Notice Young: Blazers “Would Execute a Trade For Aldridge,” Per Source

Ty Cobb got screwed by history. In many ways just like Edgar Allen Poe. Al Stump's autobiography may be the most untrue POS ever written about a major public figure.

 

yeah, but it was a fun read...I played ball overseas and Cobb was right about the power of the single and stolen base...I learned a lot about bat control from his technique.....the guy could put the ball down the right field or left field line anytime, any pitch...he held the bat according to where he wanted to put the ball...pitchers never figured him out..before Cobb taught me in his book I used to push the bat with my strong arm instead of pull it....changing that made me have so much more speed and control...it was brilliant

 

.367 Lifetime B.A. Nobody will ever bear that.

 

Are you saying Cobb wasn't a virulent racist and he didn't purposely try to injure other people on the field? Because I've never seen anyone dispute those things, which seem to be the things that most tarnish his reputation.

 

I'm saying Ty Cobb wasn't the monster people make him out to be. Was he a racist... of course. But was he any worse than Southern ball players at the time.... probably not. There are many stories about him that are complete fabrications. Even the famous photo which shows him spiking Home Run Baker you can visibly see the iron spike that would have torn his ACL had he not done so. He was a jerk and a loner, so I am sure that his aggression didn't help his reputation. The players that had hazed Cobb, "a Southern boy still fighting the war" never became his friends. Lots if players brawled and spiked each other, Cobb was the mean one that stuck out.

Listen, I'm not really Ty Cobb fan and I don't really have any interest in the guy. But what I have interest in, is that there are two Hollywood movies and an entire documentary series based around a biography that is utter bullshit. There are urban legends about Cobb that have been debunked as utter fabrication. That even Stump admited on his death bed that he made up, probably for the money. His ex-teammates backed it up as fact because they hated Cobb. Why did Ty Cobb, a racist, support black players in baseball? I'm sure he was a bigot but not a segregationist like Cap Anson. Why is there the idea that no one would come to his funeral when the family had a private ceremony? He gave thousands of dollars to ex baseball players down on their luck.

Bill James put it best. "He was so crude and unpolished that he must have felt that whenever they took those things away from him, he became nothing; his shortcomings glowed like hot piece of iron in the dark. And whenever he saw them glowing, he got angry. You can see it in his face, I think, that if he could just put on a uniform and go out on the field, it would be such a relief to him, out where manners and taste and style were all defined by bases gained and bases lost. And everyone else, for a change would have to apologize to him."

He wasn't a nice person but he was no worse than Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio or Babe Ruth.

 

Hmm, from what I've read/heard, he stuck out even for his time. If you narrow the pool specifically to "Southern ball players," I don't know.

I'm sure there was plenty of racism to go around in baseball in general, but Ty Cobb and Cap Anson seem to be the ones who were most outspoken and/or most hate-filled.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if plenty of fabrications have sprung up around him. That period, before the modern era of both baseball and media itself, is rife with exaggerations.

 

Well. He most certainly was. I'm not saying that. The exaggerations are mostly stories regarding his personal conduct of which there is no basis in fact. But it really doesn't matter he was a mean, nervy fiery guy who was nice as long as you didn't challenge him. Who wants to repair the reputation of the guy like that? Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

 

Apparently this is now a thread about baseball?......

 

Baseball is still more relevant to the Blazers than Aldridge-to-the-Blazers trade speculation.

 

If football gets discussed here, nobody says much....baseball talk is common amongst a handful of us around here...think of it as spam..that's how I think about football talk

 

I didn't see a lot of football discussion in a thread about LMA.

 

Probably cause that's a sport that requires some physicality....

 

Zing!

 

He'd suck at football...there

 

LOL I check out this thread and thought I was on a baseball forum - TY Cobb WTF?

 

At some point being tall would become a negative in football and baseball, I can imagine. I mean, 6'6" or 6'7" fine. But being 6'11" or taller wouldn't give you an edge. Maybe an OL in football but that it.

 

I love that the Mariners now have multiple grown men with lucious hair now... but none can compare to The Big Unit

 

Being left-handed and having a 99 mph FB is like a human cheat code at any height.