Ty Cobb
Page 47
The autobiography that Stump wrote did not change the way its subject was perceived by the general public. To the extent that people talked about the book, they mostly talked about the many errors it contained. No one commented on the fact that in its pages Cobb sounded more like a jaded sportswriter than an old ballplayer. (“No, I didn’t once attack Nap Rucker, the pitcher, in the bathroom and try to throw him out of the tub in which he was relaxing. That phony fable has dogged me for more than half a century and I doubt there are enough fans to fill a broom closet who don’t believe it happened—which it never did. I don’t know who first concocted that particular piece of Limburger, but it has an odor I seem to associate with certain New York writers—never exactly simpatico to me—who’ve made certain it appeared in every language but the Sanskrit.”) That was just the way it went with ghostwritten baseball books after all. Since not many people knew that Cobb had hated everything about the autobiography, the tone and the organization and the corny B-movie quotes that Stump had concocted, and was desperately trying to halt its publication in his dying days, it didn’t have the sizzle of being “the book Ty Cobb tried to suppress.” It had no dirt in it, no bombshells. And because it wasn’t selling “furiously,” as Stump claimed, there wasn’t any money in it for him, either, beyond his original $3,000 share of the advance. And that right there was the key to the destruction of Cobb’s good name. For if My Life in Baseball had been gushing royalties and looking like it was going to become a nice little annuity for Stump in his golden years, he likely would not have undermined its credibility, just two months later, by saying in True that the book had been a whitewash ordered up by Cobb, and that he now felt conscience-bound to come forward with the real story in True magazine.
• • •
When the culture has a mind to convict someone, facts are like gnats, annoyances to be swatted away. In the fullness of time, Ty the Ripper’s body count only increased. “It is well known that Ty Cobb may have killed as many as three people,” Ron Shelton, the director of the 1994 movie Cobb, told me in the course of an email conversation. Really? Who were his victims? What were his motives? When did these crimes happen? Shelton declined to say, beyond repeating “All this is well known.” He was more forthcoming, though, about a squirm-inducing scene in his film in which Tommy Lee Jones, playing the sickly old Cobb, attempts to rape a cigarette girl at a Nevada casino but fails because of impotence. “What was that based on?” I asked.
“That actually was not in the original screenplay,” he said—proudly, I thought. “That is something that Al and I came up with during the shoot. It felt like the sort of thing that Cobb might do.”
“Al” of course was Al Stump, upon whose True story the movie was based, and who served as a consultant during the shoot and even made a cameo appearance. His first and last movie role, it would turn out. He died a few months later.
In the 1970s Al Stump noticed that the baseball memorabilia market was becoming lucrative. He thought seriously of again exploiting his connection to Cobb. He had a fair amount of material on hand, letters and personal effects such as a penknife, a corncob pipe given to Cobb by General Douglas MacArthur, even a set of Cobb’s false teeth—the kind of cool and quirky baseball-star-related things that were selling. How he’d acquired the items was a question Stump tried to avoid as he tested the waters of the new market, but if pressed he’d flash a note from Cobb—a warm and friendly note, addressed to “Alimony Al”—saying he could have certain of his effects, mostly clothing he’d left behind at Stump’s house in Santa Barbara after he’d gone there for a couple of days to work on their book. That Stump’s collection went far beyond the items mentioned in the note was never questioned.
Nor did the writer face much resistance when he decided to supercharge his new career as a seller of “Cobbibilia” by forging items, which he then claimed had been authenticated. Why not? He’d already created a fake Ty Cobb. In 1980 a respected authenticator named Mike Gutierrez signed off on between fifty and a hundred letters that Stump created by using his own typewriter and Cobb’s personal stationery and trademark green ink. The letters were heavy on “baseball content,” as the dealers say, which enhanced their value—though several things “Cobb” said in them were flagrantly inaccurate. Another collector said he knew something was amiss when he inspected the letters in a sales catalog and noticed that the content of one was exactly the same as a letter he already owned. Others noted that the signatures were strangely shaky. Gutierrez at first attributed this to Cobb’s declining health, but it likely had more to do with Stump’s delirium tremens. Ultimately, with other experts saying the letters were fraudulent, Gutierrez recanted his authentication, but by then it was too late to issue a recall, and a new batch of seventy-five or so forgeries had joined the hundreds of similar letters circulating through the marketplace. Ron Keurajian, the leading authority on the player’s signature, told me that most of the Cobb autographs the average collector comes across these days were actually signed by Stump.
In the early 1990s Ron Shelton optioned the screen rights to “Ty Cobb’s Wild 10-Month Fight to Live.” Stump was a willing seller, and an eager listener when the filmmaker suggested that he expand the story into a book. Although he’d had a heart attack, the task was easier for Stump because Charles Alexander, John McCallum, and a few others had produced Cobb biographies in the interim. By repurposing his True story, borrowing the research of these other writers, and tricking out the old tale with his trademark touches, Stump could, with a minimum of energy, produce another volume that might both give a boost to and be boosted by Shelton’s movie. Cobb: A Biography was published in November 1994. It suffered from all the predictable flaws: fake dialogue, tabloidy writing, and various kinds of inaccuracies—Stump has Casey Stengel complaining to Cobb about his years with the Mets, an expansion team that didn’t play its first game until about nine months after Cobb died (the error was corrected in subsequent editions). But it also brought back the fascinatingly repellent character who had found such eager acceptance more than thirty years earlier—and the venom-spewing, gun-waving Cobb was at least as popular this time around, despite or maybe because of his being a raving racist. The reviews were mostly positive. Since the bulk of Stump’s forgeries had not yet become known, his authority and accuracy went unquestioned. The critics opened wide and swallowed. “Spellbinding,” said the Washington Post. “Stump has resurrected Cobb in all his terrifying malevolence.” “A big, raw, rough-cut diamond of a book and the most powerful baseball biography I ever read,” said Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer. Sports Illustrated, which excerpted the book, was especially credulous: “A chilling biography,” it said. “Cobb was fortunate not to have been locked up for life.” The reading public loved the character Stump created. As a commercial venture, Cobb the book did exponentially better than Cobb the movie, which was hustled out of theaters shortly after it opened, its first week of national release having grossed less than a million dollars.
• • •
Perhaps the single meanest lie told about Ty Cobb is that nobody came to his funeral—or even more heartbreaking, because it is more specific—that only three people did. This story started with Stump, who said that just three people from the world of professional baseball traveled to Royston for the service, and it has been distorted in the process of mindless retellings, which since the advent of the Internet can happen at hyperspeed. In fact, there were very few baseball people there—just four—but that was because Charlie Cobb and her children had announced that it was a private service meant only for family and close friends. In the event, hundreds of mourners stood outside the Christian Church in Cornelia and thousands lined the road to Royston to witness the funeral cortege as it proceeded to Rose Hill Cemetery. The baseball people who did come—Hall of Fame director Sid Keener and former players Ray Schalk, Mickey Cochrane, and fellow Georgian boy Nap Rucker—all had a special connection to Cobb. Schalk, a catcher for the White Sox for seventeen years, no doub
t got more than a few chances to use his favorite line about Cobb: “When Ty started to steal second, I would throw to third.”
Another problem with the “nobody came to Cobb’s funeral” myth, which I heard numerous times while researching this book, is that it misses the phenomenon of all the little spontaneous memorial services that broke out across the country in late July of 1961 as probably hundreds of old ballplayers and sportswriters sat down in front of typewriters and beer glasses and retold the old stories. A columnist for the Detroit Free Press, John C. Manning, recounted one that he’d heard from umpire Bill Dinneen. It probably happened around 1916 or so, in Detroit, in a game lost to history, and with good reason, it was so tediously one-sided—the Yankees were ahead of the Tigers by a score of 7 or 8 to 1, as Dinneen remembered it—and the field-level temperature so stifling. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Cobb came up and hit a single, prolonging the painful experience. Even the hometown fans groaned. As the next man got ready to hit, Wally Pipp, the Yankees first baseman, said to Cobb, “You must be as tired of this as I am,” and suggested that he let himself get picked off so they could all go and take a cold shower. “Good idea,” said Cobb. “I’ll go along with that.” He then took what Dinneen called “an accommodating lead,” and the pitcher whipped the ball to Pipp, who reached out to make the tag. But Cobb pulled away. Pipp looked at him quizzically, and reached out with the ball again—at which point Cobb broke for second. As Manning wrote it, “A rundown ensued with Ty dodging back and forth between the converging infielders. One of them bobbled the ball momentarily and Cobb streaked for second. He rounded second full tilt and slid into third, safe by an eyelash. The next batter ended the game with a pop-up.”
Dinneen, who’d overheard the conversation at first base, stopped Cobb as he left the field and asked him why he’d crossed up Pipp.
Cobb himself seemed surprised by what had happened, Dinneen said. “I simply couldn’t help it,” he told the umpire. “I give you my word I didn’t mean to welsh on Wally. I intended to go through with it. But when he took that throw and reached, something exploded inside of me. I just couldn’t stand there and take it without a fight.”
— TY COBB’S LIFETIME STATISTICS —
Year
G
AB
R
H
RBI
SB
BA
1905
41
150
19
36
15
2
.240
1906
98
358
45
113
34
23
.316
1907
150
605
97
212
119
53
.350
1908
150
581
88
188
108
39
.324
1909
156
573
116
216
107
76
.377
1910
140
506
106
194
91
65
.383
1911
146
591
147
248
127
83
.420
1912
140
553
120
226
83
61
.409
1913
122
428
70
167
67
51
.390
1914
98
345
69
127
57
35
.368
1915
156
563
144
208
99
96
.369
1916
145
542
113
201
68
68
.371
1917
152
588
107
225
102
55
.383
1918
111
421
83
161
64
34
.382
1919
124
497
92
191
70
28
.384
1920
112
428
86
143
63
15
.334
1921*
128
507
124
197
101
22
.389
1922*
137
526
99
211
99
9
.401
1923*
145
556
103
189
88
9
.340
1924*
155
625
115
211
79
23
.338
1925*
121
415
97
157
102
13
.378
1926*
79
233
48
79
62
9
.339
(Detroit Tigers/*years as player-manager)
1927
133
490
104
175
93
22
.357
1928
95
353
54
114
40
6
.323
(Philadelphia Athletics)
24 Yrs
3034
11434
2246
4189
1938
897
.366
(1) Young Ty (front left) was at first rejected by his hometown team, the Royston (Georgia) Rompers.
(2) Matty McIntyre led the hazing that may have brought on Cobb’s nervous breakdown in 1906.
(3) Home Run Baker later admitted that Cobb was sliding away from him during their famous 1909 “incident,” but Ty’s reputation as a spiker was set.
(4) The Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner was in Cobb’s class as a ballplayer, but lacked charisma.
(5) Team comedian Germany Schaefer once played second base in a rain slicker to convince the umpire to call the game. During the off-season he performed a recitation called “Why Does Tyrus Tire Us?”
(6) Napoleon Lajoie was a bit of a rube, but he was such a great all-around player that the Cleveland franchise changed its name to the Naps.
(7) Tris Speaker, a
nother superstar of the Deadball Era, was a frequent houseguest of Cobb’s in Augusta. After they were exonerated in a game-fixing scandal, they finished their careers together, playing for Connie Mack on the 1928 Philadelphia A’s.
(8) After Cobb’s father was shot and killed, American League President Ban Johnson (standing right) became one of the two main authority figures in his life, along with Detroit Tigers owner Frank Navin.
(9) No one in the Deadball Era threw harder than Walter Johnson. Cobb crowded the plate on him, knowing that the Big Train worried about hitting batters with his heat.