Cobb blamed his lackluster managerial record wins losses on Navin, who was arguably an even bigger skinflint than Cobb. Navin passed up a number of quality players that Cobb wanted to add to the team.
In fact, Navin had saved money by hiring Cobb to manage the team. The Tiger management made a classic blunder by not signing Carl Hubbell. At the end of Cobb was once again embroiled in a batting title race, this time with one of his teammates and players, Harry Heilmann.
In a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns on October 4 , Heilmann got six hits, leading the Tigers to a sweep of the doubleheader and beating Cobb for the batting crown,. Cobb and Browns manager George Sisler each pitched in the final game. Cobb pitched a perfect inning.
Cobb, though not a major power hitter, hit 5 home runs in 2 consecutive games and had 25 total bases in 2 consecutive games - records he shares to this day. He led the league in on-base percentage in , his most successful batting department leadership of the s. Cobb finally called it quits from a year career as a Tiger in November He announced his retirement and headed home to Augusta, Georgia.
Shortly thereafter, Tris Speaker also retired as player-manager of the Cleveland team. The retirement of two great players at the same time sparked some interest, and it turned out that the two were coerced into retirement because of allegations of game-fixing brought about by Dutch Leonard , a former pitcher of Cobb's. It seemed that Leonard was bitter about being let go from organized baseball in what he felt was a conspiracy by Cobb and Speaker. He used the game-fixing charges as a way to retaliate against the two men so that they would know what it would be like to be run out of the league.
His plan failed as he was unable to convince either Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis or the public that the two had done anything for which they deserved to be kicked out of baseball. Landis allowed both Cobb and Speaker to return to their original teams, but each team let them know that they were free agents and could sign with whomever they wished. Speaker then joined Cobb in Philadelphia for the season. Cobb says he came primarily to seek vindication and to reach hits and so that he could say he left baseball on his own terms.
Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were unofficially blackballed from becoming managers or full-time coaches, according to documents later uncovered. Cobb played regularly in for a young and talented team that finished second to one of the greatest teams of all time, the Yankees, which won games. He returned to Detroit to quite a welcome on May 11 , Cobb doubled in his first at bat, to the cheers of Tiger fans. On July 18 , , Cobb became the first player to get 4, career hits when he doubled off former teammate Sam Gibson of the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field.
Cobb returned again in , for no real reason other than he had nothing else to do with his life. He played less frequently due to his age and the blossoming abilities of the young A's, who were again in a pennant race with the Yankees. It was against those Yankees in September that Cobb had his last at bat, a weak pop-up behind third base. He then announced his retirement, effective at the end of the season.
Ironically, had he stuck with the A's in some capacity for one more year, he might have finally got his elusive World Series ring. But it was not to be. In , in a game against the New York Yankees , the combined line-up included 13 future Hall of Fame players.
Cobb's plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cobb retired a very rich and successful, but very lonely man. He spent his retirement pursuing his off-season activities of hunting, golfing and fishing, full-time. He also traveled extensively, both with and without his family. His other pastime was trading stocks and bonds, increasing his immense personal wealth.
At that same time, his wife Charlie filed the first of several divorce suits. Cobb had never had an easy time being a father and husband. His children had found him to be demanding, yet also capable of kindness and extreme warmth. Ty, Jr. Despite his shortcomings as a father, Cobb had only wanted his children to work hard and succeed, though it seems that it was hard for him to accept that they would succeed in anything except baseball.
Charlie finally divorced Cobb in , after 39 years of marriage, the last few of which she lived in nearby Menlo Park. A tremendous thrill came in February, , when the first Hall of Fame election results were announced.
His Those incredible results show that although many people disliked him personally, they respected the way he played and what he accomplished. There was little else for Cobb to be happy about, now a bachelor in the twilight of his life. He drank and smoked heavily, and spent a great deal of time complaining about the collapse of baseball since the arrival of Ruth.
Cobb was known to help out young players. He was instrumental in helping Joe DiMaggio negotiate his rookie contract with the New York Yankees , but ended his friendship with Ted Williams when the latter suggested to him that Rogers Hornsby was a greater hitter than Cobb.
Another bittersweet moment in Cobb's life reportedly came in the late s when he and sportswriter Grantland Rice were returning from the Masters golf tournament. Stopping at a South Carolina liquor store, Cobb noticed that the man behind the counter was Shoeless Joe Jackson , who had been banned from baseball almost 30 years earlier following the Black Sox scandal. At 62, Cobb remarried. The bride was year-old Frances Cass. This marriage also failed, and she later filed for divorce.
She felt that he was simply too difficult to get along with when he was drunk. However, Cobb counter filed and won the suit. When two of his three sons died young, Cobb was alone, with few friends left. Cobb knew that another way he could share his wealth was by having biographies written that would set the record straight and teach young players how to play.
John McCallum spent some time with Cobb to write a combination how-to and biography. He, like everyone else, found Cobb difficult at best, and impossible at worst. McCallum's book came out in and was filled with half-truths and misinformation that McCallum had never checked out. After McCallum left, Cobb was again alone and had a longing to return to Georgia. It was on a hunting trip near his Lake Tahoe home that Cobb's long-range plans were going to be cut short, as he collapsed in pain and was diagnosed with prostate cancer , diabetes , high blood pressure and Bright's disease , a degenerative kidney disorder.
He returned to his Lake Tahoe lodge with painkillers and bourbon to try to ease his constant pain. He did not trust his initial diagnosis, however, so he went to Georgia to seek advice from doctors he knew, and they found his prostate to be cancerous.
They removed it at Emory Hospital , but that did little to help Cobb. From this point until the end of his life, Cobb criss-crossed the country, going from his lodge in Tahoe to the hospital in Georgia. Al Stump , one of the most celebrated sports writers in the country at the time, was asked by Doubleday to ghostwrite Cobb's autobiography. Like John McCallum, Stump found Cobb rather difficult to work with most of the time and totally impossible when drunk.
Stump's time with Cobb was "interesting," but not necessarily in a good sense. Despite the troubles, Stump stuck it out mostly because he feared Cobb's reaction if he tried to leave.
From the time the two spent together we now have two books and a movie, each of which offers a slightly different point of view of Cobb's life. A powerful moment in Stump's experience was the visit to the Cobb family mausoleum in December Cobb had used the mausoleum as an attempt to reunite his family members in death, disinterring some of them to do so.
It was here that Cobb told Stump about the murder of his father, and pointed the finger at his mother. Unfortunately his character was not as large as his ba.
My Dad was born in in Detroit, Mich. When the players would walk in to the club house, they would pick a small boy to shag balls for them. My dad was Leo F. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
The records include: Games played 3. Fight With a Fan Leads to a Strike Cobb once went into the stands to take on a heckler at a game in New York against the Highlanders which later became the Yankees in Related Posts. Cardinals World Series Wins to Present. Louis Cardinals Baseball. Chris January 18, at am - Reply. John F Jakubowski June 16, at pm - Reply. And given his clever and consistent play, Cobb was a draw at every game.
Baseball wasn't the same game back then. The major league was young, with the first World Series played in Players weren't well paid, and given that they made their living from a game and spent their life on the road, a whiff of disreputability hung over their heads.
But over Cobb's career, baseball evolved. Players began to sign endorsement deals for everything from vitamin tonics to cigarettes. By , it had become a polished business. Numerous concrete-and-steel ballparks were built all across America, including Navin Field in Cobb can be partly credited for that growth, according to Leerhsen.
Besides his fast-moving steals, he brought an aristocratic air to the ballplayer image. He was more educated, and he carried himself accordingly. While many of his hard-drinking counterparts played day games hung over after a rough night out, Cobb kept his distance.
That made him more palatable to the public, but less palatable to his fellow ballplayers. For the man credited with playing an unusually intelligent ball game — he once found a way to steal home against the Yankees while the entire opposing team was crowded around the plate to protest an umpire's call — this makes sense.
But that's not the kind of story about Cobb that gets repeated. Many vicious tales can be traced to sportswriter Al Stump, who collaborated with Cobb on his autobiography. After Cobb's death, Stump wrote a lurid article for True magazine and later republished the biography. These versions, he said, were true to Cobb's cruelty. The Tigers lost all three World Series, the first two to the powerful Chicago Cubs, and the last one in a seven game thriller to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
In the 17 Series games, Cobb had an undistinguished. These were the only three World Series in which the Georgian would appear. During this period Cobb began to develop a reputation for controversy. In August of , Cobb slid into third on a close play , cutting the arm of Philadelphia Athletics third baseman Frank Baker.
Although Cobb was within his rights, emotions ran high in Philadelphia, and Cobb received death threats when the Tigers played in Philadelphia in mid-September.
Meanwhile, in a more serious matter, Cobb got into a fight in Cleveland with George Stanfield, a hotel night watchman who was African-American. The criminal charges were settled after the season with Cobb pleading guilty to a lesser charge, and the civil suit was settled out of court.
During and after his career, Ty Cobb was involved in a number of violent altercations. Some of the best known of these incidents were with African-Americans. Cobb certainly did not oppose racial segregation in baseball or elsewhere, and all evidence shows that his attitudes were typical of his times and Georgia upbringing.
Years later he took a somewhat different view, however. He was always one step ahead of the opposition, doing the unexpected, especially on the base paths.
He outthought them! Runs were hard to come by, and Cobb was always looking for an edge. At bat, he studied pitchers, learning their weaknesses. On the base paths he was always the aggressor, trying to create opportunities. Cobb later told of how he sometimes ran the bases recklessly in one-sided games to plant fear in the minds of the opposition, which led to errors in close games where a momentary hesitation by an opposing fielder could prove decisive. When on the bases, Cobb would kick the bag — not because it was a habit, which everyone assumed, but because by kicking it toward the next base he could pick up a few precious inches if he decided to steal a base.
By Cobb was recognized as the biggest star in the American League. However, he remained unpopular with his teammates and opposing players for his attitude and rugged style of play.
This led to another major controversy — an attempt to fix the American League batting title. Cobb sat out the final two games of the season in order to preserve his lead. American League President Ban Johnson investigated the matter but, in typical fashion for baseball officials of that day, decided to sweep the scandal under the rug. The clerical error was discovered years later, and who should be considered the AL batting champion is still a matter of controversy.
Lajoie has the higher average, but Cobb is still recognized by Major League Baseball as the official batting champion. During a game in New York on May 15 of that year, Cobb was subjected to vicious and unrelenting heckling from the fans, especially a disabled man named Claude Lueker, who for several years had made sport of heckling Cobb whenever the Tigers visited Hilltop Park.
Finally, unable to stand the abuse and urged on by his teammates, Cobb went into the stands and attacked Lueker, who had lost one hand and most of the other in a printing press accident.
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