I e-mailed this article to three people I know who are baseball historians, and they loved the article. One is in radio broadcasting, and he made it a part of his show.
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Mel Ott was another with a bad reputation.
Back in the 50s, maybe early 60s, a manager named Casey Stengel was on the show “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx. They naturally began to talk baseball. Groucho asked him who he thought was the best player of all time. Stengel replied, “Ty Cobb, no one else was even close”.
Groucho agreed with him then asked how he thought Cobb would do against modern pitching. Casey replied, “oh around 270” to which Marx said, “that is not all that great.
Casey then delivered the punch line. “Well you have to remember that Cobb is in his 70s.”
I got my imprimus. Good research by the author and great story.
I’m reading the book right now . . . very enlightening. If you want to know something of the Tiger’s history - this is the book for you.
Most Americans dont know who Ty Cobb was . . .and of those who do, most don’t know or give a Flying F about his racial views
He is simply one of the Greatest of All Time. But he’s a white guy so let’s smear him whilst overlooking the transgressions of say, MLK
A good read
From all of the tales I've heard about Cobb, it seemed that such a "racist" talking about black players being in MLB in flattering terms seemed so out of character.
I guess the truth comes out eventually.
And I didn't know that the "sweet, poor little handicapped man" who kept taunting him, and Cobb beat up was anything but "sweet".
That story gets repeated so often I really though Cobb was some kind of monster.
I believed everything, right down to the sharpened spikes. And the black groundskeeper who dared to speak with him.
Glad to hear there truly is another side to all of the stories.
Looks like Al Stump is a real piece of work.
No wonder Cobb was so furious with that guy's "biography" of him.
SMEAR a dead man is the procedure.
I always knew slimebag Al Stump was full of it.
Al Stump also was a thief and a con artist who would buy objects at flea markets and then resell them as supposed Cobb artifacts. It upsets me to no end when the MLB Network broadcasts the Cobb movie, a despicable hatchet job.
Looks like the real a__hole was Al Stump.
I used Cobb’s split grip and found it superior to the normal grip. You can easily direct the head of the bat into the ball. The difference was startling as I could hit nearly any ball that was close to the plate. Try it, you’ll like it.
Great article. I get Imprimis at home, and read this article as soon as it came. Thanks for posting it for wider audience.
Isaw a copy of Impris laying around at my buddie's house, and noted this story on the cover.
I was going to look it up, then forgot.
Thanks again! :)
I saw a copy of Imprimis laying around at my buddie's house, and noted this story on the cover.
I was going to look it up, then forgot.
Thanks again! :)
i will do that. i loved ty cobb as my favorite baseball player. i read a biography somewhere in grade school or high school that probably predates these characterizations. my dad would comment against my fondness for him and i never knew why. (we had fights about FDR as well)
But this is hard for me to believe coming from a journalist:
What I didn’t understand before was the power of repetition to bend the truth.
that is about all we have now.
Stump sounds a lot like Roger Stone.
Within the last few decades, historians have went back to the state records and other original sources and have found that much of what the supposed historian wrote during the days of Elizabeth was wrong. He would mash up accounts, he would interject his own opinion, he would misrepresent the words of those he interviewed. This was realized when the state records were compared to his written account.
Added to the book that was written, it was illegal to write or speak favorably of the previous queen, even though the numbers of people who were killed under Mary was about one twentieth the number Elizabeth had killed.
Yes, someone got the wrong moniker.
Thanks for posting this. It’s a great read, and I will foreword this to all my baseball friends, and a few friends that don’t even like baseball.