Ty Cobb

Generally regarded as a mass murderer and child molester by the unwashed hordes who don't know baseball, Ty Cobb (also known as "The Georgia Peach") was born over one hundred years ago, and is remembered as a violent, competitive, offensive, fierce, driven and strange man. If he were alive today, he wouldn't want to be remembered any other way. What normal people consider "character flaws" were to Ty shining examples of how a grown man should comport himself in all situations. Ty is often labeled a racist bastard by his present-day detractors, but they don’t seem to understand that Ty wasn't racist; he hated everybody with an equal amount of fury.

History

Portrait of an asshole as a young asshole.

Ty Cobb, at the end of his career.

Ty grew up in post-Civil War era Georgia, and his hard upbringing (his father was a high school principal) would shape the way Ty would perceive all aspects of his life. Even his name "Tyrus" was given to him in honor of the stubborn city of Tyre, which weathered successive sieges by the armies of Alexander the Great.

When he was 17 years old, Ty would leave his family home to pursue a career in the sport of baseball. Since his father thought this was an idea akin to gently but firmly inserting your penis into a light bulb socket, he sternly told his son to leave, and "don't come home a failure."

Those words would prove important for Ty Cobb's next 24 years.

Life and Baseball

Famous photo of Cobb sliding into third, wrecking a guy's legs for no reason

	“	When he's at bat you can hear him gritting his teeth	„
	—Rebel Oaks

After bumming around in several semi-pro leagues, Cobb finally got his chance to play in the big leagues when the Detroit Tigers purchased the team he played on for a measly $8,000. After that, the records and streaks would fall into place. Ty Cobb amassed over 90 records in his time with the Tigers and many considered him the best baseball player of all time.

Just prior to Ty Cobb joining the Tigers in the majors, his mother shot his father twice in the face from their bedroom window. While this incident is hilarious to most, it had a profound and sobering impact on Cobb's playing style for the remainder of his career. He often stated that because his father was not able to watch him on the field, he was "up there, always watching" and could see everything that young Ty was doing. It has been speculated that insanity is a genetic trait that runs in certain families (especially in the South) and that it often manifests itself in the form of paranoia. This would be particularly lulzy considering that Ty "saw" his father while his mother shot the man while he was spying on her from their upstairs bedroom window. He was worried she was a cheating whore.

Nervous Breakdown

When he first arrived in the big leagues, Cobb was hazed by his fellow players to the point where he actually had a nervous breakdown. Prior to leaving the league for a few months to cool off, he was involved in several confrontations with his fellow teammates, many of which ended with somebody getting the shit beat out of him. Once his cool-off period was over at the sanitarium, Cobb returned to the majors with a new accessory: he now carried a loaded pistol wherever he was, including his own team’s dugout.

Demeanor on the Ball Diamond

	“	I recall when Cobb played a series with each leg a mass of raw flesh. He had a temperature of 103, and the doctors ordered him to bed for several days, but he got three hits, stole three bases, and won the game.	„
	—Grantland Rice, movie producer, commenting on Cobb's triumphant insanity

Often considered the greatest douchebag to ever walk the earth, Ty Cobb played the sport of baseball with such fury that most teams (including his own) hated to suit up and play games with him. He was crass, loud, obnoxious and distractive, traits that are admired by trolls on the internet to this very day. He would yell at fans, he would question the opposing team's pitcher about the race of his mother, he would insult the wives of players and he would utter racist remarks to any person in the stadium, attempting to build his own legend to a towering specter and seep into every opposing team's traumatized minds. Whatever you can say about this demeanor, it worked. Ty Cobb would gain a lifetime batting average of .367, a feat that would cause sportscasters, internet baseball geeks, and modern baseball stars to wonder what kind of crack the guy was on.

Stealing Home

The correct way to slide into home.

Considered by many to be the ballsiest move in all of professional sports, Ty Cobb would steal home so many times in his career that whenever he was on first base, it was a given that he would try to steal home from that point forward. He did it 54 times during his career, usually with his sharpened spikes launched at the face of the catcher. Because of his vicious attack on the base paths, Ty was often called "dirty" and "unscrupulous" by writers and fellow players. This didn't bother Cobb in the least, hoping the legend of his base-rage would grow to frighten others in the league.

Contract Holdouts

During the era in which Ty Cobb played, baseball players were regarded as dogshit and were paid an amount comparable to said dogshit. Cobb would not have any of that sort of treatment and held out for more money several times during his career. This impromptu striking would cause several people to question Cobb's motivations, stating that players should play for the love of the game. Ty's only response was that most players, upon retirement, went straight to the workhouse or died in some alley, filled with cheap gin and tuberculosis.

During his final three years in the big leagues, Ty Cobb would play for the Philadelphia Athletics and command a $70,000 per year contract. He was the highest paid player of his era.

Scandals

	“	Sure, I fought, 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.	„
	—Ty Cobb, after stabbing a man in an elevator

During the two decades that Ty Cobb ruled the baseball diamond, he was involved in or named as the principle suspect in several scandals that would write his history off the ball field for several decades to come. Despite being called "everything that is wrong with baseball" several times in his career, he managed to keep clear of the 1919 Black Sox scandal that would rock the baseball world and tarnish the World Series for that year. However, he was named in a handful of gambling cases, but was never tried in any court, except the court of public opinion. Here are some of the more notable scandals during his lifetime:

• He killed a mugger by beating his face to a pulp with the butt end of his pistol.

• He slapped a black elevator operator for being "uppity." When a black night watchman intervened, Cobb pulled out a knife and stabbed him.

• He kicked a black chambermaid down a flight of stairs after she objected to being called a nigger.

• He beat up a cripple who was calling him a half-nigger from the stands during a game. During the melee, he was told that the man he was beating had no hands; to this, Cobb replied, "I don’t care if he doesn’t have any feet!"

• During one spring training, he complained to a black groundskeeper about the quality of the field. When the discussion became heated, the man's wife tried to intervene. Cobb ended up choking her.

• He was involved in a large-scale betting scandal that would later be swept under the rug by baseball commissioner Mountain Landis. Cobb would only admit that he had "written letters" suggesting that other players should bet on baseball to supplement their shitty pay.

• Upon hearing that his son, Ty Jr., was flunking out of college, he drove to the Columbia campus and beat his child with a horsewhip in a public display that was meant to "straighten the brat out."

Coca Cola

Try Ty Cobb cigarettes kids!

	“	I always find that a drink of Coca-Cola between the games refreshes me to such an extent that I can start the second game feeling as if I had not been exercising at all, in spite of my exertions in the first.	„
	—Ty Cobb, lying his ass off for cash

Cobb was known as an astute trader of stocks and bonds. Because he was smarter than the average baseball player of his time, Ty Cobb spent his earnings wisely, rather than on broads and booze. He invested in Coca-Cola and thanks to this shrewd business maneuver, he would end up a millionaire who owned three Coca-Cola bottling plants.

He also attempted to start his own tobacco and cigarette company.

Later Years

As the 1920s ended, Ty Cobb began to feel the effects of his kamikaze style of base running. Years of leading off, sliding, and pell-mell running would take their toll on his knees and legs, which were often bruised and bleeding to the point where fellow players questioned his ability to stand, much less run. Finally, in 1928, he retired from baseball.

Life After Baseball

	“	Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!	„
	—A fictional Shoeless Joe Jackson from the movie Field of Dreams

Cobb telling Mickey Mantle that he sucks.

Once removed from the big leagues, Ty Cobb found himself restless and unhappy. Being a millionaire meant that he did not have to build a career during his post-baseball years. This also probably aided in his descent into alcoholism and general assholism as well. He spent much of his free time writing his own biography while trying to murder biographer Al Stump. This biography would later be made into the movie Cobb, staring Tommy Lee Jones. In June 1961, after spending a couple of years going back and forth across the United States in an attempt to cure his Ass Cancer, Cobb felt the cold grip of death approaching. He checked himself into his own Georgia hospital carrying a paper bag that contained 1 million dollars in bonds, a bottle of Rye whiskey, and a Luger pistol. He died one month later, having shot only at the ceiling.

The Legend

When you ask a baseball retard who their top five greatest players of all time are, Ty Cobb is usually number three on that list behind Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. Most of the memorabilia you can find related to Ty Cobb are incredibly overpriced junk, fake items and beat-to-shit baseball cards that have been reprinted so often, the stamp is wearing out. His genuine tobacco cards consistently fetch high prices whenever they become publicly available, and his old chaw tins will occasionally be discovered and sold on eBay. Due to his vast impact on the game, there are many "experts" out there on baseball forums and websites who will either deny or confirm that Ty Cobb is the best player to have ever graced the sport. 20-year-old baseball nerds will argue for weeks about the merits and detriments of Ty Cobb and his career in the major leagues. He is often mentioned in the same sentences as the words "Shoeless Joe Jackson," "whiskey," "FACT!" and "incredible pain in the ass." These keywords can be used on Google to find places in which one can troll baseball queers.

God would go on to punish Detroit for all of Cobb's bullshit.

Internet Relevance

Ty Cobb has Internet Relevance because he is a model for all internet trolls. One intending to seriously become a troll should study his life as an example.

Many people, through casual perusal of the internet, will not find a direct correlation between Ty Cobb and the internet. In fact, if Cobb were alive in this day and age, he would probably:

• Hate it, citing the millions of fat, greasy failures who use it as prime examples of why it should be shut down and its users strung up by their balless scrotums.

• Blog about how great he is.

• Complain about the abundance of "nip cartoons and their race traitor fans" on 4chan.

• Use his millions to buy up stock in various web-based companies...and make even more millions by overcharging for their services.

• Post on /b/...especially when a thread about black people or the KKK was posted.

All of this aside, his drama-generating techniques are very relevant to today's internet. Newbies could stand to learn some of his tricks in order to better themselves through the use of his approach to just about anything. Seasoned internet pros already utilize his melodramatics and are very successful, but even the most grizzled and frumpy veteran of the World Wide Web can still stand back and admire the psychological force that was Ty Cobb.

Quotes

People like to talk...mostly about themselves. Ty Cobb was no different, but because of his ruthless nature, he also garnered his share of quotes about him.

“   Basketball is a bunch of queers running around playing a niggers ballgame in their underwear   „     —Ty Cobb on basketball     “   He ran well for a fat man   „     —Ty Cobb on Babe Ruth     “   Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.   „     —Ty Cobb on baseball and faggotry     “   Baseball was one-hundred percent of my life.   „     —This is true, he died alone     “   I have observed that baseball is not unlike a war, and when you come right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery.   „     —In reference to his bayonet-sharp cleats     “   I may have been fierce, but never low or underhand.   „     —Remember, this man was a spokesperson for a cigarette company     “   The way those clubs shift against Ted Williams, I can't understand how he can be so stupid not to accept the challenge to him and hit to left field.   „     —Ty Cobb on Ted Williams being a dumbass     “   When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch.   „     —On his early career hazing     “   A ball bat is a wondrous weapon.   „     —And he used it too.     “   You've got to remember - I'm seventy-three.   „     —On why he would only hit .300 against modern pitchers     “   I'm coming down on the next pitch, Krauthead   „     —Bitching at Honus Wagner     “   Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.   „     —Babe Ruth     “   Every time I hear of this guy again, I wonder how he was possible.   „     —Joe DiMaggio     “   He was still fighting the Civil War, and as far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees. But who knows, if he hadn't had that terrible persecution complex, he never would have been about the best ballplayer who ever lived.   „     —Sam Crawford     “   I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one even close to him. He was the greatest all time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing.   „     —Casey Stengel - noted retard Previous Quote | Next Quote

Video

Unless you're a Soundgarden fan, there is very little video of Ty Cobb to see on the internet. There are some very old footage taken from newsreels, some clips of dipshits acting like Cobb, and some very bad excerpts from the movie Cobb. Have a look:

Previous Video | Next Video

Gallery

• 
  Moar Smokes!
• 
  A rare moment of congeniality. It is a wonder that he isn't flipping somebody off.
• 
  Autobiography.
• 
  Autobiography turned into a major motion picture.

See Also

• Baseball
• Racists
• Asshole
• Douchebag
• Coca-Cola
• Detroit
• Georgia

External Links

• The Official site of Ty Cobb
• Hall of Fame Stuff
• Espn article
• Ty Cobb Museum
• Baseball Almanac Statistics
• List of some of his records

Featured article October 28, 2009
Preceded by Evony	Ty Cobb	Succeeded by Halloween