Cobb – Al Stump

While Ty Cobb never played for the Indians, he remains one of the greatest baseball players in history and his biography, Cobb: The Life & Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball by Al Stump is a book that should be read by all. Originally, Stump was commissioned to help Cobb pen his memoirs, an autobiography that would ultimately become My Life in Baseball: The True Record (1961). More than 30 years later, Stump would tell the true (or at least less censored) version of Cobb’s life and the time they spent together in this 1994 biography.

While the movie (Cobb [1994] featuring Tommy Lee Jones as the Georgia Peach and Robert Wuhl as Stump) made shortly after the book was published Cobb focuses primarily on the time the two spent writing the original biography, the book itself is a full depiction of Cobb’s life with very little emphasis on his later years. In fact, outside of the first and final chapters, there is almost no mention of Cobb’s post retirement life. Of course, there were more than enough events that occurred during his career to fill a book as he was not only an incredible baseball player, but also a fighter on and off the field and an extremely successful business man.

It would be impossible to relay even a fraction of those stories here, but there are a couple that are of particular interest to Indians fans. To start, while he did not play for Cleveland, he did come very close to doing so early in his career. During Spring Training of 1907, in a story typical of the racism showed by Cobb throughout the book, Cobb beat both a black groundskeeper and his wife. After the assault, Cobb was offered in trade to the Indians in a one-for-one swap for future Hall of Famer Elmer Flick. Flick was a 31 year old veteran and former batting champ, but the Indians and manager Napoleon Lajoie (which, according to Stump, is actually pronounced La-Zway) didn’t feel the hot headed, 20 year old Cobb would be worth the trouble he caused in the dugout. The deal was not made, Cobb won the batting title in 1907 and each other season except one through 1919. Flick would play just 246 games over the next four seasons before retiring. Thanks to the reserve clause that kept a player with the team that originally signed him (another touchy subject throughout the book), Cobb played his entire career until 1927 with Detroit, tallying 4,189 career hits and an MLB record lifetime .366 average.

There are many other mentions of Cleveland as Cobb and the Naps/Indians clashed many times with just eight teams in the American League, but the next most important came prior to his jump to Philadelphia in 1927. It was during that off-season that a formerly spurned player, Dutch Leonard, provided evidence to commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that Cobb, Leonard along with Smokey Joe Wood and Tris Speaker of the Indians had arranged to fix a game back in 1919. That year was the same as the Chicago Black Sox scandal and Landis took any gambling rumors very seriously. Included in the book is Cobb’s entire testimony and an in depth look at the entire situation, eventually exonerating the Indians manager and future Hall of Famer, Speaker.

While the original Cobb autobiography may have been shaded a little too rosy, this version may be a little too dark. There have been misgivings about the truth behind many of the events covered in the tome with some stating that it should be considered a work of fiction. Some of this concern may stem from the fact that Stump, writing from the 1960’s onward, had to rely completely on unreliable records from the early years of baseball. Many of the quotes are hearsay coming from his time with Cobb just prior to his death and from Cobb’s teammates decades after the events occurred. This is something that should be kept in mind when reading this book (which I highly recommend). Take the stories with a grain of salt, especially those where the source of the material was Cobb himself.

Even long time baseball fans who are well aware of Cobb and his contemporaries like Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Shoeless Joe Jackson will learn much about Cobb’s life and baseball in general from this biography. Of particular interest is the fact that Cobb was almost constantly playing injured and missed significant time almost every single year of his career do to leg and eye issues. The book details each individual event, something that can’t be found by simply looking at year-by-year statistics. There is also included some of Cobb’s science of baseball, although surely less than was in Cobb’s autobiography from 1961.

Cobb is proof that a man can be great and still a terrible human being. Books like this are important as they can help keep the past from becoming distorted, attempting to provide an accurate look at the history of the sport of baseball. There is nothing wrong with praising Cobb’s performance on the field while condemning his actions off. Stump’s tale essentially does just that, but in general, leaves enough open that each individual can form their own opinion. This book is a must read for baseball fans, but the movie is not. Tommy Lee Jones may be great in science fiction and action, but a baseball player he is not and he is especially no mid-20’s Ty Cobb.