Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up With My Grandfather, Ty Cobb

by Herschel Cobb

  As summer approached, Susan and I dreaded the prospect that Ayako would return to her family in Seattle, leaving us alone with Mom for the entire summer, targets of her caprice and rejection. Fortunately, our mother fervently desired to rid herself of the three of us. On the last day of third grade I came home from school to find Mom waiting at the open front door. Just inside, our suitcases were packed. We would, she announced, spend the entire summer at my grandmother’s.

  The next morning, she took us to the train station, put the three of us into a train car with bench seats, and waved good-bye. Ayako had fixed us a bag of sandwiches. We headed off to Palo Alto, where my grandmother would pick us up. To Grandma, we were her son’s children, and we were always welcome.

  The rail journey took all day, but it wasn’t boring. I saw all kinds of pretty hills, trees, and animals, a little bit of the Pacific Ocean, and a string of small towns where the train stopped. Susan and I shared an unspoken comfort in knowing that our grandmother would welcome us with open arms.

  The old-fashioned train station in Palo Alto looked a dirty pink color in the late afternoon sun, its thick plaster walls and tiled roof barely catching the fading light. We climbed down the railcar’s metal steps onto the platform, peered through an arched doorway, and spotted Grandma waving to us. She was smiling, but she looked visibly pale and tired. Susan and I and Kit all started talking at the same time, and Grandma laughed as she tried to sort out our stories. We climbed into the back of her light blue four-door Chrysler. The drive to her house in Menlo Park, on Bay Laurel Drive, took only a few minutes.

  As soon as we stopped, I jumped out of the car and ran up to the house. Immediately I saw the reason why Grandma looked so tired and pale. Uncle Ty was there, sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in pajamas and a robe. His hands tightly gripped the side armrests, and I saw his hair had been shaved off the back of his head. He had trouble saying hello, but his smile was as warm and enveloping as ever and he knew our names. By the end of summer, Uncle Ty would change forever, and he would not even remember the names of his own children. The brain tumor diagnosed several months before would steadily follow its irrevocable course.

  I had first met Uncle Ty when he visited Twin Falls one summer. He was tall, with a broad smile, scarce of red hair on top of his head, much like his father. He picked me up and looked me over while he held me in outstretched arms. He pronounced me a “strapping young’un,” gave me a big kiss, and walked around with me held high in the air, leaving a deep, affectionate first impression on me. He exuded a charm and easy confidence that made me feel like all was right in the world. Now, Uncle Ty was helpless, and my Aunt Mary was pushing his wheelchair over the uneven brick porch at the front of Grandma’s house. His children had gathered as well. My cousin Ty III was my age, his brother Charlie a couple of years younger, and their sister Peggy a few years younger yet. Susan, Kit, and I quickly said hello to Uncle Ty, then stood awkwardly before him, not knowing what else to say.

  Finally, Aunt Mary turned so her body was between us and Uncle Ty and quietly said, “Ty is sick, very sick. We hope he’ll get better, but we don’t know.” I knew she didn’t want Uncle Ty to hear what she said. “You children said hello, but Ty gets tired very easily, so you’ll have to understand.”

  Grandma quickly put in, “Go say hello to your cousins, and then we’ll get you settled.”

  Ty III and Charlie had settled in chairs on the brick porch, and their gloom was so thick it cast a dark pall around them. We had never spent much time with Ty and Charlie, so we didn’t know what to say. We all walked out on the front yard and stood looking at each other, silent and uneasy. Susan grasped the situation better than I, and she told Ty and Charlie how sorry she was, but never asked them what was actually wrong with Uncle Ty.

  My Aunt Shirley lived with Grandma in the Bay Laurel house, and she soon walked outside to join us. “Susan, Hersch, I’m going to take you over to your Aunt Beverly’s house. Aunt Mary and her children are staying here. You’ll be fine. You can come back tomorrow and see your cousins.”

  I had so looked forward to seeing my grandmother’s porch, with its white posts, overhanging roof, white painted windows, and planter boxes filled with plants and bright flowers. Yet I found myself riveted on Uncle Ty’s profile. Aunt Mary was wiping his mouth, and his knuckles shone white, clinging to the armrests of his wheelchair.

  Uncle Ty was the oldest of Ty Cobb’s five children, Aunt Shirley was next, and then my father. The three of them had grown up with a special emotional bond. Aunt Beverly and Uncle Jim came later. Aunt Shirley was very close to both Uncle Ty and my father, but especially my father. She felt an affinity with him and reveled in his peevish humor and schoolboy antics that balanced her bookish, proper ways. She missed my father deeply for the rest of her life.

  He had died just over a year ago, and now she was watching helplessly as her older brother slipped toward his end. The man sitting in the wheelchair was only a shadow of her brother. She grew up with Ty Jr. and knew him as tall and handsome, very athletic, capable, and a bit rebellious. He had been born in 1910, and by the time he was ten years old, he frequently watched his father play professional baseball, the highest paid player in either major league, winning the most batting championships in history. His expectations of himself must have felt like a test over hot coals.

  Ty was a good athlete, and at the age of seventeen or eighteen he was an alternate on the United States Davis Cup team. My grandmother told many stories of Granddaddy bringing home famous sports people of the times, athletes, sportswriters, announcers, owners of clubs, businessmen who backed the clubs and, frequently, Uncle Ty’s tennis coach, Mr. Bill Tilden. Uncle Ty’s interest in competitive tennis turned into sickening revulsion after an improper gesture by Mr. Tilden while they were riding in the back seat of Grandma’s car. They were returning from a practice, dressed in tennis shorts and shirts. Grandma tried to convince Uncle Ty to keep playing, but the incident marked his view of what he might come up against off the courts traveling with strangers to tournaments. Grandma was taken aback and wanted to mollify the shock that rocked Uncle Ty. She assumed her gentile Southern manner and tried to describe Mr. Tilden’s gesture as a mistake, but years later, Aunt Shirley related an entirely different picture. We nephews and nieces were at her home and asked, “What really happened with Uncle Ty and his tennis?” It was late in an evening of tales and talking, and we didn’t really know how famous Bill Tilden was or the place in American sports history he occupied.

  She replied, in a sternly restrained voice that could quietly blister the pants off a listener, “Mr. Tilden ran his hand up the bare leg of your uncle, absolutely scared the wits out of him, and totally devastated his confidence in playing tennis ever again.” She was nobody to back down from the truth as she saw it, and her loyalty to her older brother was that of a warrior, ready to engage the fieriest foe in defense of her ally. I deeply admired that.

  My grandmother was a gardener all her life, finding her joy in nurturing and tending life. Her home was filled with flowers and plants, but now she was entirely focused on her son, sitting helplessly in a wheelchair, waiting to be cared for. It was a somber and haunting sight, watching her make busy movements to comfort him, all the while being closely watched by Aunt Mary, Ty III, and Charlie. Their eyes followed every gesture, their smiles were worn out and wan, and the emotional drain showed in their every movement and expression. Time crept by slowly, as if its feet were stuck in clay. As tired and worn out as Grandma was, she insisted to our mother that we three were not a burden and that she wanted us with her that summer. She knew our plight at the hands of our mother, and her capacity for affection and love was boundless.

  We stayed at Aunt Beverly’s home, located a short distance away. On the ride to her house, I sat in the back seat with the window rolled down, feeling the evening breeze flow over me, listening to the sounds of birds singing and kids playing and cars driving about. The world was carrying on as though it didn’t
know that my uncle was dying.

  We made short visits to see our cousins, but their focus was on their dying father, emotionally caught in a dark cave of dread, helpless in their knowledge of how it would end. Instead we tagged along with Beverly’s children for four days, swimming at the club until she picked us up in the late afternoon, then fed us at night.

  Granddaddy lived nearby, in Atherton, and I wanted to see him, but Beverly evaded my requests for several days. She finally received a phone call from Aunt Shirley, phrasing the gist of the call in the strangest way, “It’s all right now if you go visit your grandfather. Shirley will take you in about an hour.”

  When Aunt Shirley arrived to take us to Granddaddy’s, Susan, Kit, and I were ready to go. Kit and I climbed into the back seat of her DeSoto, and Susan sat in front. The short ride was silent, except when Aunt Shirley told Susan, “Susan, let me go in first and make sure he’s all right. Then I’ll come and get you children.”

  Susan cautiously asked, “Is Granddaddy sick?”

  “No, hon, he’s not sick. I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

  A few turns later, we were on Spencer Lane, a short cul-de-sac, and Shirley slowed down to turn into Granddaddy’s drive. The driveway was flanked on each side by a square Spanish-style gatepost, with dark beige plaster, topped with red bricks. The gatepost on the left presented a brass plate, which read, “El Roblar.”

  “What’s that mean, Shirley, ‘El Roblar’?” I asked.

  “That’s the name of this house, ‘The Oak,’ just like that big ole tree right there in the middle of the front yard.” She continued around the curved drive while I gaped at the huge California oak. Yet my mind rapidly shifted to all the conversations between Aunt Beverly and Aunt Shirley about whether Granddaddy was okay or not. I felt a hot, sickening pit inside of me, not knowing what to expect. My dad was dead, my uncle was dying, and my mother floated into whatever relationship pleased her at the moment, openly resentful and destructive toward her children. I stiffened at the thought of losing my grandfather.

  As the DeSoto rolled to a halt, I glanced at the scar on my right pinkie finger. I’d gotten that cut escaping into the stubble of razed stalks on that day when my father shot at me with his BB pistol. I had scrambled up the side of the ditch to hide when I felt pain in my right hand and saw blood dripping. As I landed, I jammed the base joint of my right little finger into the stubble, and a stalk tore through my skin, down to the bone. Blood was everywhere. Somehow, I felt like a warrior with a noble wound. My finger eventually healed up, but left a scar, and it was that scar that I was looking at and rubbing when Aunt Shirley turned off the engine.

  That memory in turn shifted to the morning on the Snake River when my grandfather dominated my father through his sheer strength and determination, then the message in green ink saying that he loved me.

  When Shirley stopped the car, she told us firmly, “Wait here until I come and get you.” We waited for only a few minutes before Shirley reappeared, looking more relaxed. Her summer “spectators” made a clicking sound on the porch tiles as she strode to the car, opened the door for Kit, and told us, “Your grandfather is waiting, hurry up.” She liked Kit a lot, and her smile broadened as she watched him run for the front door, grab the doorjamb, and swing himself into the house. As Susan and I followed, Aunt Shirley told us, “I’ll be back when Louise calls me. About an hour.”

  The reason for Shirley’s caution was not hard to find. The entry hall and living room were almost dark with thick curtains pulled shut over the glass doors. The only light came from a dim floor lamp behind where Granddaddy was sitting. He was slumped down in his favorite chair, with his left hand languidly hanging over the armrest, scratching the neck of his bulldog, Chudly. He barely raised his right hand toward us. Susan and I stopped at the edge of the oriental carpet, adjusting our eyes and waiting for him to say something. I was gripped with fear that he was sick and dying. I didn’t want to look at him and see that he too was leaving me.

  “Susan, come here. Granddaddy’s a little tired. Come here and let me look at you. It’s been two whole years.” Susan walked slowly toward him, visibly concerned.

  I noticed books strewn everywhere, opened at the binding, lying half read. Four or five were on the floor, one on his armrest, several on the piano behind him, one on the fireplace mantel. I didn’t want to ask Granddaddy if he was sick or say anything. He didn’t look like the smiling, roly-poly, energetic grandfather of two years ago. There was no twinkle in his eyes, his skin was pallid, and he looked exhausted. I tiptoed through the books lying open on the living room carpet, bending over to look at the names. One book was bound in red leather with the name encrusted in a gold arch across the front. “Who’s Winston Churchill?” I blurted out. I avoided looking at him, not wanting to see what I feared.

  “Never mind that, Hersch, we’ll talk about him later,” he said. “Right now I want to see you all.” He paused, taking a deep breath, “Susan, come closer.” She was dressed in a light pink and green flowered summer dress, with white flat shoes with a strap across her arch; she called them Mary Janes. Her hair was in large ringlets, hanging down the sides of her face, showing off her strawberry blond color, and perfect peach complexion. As he looked at her, his smile broadened, he straightened his posture a little, and his eyes showed some life.

  “Granddaddy’s had a hard year, honey, and it’s so good to see you.” He swallowed these words, as if he was talking more to himself than to us. And, as I found out a few years later, he was admitting more to himself than saying something to us. My father had died suddenly of a massive heart attack at age thirty-three. Granddaddy felt my mother was responsible for the stress Daddy was under and his unhappiness, and ultimately, for him losing his son so young.

  Now, less than a year and a half later, Granddaddy’s oldest son, Ty Jr., was gravely ill from a tumor at the base of his skull. Uncle Ty was a doctor and he had quickly deduced the implications, knowing that no operation would cure him. When the symptoms became severe enough, he flew from his home in Florida to his mother’s home. He was only forty-two years old. There was nothing Ty Cobb could do; no amount of fight, determination, or ferocity would save his son.

  Granddaddy was especially distraught knowing that he and his son had often fought while Uncle Ty wandered from college to college. The distance between them widened when Uncle Ty went to medical school and set up his own medical practice. Over the years, neither had made a meaningful effort to reconcile. Now, as Uncle Ty sat helplessly in his wheelchair, Granddaddy knew in his heart that the rift between him and his firstborn son would never be healed. Uncle Ty was too sick, and Granddaddy didn’t know how to let go of the past and embrace his son. Now all he could do was to visit him at the home of his ex-wife and watch as he fumbled in his wheelchair. Granddaddy had taken to drinking too much and his behavior estranged Aunt Shirley. He was emotionally devastated, isolated from his family, alone, and unable to right what had gone so tragically wrong.

  All I knew that day, at his home in Atherton, was that Susan, with a smile on her face, her hands clasped in front of her, her toes pointed slightly inward, calmly came over to the side of his chair so he could wrap his arm around her. In response, she wrapped both her arms around him, pressed her cheek next to his, and whispered, “Granddaddy, it’s going to be all right. Just you wait and see.”

  His eyes closed and his chest heaved raggedly, exhaling a slow, controlled sigh even as he sniffled back a tear. Susan had the biggest heart I’ve ever known, and in those long seconds, it glowed all over him. It was like she gently smoothed a balm over his wound, helping him retreat from the edge of destructive remorse. Granddaddy adored her, and she had a special way of talking to him, listening to him, suggesting to him, and asking of him what he wanted to be asked, always ready to agree with her. When she said he looked nice, he beamed. When she asked him to put on a tie, he did. When she told him “the boys” needed a kind of food, or something else, he responded as if it
was his pleasure to do so. He relished pleasing her, and her effect on him was curative.

  Kit and I stood with our feet nudging Chudly, who was sprawled on the left-hand side of the chair. When Chudly moved, we got close enough for a hug. Kit squirmed and Granddaddy let go of us, calmly saying, “Hersch, take Kit out to the backyard and play for awhile, I want to talk with Susan.” I could see he wasn’t sick, but his skin was pale, he was puffy under his eyes, his beard showed, and he stayed slouched down. Even so, I felt relieved and knew Susan would be with him. I looked around the living room and realized I didn’t know how to get to the yard, but I wandered through the dining room, then the pantry, and the kitchen, past the back bedroom and out to the courtyard. From there, we found the gate to the backyard. For me it was exploring a new territory, one where an anchor of safety was right nearby.

  We played outside for nearly half an hour. When we returned, they were still talking, and I heard Granddaddy finish what he was saying: “. . . and if it gets bad, Susan, you call me right away. Do you understand?” She was nodding in agreement as they both looked up to see me.

  I knew they were talking about our mother, so I didn’t say anything. He was sitting up straighter, and his expression was livelier. He called, “Now, Hersch, come over here and tell me about your school.” Susan was sitting on a large ottoman next to him, her hand quietly on top of his. He wanted to know what books I was reading, my arithmetic problems, what my teachers were like, what I did after school, just about everything except for my mother. I liked school, so I couldn’t stop chattering. I maneuvered to sit on the right armrest, my feet dangling over the front. I could tell he was really interested and understood everything I was talking about.