TY COBB — 100 YEARS: Ty-gertown

[missionhockey21]

TY COBB — 100 YEARS: Ty-gertown
August 29, 2005
BY RICHARD BAK
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

Last in a four-part series.

For young Ty Cobb the infatuation began, as it always does, with the most basic instincts.

Put a ball in a boy's hand and his immediate impulse is to throw it. Give him a stick and he'll swing it. Add to this the unfettered joy of romping with friends around the makeshift ball yard of a sun-blessed meadow and suddenly, if you are a country boy growing up in turn-of-the-century Georgia, you discover one day a simple pastime has turned into an all-consuming passion.

"Ty was still a little, skinny, spare-built fellow," childhood friend Bob McCreary once recalled. "But I thought at the time that he was about the best natural ballplayer I had ever seen."

The record books bear that out. Today, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his first game with the Tigers, Cobb continues to rank in the top five of most major batting and base-stealing categories. He has a stranglehold on several marks, including highest lifetime batting average (.367), most batting titles (12), most .300 seasons (23) and most steals of home (50).

Cobb remains as firmly identified with the city of Detroit as the Model T, Motown Records and Vernors ginger ale. He played the first 22 of his 24 big league seasons in Detroit, his rise in fame and fortune paralleling that of the emerging Motor City. When he arrived in 1905, Detroit was a drowsy community of fewer than 300,000 -- the second-smallest city in the American League. Attendance was so poor, there was widespread speculation the Tigers would fold or move.

Cobb's dynamic play got the turnstiles spinning and stopped such talk. By the time he left town in 1926, Detroit had exploded into the country's fourth-largest city and the Tigers had matured into one of baseball's most stable and prosperous franchises. Navin Field, the grandfather of Tiger Stadium, had replaced wobbly, wooden Bennett Park at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. As one of the first concrete and steel facilities, Navin Field was a powerful symbol of modern Detroit and rightfully called "the park that Cobb built."

Despite Cobb's enduring local connections, the roots of his complex nature reach past the din of the factory and the bustle of the ballpark and deep into the hushed heart of the post-bellum South. There the events of one sultry summer evening shaped -- some might say warped -- his character forever.

From sandlots to the Motor City

Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born Dec. 18, 1886, in a flyspeck farming community called The Narrows. His father, William, was an itinerant schoolteacher who finally settled his family in Royston, Ga., when Ty was about 6. By then Ty's mother, Amanda, had given birth to another boy, Paul, and a girl, Florence.

Royston -- today a community of 2,500 about an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta -- was typical of small towns found throughout 1890s America. Perhaps 500 people lived in the small residential district centered around Main Street and on the outlying farms. The Cobbs were relatively well off, owning a house in town and farmland on which cotton and other crops were grown.

Farming never agreed with Ty. "Somehow the idea of staring at the rump of a balky mule while I steered a plow behind him didn't strike me as fitting work," he complained. Nonetheless, as an old man Cobb would often reminisce about the small-town sensations of his youth. The sound of croaking frogs near a favorite swimming hole. The sight of rockers and flower boxes on a wide veranda. The smell of red clay as it baked and shimmered in the sun. "I felt secure and, like all small boys, I harbored big dreams," he said of this idyllic period.

William Cobb, the graduate of a military school, was a man of accomplishment. He was county school commissioner, state senator, publisher of the local paper and mayor. He suffered his son's love of baseball. "There's nothing as useless on earth," he said, "as knocking a string ball around a pasture with ruffians." William insisted it was better that Ty use his mind, not his muscles, not appreciating that his son's future greatness rested on his ability to meld both on a ball diamond.

In the spring of 1904, just as Ty was approaching high school graduation, he and his father argued into the wee hours of the morning over the boy's desire to leave home to try out with the Augusta Tourists, a team forming in the Class C Sally League. William was dead-set against it. He envisioned a career in medicine, law or the military for his son.

"I just have to go," the 17-year-old protested over and over.

William finally caved in, sitting down at his desk to write a half-dozen $15 checks to cover Ty's expenses.

When Ty was cut after just one game, he called his father and asked for permission to travel to Anniston, Ala., to catch on with a ragtag team there. He got it, along with a stern warning: "Don't come home a failure."

Cobb didn't, soon returning to Augusta a vastly improved player and becoming one of the Tourists' stars in 1905. His father even began to warm, ever so slightly, to the idea of his son being a professional ballplayer. William carried around a clipping describing Ty's heroics and occasionally showed it to his legislative friends.

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[Fishercat]

Although Cobb was a complete and utter jackass, man, he was a hell of a player. Not necessarily in performance value, but an extreme version of Ichiro with the attitude of Bonds. However, he's likely either the best CF ever or right near Mantle and Mays. When you look back at his numbers and even though numbers from then are questionable and he played to where the money was, batting average, he was simply an amazing talent.

You may never see another guy like Cobb again.