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Fake News Made Baseball Icon Ty Cobb a Dirt Bag — But He Wasn't

April 04, 2017
 Staff

WRITER

Ty Cobb, baseball's first superstar, is remembered for being the worst racist and dirtiest player ever to take the field. But was he? A new PragerU video by Cobb biographer Charles Leerhsen provides compelling evidence to the contrary:

How could a man born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? Well, as it turns out, Ty Cobb descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a minister who preached against slavery and was run out of town for his troubles. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate Army because of the slavery issue. And his father, an educator, once broke up a lynch mob.

In researching Cobb's legacy, Leerhshen found that nearly every accusation against the baseball legend found its roots in the same source: Articles and books that were not fact-checked and published after Cobb's death by a bitter, opportunistic journalist named Al Stump, whom Cobb had once threatened to sue for making up stories about him.

RELATED: Calling Good People ‘Racist’ Isn’t New: The Case of Ty Cobb

"I would like to hear who has been besmirched that needs to be restored? Whose credibility has been destroyed that needs to have it restored?" Glenn asked.

Glenn challenged listeners to email patgray@glennbeck.com with the names of historical figures --- from the 20th century or before --- whose legacy has been inaccurately portrayed.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Well, the latest thing is we just found this Ty Cobb Prager U discussion about Ty Cobb not being who you think he is.

STU: Now, because I'm a big baseball fan.

PAT: Yeah, me too.

STU: We're all sports fans.

PAT: And what have you heard about Ty Cobb? Do you know about Ty Cobb at all?

GLENN: No. I just know he's a bad guy. That's all I know.

JEFFY: Right!

PAT: Bad guy. That's all anybody knows about him. Great baseball player. Racist.

STU: Racist. Dirty player.

PAT: Killed a guy. Never paid for it. Spiked people when he slid into second base as often as he could, you know, that kind of thing. Well, listen to this.

VOICE: He was Major League Baseball's first superstar. The first man ever inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, and he still has the game's highest career batting average, 366, almost 90 years after he retired.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: His name is Ty Cobb.

Yet, despite his historic achievements, he is often remembered for being the worst racist and the dirtiest player ever to take the field. If you know baseball, you've heard the stories. Ty Cobb would pistol whip black men he passed on the street. He once stabbed to death a black waiter in Cleveland, just because the young man was acting uppity. On the field, he was set to sharpen the spikes to cut up rival infielders. He supposedly had no friends.

In the movie, Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson said that Cobb wasn't invited to the ghost league cornfield reunion (phonetic) because, quote, no one liked the son of a bitch.

A lifelong baseball fan, I believed these stories when I set out to write the first authoritative biography of Cobb in 20 years. I had been hearing them all my life. And like a lot of people, I took the repetition as evidence.

But to my astonishment, as I delved into the source material, newspapers, census reports, and personal letters, I couldn't find any proof that they were true.

On the contrary, Cobb's teammates on the whole seemed to respect him, defending him on the field and off. His opponents said he played the game hard, but clean. Wally Schang, a veteran catcher, was typical, he once said Cobb never cut me up. He was too pretty a slider to hurt anyone who put the ball on him right.

One famous photograph of 1912 shows Cobb flying foot first into the crotch of St. Louis Brown's catcher Paul Krichell. It looks bad. But pictures can be deceiving. In reality, Cobb is kicking the ball out of Krichell's glove. He didn't spike the catcher. Krichell later said, in a way, it was really my fault. I was standing in front of the plate, instead of on the side where I could tag tie as he slid in.

Indeed, in 1910, Cobb actually asked the League to require that players dulled their spikes.

And what about the bigotry? How could a man born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? Well, as it turns out, Ty Cobb descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a minister who preached against slavery and was run out of town for his troubles. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate Army because of the slavery issue. And his father, an educator, once broke up a lynch mob.

On the subjects of blacks playing with whites, Cobb said, "The Negro should be accepted whole-heartedly and not grudgingly. The Negro has the right to play professional baseball. And who is to say he has not?"

PAT: It doesn't sound like a racist.

VOICE: Cobb attended many Negro League games, sometimes throwing out the first pitch. And sitting in the dugout with the players, he said Willie Mayes was the only modern day player he'd pay to see.

As for that black waiter he supposedly killed, well, in reality, he was a hotel night watchman. And Cobb didn't kill him. He just scuffled with him. And, oh, yeah, the guy was white.

Now, Ty Cobb was like the rest of us. A highly imperfect being. Too quick to take offense. Too intolerant of those who did not strive for excellence with the same almost crazy zeal that he did.

But a racist? A dirty player? Not true.

What is true is that almost every accusation against Ty Cobb's character finds its roots in the same source, un-fact-checked articles and books published after his death by a bitter opportunistic journalist named Al Stump, whom Cobb had once threatened to sue for making up stories about him.

It didn't matter that Stump had spent little time with Cobb or that all of Stump's sources were anonymous. That sportswriters who knew Cobb rushed to his defense. Or that Stump himself had been banned from publications for writing lies. The scandal was titillating. And it stuck. When the legend beats the facts, print the legend.

Meanwhile, a good man's reputation lies in ruins. There are lessons to be learned here. First, it's all too easy to believe lies about people, especially successful ones. Lies take achievers down a few notches. And we like to hear that. And second, if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes accepted as fact.

This has consequences because lies are the source of much of the world's evil, like the evil of destroying a man's legacy. In this case, a legacy that should be celebrated.

Ty Cobb was the most exciting baseball player of all time. He once stole second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches. He once had a (inaudible) to the pitcher, to an inside-the-park home run. He's not a racist or a cheat. It's time to tell the truth about Ty Cobb.

PAT: That's crazy. Yeah.

GLENN: Jeez.

VOICE: I'm Charles Leerhsen, author of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty.

PAT: I mean, that's everything --

STU: Yeah.

PAT: -- everything you didn't believe about Ty Cobb in five minutes.

JEFFY: Nothing is sacred anymore.

PAT: That's amazing.

STU: It's incredible too. And you think about it in today's context with fake news -- first of all, fake news been going on for a long time apparently.

GLENN: Fake news -- if anybody doesn't think the king wasn't paying the town cryers to go out and cry out with fake news, you're crazy.

PAT: Oh, please.

GLENN: Of course, they were.

STU: It's been going on forever. And this is one, even as a person who has spent way too many hours focusing on sports -- we're all huge sports fans with, of course, the exception of Glenn who doesn't know the difference between baseball and football.

GLENN: I do. Yes, the ball size.

STU: Yes, right. That's it. That's the only difference.

PAT: Very good.

STU: But we spend a lot of time talking about baseball and --

GLENN: And the color. One is brown. One is white.

STU: There you go. Very good.

PAT: You could go with the shade. A little bit different.

JEFFY: Don't give him the answers.

GLENN: Okay. The shape. I said one is smaller. One is bigger.

STU: The point is, I even believed it. Right? I totally thought that was true. Great player, dirtbag. That was my whole -- you just believed that about Ty Cobb.

PAT: Yeah. Well, that's always the name that comes up when you're talking about Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. You're telling me Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame, but not Pete Rose? I mean, look what he did compared to Pete Rose. I've heard that 100 times. One hundred times.

STU: Yeah. And look at, like, we all recognize this is true in the area, for example, for politics. FDR ended the Great Depression. Like, all these things that we know -- over time, you look at, and you're like, wait a minute. That's not right. This isn't right.

But when we get to -- there's a certain level of interest. Like if you hit -- like with sports, I'm interested in Ty Cobb because I think it's -- you know, I like sports. I haven't dedicated my life to looking at Ty Cobb like this author has. And it's like, when you actually look at these things, so many times, they're the opposite.

PAT: Tokyo Rose.

STU: Yeah, Tokyo Rose. You've done with Tokyo Rose.

GLENN: Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson.

STU: Woodrow Wilson.

It struck me -- it hit me initially because it was a sports reference. We had John Ziegler in here a couple weeks ago talking about the Penn State thing. And Joe Paterno being the main part of that. Of like, here's a guy who was fired, his reputation ruined, and really, in retrospect, it's pretty hard to make the case that Paterno in particular -- I mean, Ziegler goes even further than this. But Paterno in particular, it's hard to make the case that this guy had lengthy knowledge of these things and did something horrific because he wanted to endanger children. You know, it's -- it's really -- it's bizarre when you stop and you can get past the sort of craziness of the moment and really examine these things, how your opinion changes.

GLENN: I would love to hear -- in fact, no, I guess -- send it to PatGray@GlennBeck.com. I would like to hear who has been besmirched who needs to be restored?

PAT: That would be really interesting.

STU: Yeah, yeah.

GLENN: Whose credibility has been destroyed that needs to have it restored? And let's take it out of the last 20 years.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: You know, because you can't --

STU: It's hard.

GLENN: It's too controversial the last 20 years.

PAT: Because you know it doesn't end at Ty Cobb and Tokyo Rose. There's got to be hundred of people --

GLENN: Of course not. That Tokyo Rose thing below blew me away. Blew me away.

PAT: Yeah. We had no idea. None.

GLENN: Yeah. You know, another thing I thought of is we should start -- because when Tokyo Rose -- she died in 2006. She died in 2006.

PAT: She was alive for a long time.

GLENN: Yeah, most of my life she was alive. Why didn't I ever talk to Tokyo Rose? Why didn't I ever reach out to Tokyo Rose?

PAT: We didn't know the story then.

GLENN: Right. But even not knowing the story, what happened? Why wouldn't we do that?

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Who was it, somebody that just died -- and then today I saw the picture, the guy who -- you remember that really famous firefighter in the Oklahoma City bombing that was carrying the baby?

STU: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: The little girl. Remember that? He's just retired.

PAT: Oh, wow.

GLENN: It's hard to believe because he was young in that -- he's just retired from the fire department.

PAT: Jeez.

GLENN: We should find people from history -- the Tokyo Rose size, that are here, available, and just nobody is talking to, before they die.

PAT: Yeah, we should.

GLENN: I'd love to talk to some of those people.

PAT: That would be great. By the way, did you know that Ty Cobb hit over 300 three separate years?

STU: See, this is --

GLENN: This is going to happen now for three weeks.

PAT: Easily.

STU: We will be in the middle of a conversation about something totally different. And like, did you know he hit 420 one year? 420. 420.

PAT: The highest batting averages of all the time.

GLENN: And that's all he'll say. That's all he'll say. And we'll all go, huh. And then right back into the conversation.

Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias: America doesn't do GREAT things by fighting amongst ourselves

This week on the Glenn Beck Podcast, Glenn spoke with Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias about his new book, "One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger."

Matthew and Glenn agree that, while conservatives and liberals may disagree on a lot, we're not as far apart as some make it seem. If we truly want America to continue doing great things, we must spend less time fighting amongst ourselves.

Watch a clip from the full interview with Matthew Yglesias below:


Find the full podcast on Glenn's YouTube channel or on Blaze Media's podcast network.

Want to listen to more Glenn Beck podcasts?

Subscribe to Glenn Beck's channel on YouTube for FREE access to more of his masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, or subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

'A convenient boogeyman for misinformation artists': Why is the New York Times defending George Soros?

Image source: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On the "Glenn Beck Radio Program" Tuesday, Glenn discussed the details of a recent New York Times article that claims left-wing billionaire financier George Soros "has become a convenient boogeyman for misinformation artists who have falsely claimed that he funds spontaneous Black Lives Matter protests as well as antifa, the decentralized and largely online, far-left activist network that opposes President Trump."

The Times article followed last week's bizarre Fox News segment in which former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared to be censored for criticizing Soros (read more here). The article also labeled Glenn a "conspiracy theorist" for his tweet supporting Gingrich.

Watch the video clip below for details:


Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

'Color Revolution': The Obama Admin's plan UPEND America—and it's all happening NOW

The former ambassador to Russia under the Obama Administration, Michael McFaul, came up with "7 Pillars of Color Revolution," a list of seven steps needed to incite the type of revolution used to upend Eastern European countries like Ukraine and Georgia in the past two decades. On his TV special this week, Glenn Beck broke down the seven steps and showed how they're happening right now in America.

Here are McFaul's seven steps:

1. Semi-autocratic regime (not fully autocratic) – provides opportunity to call incumbent leader "fascist"

2. Appearance of unpopular president or incumbent leader

3. United and organized opposition – Antifa, BLM

4. Effective system to convince the public (well before the election) of voter fraud

5. Compliant media to push voter fraud narrative

6. Political opposition organization able to mobilize "thousands to millions in the streets"

7. Division among military and police


Glenn explained each "pillar," offering examples and evidence of how the Obama administration laid out the plan for an Eastern European style revolution in order to completely upend the American system.

Last month, McFaul made a obvious attempt to downplay his "color revolutions" plan with the following tweet:

Two weeks later, he appeared to celebrate step seven of his plan in this now-deleted tweet:



As Glenn explains in this clip, the Obama administration's "7 Pillars of Color Revolution" are all playing out – just weeks before President Donald Trump takes on Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the November election.

Watch the video clip below to hear more from Glenn:


Watch the full special "CIVIL WAR: The Way America Could End in 2020" here.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multiplatform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

Start your free trial and get $20 off a one-year subscription with code BANTHIS.

Modern eugenics: Will Christians fight this deadly movement?

Photo by Olga Kononenko on Unsplash

Last month, without much fanfare, a new research paper disclosed that 94 percent of Belgian physicians support the killing of new-born babies after birth if they are diagnosed with a disability.

A shocking revelation indeed that did not receive the attention it demanded. Consider this along with parents who believe that if their unborn babies are pre-diagnosed with a disability, they would choose to abort their child. Upwards of 70 percent of mothers whose children are given a prenatal disability diagnosis, such as Down Syndrome, abort to avoid the possibility of being burdened with caring for a disabled child.

This disdain for the disabled hits close to home for me. In 1997, my family received a letter from Michael Schiavo, the husband of my sister, Terri Schiavo, informing us that he intended to petition a court to withdraw Terri's feeding tube.

For those who do not remember, in 1990, at the age of 26, Terri experienced a still-unexplained collapse while at home with Michael, who subsequently became her legal guardian. Terri required only love and care, food and water via feeding tube since she had difficulty swallowing as a result of her brain injury. Nonetheless, Michael's petition was successful, and Terri's life was intentionally ended in 2005 by depriving her of food and water, causing her to die from dehydration and starvation. It took almost two excruciating weeks.

Prior to my sister's predicament, the biases that existed towards persons with disabilities had been invisible to me. Since then, I have come to learn the dark history of deadly discrimination towards persons with disabilities.

Indeed, some 20 years prior to Germany's T4 eugenics movement, where upwards of 200,000 German citizens were targeted and killed because of their physical or mental disability, the United States was experiencing its own eugenics movement.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas documented some of this history in his concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., Justice Thomas describes how eugenics became part of the academic curriculum being taught in upwards of 400 American universities and colleges.

It was not solely race that was the target of the U.S. eugenics movement. Eugenicists also targeted the institutionalized due to incurable illness, the physically and cognitively disabled, the elderly, and those with medical dependency.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, which wiped out pro-life laws in nearly every state and opened the floodgates to abortion throughout the entirety of pregnancy. Since then, 60 million children have been killed. Abortion as we know it today has become a vehicle for a modern-day eugenics program.

Since the Catholic Church was established, the Truth of Christ was the greatest shield against these types of attacks on the human person and the best weapon in the fight for equality and justice. Tragically, however, for several decades, the Church has been infiltrated by modernist clergy, creating disorder and confusion among the laity, perverting the teachings of the Church and pushing a reckless supposed “social justice" agenda.

My family witnessed this firsthand during Terri's case. Church teaching is clear: it is our moral obligation to provide care for the cognitively disabled like Terri. However, Bishop Robert Lynch, who was the bishop of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, during Terri's case, offered no support and was derelict in his duties during the fight for Terri's life.

Bishop Lynch had an obligation to use his position to protect Terri from the people trying to kill her and to uphold Church teaching. Indeed, it was not only the silence of Bishop Lynch but that of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which also remained silent despite my family's pleas for help, that contributed to Terri being needlessly starved and dehydrated to death.

My family's experience, sadly, has turned out to be more of the rule than the exception. Consider what happened to Michael Hickson. Hickson was a 36-year-old, brain-injured person admitted to a Texas hospital after contracting COVID-19. Incredibly—and against the wishes of Michael's wife—the hospital decided not to treat Michael because they arbitrarily decided that his “quality of life" was “unacceptably low" due to his pre-existing disability. Michael died within a week once the decision not to treat him was imposed upon him despite the efforts of his wife to obtain basic care for her husband.

During my sister's case and our advocacy work with patients and their families, it would have been helpful to have a unified voice coming from our clergy consistently supporting the lives of our medically vulnerable. We desperately need to see faithful Catholic pastoral witness that confounds the expectations of the elite by pointing to Jesus Christ and the moral law.

A Church that appears more concerned with baptizing the latest social and political movements is a Church that may appear to be “relevant," but one that may also find itself swallowed up by the preoccupations of our time.

As Catholics, we know all too well the reluctance of priests to preach on issues of abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and other pro-life issues. We have heard that the Church cannot risk becoming too political.

At the same time, some within the Church are now openly supporting Black Lives Matter, an organization that openly declares itself hostile to the family, to moral norms as taught by the Church, and whose founders embrace the deadly ideology of Marxism.

For example, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, knelt in prayer with a cardboard sign asserting his support for this ideology.

Recently, during an online liturgy of the mass, Fr. Kenneth Boller at The Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York, led the congregation with what appears to sound like questions affirming the BLM agenda. Moreover, while reading these questions, pictures of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, assumed victims of racial injustice, were placed on the altar of St. Francis Xavier Church, a place typically reserved for Saints of the Catholic Church.

Contrast these two stories with what happened in the Diocese of Lafayette, Indiana, where Rev. Theodore Rothrock of St. Elizabeth Seton Church fell victim to the ire of Bishop Timothy Doherty. Fr. Rothrock used strong language in his weekly church bulletin criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and its organizers. Consequently, Bishop Doherty suspended Fr. Rothrock from public ministry.

In 1972, Pope Pius VI said, “The smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God." It seems that too many of our clergy today are enjoying the smell.

I encourage all who are concerned about the human right to life and about Christ-centered reforms in our culture and our Church to raise your voices for pastoral leadership in every area of our shared lives as Christian people.

Bobby Schindler is a Senior Fellow with Americans United for Life, Associate Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and President of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.