Free Republic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzbJn2UAoIs He was Major League Baseball's first superstar. The first man ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And he still has the game's highest career batting average – .366 – almost 90 years after he retired. His name is Ty Cobb. Yet, despite his historic achievements, he is often remembered for being the worst racist and the dirtiest player ever to take the field. If you know baseball, you've heard the stories: Ty Cobb would pistol-whip black men he passed on the street. He once stabbed to death a black waiter in Cleveland just because the young man...

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...