The Guileful Magician

It was the year the largest diamond was discovered, yellow fever broke out in New Orleans, and George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession was banned from Broadway. But in the inbred lore of baseball, 1905 will always be the year in which Manager Bill Armour of the Detroit Tigers, on a sultry afternoon in August, beckoned to a gawky, 18-year-old rookie who had arrived just the day before from Augusta, Ga. "Hey, Cobb," he shouted, "look alive, and start warming up. You take Dick Cooley's place in centerfield today.'

The first time he came to bat, against the New York Highlanders, Ty Cobb doubled off famed Spitballer Jack Chesbro and drove in a run. Unfortunate Dick Cooley, who was ill, never got his job back. For the next 24 years--22 with Detroit, two with Philadelphia--brawling, champagne-swigging Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the son of a mild-mannered Georgia state senator, batted, ran and fought his way through the American League with durability, skill and brazenness unmatched in the history of baseball.

Ty Cobb played in 3,033 games, a record that no player has approached--or probably ever will. In the era of faraway fences and the "dead" baseball, when spitballs and beanballs were everyday hazards, Cobb set 13 batting records that have never been bettered. Among them: highest lifetime batting average (.367), most base hits (4,191), most total bases (5,863), most singles (3,052), most years batting over .300 (23). He batted over .400 three times, led the American League in hitting twelve times and nine years in a row.

Curious Crouch. Hunched into his curious, knock-kneed crouch, holding his thick-handled bat like a broomstick (with his hands six inches apart), Cobb was a remarkably versatile hitter. He could bunt, hit line drives or ground balls, place his hits almost at will. Never noted as a longball hitter, he nevertheless led the American League in home runs in 1909 (with nine), once hit five in two consecutive games--a mark Babe Ruth never matched. Asked to compare Cobb and Ruth, Cleveland Outfielder Tris Speaker once said: "Babe was a great ballplayer, but Cobb was even greater. Ruth could knock your brains out, but Cobb would drive you crazy."

A magician with a bat, Cobb was almost as wizardrous in the field; he once threw three runners out at first base from the outfield in a single game. And on the base paths he was dazzling. Swirling through a cloud of dust with razor-sharp spikes flashing high, Cobb gave baseball some of its most memorable moments. He stole 892 bases, 96 in a single season (1915). Three times he stole all the way home from first base, and once, recalls Casey Stengel, he scored from third on an infield pop fly: "Ty just waited until the infielder got ready to throw to the pitcher--and then he went.''

Master Strategist. A master strategist of base running (he perfected the "fallaway" or "hook" slide), Cobb made up for a lack of natural speed with daring, guile and meanness. His favorite tricks included kicking the ball out of a fielder's hand or permitting a throw to hit him. "I believe the base paths belong to the base runner," Cobb said--and he did not hesitate to spike infielders who tried to block his way to the bag. After he slashed Philadelphia's famed Frank ("Home Run") Baker on the arm in 1909, Cobb received 13 threatening letters from Philadelphia fans. The fans never got revenge, but Cobb's opponents did: by the time Cobb retired, his legs were crisscrossed with angry scars.

The first player elected to baseball's Hall of Fame (he received 222 votes to 215 for Babe Ruth), Cobb was a superb athlete. But, like the hero of a Greek tragedy, he had a fatal flaw: his compulsion to win was too strong. Cantankerous and mean, he was heartily hated by his Tiger teammates--particularly during his six-year hitch (1921-26) as player-manager--and got involved in countless brawls. He fought a bloody battle with Umpire George Moriarity, once stormed the New York grandstand to attack a crippled heckler. His two marriages ended in bitterness and divorce.

Poor Adjustment. When he retired in 1928, Cobb's financial future was assured: he. had invested much of his salary (up to $60,000 a year) in blue-ribbon stocks --among them Coca-Cola and General Motors. But he adjusted poorly to retirement, restlessly moved from California to Nevada and then back to his native Georgia. "You cannot eat baseball and sleep baseball and study baseball year after year and then just stop like that," he once explained. "It's in the bloodstream. You crave it. You can't get along without it."

To fill the void, Cobb drank heavily, haunted golf courses (his opponents were advised to let him win), delighted in carping on the inadequacies of modern ballplayers and in teaching youngsters the fine points of baseball. He once counseled a teen-age catcher: "You're doing fine, son. But here's something you might try. When the pitcher has already thrown the ball and the umpire is looking at it, you grab a handful of dirt and fling it up into the batter's eyes."

Lonely and unhappy, Cobb mellowed in recent years, tried to recast his own public image. "If I had my career to live over," he said, "I know I'd do some things differently." He chartered a foundation that gives 40 scholarships each year to needy Georgia college students. He built a 'hospital for his home town of Royston, Ga., gave it stocks that help the hospital turn a tidy profit.

Last month, afflicted with cancer, diabetes and chronic heart disease, Cobb checked into Atlanta's Emory University Hospital. With him, he carried $1,000,000 worth of negotiable securities that he placed on a table beside his bed and covered with a revolver. Then last week, at 74, Ty Cobb died.

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