If you know much about baseball history, the name Ty Cobb evokes a range of responses. Cobb, known by his nickname of the “Georgia Peach,” is considered by many to be the greatest all-around baseball player of all time. His prowess at the plate was nothing short of phenomenal. He holds the lifetime record for batting average (an amazing .366); he holds the record for most consecutive .300+ batting average seasons (a staggering 23 consecutive seasons); he held the record for most stolen bases for many years, and is still ranked fourth all time (892, with 54 of those being home plate); and he is second all time for number of hits (4,189). The amazing thing is, these are but a handful of the records he either holds or is within the top five or ten (sometimes, such as in the case of single season batting averages over .400, he is on the top ten list multiple times!).
Yet for all his ability, what most people remember about Ty Cobb is his despicable behavior. Ty Cobb was born not far from where I grew up in Georgia and is buried near his hometown. I loved baseball while I was growing up (my love of the sport, at least at the professional level, largely died during the strike of 1994-1995). I loved to hear the stories my Grandpa would tell of watching spring training games with the Yankees in Florida during the 1950s, when he would talk with the likes of Mantle and Berra while they were in the dugout. I remember the stories about Cobb, how he would sharpen the metal spikes on his cleats before every game in order to intimidate anybody trying to tag him out as a stole a base and how he was a racist of the first order. I saw the pictures of him sliding into a base with his cleats high. “Cobb,” a movie based on his life starring Tommy Lee Jones in the titular role, was released in 1994, reinforcing this image of the “Georgia Peach” as a miserable man. And who can forget the line in the movie “Field of Dreams,” where “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (played by Ray Liotta) explains that the reason why Ty Cobb wasn’t invited to play in these afterlife baseball games was because no one liked him while he was alive!
But what if I told you that the vast majority of what you know to be true about Cobb, well, isn’t? Recently in Imprimis, Charles Leerhsen wrote about how the generally accepted narrative concerning Cobb’s life was based not on facts, but rather on the work of a man who had been fired from previous journalism positions because he made stuff up. When his book initially came out, many of the people who knew Cobb personally publicly denounced the work as false. Many of the stories were demonstrably false with primary sources (for instance, Cobb actively lobbied that all players be required to dull their cleats because of the false stories). Sometimes, there are things we just know are true, whether it’s about people, nationalities, churches, or some aspect of life. We’ve been told or have read certain “facts,” often without any citation or sources, and our perspective is altered as a result. Paul told the Thessalonians, “Test everything; hold fast what is true” (1 Thess. 5:21). Sometimes, that means doing the extra work to dig for the truth; it is always worth it. Of course, our preconceived notions will be challenged and our conventional wisdom may turn out to be neither conventional nor wisdom. But since as Christians we serve the God of all truth, the truth should be something we highly cherish, fiercely protect, and doggedly pursue. Just something to think about…
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