Ty Cobb was an asshole. There’s really no getting around it. Whenever anybody starts going off about how we can’t let Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame because he gambled on baseball, or how Shoeless Joe Jackson shouldn’t ever be allowed in because he might have thrown some games, or how Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGwire will never get in because they (stick with me here) corked a bat and probably took steroids, probably took steroids and was an asshole, and probably took steroids (and had an awful case of backne either way), just remind them that Ty Fucking Cobb is in the Hall of Fame.
Stats wise, there’s no doubt Ty deserves to be in the Hall. The all-time hit king before Rose played for seven thousand years and beat his record (and his career .366 average is still the best ever), Cobb was also a demon on the basepaths, stealing somewhere north of 800 bases in his career, which is good for fourth on the all time list–and 2-3-4 on the list are bunched up fairly close together. Lou Brock in second has 938, Billy Hamilton in third has 912, and Ty in fourth has 892. Of course, Rickey Henderson swiped 1406 because he was a mother fucking base stealing MACHINE sent from the future to steal our bases.
But we’re here to talk about Ty Cobb. And part of the reason he was so good at stealing bases wasn’t just because he was fast (although he was). It was because he’d spike the shit out of you if you got in his way.
Here he is kicking some poor catcher in the dick:
Seriously, look at that. He gave that guy a flying kick right in the goddamn dick. And why? Probably because he had the unmitigated gall to try to tag Ty out at home. Or maybe JUST BECAUSE. For all I know, Ty just walked, and decided to jump-kick the catcher’s ball sack before heading to first, just on goddamn principle.
Cobb fought everybody. He once challenged an umpire to fight him under the grandstand after the game. The hell of it is, the umpire accepted, and Cobb knocked him down and choked the shit out of him until some spectators intervened. He fought with fans–he once climbed into the stands and beat the shit out of a handicapped man who called his momma names.
He was a well known racist. He once slapped a black elevator operator for being “uppity”. When a black security guard intervened, Cobb stabbed him. It being the early 1900s, this was apparently acceptable, and the issue was never taken to court.
He was hated by so many people, one time a manager basically threw a couple games just to prevent Cobb from winning a batting title. St Louis Browns manager Jack O’Connor ordered his third baseman to play back on the outfield grass every time Nap Lajoie came up to bat in the final two games of the season. Nap was behind Ty by just a few percentage points in the batting title race, and old Jack hated Ty so much, he tried to rig it so Nap would win. Nap went 8 for 8 in the double header, with six bunt singles, but MLB cottoned on to what Jack was up to and ended up awarding the title to Ty anyway.
So, in conclusion, Ty Cobb was a huge cock. He was a shithead, a racist asshole, and a loudmouth punk with an inferiority complex that caused him to lash out at everybody. But holy shit could the man play baseball.
So the next time someone tries to tell you Barry Bonds shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame because maybe he took roids, show them that picture of Ty kicking that poor dude in the dick. If that’s “playing the game the right way”, I’m not sure what Barry (probably) did was so wrong.
For the record: I do not care about steroids. Steroids, to me, are no different from the spitball — they’re artificial enhancements that players used to get an edge, and then they were banned and the game will probably be better for it. For fuck’s sake, remember when Kenny Rogers was caught throwing a doctored ball in the goddamn World Series? Nobody’s seriously saying that should keep him out of the hall (though I won’t cry if it does, because fuck that guy). Hell, Gaylord Perry (as that same article mentions) threw the spitball constantly, and it’s a wee hair too late to keep him out of the hall. So what’s the big damn deal?
I do believe that Pete Rose should be banned from baseball activities for life for gambling. Why? Because if he’s betting on baseball while he’s working for baseball, it creates a massive conflict of interest. Players don’t take steroids to make their teams worse, but players or managers betting on the game may have incentive to do a poor job. Does this extend to the Hall as well? I’m not convinced; what’s he going to do, throw Veteran’s Committee votes? Honestly, barring him from the Hall seems petty and vindictive to me.
As for Shoeless Joe, well, frankly, fuck him. Accepting money to lose a game intentionally — or being party to such a transaction — is something I’m just not cool with. It’s disrespectful to the thousands of other people who make their living from the game of baseball, and it’s pretty much completely opposed to what the Hall of Fame stands for.
The thing is, the Baseball Hall of Fame isn’t the Baseball Hall of Dudes Who Totally Weren’t Giant Dicks, which would clearly exclude Ty Cobb but would no doubt welcome stunningly mediocre pitcher but totally solid upstanding God-fearing Christian HGH-using family man Paul Byrd. Nor is it the Baseball Hall of Dudes With Big Dicks, which would clearly exclude Barry Bonds because holy shit did that man use a lot of steroids. It’s about players who really gave their all on the baseball field and also did a hell of a job. And I think there is a difference between the kind of cheating or dirty tricks that gets you an edge on the field (I mean, have you seen the fucked-up things steroids will do to you? Holy shit are those guys dedicated), the kind of cheating or dirty tricks that don’t really have anything to do with baseball at all (like knifing a non-baseball-related guy in a non-baseball-related elevator), and the kind of cheating or dirty tricks that are designed to enrich the cheater at the expense of the other 24 guys he plays with, and of all the other people who work to support the organisation.
So, yeah, fuck Shoeless Joe.
Oh, on the subject of Pete Rose being banned from the Hall, there’s news. Almost.
To me, the only real argument you can make against Joe Jackson and any of the other Black Sox is that their stats don’t merit inclusion. The 1919 fixing scandal was so incredibly fucked up that it’s hard to figure out who *wasn’t* involved, honestly. The White Sox front office apparently knew about the whole thing, because Jackson *told* them. Should the whole White Sox organization be barred from the Hall of Fame?
The Hall of Fame is a private entity, so they get to make up their own rules of inclusion. But to me, if you’re going to have such a thing as a “Hall of Fame” you should at least be consistent in the value judgments you make during inclusion. There are at least two guys in the Hall right now that we’re fairly sure fixed at least one game (Tris Speaker and, guess who? TY COBB). The Hall has a “character clause” that they only seem to exercise when it suits them.
In general I agree that conspiring to lose is a much bigger crime against the game than cheating to gain an advantage. But seriously, nobody played the game harder than Pete Rose. Nobody did more on sheer guts and determination than Rose did. So frankly, the fact that maybe he bet on his team to lose and thus had at least the incentive to throw games doesn’t take away from the amazing career he had. It just makes him a stupid idiot who made some really dumb decisions.
There’s this idea that putting someone in the Hall of Fame is a blanket endorsement of everything they did or stood for. I hate that mindset and I hate the bullshit thinking like that causes. There’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t put Rose in the Hall of Fame and still point out that the fucker bet on baseball. You can celebrate his accomplishments as a great baseball player while still condemning things he did. But too many people want shit to be black and white, good or bad. That’s not how life works, though.
Ty mother fucking Cobb was probably the biggest jackass ever to play the game, he knifed a man for the crime of being black, he was a violent sociopath and was not the kind of guy most people would want to hang around with. But holy shit could he play baseball. Is it so hard to celebrate his abilities as a ballplayer while simultaneously condemning his complete lack of ability to be a decent human being? I don’t think so.
People seem to have this need to make heroes of sports figures. We want Mark McGwire to be squeaky clean and the epitome of super niceness because we love how far he can hit a baseball and how many times he did so. But oh no, McGwire probably took steroids! HE’S AN EVIL DIRTY CHEATER! OMG KEEP HIM OUT OF THE HALL! KIDS WILL BE CORRUPTED!
Fuck that. We all goddamn ignored his big head and backne during that wonderful summer of ’98 while he and Sosa were chasing Maris. We all got caught up in the drama and the excitement of the chase. I still have fond memories of that summer. But you know what? He still belongs in the Hall of Fame. He was a great slugger, a fearsome presence at the plate, and nobody can deny that. Gaylord Perry made an entire goddamn career out of cheating, and he’s in the Hall. I see no compelling reason to keep McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa out.
Things aren’t black and white. Everybody is human. The sooner we all realize that, the sooner we learn to be able to celebrate the good and condemn the bad in people like Pete Rose and Barry Bonds, the better. If you’re seriously taking your kids to the Hall of Fame and saying “Go ahead, son, worship everybody in here! They’re all great men!” then you’re a jackass. No amount of jackassery on the part of the baseball writer’s association seeking to keep qualified people out of the Hall is going to fix that.
I’d be okay with banning the entire White Sox organisation from the Hall. Also the entire Cardinals organisation. And for the Mets we can open a seperate “Baseball Hall of Hilarious.”
[…] ain’t your goddamn granddad’s baseball game — unless I suppose your granddad was Ty Cobb — and don’t you forget it. Oh, also it makes them stand farther out from the plate so […]
[…] Ty Cobb begins playing baseball. Injures many opposing players with his sharpened spikes and dick-kicking skills. Knifes a black man for being "uppity." Dives into the stands to attack a fan for […]
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