"During Cobb's career, he was involved in numerous fights, both on and off the field, and several profanity-laced shouting matches. For example, Cobb and umpire Billy Evans arranged to settle their in-game differences through fisticuffs, to be conducted under the grandstand after the game. Members of both teams were spectators, and broke up the scuffle after Cobb had knocked Evans down, pinned him, and began choking him. Cobb once slapped a black elevator operator for being "uppity." When a black night watchman intervened, Cobb pulled out a knife and stabbed him. The matter was later settled out of court.
"Sure, I fought," said an unrepentant Cobb in a revealing quote. "I had to fight all my life just to survive. They were all against me. Tried every dirty trick to cut me down, but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch." - Wikipedia entry on Ty Cobb
Oh man, the best part of Ken Burns' BASEBALL is everything with Ty Cobb in it.
ReplyDelete~Eamonn
Yeah the Ty Cobb stuff is right up there with literally every word spoken by Buck O'Neil as the top reasons to watch Ken Burns' Baseball. (I guess Ty Cobb would HATE that actually but lol fuck you Ty Cobb.)
ReplyDeleteI know we talked about this pre-Baseball Feelings but the two-part Tenth Inning that came out last year is really, really good, an impressively sensible take on the steroid era (although if I hear another middle-aged beat writer be all THERE WAS NO WAY WE COULD HAVE KNOOOOOWN I will blow everything everywhere up)
I love that Ty Cobb was a Detroit Tiger. I also hate that Ty Cobb was a Detroit Tiger. I think there's more love than hate, but that is generally because I love athletes who are inveterate shitheads and who everyone else hates. I mean, that psychotic attitude is my favorite sports attitude. Fuck yeah, kill 'em all, I grew up with the Bad Boys Pistons blah blah blah, but then you have the intense racism which can best be summed up with something I wrote ages ago, when we were doing that CKC Baseball Hall of Fame thing: Ty Cobb was considered revolting in a time when people still hung black dudes from trees as a form of town entertainment. It is kind of like having an incredibly racist old grandpa. You love him, but it's like goddamn, grandpa, settle down.
ReplyDelete"It is kind of like having an incredibly racist old grandpa. You love him, but it's like goddamn, grandpa, settle down."
ReplyDeleteThis makes a lot of sense.
Soundgarden named their rawest song after him. That's good enough for me.
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