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Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb (December 18, 1886 -
July 17, 1961), nicknamed "The Georgia Peach",
was an American baseball player considered to be
the greatest player of the "Deadball Era" (1900
– 1920), and perhaps of all time. When he retired
he was the holder of 90 major league records and
he was among the first players elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1936.

Pre-professional career

Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born in Narrows, Georgia,
the first of three children. His mother Amanda
(Chitwood), who had married William Herschel Cobb
when she was 12, was 15 when she gave birth to Ty.
In 1893, W.H. Cobb, a teacher by profession,
bought a 100 acre (400,000 m²) farm in Royston,
Georgia to supplement his teaching income. It was
on this farm that Ty’s father taught him the
values of hard work and perseverance. It was also
in those fields that Ty grew strong and developed
his relationship with his father. When W.H. saw
that Ty displayed a knack for farming and its
economics, the two grew closer. Cobb once said,
"It was the sweetest thing in the world to be
fully accepted by my father. All at once, he was
willing to hear my ideas, discuss them, and even
exchange opinions."

W.H. Cobb became a very well respected man in the
community, getting elected to the Georgia State
Senate. When Ty was not working the farm for his
father, he was honing his baseball skills by
playing for the Royston Rompers and the semi-pro
Royston Reds during his early and mid-teens. W.H.
greatly disapproved of Ty playing baseball,
fearing that his firstborn would become a drunken
womanizer like the stereotypical big league
ballplayers of the day. However, when Ty, at 17,
approached his father to ask for his blessing to
try out for the South Atlantic League (Sally
League) team in Augusta, W.H. reluctantly
acquiesced. He figured that it would be best for
his son to get the baseball out of his system and
return home to pursue a career as a doctor,
lawyer, or military man.


Professional career

Minor leagues

In 1904, Cobb successfully tried out for the
Augusta Tourists, a minor league club in the newly
formed South Atlantic League, but was cut two days
into the season. Cobb asked his father for
permission to try out for a semi-pro team in
Anniston, Georgia. In Cobb’s account of the
conversation he said that his father gave him
permission to go, but warned him, "Don't come
home a failure." Cobb tried out for the Anniston
Steelers of the Tennessee-Alabama League. He
easily made the team due to his previous
professional experience. Cobb was hoping that his
success would be noted in a major paper in
Georgia, but to no avail. He took matters into his
own hands by sending postcards to Grantland Rice,
the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal, under
several different aliases. Eventually, Rice wrote
a small note in the Journal that a "young fellow
named Cobb seems to be showing an unusual lot of
talent." W.H. kept this press clipping in his
wallet until his death, showing it to all as if it
were a baby picture.

Cobb continued to tear up the league, and after
about three months, he received a telegram from
Augusta asking him to return. Con Strouthers,
Cobb’s previous manager with the Tourists, had
been released, and the team missed his aggressive
style. His return to Augusta proved unfruitful, as
he finished the season hitting a meager .237 in 35
games.

Andy Roth, manager of Augusta, wanted Cobb back
for 1905, but Cobb demanded a raise to $125 per
month. It was the first of many salary disputes in
his career. Despite the fact that he was asking a
lot for a teenager with less than a season's
experience, Roth consented and he rejoined the
team in the spring of 1905.

By August 1905 Cobb, under the tutelage of his new
manager, George Leidy, was leading the league in
hitting. The Tourists’ management sold the
left-handed hitting and right-handed fielding Cobb
to the American League's Detroit Tigers for $750.
Cobb was given a $50 gold watch as a gift in his
final appearance with the Augusta Tourists.

Just before Cobb reached the majors, tragedy
struck. On the night of August 8, 1905, his father
was shot to death. The story is that he suspected
his younger wife of infidelity. He told her he was
going out of town, but he returned after midnight
and climbed onto the porch roof outside his
wife's bedroom. Amanda Cobb saw the figure, took
a shotgun that was in the bedroom, and fired
twice.

"My father had his head blown off with a shotgun
when I was 18 years old -- by a member of my own
family," Cobb said. "I didn't get over that."

Amanda Cobb was arrested on a charge of voluntary
manslaughter, but she was acquitted the following
spring after testifying she had mistaken her
husband for an intruder.

Major leagues

Three weeks after his mother killed his father,
Cobb was playing center field in Detroit. In his
first at-bat on August 30, 1905, Cobb doubled off
the New York Highlanders's Jack Chesbro. The rest
of the season wasn't so successful; he batted
.240 in 41 games. Cobb showed enough promise as a
rookie for the Tigers give him a lucrative (for
the time) $1,500 contract for 1906. Although
rookie hazing was customary, Cobb could not endure
it in good humor, and he soon became alienated
from his teammates. He later attributed his
hostile temperament to this experience: "These
old-timers turned me into a snarling wildcat."

The following year he became centerfielder for the
Tigers and hit .320 in 97 games. He would never
hit below that mark again. In spring training in
1907, Cobb, considered a racist by many, fought a
black groundskeeper over the condition of the
Tigers' spring training field in Augusta,
Georgia, and ended up choking the man's wife when
she intervened. In one regular season game Cobb
reached first, stole second, third and home. He
would do it again five more times in his career to
set the record. Cobb's Tigers were engaged in an
incredibly close 4-way race for the American
League pennant with the Philadelphia A's,
Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. Both the
White Sox and Indians ran into trouble late in the
season. The final series that year pitted the
Tigers against Connie Mack's Athletics. Cobb
belted a ninth inning out of the park home run to
send the game into extra innings. In his next at
bat (11th inning), Cobb struck a ground rule
double, driving in the go-ahead run.
Unfortunately, the A's recovered. When the game
was called a tie in the 17th, the Tigers won the
pennant anyway. That season, his first as a
regular, Cobb hit .350 to win the first of nine
consecutive batting titles. He also led the league
with 212 hits, 49 steals and 116 RBI.

In the 1907 World Series the Tigers faced the
Chicago Cubs. Cobb got a triple in Game 4, but the
Tigers lost the series 4-0-1. Cobb struggled to
hit .200 in the postseason.

Cobb was almost traded in 1907 to the Cleveland
Indians for Elmer Flick. He was put on the block
by his manager, Hughie Jennings, who was
exasperated by Cobb's antics. The trade never
materialized because Cleveland felt that Cobb was
too divisive and that Flick was a better player.
Newspaper advertisement from 1907 was the first
Coca-Cola ad featuring Cobb
Newspaper advertisement from 1907 was the first
Coca-Cola ad featuring Cobb

In September of 1907 Cobb began a relationship
with Coca-Cola that would last his entire life and
make him a very rich man. In 1918 Cobb took a loan
out against his future baseball earnings to buy
his first 1000 shares of Coke stock. By the time
he died, he owned 3 bottling plants, in Santa
Maria, California, Twin Falls, Idaho and Bend,
Oregon and owned over 20,000 shares of stock.

The following season the American League Pennant
Race came down to the Tigers and another team,
this time it was the White Sox. The Tigers ended
up winning it on October 6, 1908, their last game
of the year, defeating the White Sox 7-0. Cobb
again won the batting title, although he "only"
hit .324 that year. In their first rematch with
the World Series champion Cubs, the Tigers once
again lost the series 4-1, but Cobb had a much
better postseason, leading the Tiger regulars with
a .368 batting average.

In August 1908 Cobb married Charlotte "Charlie"
Marion Lombard, the daughter of prominent Augustan
Roswell Lombard.

In a 1909, Cobb spiked Frank "Home Run" Baker.
After the incident, Connie Mack called Cobb
"...the dirtiest player around." Ban Johnson, AL
President, initially condemned him for his slide,
but later said that Cobb was merely playing hard
within the rules. A photo of the incident also
supported Cobb, as it was clear that Cobb was
sliding to the inside of the base and Baker was
reaching across the base to try to tag him. There
was no obvious malevolent intent. The Tigers won
the American League pennant, and it looked as if
they might beat Pittsburgh Pirates in the World
Series. Babe Adams, a rookie pitcher and the 4th
starter in Pittsburgh’s rotation, was chosen by
Fred Clarke to pitch the first game in place of
Howard Camnitz, the Pirates ailing ace. He
finessed the Tigers, becoming the first pitcher to
win three games in a World Series. During the
Series Cobb stole home in the second game,
igniting a three-run rally, but that was the high
point for Cobb. He ended batting a lowly .231 in
his last World Series. Cobb won the Triple Crown
in hitting .377 with 107 RBI and 9 home runs, all
of which were inside-the-park home runs.


One day in New York, in 1909, Charles M. Conlon
was fortunate enough to snap a terrific action
photo of Cobb sliding into third base, an image
that has been reprinted countless times. In the
book Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of
Charles M. Conlon, by the brother-and-sister team
of Neal and Constance McCabe, the story of that
famous photo is presented, along with a print of
the full photo, the way it actually looked.

For publication, the original photo was cropped on
the right, taking away almost half of it, in order
to focus on the action. That is the version
everyone saw until the book was published in 1993.
The excised portion merely shows more of the
right-side bleachers, as well as the left arm of
the third base coach.

Conlon was actually on the field with his big
camera, a common practice of the day. He was
positioned to the outfield side of the third base
coach's box. Cobb was on second. New York third
baseman Jimmy Austin was playing in for a possible
sacrifice bunt. Cobb took off for third, but the
batter did not get the bunt down. Austin
backpedaled to take the throw from the catcher.
Cobb spilled Austin and the catcher's throw
sailed into left field. Presumably Cobb could have
got up and scored, but the book does not
elaborate.

Instead, the issue was whether Conlon got the shot
or not. He changed plates, just to be safe,
because he did not remember if he had squeezed the
shutter bulb or not, and he knew it had potential
to be a great shot. It turned out that he did, it
was, and baseball had its answer to the Mona
Lisa.

1910 Chalmers Award controversy


In 1910, Cobb and Napoleon Lajoie, manager and
star of the Cleveland Indians, were neck-and-neck
for the American League batting title, with Cobb
ahead by a slight margin going into the last day
of the season. The prize was a Chalmers
Automobile. Cobb sat out the game to preserve his
average. Lajoie, whose team was playing the St.
Louis Browns, notched seven hits in a doubleheader
to pass Cobb. Six of those hits were bunt singles
that fell in front of the third baseman. It turned
out that Browns manager, Jack O' Conner, had
ordered third baseman Red Corriden to play deep,
on the outfield grass, so as to allow the popular
Lajoie to win the title. AL president Ban Johnson
declared Cobb the official batting average winner
after some wrangling. The Chalmers people,
however, decided to award an automobile to both
Cobb and Lajoie. The next year, the Chalmers Award
was given to the player "most valuable" to his
team, and the modern Most Valuable Player Award
was born, with Cobb winning the American League
version unanimously.

One of Cobb's most devastating approaches to
baseball and perhaps the one that left the most
lasting impression was his psychological
intimidation. Cobb was having an incredible year
in 1911, but by the end of the season, ”Shoeless”
Joe Jackson had a 9 point lead on him in batting
average. Very near the end of the season, Cobb’s
Tigers had a long series (6 games in 4 days) in
Cleveland with Jackson’s Indians. Cobb and Jackson
were friendly both on and off the field, both
being Southerners. Cobb used that friendliness for
his gain. Cobb would ignore Jackson whenever
Jackson said anything to him. Then Cobb would snap
angrily at Jackson making him wonder what he could
have done to so anger Cobb. Meanwhile, Cobb says,
"My mind was centered on just one thing: getting
all the base hits I could muster. Joe Jackson's
mind was on many other things. He went hitless in
the first three games of the series, while I
fattened up. By the sixth game, I'd passed him in
the averages." Then, just for good measure, Cobb
completed his ploy by giving Jackson a hearty
good-bye just as the Tigers were leaving town.
Cobb felt that it was those mind games of his that
caused Jackson to "fall off" to a final average
of .408, while Cobb himself sailed home with a
.420 average, 248 hits, 147 runs scored, 144 RBI,
83 stolen bases, and the league lead in doubles,
triples, and slugging average. He was awarded
another Chalmers, this time for being voted the AL
MVP by the Baseball Writers Association of
America.

On May 15, 1912, Cobb assaulted Claude Lueker, a
heckler, in the stands in New York. The league
suspended him; and his teammates, though not fond
of Cobb, went on strike to protest the suspension
prior to the May 18th game in Philadelphia. For
that one game, Detroit fielded a replacement team
made up of college and sandlot ballplayers, plus
two Detroit coaches, and lost, 24-2. The strike
ended when Cobb urged his teammates to return to
the field.

In 1914, Red Sox pitcher Dutch Leonard hit Cobb in
the ribs with a fastball. In the next at bat, Cobb
bunted the ball down the right side line. First
baseman Clyde Engle covered the play, turning to
toss the ball to Leonard just as Cobb spiked him.

Cobb became the first professional athlete to
appear in a motion picture when he starred in
"Somewhere in Georgia". Based on a story by
sports columnist Grantland Rice, the film casts
Cobb as "himself", a small-town Georgian bank
clerk with a talent for baseball. When he's
signed to play with the Detroit Tigers, Cobb is
forced to leave his sweetheart (Elsie McLeod)
behind, whereupon a crooked bank cashier sets his
sights on the girl. Upon learning that Cobb has
briefly returned home to play an exhibition game
with his old team, the cashier arranges for Our
Hero to be kidnapped. Breaking loose from his
bonds, Cobb beats up each and every one of his
captors and shows up at the ball field just in
time to win the game for the home team.


Cobb kept dominating the league winning batting
titles in every year till 1915. Also in 1915 Cobb
set the single season steals record with 96 which
stood until Maury Wills broke it in 1962. Cobb’s
streak of batting titles ended the following year
when he finished second with .371 to Tris
Speaker’s .386. In 1919, a young pitcher from the
Boston Red Sox named Babe Ruth began to come on
strong as a home run hitter by shattering the
40-year old home run record by hitting 29
round-trippers. Cobb abhorred Ruth's power game,
and when he saw fans becoming enamored with the
Babe, he was afraid that the "inside style" of
bunting, taking the extra base and hitting the
ball to gaps that he had perfected would fall by
the wayside.

Ruth started the 1920 season on a pace to destroy
his own record. Therefore, when Cobb and the
Tigers showed up in New York to play the Yankees
for the first time that season, writers billed it
as a showdown between two stars of competing
styles of play. Ruth easily won this mini-battle,
with two homers and a triple, while Cobb got only
one single in the entire series.

But the people who really knew baseball still
favored Cobb, according even to Ruth's own
manager, Miller Huggins. The venerable Tris
Speaker once said, "Babe was a great ballplayer,
but Cobb was even greater. Ruth could knock your
brains out, but Cobb would drive you crazy." Most
of the fans, however, even in Cobb's own home
city of Detroit, now came to watch Ruth instead of
Cobb. The fans began to prefer the excitement of
the home run rather than the strategy and cunning
moves of the hit and run and double steal.

As Ruth's popularity grew, Cobb became
increasingly hateful of him. Cobb saw Ruth not
only as a threat to his style of play, but also to
his style of life. While Cobb preached ascetic
self-denial, Ruth gorged on hot dogs, beer, and
women. Perhaps what angered him the most about
Ruth was that despite Ruth's total disregard for
his physical condition and traditional baseball,
he was still an overwhelming success and brought
fans to the ballparks in record numbers to see him
set his own records.

After enduring several years of seeing his fame
and notoriety usurped by Ruth, Cobb decided that
he was going to show that anybody could hit home
runs if he chose to. On May 5, 1925, Cobb began a
two-game hitting spree better than any even Ruth
had unleashed. He was sitting in the dugout
talking to a reporter and told him that, for the
first time in his career, he was going to swing
for the fences. That day, Cobb went 6 for 6, with
two singles, a double, and three home runs. His 16
total bases set a new AL record. The next day he
had three more hits, two of which were home runs.
His single his first time up gave him 9
consecutive hits over three games. His five homers
in two games tied the record set by Cap Anson of
the old Chicago NL team in 1884. Cobb wanted to
show that he could hit home runs when he wanted,
but simply chose not to do so. At the end of the
series, 38-year-old Cobb had gone 12 for 19 with
29 total bases, and then went happily back to
bunting and hitting-and-running.

On August 19, 1921, in the second game of a double
header against Elmer Myers of the Boston Red Sox
Cobb collected his 3,000th hit.


Cobb as player/manager

Frank Navin, the Detroit Tigers owner, signed Cobb
to take over for Hughie Jennings as manager in
1921. To say the least, the signing caught the
baseball world off-guard. Universally disliked
(even by the members of his own team) but a
legendary player, Cobb's management style left a
lot to be desired. He expected as much from his
players as he gave, and most of the men did not
meet his standard. The closest he came to winning
the pennant race was in 1922, when the Tigers
finished in second place. Cobb blamed his
lackluster managerial record (479 wins-444 losses)
on Navin, who was 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.

At the end of 1925 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, .393 to .389. Cobb and
Browns manager George Sisler each pitched in the
final game. Cobb pitched a perfect inning.

Cobb moves to Philadelphia

Cobb finally called it quits from a 22-year career
as a Tiger in November 1926. 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 signed with the
Washington Senators for 1927, Cobb with the
Philadelphia Athletics. Speaker then joined Cobb
in Philadelphia for the 1928 season. Cobb says he
came back only to seek vindication and so that he
could say he left baseball on his own terms.

Cobb played regularly in 1927 for a young and
talented team that finished second to one of the
greatest teams of all time, the 1927 Yankees,
which won 110 games. He returned to Detroit to
quite a welcome on May 11, 1927. Cobb doubled in
his first at bat, to the cheers of Tiger fans. On
July 18, 1927, Cobb became the first player to get
4,000 career hits when he doubled off former
teammate Sam Gibson of the Detroit Tigers at Navin
Field.

Cobb returned again in 1928, 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 1928, in a game against the New York Yankees,
the combined line-up included 13 future Hall of
Fame players. In addition to Cobb, Tris Speaker,
Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Eddie
Collins, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Waite
Hoyt, Earle Combs, Herb Pennock and Tony Lazzeri
participated in the game.


Post professional career

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.

In the winter of 1930/31, Cobb moved into a
Spanish ranch estate on Spencer Lane in the
millionaire's community of Atherton outside San
Francisco. 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. He had expected his boys to be
exceptional athletes, especially baseball players.
Ty, Jr. flunked out of Princeton and would have
rather played tennis than baseball, and in general
was a disappointment to his father. 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 1947, after 39 years of
marriage, the last few of which she lived in
nearby Menlo Park.

A tremendous thrill came in February, 1936, when
the first Hall of Fame election results were
announced. Cobb had been named on 222 of 226
ballots, outdistancing Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner,
Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, the only
others to earn the necessary 75% of votes to be
elected in that first year. His 98.2 percentage
stood as the record until Tom Seaver received
98.8% of the vote in 1992 (Nolan Ryan also
surpassed Cobb, being named on 98.79% of the
ballots in 1999). 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.

At 62, Cobb remarried. The bride was 40-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 his sons died young, Cobb was alone, with few
friends left. He therefore began to be generous
with his wealth, donating $100,000 in his
parents' name for his hometown of Royston to
build a modern 24 bed hospital now called the Cobb
Memorial Hospital. He also established the Cobb
Educational Fund, which awarded scholarships to
needy Georgia students bound for college, by
endowing it with a $100,000 donation in 1953.

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 1956 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
1960. 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. He had never spoken much
about the incident, and most people at the time
probably didn't even know that W.H. had been
shot.

Cobb also spent much of his last few years making
visits to places important to him, like the Hall
of Fame. He traveled to Cooperstown in June 1960,
and lingered after-hours in the Hall, gazing at
the plaques on the wall, including his own, with
tears in his eyes.

By the spring of 1961, Cobb was spending most of
his time at Emory Hospital for cobalt treatments
to slow the spread of his cancer, which had now
moved into his spine and skull. He did feel good
enough to make it to spring training of the new LA
Angels in 1961, and then to his last ball game on
their opening day, 1961.

In his last days Cobb spent some time with the old
movie comedian Joe E. Brown, talking about the
choices Cobb had made in his life. He told Brown
that he felt that he had made mistakes, and that
he would do things differently if he could. He had
played hard and lived hard all his life, and had
no friends to show for it at the end, and he
regretted it. Publicly, however, Cobb claimed not
to have any regrets: "I've been lucky. I have no
right to be regretful of what I did" (Newsweek,
July 31, 1961, 54). His last year or so must have
been quite trying for him, old, alone, and sick.

He checked into Emory Hospital for the last time
in June 1961, bringing with him a paper bag with a
million or so dollars in securities and his Luger
pistol. This time his first wife, Charlie, his son
Jimmy and other family members came to be with him
for his final days. His final day came a month
later, July 17, 1961.

His funeral was perhaps the saddest event
associated with Cobb. From all of baseball, the
sport that he had dominated for over 20 years,
baseball's only representatives were three old
players, Ray Schalk, Mickey Cochrane, Nap Rucker,
along with Sid Keener from the Hall of Fame. Also
there were his first wife, Charlie, his two
daughters, his surviving son, Jimmy, his two
sons-in-law, his daughter-in-law, Mary Dunn Cobb,
and her two children. He had outlived many of his
contemporaries, had alienated most of the others,
and a lot of them were glad that he was finally
dead.

In his will, Cobb left a quarter of his estate to
the Cobb Educational Fund, and the rest of his
reputed $11 million he distributed among his
children and grandchildren. Cobb is interred in
the Royston, Georgia town cemetery.

The Stump autobiography came out a few months
later to take advantage of the publicity
surrounding his death, and sold well for the four
years that it was in print. Despite Cobb's
unpleasantness, the book (Cobb: A Biography)
painted Ty in a sympathetic light. Thirty years
later, however, Stump extensively revised the
book, including his own experience with Cobb and
capturing the man who was so disliked by so many
of his contemporaries. In 1994 the writing of the
book was used as the basis for a film starring
Tommy Lee Jones as Cobb.

Efforts to create a Ty Cobb Memorial in Royston
failed, primarily because most of the artifacts
from his life were in Cooperstown, and the Georgia
town was too remote to make a memorial worthwhile.
The building erected is now Royston City Hall.

However, on July 17, 1998, on the 37th anniversary
of his death, the Ty Cobb Museum opened its doors
in Royston. The time had become right to honor the
man in his own hometown.


Records and achievements

    * Highest lifetime major-league batting
average (.366)
    * Most career batting titles (12)
    * Most career steals of home (54)
    * Second in career hits (4,189 – first in AL
and first when retired)
    * Second in career runs scored (2,246 – first
in AL and first when retired)
    * Third in career steals (892 – first when
retired)
    * Led the American League in hits 8 times
    * Led the American League in runs scored 5
times
    * Scored 100 runs 11 times in his career
    * Reached 1,000 hit level by the age of 24 --
the youngest of any major league player.
    * Batted under .320 only once in his career --
his first season
    * Batted over .400 three times (1911, 1912 &
1922)
    * Batted over .320 for 23 straight seasons
    * One of only two people to hit a home run
before his 20th birthday and after his 40th
birthday (the other is Rusty Staub)
    * Won the prestigious Triple Crown in 1909
    * First player to be inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame



Regular season stats
G 	AB 	R 	H 	2B 	3B 	HR 	RBI 	SB 	CS 	BB 	SO 	BA
	OBP 	SLG 	TB 	SH 	HBP
3035 	11434 	2246 	4189 	724 	295 	117 	1937 	892
	178 	1249 	357 	.366 	.433 	.512 	5854 	295 	94