WE LIVE IN A TIME WHEN VILLAINS never seem to get their comeuppance. So the recent news that Major League Baseball had re-crunched its trove of statistics and taken the legendary Ty Cobb down a notch from first to second place among all-time batting champs had many sports fans celebrating. Cobb, who played mostly for the Detroit Tigers from 1905 to 1928, was a pioneering superstar who had an astounding lifetime batting average of .367-until recently considered unsurpassable. He was also the most exciting player of his era, once stealing second, third and home on three consecutive pitches and on another occasion turning a squibbler back to the pitcher into an inside-the-park home run.
But the Georgia Peach, as he was known in his day, also owns a reputation as a thoroughly despicable human being (it was said that he sharpened his spikes and kept them high when sliding into opposing infielders) and, most of all, a virulent racist. Rumor had it that he'd once stabbed a Black hotel clerk whose attitude he didn't fancy. A baseball historian wrote that Cobb "brutally pistol-whipped African-American men" on the street. Cobb was insulted in the movie Field of Dreams ("None of us could stand the son of a bitch," one character said), depicted as a sexual predator in the 1995 biopic Cobb starring Tommy Lee Jones, and decried in the Ken Burns documentary Baseball as "an embarrassment to the game." In the long history of America's National Pastime, it's safe to say that no player has been more despised.
This story is from the June 21 - 28, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek Europe.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 21 - 28, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek Europe.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Falling for Romance
A new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, celebrates the writer/director best known for her iconic rom-coms and strong female characters
Cracking the Norse Code
Walrus DNA has shown that Vikings were likely the first to have encountered Indigenous North Americans
Monumental Shift
The discovery of 165-million-year-old crystals Easter Island has upended the longheld notion of how the Earth's \"conveyor belt\" moves
'OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC REFORMS ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN'
It is a well-known fact across the globe that the North Korean regime is irrational and unpredictable, but we have been consistent in strengthening our defense posture against the threat from North Korea since the Korean War, and I believe that their conventional capability is much inferior to that of the Korean military.
'They Read My Eulogy As I Lay in an Open Grave'
Like Paris Hilton, Natasia Pelowski claims she was subjected to abuse at a teenage therapy program
Russian Economy Faces 'Burnout'
Vladimir Putin admits difficulties” as the country’s key interest rate reaches a historic high
China's 'Silent Chemical War'
The U.S. must investigate Beijing's role in the manufacturing of fentanyl that is killing Americans, says one mom whose daughter died after accidentally taking the illicit substance
HARSH HEADWINDS
President Yoon Suk Yeol's BATTLE to reform a South Korea beset with structural problems under the specter of an increasingly aggressive neighbor to THE NORTH
Bridget Everett
BRIDGET EVERETT NEVER THOUGHT SHE'D BE THE LEAD OF A TV SHOW. \"I come from the downtown world in New York, a cabaret singer, and these things just don't happen, you don't find yourself with three seasons of HBO.
Amber Ruffin
A LATE-NIGHT COMEDY SHOW ON CNN? YES, and it's a game show, too.
