Cobb: A Biography by Al Stump (Algonquin, 1996), 436 pages.
Many biographies tend to fall into one of two categories: sensationalist rubbish of little substance, or stale re-treads of stories that everyone has heard a thousand times before. This biography breaks the mould largely thanks to the subject himself. Ty Cobb was an astonishingly talented sportsman; he was also an unhinged, ferocious, murderous maniac.Â
With such rich material it would be difficult to write anything other than a fascinating book and Cobb certainly is; however anyone who considers Al Stump to have been fortunate would be well served to consider the year he spent with the Georgia Peach when ghost-writing his autobiography. Despite being seventy-four years old and seriously ill, Cobb had in no way mellowed with age. Stump even admits that “he scared hell out of me most of the time I was around him”. The opening chapter, during which the author recalls his time spent with Cobb, can’t help but shock the reader. It is a fitting way to prepare you for the many revelations that follow.
With Tyrus Raymond Cobb, it is impossible to separate the ballplayer from the man. At the plate, Cobb was simply masterful; whether hitting for extra bases or getting aboard thanks to one of his patented ‘drag bunt base hits’. The records speak for themselves: he had the top batting average in his league on no less than twelve occasions and finished with a career .367 mark which none of the other great hitters (Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio to name but two) came close to. And yet the outright hatred he provoked reached such a level that he was nearly denied one of his batting titles, as opposing players and managers helped his rival Napoleon Lajoie to collect cheap base hits at the end of the 1910 season in an effort to stop Cobb coming out on top (their efforts counted for nought though: Cobb finished with a .384944 average to Lajoie’s .384084) .
For opposing teams, a hit by Cobb was only the start of their troubles. Possessing exceptional quickness, in both his feet and his mind, he caused havoc on the base pads. To illustrate the point, Stump includes an appendix listing details of all thirty-five occasions on which Cobb pulled off one of the most exhilarating moments in baseball: stealing home plate. But again, his exceptional performances won him few friends. It was hard to respect, never mind like, a man who would viciously slide into a base with the intention of ripping the unfortunate fielder’s legs to shreds with his spikes. Cobb’s own legs were often a bloody mangled mess owing to his reckless base-running, yet even considerable pain was not enough to halt a man possessed.
The calculating mind evident in his play on the field was matched in his shrewd financial dealings. He knew how to exploit his bargaining power with the Tigers to gain lucrative contracts and was ahead of his time in capitalising on endorsements. Yet it was his dealings on the stock market that pushed him to millionaire status. His investment in the growing automobile trade was wise; his early investment in a local soft drink product called Coca Cola turned out to be inspired. If Cobb really was a megalomaniac, as some claim, his record of stunning success in various fields clearly fuelled the flames.
His period as a manager of the Tigers didn’t quite fit into this general pattern though. Great players often make for lousy managers/coaches and (unsurprisingly) his frustrations constantly boiled over when his players couldn’t match his own impossibly high standards. Several members of his team even signed a petition against what Stump describes as Cobb’s “driven, despotic ways”.
The list of charges against him make it hard for even the most charitable person to believe that the characterisation of Cobb as a psychotic lunatic was (and is) undeserved. His vicious actions on the diamond were bad enough, the several occasions when he nearly beat someone to death for little reason (and in one case actually did murder someone, according to the man himself) are frankly chilling. Cobb is littered with many tales of crazed violence, but perhaps the most telling relates to a fight he lost (a rarity by all accounts) after his career had ended. A former football player was so incensed at Cobb’s insulting behaviour towards his wife that he shattered a chair over his head and left him unconscious. Believing that he had just committed murder, the man rang the police, explaining what had happened and who he had ‘killed’. The officer’s response was blunt: “yes, we know all about that son of a bitch. It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t killed him a long time ago”.
The shocking death of his father (courtesy of his mother and a shotgun) just before he joined the Tigers was something that he never recovered from, by his own admission. Cobb was also mercilessly bullied by his team ‘mates’ when he moved to Detroit. Both factors drove him to a sanatorium for forty-four days in 1906, yet neither can seriously be used as an excuse for his appalling behaviour.
No, Cobb truly was ‘one of a kind’. Most people who crossed his path were glad of the fact.
My Life in Baseball, Cobb’s autobiography ghost-written by Stump, depicts a man who was persecuted at every turn and reacted accordingly. Cobb is Stump’s attempt to paint a more accurate version his life; a version that Cobb would not, and probably could not, accept. Originally published in 1994, it is a gripping read that cannot fail to shock, no matter how many times you read it.
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