article points out, he also succeeded at transcending his upbringing and demons and found ways to put his insecurities aside and be a decent and generous person to any number of others. On the other, he did fail a lot, much more even than other people who grew up like he did. Tris Speaker grew up in the middle of Texas at the same time and managed to at least not get in constant fistfights with people. Mel Ott was from exurban Louisiana and was famously kind. There's a lot of natural sympathy with someone who's been made to feel small and out of place, like they just fell out of a turnip truck, because I think we all feel that way sometimes. But, I think that has to be tempered by the knowledge that most of us have developed healthier ways to deal with those feelings than punching the person who made you feel that way. Being less of an asshole than the Biggest Asshole Ever in Baseball still leaves a lot of room to be an asshole.
posted by Copronymus at 12:00 PM on April 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

Was Ty Cobb the inspiration for James Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World"?
posted by lagomorphius at 12:16 PM on April 11, 2016

When was the last time that someone described as "not a complete asshole" was not a complete asshole?
posted by maryr at 1:58 PM on April 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

he was extremely self-conscious about being, in many ways, a rube from Georgia hob-knobbing with college boys from the Northeast.

"Rube"? Not really.

Fun fact- his great grandson is more into basketball
posted by IndigoJones at 2:00 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is a revelation to me, a casual follower of baseball. As noted, the popular notion is that he was a complete asshole. Seems like he was a driven, socially awkward dude with a poor sense of public relations and was no more a dick than Ruth or DiMaggio, for instance.
posted by Phreesh at 2:02 PM on April 11, 2016

So apparently when he was 18 his mother shot and killed his father after mistaking him for a prowler (or so the court ruled; a lot of people apparently thought otherwise). That probably didn't help.
posted by ostro at 2:07 PM on April 11, 2016

 → a laughably enormous suit

That doesn't look more baggy than a drape cut.
posted by scruss at 3:25 PM on April 11, 2016

If you stop by the Ty Cobb Museum in rural NE Georgia, as I did a few summers ago, the director will be happy to point out to you that Cobb wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he’s pictured.

People in that area also remember him for donating what today would be the equivalent of almost $1 million to jump-start the entire health care system in that part of the state.
posted by LeLiLo at 10:29 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

He was too quick to take offense and too intolerant of those who didn’t strive for excellence with the over-the-top zeal that he did. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought too many others fools.

So, Peyton Manning, basically? And yet Manning gets a pass as a pizza-shilling man-next-door type.
posted by Fister Roboto at 10:07 AM on April 12, 2016

He was the first baseball celebrity

What about Cap Anson? Or King Kelly (who had a hit song written about him?)
posted by Chrysostom at 12:33 PM on April 14, 2016

And yet Manning gets a pass as a pizza-shilling man-next-door type.

Well, we can hope not.

Also, yes, I see what you did there. "Gets a pass".
Sensible chuckle.
posted by Etrigan at 12:35 PM on April 14, 2016