If new baseball books were water, I would be Noah.
It's just that time of the year. Which, this year, includes not one but two supposedly definitive biographies of Ty Cobb.
The first came out last week, the second this week. Both look pretty good, but I don't honestly know if I'll read either (let alone both) of them. I already own seven or eight books about Cobb, have read three or four. I know there's always new information to be found, new perspectives gained but ... I mean, I've been in the middle of this new Billy Martin biography and it's quite good, but I just don't know how much I'm going to learn about the subject, considering how much I've already read and heard. Meanwhile, I read Pedro Martínez's new book in about two days flat.
Anyway, the author of the latest Cobb book was on Olbermann's Tuesday show, and it seems he's written a bit of a revisionist history:
Again, I haven't seen the book yet. So the following isn't completely fair. But the author's comments don't quite refute the notion that a) Cobb was a racist for much of his life, and b) his teammates didn't enjoy his company.
Cobb's forebears were apparently enlightened in racial matters, at least by the standards of their time. But that doesn't tell us a great deal about Cobb. Granted, he apparently did say some enlightened things late in his life, for which he deserves great credit. Bobby Bragan and Dixie Walker came around, too. Again, good for them.
As for Cobb's teammates and colleagues, we don't have a great deal to go on there. But perhaps our best source is Larry Ritter's classic book, The Glory of Their Times, which includes four quotes that bear upon this subject...
Davy Jones: "Cobb ... was a very complex person -- never did have very many friends. Trouble was he had such a rotten disposition that it was damn hard to be his friend. I was probably the best friend that he had on the club. I used to stick up for him, sit and talk with him on the long train trips, try to understand the man. He antagonized so many people that hardly anyone would speak to him, even among his own teammates."
Sam Crawford: "Cobb was a great ballplayer, no doubt about it. But he sure wasn't easy to get along with. He wasn't a friendly, good-natured guy, like Wagner was, or Walter Johnson, or Babe Ruth."
Rube Bressler: "And Cobb had that terrific fire, that unbelievable drive. He wasn't too well liked, but he didn't care about that. He roomed alone."
Jimmy Austin: "Ty could get real nasty on the field, you know? Off the field, though, he was a pretty good guy."
Cobb is typically portrayed as some sort of monster, and I welcome any and all attempts to render him as an actual human being. But I do wonder if someday we'll have a book about Saint Barry Lamar Bonds...
