Usurping Ty Cobb is just perfect.
Virulent racist eclipsed by a Negro Leaguer. Karma.
I thought this thread might be about angel hernandez. May his name be forgotten forever.
Just like Angel Hernandez wasn’t the only really bad ump. Cobb wasn’t the only virulent racist of the day. He has just be highlighted more than guys like Cap Anson and other Cobb contemporaries.
Gibson deserves his spot at #1. Too bad not all info is available still. For example Hank Aaron won’t have any more home runs added to his list because the records haven’t been verified yet.
I certainly did not mean to imply Cobb was the only one, and we probably could come up with a list of racists as long as the proverbial arm. I will see if I can find the criteria MLB used to determine which stats would be accepted and which would not be.
Based on what I read, it is because the negro american league stopped having regular seasons after intergration and Aaron played on the clowns in 52 for three months of barnstorming. The committee only added regular season and play off games, not barnstorming games. Which makes perfect sense.
A lot of that was overblown or just plain wrong. Charles Leerhsen’s book “Ty Cobb, A Terrible Beauty” goes into some detail on this myth. Cobb, of course, was a man of his times, but supported Jackie Robinson and stated publicly that he supported integration of baseball. “I see no reason in the world why we shouldn’t compete with colored athletes…” Cobb said in 1952 when the Texas League was being integrated.
Could be, and I am not arguing with you, but easy to say in 1952; Robinson and Doby had been in MLB and excelled. Cobb was retired. What did he say in the 1920s or 1930s?
ETA: my opinion of Cobb as a racist is based on biographies I read. Perhaps I did not read the correct one. Does not affect my admiration for his play.
According to the book, quite a bit. It was an eye-opener for me. He was also a vocal supporter of Jackie Robinson and criticized Dixie Walker and others at the time. A lot of Cobb’s bad reputation came from fabrications by Al Stump.
Author? A blurb I just read by a biographer trying to debunk the myth said Cobb was not asked about it until 1952.
Jim, I just flipped open the book and read the first relevant quote I found. I saw another place in the index where Cobb was critical of Dixie Walker. I’m not trying to formulate a debate, only note that there is one. I would, however, question your implication that supporting racial mixing in Texas in 1952 was no big deal.
You can read the book or look further into it if you’re interested
Dang it, Tex, I said at the outset I am not arguing with you. I do not give a damn if Cobb was or if he wasn’t, and I know only what I have read. I now know there are authors trying to debunk what they call myths about him.
I said nothing about racial mixing. I was born in 1945 and grew up in Texas in the Jim Crow era. I said Blacks in baseball in 1952 was not a big deal any more…unless you were the Red Sox or the Yankees. Of course, integration to any degree was a very big deal in society generally.
I do not care enough about Cobb’s reputation to read another biography. If Falk were still around, I could ask him. He played against him his entire career.
I withdraw my virulent racist comment because there seems to be a legitimate debate among historians about the label’s accuracy.
Cobb was a complicated man. He was an educated man, from a family of what you might call today “progressives”, but he was also very much a product of the Jim Crow South. He was a racist, there is no getting around that. Probably not as much as some portraits make him out to be, and his views on race likely changed in his later years, as did the attitudes of much of the country. But it was certainly there in his younger playing days.
“I don’t care if he’s got no feet”
Isn’t that a Cobb story?