How Ty Cobb Was Framed as a Racist

New York Post ^ | 5/31 | Kyle Smith

[nickcarraway]

The two things everyone knows about Ty Cobb are that he was a phenomenal baseball player and that he was the worst racist ever to play the game.

But one of these things is mostly wrong.

Cobb, the first player voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the holder of more than 90 records upon his retirement and still the pace-setter with a .366 lifetime batting average, could be rude, but not nearly as nasty as you think. And far from being the most notorious racist in baseball history, he was an early and vocal supporter of integrating the big leagues.

[Secret Agent Man]

Nobody has sver had to teach the media how to do a smear job.

[dennisw]

Great article that sets things right about the immortal Ty Cobb

[Impy]

Well good thing they didn’t, he may have served 2 terms (until he died during term 2 and his sure to be worse VP took over and maybe would have won in ‘84 thanks to the sympathy vote).

[fieldmarshaldj]

True. I expect he’d have had a far better foreign policy than Carter (although that sort was already on the way out with the McGovernite left in full ascendance in the Dems). Had Reagan been able to muscle Ford out of the way in ‘76, he’d probably have beaten Carter, but the downside is that he’d have had to deal with heavy Democrat post-Watergate majorities that would’ve hampered him enormously.

[eyedigress]

I guess Lou Gehrig is next on the chopping block from the moonbat media.

[driftless2]

Like a lot of things, the truth about Cobb is probably somewhere in the middle. He was an extremely competitive player which undoubtedly rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But most likely not nearly as evil as the stuff I’ve read about him for the last sixty years.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Cobb was a mixed bag, just like everyone else. His effort in assisting the young Joe DiMaggio negotiate his first Yankee contract makes a wonderful story, which is more than offset by the time he went into the stands and beat the crap out of a man with no hands. Whether he was racist is almost beside the point that Cobb was almost universally disliked by teammates and opponents alike, as pointed out by Shoeless Joe in Field of Dreams.

[ansel12]

The article describes the heckler as missing 7 fingers, not as, without hands.

Did you read the article?

[ansel12]

George Wallace was a lifelong democrat who ran for president in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976, the only time he did not run as a democrat was for the 1968 election, when he tried third party.

In the 1980s he was winning about 93% of the black vote, running for Governor.

[ClearCase_guy]

My point exactly. Liberals today despise George Wallace as one of the great racists — but Liberals today are quite ignorant of the facts which you just stated.

[presidio9]

I don't have time to read this thread right now, so forgive me if I repeat the fact that In 1945, Ty had decided that, as a memorial to his parents, he would make possible a modern hospital for the people of his hometown, Royston, GA. That hospital was open to people of all races during segregation, and is still in existence today:

Additionally, my dad's grandfather had the proverbial cup of coffee with the Tigers in the 20's and always spoke highly of Cobb as a person.

Finally, the is this more extended bio of Cobb by Bill Burgess on Baseballguru.com

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

Best quiz show that ever was, btw.

[Rockpile]

What??!! You guys are using an effing movie as evidence??!!

[gusty]

Yes he was. He is defined as a conservative by liberals in order to discredit conservatives. Wallace was a racist New Deal Liberal. Segregation was a statist phenomenon. A top down edict from big government. The great Walter Williams said that state imposed segregation was proof that the people, white and black, would have naturally interacted with each other in all fields. The state does not pass laws to prevent people from doing what they do not want to do, they do so to prevent people from doing what they want.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Wallace was a bit more complicated than that. Earlier on, at least in the ‘50s, he was a protégé of Gov. Big Jim Folsom and was considered a racial moderate. Wallace expected to carry on as such until he faced a formidable challenger in 1958 by young Attorney General John Patterson. Because Wallace was perceived as a Folsomite liberal, Patterson ran with the endorsement of racist groups and beat Wallace in the Gubernatorial primary.

Wallace was enraged that he lost the race and vowed to never be “outniggered” again and turned into a premier segregationist at that point. When that was no longer a tenable position to take (in a Democrat primary, at least), he moved back to his earlier racial stances and attempting to appeal to the Black vote.

Opportunist was more the phrase to describe Wallace. Curiously about Gov. Patterson, ostensibly claiming to be a Klan-supported reactionary, he got along famously with the Kennedys (for which the bulk of his 1959-63 term overlapped), while Wallace did not. Patterson, still alive today at almost 94, and still a Democrat, endorsed Zero for President.

[Bratch]

[Impy]

“Typical democrat” is the ideal term for Wallace.

[Hebrews 11:6]

No, I didn’t read it—thanks for adding that description. I did consult a couple of sources elsewhere which claimed the handlessness, so I’m unclear on the actuality. My point remains: he was good and bad, like all of us.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Had Scoop Jackson won the 1976 RAT presidential nomination, Ford probably would have won the general. No way that Scoop would have won 11 of the 13 Southern states like Carter did (MS, AL, TX, TN, KY and NC probably would have gone to Ford, as would OH); remember, when Kerry got 47% in FL in 2004, he became the first Northern Democrat to get over 45% in a Southern state since Kennedy in 1960. And the only Ford states that I can see Scoop picking up are WA and OR.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I'm not so sure. There really was a huge anti-GOP backlash in the South post-Watergate. Even with Northwesterner Jackson as the standard bearer (and likely he would've chosen a Southerner for balance, either Carter, Govs. Wallace or Reubin Askew), I think he would've stood an excellent chance of winning and carrying a number of Southern states (my TN was going Democrat regardless, and they took out Sen. Bill Brock, too, who was painted as a dishonest Nixon crony). I also believe Jackson would've done much better in the Western states (including CA, which only went to Ford by 1.78%), enough for a win.

By all accounts, Carter should've won by a wider margin, but Ford was already rapidly closing on him at the end of the campaign (had it been held a week or two later, that might've been all that Ford needed to get Ohio, and the election, in the bag). Jackson, who was ultra-popular in Washington State and got grossly disproportionate votes as a Democrat, might've played far better overall than Carter (if anything, Carter's Southerness cost him in close races, and also Ford did better than he should've given the national climate in Northern states).

^This was Ford-Carter.

^I think with Jackson/Askew vs. Ford/Dole, it would've looked like this. You may vehemently disagree, but the only state I think Ford would've picked up under this scenario would've been Mississippi, and perhaps not even that. It would've been a landslide for the Dems, even if TX went to Ford.