2025 MLB Thread

[oblong]

and I do remember chas pushing back on this narrative so I look forward to what he has to say 🙂

I like the approach that the author claims he used.  I'm very open to the idea that the myth we've been handed down for decades wasn't true.  I don't know that anybody's really refuted him or defended Stump with more evidence.  Are there cases where Cobb made insenstive comments, by today's standards, towards blacks?  Maybe.  But we have that for a lot of people at the time.  Harry Truman, LBJ.... it's not to make them appear as good people or to excuse it, but maybe Cobb doesn't deserve the extra scrutiny.   He was a southerner during a sensitive time... but his family also had progressive roots when it came to racial issues. Later on he said blacks should get to play MLB and that Willie Mays was the closest player to himself that he was.  There's photos of him at the field in Hamtrack where the Detroit Stars played.

To me if you want to charge someone with being a jerk and racist then you need proof.  And maybe I'm misremembering what chas said at the time but I recall his argument being the lack of proof that he wasn't.  Which to me is backwards. You can't expect people in the 10's/20's/30's to explicity refute charges made in the 60's/70's/80's.

 

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, oblong said:

Are there cases where Cobb made insenstive comments, by today's standards, towards blacks?  Maybe.

Undoubtedly. If you grew up in Georgia when Cobb did, the ordinary everyday language that *everyone* used would sound outrageous today. Even in Michigan in the 50's the everyday language was harshly racist, the 'N' word as as common as dirt anywhere you went. Not all those people were racist in any active sense, they were just reflecting the milieu in which they existed. It's an ethical fallacy to charge people of the past for simply living in the culture they found themselves in. To me, if you victimized people - like Jefferson did, then those acts can always be judged by their particular cruelty, or inhumanity.

Edited Monday at 03:02 PM by gehringer_2

[oblong]

I admit to there being some biases at play here....  this author has made the rounds at certain institutions that might color the goal of what he's trying to do (google his name if you like to see what I mean) and Cobb being a Tiger could mean I want to exonerate him.  But I think I'm on solid ground with my expectations.   Cobb's a southerner during that time.  Al Stump agrees to write a book.  He's a drunk gambler with debts and a chip on his shoulder.  Cobb dies.  He writes a sensationalist book.  People pick up on that and over the decades it becomes conventional wisdom and people like Ron Shelton and Ken Burns elevate to pop culture so that Ray Liotta as Joe Jackson tells us "nobody could stand the sonofabith" in Field of Dreams.

Show me that he desrved the reputation he has/had as it relates to his contemporaries to justify what was said about him that isn't sourced from Stump or Burns.

 

[1776]

The original publication of Al Stump’s book was in 1961, the year Cobb died. A reprint of Stump’s book was done in 1993.  Charles C. Alexander, a history professor at Ohio University, also did a Cobb biography in 1984 titled, Ty Cobb. Alexander is guilty of repeating some of Stump’s unfounded tales in his book. 
Several years ago I read a Q&A that Charles Leershan did regarding previously published inaccuracies that he had uncovered in his research of Cobb’s life. Leershan personally questioned Alexander on several statements he made about Cobb in his book, Ty Cobb. When Leershan pressed Alexander for evidence on several of his statements in the book Alexander had made regarding Cobb’s character, Alexander conceded that he was only going by what had been written up to that point. I guess it should be no irony that the Introduction for the reprint of Stump’s, My Life in Baseball, in 1993 is written by Charles C. Alexander. 

[Tiger337]

12 hours ago, chasfh said:

Ty Cobb was not considered a bad guy in 1936.

He did get accused of gambling on games in 1919 though and they were credible accusations from another player.  I wasn't sure whether 1776 was referring to that or his general character.  

[Tiger337]

One thing that Cobb never did (as far as we know) was have sex with a minor as a 30 something adult.  Sadly, Rose's excuse was that sex with a 16-year old was legal in Ohio at the time.  Recent players have been banned from the game for that sort of thing.   

[Tiger337]

57 minutes ago, oblong said:

I admit to there being some biases at play here....  this author has made the rounds at certain institutions that might color the goal of what he's trying to do (google his name if you like to see what I mean) and Cobb being a Tiger could mean I want to exonerate him.  But I think I'm on solid ground with my expectations.   Cobb's a southerner during that time.  Al Stump agrees to write a book.  He's a drunk gambler with debts and a chip on his shoulder.  Cobb dies.  He writes a sensationalist book.  People pick up on that and over the decades it becomes conventional wisdom and people like Ron Shelton and Ken Burns elevate to pop culture so that Ray Liotta as Joe Jackson tells us "nobody could stand the sonofabith" in Field of Dreams.

Show me that he desrved the reputation he has/had as it relates to his contemporaries to justify what was said about him that isn't sourced from Stump or Burns.

 

After reading Leershen's book, I still didn't get the feeling Cobb was a great guy.  He was portrayed as less racist than previously though, but he did beat up a crippled fan and pushed an old woman down some stairs.  

[oblong]

But I don't think the goal is to say he was a great guy but that he wasn't a monster.   We don't need to specify what a bad person he was every time his name comes up.    There were people trying to get his plaque taken down at Tiger Stadium.  

Speaking of that, there was a story that someone took it or it was unaccounted for.  The same plaque is outside Comerica Park near the entrances to the offices, by the player/staff parking garage.  

 

[Tiger337]

In a way, I was agreeing with you.  I was saying that the book was not a white washing of Cobb's reputation.  

[Stanley70]

Cobb was an educated guy from a wealthy family, when most players at that time were not. The "rubes" resented him and he hated them right back. He also hated the other team, umpires, ownership,probably the fans that gave him a hard time as well. His own father thought a career in baseball was beneath him. He was 18 when his mother shot him which drove him to a maniacal/hostile will to succeed and prove that his father was wrong.

So basically anyone writing about him back then would probably have found numerous people in and around the game that hated him and would be happy to share/invent stories about him. I think Stumps book is a little accurate, it just leaves out a lot of the good things Cobb did and the context in which some to the negative stories happened. Which only look worse as time passes and the social norms of the day are forgotten. 

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, oblong said:

and I do remember chas pushing back on this narrative so I look forward to what he has to say 🙂

I like the approach that the author claims he used.  I'm very open to the idea that the myth we've been handed down for decades wasn't true.  I don't know that anybody's really refuted him or defended Stump with more evidence.  Are there cases where Cobb made insenstive comments, by today's standards, towards blacks?  Maybe.  But we have that for a lot of people at the time.  Harry Truman, LBJ.... it's not to make them appear as good people or to excuse it, but maybe Cobb doesn't deserve the extra scrutiny.   He was a southerner during a sensitive time... but his family also had progressive roots when it came to racial issues. Later on he said blacks should get to play MLB and that Willie Mays was the closest player to himself that he was.  There's photos of him at the field in Hamtrack where the Detroit Stars played.

To me if you want to charge someone with being a jerk and racist then you need proof.  And maybe I'm misremembering what chas said at the time but I recall his argument being the lack of proof that he wasn't.  Which to me is backwards. You can't expect people in the 10's/20's/30's to explicity refute charges made in the 60's/70's/80's.

 

To be clear, I never said that Al Stump's characterization of Cobb was correct. I am as certain as anyone else that it wasn't. What I said was, Lehrsehn did a poor job of trying to demonstrate that Cobb was a man who was merely ordinary for his time in terms of his racism, to the point of even discounting contemporaneous Detroit Free Press articles which stated that Cobb was a man of unusual racist tendencies (which was really saying something for 1905).

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

He did get accused of gambling on games in 1919 though and they were credible accusations from another player.  I wasn't sure whether 1776 was referring to that or his general character.  

SoCal had made the comment about Ty Cobb in regard to the BBWAA Rule #5. As for the gambling accusations, Cobb and Speaker were almost certainly guilty of what they'd been accused of, which was fixing games for a bet, and they were both forced to resign their managerial positions because of it, and banishment from baseball was on the table. But they were not banished because Landis, for reasons of his own, was disinclined to do so, so they remained in good standing with Baseball, at least technically, And that's they were not declared permanently ineligible. Unfair? Sure. But I would not agree with the unsaid proposition that Rose should be allowed back into Baseball as a result. I wonder whether Manfred would cite Cobb and Speaker if he were to allow Rose back in?

[4hzglory]

4 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

In a way, I was agreeing with you.  I was saying that the book was not a white washing of Cobb's reputation.  

That's what I liked about the book, it seemed fairly balanced.  He definitely wasn't the nicest guy, but he wasn't what the narrative since 1963 has been either.

[Arlington]

Just wanted to point out that Barry Bonds has more than twice the WAR of Rose.  Neither will be getting a plaque.

[Shinzaki]

10 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

One thing that Cobb never did (as far as we know) was have sex with a minor as a 30 something adult.  Sadly, Rose's excuse was that sex with a 16-year old was legal in Ohio at the time.  Recent players have been banned from the game for that sort of thing.   

In the early 70s thirty plus year old  Ringo Starr had a hit with a song built around the chorus "you're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine".  If we're going to talk about the morality of the times...

[Tiger337]

1 minute ago, Shinzaki said:

In the early 70s thirty plus year old  Ringo Starr had a hit with a song built around the chorus "you're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine".  If we're going to talk about the morality of the times...

No doubt things are different now, but he made the Ohio comment in 2017.  

[Shinzaki]

58 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

No doubt things are different now, but he made the Ohio comment in 2017.  

Are you at all surprised that a 70 something year old man who spent decades defending himself for his actions would lack the capacity to look back on events that transpired 50 years ago with a level of introspection?  Especially a seeming egomaniac like Rose?

[Tiger337]

31 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

Are you at all surprised that a 70 something year old man who spent decades defending himself for his actions would lack the capacity to look back on events that transpired 50 years ago with a level of introspection?  Especially a seeming egomaniac like Rose?

No, I am not surprised.  

[SoCalTiger]

I thought Ty Cobb would hit a nerve 😊 We must be Tiger 🐅 fans. 

[CMRivdogs]

12 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

In the early 70s thirty plus year old  Ringo Starr had a hit with a song built around the chorus "you're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine".  If we're going to talk about the morality of the times...

That song was originally recorded in the early '60s by Johnny Burnette. Made #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

[Motor City Sonics]

10 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

That song was originally recorded in the early '60s by Johnny Burnette. Made #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Well, Big Star has a great song called "Thirteen" but it's written from the point of view of a kid.    I think you could assume that was the meaning behind "You're Sixteen".  It's a song written from the point of view of a teenager.  

I mean, Johnny Cash never actually shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. 

[Arlington]

36 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Well, Big Star has a great song called "Thirteen" but it's written from the point of view of a kid.    I think you could assume that was the meaning behind "You're Sixteen".  It's a song written from the point of view of a teenager.  

I mean, Johnny Cash never actually shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. 

And the cheering at that line in the famous live version in San Quentin was dubbed.

[oblong]

I wanted to love I walk the Line when I saw they were making it.  Joaquin sounded perfect for the role.  I like the movie.  I watch it whenever I come across it... but I give it an 8.  Phoenix made him seem like a crazy mad man who would snap at any second.  Cash was gentle.   They did his first wife wrong too.

[Motor City Sonics]

10 minutes ago, oblong said:

I wanted to love I walk the Line when I saw they were making it.  Joaquin sounded perfect for the role.  I like the movie.  I watch it whenever I come across it... but I give it an 8.  Phoenix made him seem like a crazy mad man who would snap at any second.  Cash was gentle.   They did his first wife wrong too.

Almost all of those biopics are garbage.    I am seeing a lot of non-truths in the new Bob Dylan biopic and he did a table read for it.  What?      

If you want a good biopic that is fairly accurate, according to just about everyone who is still around - Love & Mercy (about Brian Wilson).   Okay, the hairpiece that Paul Giamatti wears is a bit much, but he did a lot of the things that Eugene Landy actually did to Brian.   He really did help him at first, but then he got greedy and took advantage of him.  

[lordstanley]

Speaking of Cobb again, I’ve posted both of these clips on this board before but in case you haven’t seen them I’ll post them here. One is Cobb on a tv game show in 1953, the other is a 15 minute interview with him a few years later in which gave he discusses the 1908 pennant race  A third one I came across more recently is an interview with him at his home in 1930 as he pets a dog throughout  

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:49 PM by lordstanley