Rescuing Ty Cobb....

Lots of lies about Ty Cobb. He was the greatest of all time. He stole home 33 times....unbelievable. He did it twice in one game. He stole second, third, and home in the same inning several times.

This quote is good..."Ty Cobb getting a walk is more exciting the Babe Ruth hitting a home run." Said by a sportswriter in Cobb's day.
 
Lots of lies about Ty Cobb. He was the greatest of all time. He stole home 33 times....unbelievable. He did it twice in one game. He stole second, third, and home in the same inning several times.

This quote is good..."Ty Cobb getting a walk is more exciting the Babe Ruth hitting a home run." Said by a sportswriter in Cobb's day.


Even better: a record 54 steals!

50 for Detroit, and 4 for Philadelphia
 
Now....on to the motive for many of these slanders of Cobb.....
Why would someone set out to destroy Ty Cobb's reputation.
Could he benefit from doing so????

You betcha'!

9. "....how did he come to be portrayed as a monster? By the late 1950s, when Cobb went on the TV quiz showI’ve Got a Secret, the panelists not only didn’t guess his “secret”—“I have the highest batting average of all time”—they couldn’t identify him by sight. Cobb didn’t like that, and he disliked even more being remembered as a dirty player. .... he became obsessed with setting the record straight, and he started to shop around an autobiography. Doubleday & Co. agreed to publish it and assigned a ghostwriter, Cobb being too ill to write it himself. For this job they picked a man who was known for quantity over quality, a hard-drinking hack newspaperman named Al Stump.


Stump, who had never met Cobb, spent only a few days with him before setting off to write. .... Stump was filling in the gaps by making up stories out of whole cloth, .... Cobb wrote letters threatening a lawsuit if the book wasn’t cancelled or rewritten. But he died soon thereafter, and the book—entitled My Life in Baseball: The True Record—came out a few months later.



Stump also struck a deal with a sensationalist barber shop magazine called, ironically,True. For $4,000, a tidy sum in 1961, he would write a seamy tell-all about what it was like to live and work with Cobb in his final days. Stump had negotiated the fee by pitching the tale of a wild man drinking to excess and driving around the Lake Tahoe area waving a gun at (unnamed) people, cursing at (unnamed) emergency room doctors, flinging drinks at (unnamed) bartenders, and waking up an (unnamed) bank president in the middle of the night—in person, with a gun—...All the women in Cobb’s family feared him, Stump wrote, again without naming names.


Furthermore, he may have killed some unnamed person, though he was never prosecuted and the story never made the newspapers. Everyone in baseball had hated him, Stump claimed, adding meanly and dishonestly that only three people went to Cobb’s funeral.


....in 1984, when Charles Alexander published his book. The word “racist”—non-existent in Cobb’s time—was by then very much a part of the lexicon, and people were eager to make assumptions about a Southern white man." http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-was-ty-cobb-the-history-we-know-thats-wrong/5/


A rule in media...'if it bleeds, it leads,'......the more sensational the better.
And how could a dead man, Cobb, fight it.
 
10.So.....faux-journalist Stump used Ty Cobb's reputation for his own benefit....
Stump's fabrications weren't all met with approval...

"....sportswriters rushed to Cobb’s defense, saying they had visited his homes in Tahoe and Georgia during this same period—had spent more time with him than Stump, in fact—and never witnessed such behavior. It didn’t matter that all of Stump’s sources were anonymous, all his quotes unidentified, and that Stump himself had been banned from several newspapers and magazines for making things up. It didn’t matter that Cobb’s family had put out the word that his funeral was a private service, or that four of his closest friends in baseball did attend, or that thousands of people packed the church and lined the way to the cemetery.


....director Ron Shelton bought the screen rights to Stump’sTruemagazine article and urged Stump, still alive, to write yet another book—a biography this time—that would serve to promote the movie. This 1994 book, also entitledCobb, was a huge bestseller and was excerpted inSports Illustrated. Then came Ken Burns’Baseballdocumentary, which parroted Stump and Alexander. And the myth grew further with the rise of the Internet—search for “Ty Cobb” on Twitter and see what you find.


.....having been at one time an editor atPeople magazine—that human beings take delight in the fact that the rich and famous are often worse and more miserable than they are. What I didn’t understand before was the power of repetition to bend the truth.

In Ty Cobb’s case, the repetition has not only destroyed a man’s reputation, it has obliterated a real story ..... Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong

Is it too late to save Ty Cobb?

....or to save the concept of 'truth' itself.
 
11. "..... Cobb has been portrayed as a virtual psychotic in articles, books, and films, including Ron Shelton’s 1994 feature starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ken Burns’s epic, 18-hour documentary, Baseball, in which Cobb plays the villain to Jackie Robinson’s hero.


There’s only one problem: this venomous character is predominantly fictional. InTy Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, published last year, Charles Leerhsen documents how Cobb’s wicked reputation largely dates to the years after his death in 1961, when sportswriter Al Stump created a mythical Cobb—“Ty the Ripper,” Leerhsen calls him—who displaced the real man in the public mind. Stump’s motives for spinning tall tales seem to have been financial.


Clinging to a preferred narrative about someone long dead is comparatively easy, especially when he’s a white Southerner.

The defaming of Cobb dramatically illustrates the written word’s power to exalt or slander, educate or mislead, and how the consequences of a writer’s moral choices can play out for generations.



In the meantime, it won’t hurt to remember the simplest of lessons. In Leerhsen’s words: “Just because you’ve heard something a thousand times doesn’t mean it’s true. Did you know that it’s not even true that your hair and fingernails keep growing after you’re dead?” Lies do. A Wronged Man




12. Earlier I posted that same kind of fabrication has been used against conservatives, Republicans, and any who don't toe the Liberal line.....

....and in this thread we find Ty Cobb in somewhat of a similar position as Ray Donovan...



.... "Raymond James "Ray" Donovan(born August 31, 1930) is anAmericanbusinessman and former politician. He served asU.S. Secretary of Laborunder President Reagan.


In a highly publicized 1987 case,[1]Donovan and six other defendants were indicted by a Bronx County, [read 'Democrat/Liberal'] New York, grand jury for larceny and fraud ....

On May 25, 1987, Donovan (and all of the other defendants) were acquitted, after which Donovan was famously quoted as asking, "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Raymond J. Donovan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Such are the iniquities that occur when one particular political outlook owns the media.
 
Great thread. I read books on Ty Cobb as a boy and totally admired what he did. The picture I got from books is that Cobb loved the game more than anything and he wanted to be the best and he felt that if he could get an edge somehow he would work relentlessly to get it. Everyone remembers the sharpened spikes but I remember a story that he made metal inserts for his shoes that he would wear all winter long so that in the spring when he removed them he would feel like he was flying above the ground when he ran. Cobb was not a bad person, just an incredibly competitive person who wanted more than anything to be the best player baseball ever saw.
 
There are so many myths about Cobb. Here is the truth about this famous photo...

Ty-Cobb-hard-slide.jpg

There is a famous photograph that is often used to indict Cobb. It shows Cobb and St. Louis Browns catcher Paul Krichell in 1912. Cobb appears to be flying foot-first into Krichell’s crotch while the catcher squints in pained anticipation. But there is a 1950s interview with Krichell, then a scout for the Yankees, and by his own testimony, Cobb was aiming his foot at the ball in Krichell’s glove, and succeeded in knocking it to the backstop. Here is Krichell’s account: “The ball hit the grandstand on the fly. I was mad and stunned. Cobb was mad and shaken. In a way it was really my fault. I was standing in front of the plate, instead of on the side, where I could tag Ty as he slid in. But out of that mix-up I learned one thing: never stand directly in front of the plate when Cobb was roaring for home.”
Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong
 
I certainly hope that revealing the truth vs. the myths is a lesson readers apply to the terrible lies that are still passes as truth by the Leftist media and academia.

Imagine, if the truth about Franklin Roosevelt was as well known.......
 
In post #20 I provided three prominent lies/myths that the Left tells about their political opponents....

Our pal, Nosmo, never denied or questioned the post.....so either he/she recognizes same or has no response....meaning cannot disagree that they are lies.


There are lots more, so the Ty Cobb revelations in this thread serve as allegory for our society.
I hope that lesson is not lost on those who might vote Democrat.
 
....from the internet....or from Oliver Stone, Comedy Central, or government school...or from Liberalism in general.


Of course it's easy to accept the gossip, the slanders: one simply sits and nods, absorbs the repetitions.....but that's indoctrination....so very many have been trained to allow others to do their thinking for them.

It's what allows the dominant political group to pass off lies about opponents.



"..... Cobb has been portrayed as a virtual psychotic in articles, books, and films, including Ron Shelton’s 1994 feature starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ken Burns’s epic, 18-hour documentary, Baseball, in which Cobb plays the villain to Jackie Robinson’s hero.

There’s only one problem: this venomous character is predominantly fictional." A Wronged Man



There is a lesson here that goes well beyond the destruction of a single individual's reputation, and extends to the way far too many of us get our information.
Best is to remember the insightful words of the finest President of the last 100 years:

"Trust, but verify."







1. Case in point.....Ty Cobb, "....one of the greatest baseball players of all time and king of the so-called Deadball Era. He played in the major leagues—mostly for the Detroit Tigers but a bit for the Philadelphia Athletics—from 1905 to 1928, and was the first player ever voted into the Hall of Fame.

His lifetime batting average of .366 is amazing, and has never been equaled." Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong


a. "In 1936 Cobb received the most votes of any player on the inauguralBaseball Hall of Fame ballot, .... In 1999,editorsatThe Sporting Newsranked Ty Cobb 3rd on their list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players".[1]

... credited with setting 90 MLB records during his career.[2][3][4][5]He still holds several records as of the end of the 2014 season, including the highestcareerbatting average(.366 or .367, depending on source) and most careerbatting titleswith 11 (or 12, depending on source).[6]

....and themodern recordfor most careerstolen bases(892) until 1977.[12]He still holds the career record for stealing home (54 times) and for stealing second base, third base, and home in succession (5 times), and as the youngest player ever to compile 4,000 hits and score 2,000 runs." Ty Cobb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


b. "But for all that, most Americans think of him first as an awful person—a racist and a low-down cheat who thought nothing of injuring his fellow players just to gain another base or score a run. Indeed, many think of him as a murderer. "
Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong




Here's where most people's knowledge of Cobb comes from:
2. In the mid-90s, Hollywood made a film about this baseball immortal:

"Al Stump is a famous sports-writer chosen by Ty Cobb to co-write his official, authorized 'autobiography' before his death. Cobb, widely feared and despised, feels misunderstood and wants to set the record straight about 'the greatest ball-player ever,' in his words.

However, when Stump spends time with Cobb, interviewing him and beginning to write, he realizes that the general public opinion is largely correct. In Stump's presence, Cobb is angry, violent, racist, misogynistic, and incorrigibly abusive to everyone around him. Torn between printing the truth by plumbing the depths of Cobb's dark soul and grim childhood, and succumbing to Cobb's pressure for a whitewash of his character and a simple baseball tale of his greatness, Stump writes two different books. One book is for Cobb, the other for the public."
Cobb (1994) - IMDb


a. And this: " Ron Shelton, the director of the 1995 movieCobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones in the title role, [reported that] it was “well known” that Cobb had killed “as many as” three people." Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong


b. "Cobb himself wrote shortly before his death, "In legend I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport." Schwartz, Larry."He was a pain ... but a great pain". ESPN.




'Say it ain't so!'
It ain't.


This is a cautionary tale.

I'll reveal the truth, and you can see the same process in operation, lies accepted as truth, throughout our society.

Is this your way of apologizing for all the tall tales you've told on this forum?
 
I certainly hope that revealing the truth vs. the myths is a lesson readers apply to the terrible lies that are still passes as truth by the Leftist media and academia.

Imagine, if the truth about Franklin Roosevelt was as well known.......

You've lied more about Roosevelt than anyone on this forum has lied about anyone.
 
This is why I laugh every time the Lamestream media reports that "6 in 10 have an unfavorable view of Trump". Well no shit, if you put out non-stop negative statements about Trump to people who only get their opinions from TV, what else would you expect?
 

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