When the Tigers went on strike in 1912, nine amatuers took their place. The man who filled Ty Cobb’s spot remained unknown for many years thanks to a baffling mess of misspellings and abbreviations of his name in the box scores. […]
Category: Ty Cobb
Bruce “Buddy” Petway: Keeping Ty Cobb (and history) Honest
Like many students of Negro League history, I was initially attracted to the subject by the rich stories that seemed too good to be true. Over the decades, many of those great tales have been proven false–but most, like the one I’m going to relate below, began with a true event, and no matter how much it was re-told and embellished over the years, that real story makes no less of a great story. […]
Shags Horan: Challenging Ty Cobb, and living to tell the story
The rest of the Yankees were content with baiting Ty Cobb from their dugout – all except a 29 year-old rookie named Shags Horan. The big, gold-toothed Irishman scooped up a handful of Navin Field turf and threw it in Cobb’s face. Both teams braced themselves for Cobb’s retaliation… […]
Jesse Baker: The Kid Who Got Cobbed
Of all the one-and-done players in the Baseball Encyclopedia, no one, not even Moonlight Graham, has as good a story as Jesse Baker. Underworld prizefight connections, Hollywood stunt doubles and Ty Cobb – Baker’s tale has it all! […]