I saw this article and thought it was interesting.

Was Ty Cobb’s reputation mostly a myth?

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/41972

Ty Cobb was 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. 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. Ron Shelton, the director of the 1995 movie Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones in the title role, told me it was “well known” that Cobb had killed “as many as” three people.

…….

I knew going into this project — having been at one time an editor at People 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 that is more interesting than the myth. Is it too late to turn things around? John the Evangelist said, “The truth will set you free.” But against that there is the Stockholm syndrome, whereby hostages cling avidly to what holds them in bondage.

I guess it’s me versus Al Stump. Who knows who will win? What I know for certain is that the greatness of Ty Cobb was something that had to be seen, and to see it was to remember it forever.

agree with Dino. Stump was a fraud and people still wonder what his issue with Cobb was, other than to grab money. IMO, he has been debunked as the charlatan he was. The fact is Cobb was a human being with both good and "not so good" qualities. Moreover he was a product of his times. Dino cites good references for further research; unbiased bios showing that in the whole, Cobb was what I would consider to be a good man of quality character.

Thanks for the article SKINNDOGG - that's a great read!

Cobb obviously wasn't the monster that people believed for so long, but he was still one of these greatest baseball a-holes of all time.

Thanks for the article. It was a good read.

Great article, thanks.

I read Leerhsen's book, the one subtitled "Terrible Beauty" and mentioned in the article. While apparently Stump had some unknown axe to grind against Cobb - besmirching his character to this day - Leerhsen's seems a little too eager to defend Cobba t every turn and wxain away his shortcomings.... A good read, though, and all this is a great case study into the come city of human nature, culture, and our desire to simify everything as we make meaning and story out of it....