Ty Cobb, Part One: The Trial and the Ballplayer

EPISODE TITLE Ty Cobb, Part One: The Trial and the Ballplayer SHORT DESCRIPTION His mother shot his father dead in 1905. Eighteen days later he debuted for Detroit. What the newspapers actually said about Ty Cobb. SHOW NOTES On the night of August 8, 1905, a Georgia state senator was shot to death in his own home by his wife. Eighteen days later their eldest son played his first game for the Detroit Tigers. The following spring, a jury took one hour and forty minutes to acquit her — after the Atlanta Journal printed, on page one, the allegation that her husband had come home to spy on her and that she knew exactly who she was shooting at. This episode builds Ty Cobb's playing career out of what was printed at the time rather than what was remembered later: the front pages of the Atlanta Journal in 1905 and 1906, and The Sporting News in 1912, 1926 and 1961. Three straight pennants and three lost World Series. The 1910 batting title, in which an entire team conspired to hand the championship to somebody else, two men were banned from baseball for life, a car company gave cars to both contenders — and a statistician later found the arithmetic had gone the wrong way. The day he went into the stands in New York in 1912, and the strike his teammates staged for him. And the winter of 1926, when the commissioner accused him of fixing a game in which he went one for five and, by the evidence, collected $130. Part one of two. IN THIS EPISODE Royston, Georgia, and a father who didn't want him playing baseball The shooting, the $7,000 bond, and his brother and sister defending their mother in the press The Augusta dispatch that had to explain who Ty Cobb was The 1906 acquittal and what the Journal printed about why Nine straight batting titles, the 1909 Triple Crown, and records that moved after he died 1910: the bunts, the bribe, the lifetime bans, and the title he may not have won Three pennants, three World Series losses, and never another one May 15, 1912: the grandstand, the suspension, and why his teammates walked out Why The Sporting News blamed the owners, not Cobb Coca-Cola, holdouts, and how a ballplayer became a multi-millionaire Dutch Leonard, Judge Landis, and a fixed game that wasn't SOURCES The Atlanta Journal, August 12, 1905 and April 1, 1906. The Sporting News, May 30, 1912, December 30, 1926, and July 26, 1961. SABR BioProject. Newspaper archives accessed through the Society for American Baseball Research. DISCLAIMER Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. KEYWORDS Ty Cobb, Detroit Tigers, Royston Georgia, Nap Lajoie, 1910 batting title, Chalmers Award, 1912 Tigers strike, Dutch Leonard, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Hall of Fame 1936, dead ball era, Cooperstown, baseball history