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Archive 1

Good article failure

Ty Cobb was recently nominated to be promoted to good article status, but has unfortunately failed. Reasons for failing GA:

  • Lack of references
  • NO use of inline citation
  • And all but two of the pictures don't have the right tags

Good text, but these areas are way too sloppy to let it slide, fix it and renom please Highway 10:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

2nd time around: The image tags look pretty good to me, but the inline citations are really a killer for me, especially when the article claims that another authors work was filled with "half-truths and misinformation" and doesn't offer a single source or stitch of evidence as to how.

References and inline citations are needed, there are in fact a number of claims tagged that have not yet been addressed. There would be a good place to start.TonyJoe 21:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I recently went through all the references and updated them to use the same format. I also removed any references there were not reliable. Think the article is ready for another GA run?--Roswell native 20:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Go ahead and renominate it. I, for one, think it's good enough. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 21:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

This page is pretty much identical to http://www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/cobbty/default.htm

Does anyone have any right to reproduce it here??

The similarities must have been removed; all I'm seeing today (1/22/2002) are the stats. - RjLesch

Ahh yes, that was me -- GWO
-

"...that his co-biographer Al Stump wrote posthumously..."

How can someone write after they are dead?

Ty Cobb bio

The bio states Cobb was the first man elected to the United States Baseball Hall of Fame. It's actually the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Also, he was not the first man elected. Five players were elected at the same time (1936), and Cobb had the most votes.

How was he the "first"? Just because he got the most votes doesn't mean he was the first elected. According to the Baseball Hall of Fame he wasn't the first elected. If anyone wants to verify contact the HOF

He is said to be "the first man elected into the HOF" because he got the most votes in the first election ever to the HOF. It's more a honorific title than a literal one.

The bio also stated that Cobb had a .666 batting average but http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/historical/individual_stats_player.jsp?c_id=mlb&playerID=112431&HS=True and http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/Cobb_Ty.htm states it was actually .667.

Stump, the author

Cobb was a competitor and had faults, but he also had other compensating qualities, which Stump down played. My opinion is that Stump did a hatchet job.

  • Maybe, but Cobb's insufferable personality was well-documented by many of his own contemporaries, and the fact that so few bothered to go to his funeral says a lot. I once asked my grandfather, who was a huge baseball fan, what he thought of Ty Cobb. He said, "I always liked him as a player." Off the field was another story. Wahkeenah 01:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Cobb was a superb player but a thoroughly despicable human being. Over a batting title, the Tigers sent congratulations to the other guy... Trekphiler 05:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm getting a vision of Daffy Duck meeting Ty Cobb and saying (or spraying) his famous line, "You're dethpicable!" Wahkeenah 05:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Violence

Isn't there something about him having killed a black man, and being acquitted? And if so, shouldn't this be in the entry? DS 01:11, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • No, he did kill a man once but he was not black, and he was actually trying to rob Cobb. He did get into fights with some black men, and I've read that he assaulted a black woman working in a hotel once.

In The National Pastime, #17, 1996 edition (published by the Society for American Baseball Research), Doug Roberts titles an article "Ty Cobb Did Not Commit Murder." Roberts researched Detroit autopsy reports for August and September of 1912, and found no violent deaths from head trauma. He concludes that, no matter how Cobb may have bragged, he didn't pistol whip anybody to death, though he did find a record of Cobb's being mugged on August 12 in the press. WHPratt (talk) 01:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC) WHPratt

racist

The term racist always comes up when talking about Cobb. People have to remember this man was born in Georgia. His father lived during the Civil War. Cobb admired his father greatly. So if he seemed racist it shouldn't be too surprising. I'm sure many Southern Gentleman were considered racist at that time in history. You have to remember Cobb endured much harassment and prejudice when he join the Detroit Tigers. A young man from the south who was trying to break in the line-up in 1905. Cobb ended up having a nervous-breakdown his first year.

Thats true, but it is an unfortunate part of Cobb's life and image, and it deserves mention.

There is no question Cobb was a racist where minorities were concerned. However, he wasn't all that fond of white people either, least of all Yankees (Babe Ruth and otherwise). He got into an infamous and one-sided fist-fight with a handicapped New York fan in the stands who made the mistake of calling him a "half-n*gger". Wahkeenah 00:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

The question is, was Cobb more racist than his early 20th Century contemporaries, or other ballplayers from that era? If so, then it belongs in the article, but if not, then racism needs to be mentioned for every ballplayer.

  • "(even supposedly shunning Babe Ruth for his allegedly black facial characteristics)"

Seems a little tacky to me, especially for something in the first paragraph of the article. In fact,I don't think parenthetical items should be one of the first things we read in an article. --AlanzoB 00:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I think some of the article may try a bit too hard to paint Cobb in a favorable light. For example, it includes a remark sort of favoring integration of baseball (as long as the black players are polite). But because the statement was undated and appeared in the article between discussion of events occuring in 1910 and 1912, it would suggest to readers that Cobb favored integration in the 1910s and thus was ahead of his time. In fact, those remarks came in 1952 (http://www.baseball-fever.com/showpost.php?p=480633&postcount=71) after several teams had already integrated. I edited it to reflect that. I also the phrase "outspoken proponent" should be applied to someone leading the charge rather than praising integration in a couple of newspaper interviews. --JamesAM 04:34, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Whether Cobb was a "racist" needs to be viewed in light of the period in which he lived. In the South at that time, the vast majority of white people believed in the social and economic separation of the races. It was not an oddball or radical view. Today, we see restrooms marked "Men" and "Women," and we do not think anything of it. Most of us would oppose "integration" of public restrooms (at least I think women would). That is the way Southerners viewed racial segregation. State Constitutions, state statutes, and local customs required segregation, and it was viewed merely as part of life at that time.

Twenty-one (21) states, including California and other non-Southern States, had laws forbidding interracial marriage, and many States (not all of them in the South) had laws either requiring or permitting racial segregation of schools. In the period from 1896 to 1950, the Supreme Court issued six decisions declaring that racial segregation in public facilities was constitutional.

Ken Burns' "Baseball" describes an incident in which Cobb beat a handicapped man for calling him a "half-nigger," but we need to remember two things:

(1) under the mores of the time, it was a grievous insult to say that about a white man if it was not true. I remember, as late as the 1960's, when a Detroit newspaper issued a formal retraction for incorrectly identifying a white man as black.

(2) According to the Ken Burns' documentary, the beating took place in New York, and the crowd cheered Cobb to an echo. Thus, at that time, calling a white man a "half-nigger" offended the social sensibilities even of New Yorkers and other Northerners. Also, when Cobb was suspended, the entire team quit in protest and as a show of support for Cobb.

John Paul Parks (talk) 13:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Stats

To mention Cobb's record for one team, the Tigers, significantly understates his accomplishments -- he's arguably the greatest of all time, not merely in Tiger history.

Better to say, As of 1970, 42 years after he retired, Cobb was first among all players ever in Batting Average, Runs, Hits, Stolen Bases, At Bats, and Games played. Since then, different players have broken different records. Here is how Cobb now stands: 

 Batting Avg - 1st
 Runs - 2nd
 Hits - 2nd
 Doubles - 4th
 Triples - 2nd
 RBI - 6th
 Stolen bases - 3rd
 At Bats - 5th
  • The arguments about who was better, Cobb or Ruth, have been going on for generations. Obviously, Cobb never won a championship while Ruth won several. They were both huge drawing cards. They were both well-paid. Cobb, in particular, was notorious for holding out for more money. But did Cobb change the nature of the game, the way Ruth did, or did he merely take the existing "inside" game to another level? And a number of his own contemporaries regarded Honus Wagner as the superior overall player to Cobb. Some of that might be bias because Cobb spread so much ill will wherever he went. Which also raises the question, did Cobb hurt his own teams as much or more than he helped them? Wahkeenah 00:58, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that Cobb took the existing game to another level... while Ruth changed the game all together... I doubt anyone would deny that.. but I'm not sure that is a knock on Cobb either, he played the way he played and did not change even after the Ruth era began. Alot of people hated Cobb, but by their stats I doubt one could say Wagner was better... though he may have been a better defensive player. As far as the Championships, I think Championships are more of a team effort than a individual effort, Ruth played for better teams than Cobb did, hence he was able to win Championships. Cobb did not do to badly in the three World Series he played in either. In his first he did, but he was a young player. In his second he hit .368, leading the team. In his third he had a low average in the .230's, but he also hit more RBI's than anyone else on the Tigers team for that World Series. Cobb did not necessarily enhance his game in the World Series the way a Jordan would in the Finals, but Cobb did not completely fold either. I personally would rank Ruth higher though, because Ruth was a HOF candidate as a pitcher, and as far as hitting goes I feel that he and Cobb were equals. I'd probably rank Cobb #2 behind Ruth all time.

Re: the section about the death of Ty's father. A lot of this is stolen from here: http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00014142.html GWO (Yes, the same one from 2002 up there)

Took care of it. Gorrister 12:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Update his stats so I know where he stands now among the all-time greats.

And is it true he sharpened his spikes?

The sharpened spikes! I remember reading this when I was a tyke.192.249.47.11 18:17, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

He always claimed it was not true. He was a sharp guy, though. Baseball Bugs 00:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Personel life

This page has no importance to me because it does no tell me, in details, about Ty Cobbs youth. I would certainly hope that somebody else out there has the same thinking.

I agree that there should be more on Cobb's youth.Slater79 21:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


Alot of the information used on why Cobb retired is plaigerized. I would change it but personally I would just delete it as none of it has ever been verified and I don't have the time and always seem to have to make 20 corrections to fix my own corrections because of poor grammar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbfolsom122 (talk • contribs) 07:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarized from where? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:44, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

stat change

To my understanding, Ty Cobb's legendary hit total was changed in 1995. It was a shock when I first saw the new number because I stopped following baseball between 1990 or so and 1997, and I never knew why this was. Then I came across the story:

"Although Lajoie led the AL in batting twice more, hitting .355 in 1903 and .381 in 1904, the race he lost to Ty Cobb in 1910 is a piece of baseball legend. The 1910 batting title was hotly contested, with a Chalmers automobile to go to the leading batter. Most of the baseball world rooted for the popular Lajoie and against the hotheaded Cobb, who had won the three previous titles. On the final day of the season, Lajoie bunted for seven infield hits and swung for a triple in a doubleheader at St. Louis. St. Louis manager Jack O'Connor was ultimately fired when it was revealed that he had ordered his third baseman to play deep against Lajoie. Lajoie finished second by a point despite the machinations but received an auto anyway. Later historical research by The Sporting News revealed Lajoie 's .384 average actually should have won the title. Cobb's official average of .385 was inflated because one of his games was inadvertently counted twice. In a dispute that rose to the highest baseball levels, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled in 1981 that the mistake would not be corrected."

Obviously that has since been reversed and Cobb now has new career stats. Should this story be included in the article? It may seem trivial, but given the importance of the records involved (one of which he still holds, the other he held for so long), I think it has weight.

I think it would be nice to mention when the hit total was changed, and who it was who discovered it. Funnyhat 17:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Second Marriage

The "Second Marriage" section leads off with the following statement "At 62, Cobb remarried. The bride was 40-year-old Frances Cass. This marriage also failed, and she later filed for divorce. She felt that he was simply too difficult to get along with when he was drunk. However, Cobb counter filed and won the suit." First, it might be useful to give some idea of how long after marriage she filed for divorce. But more importantly, the problem with this statement is that I have no idea what it implies. Divorce laws are nowadays quite different from what they were and this could use some explanation; that is to say, what does it matter who filed and who counterfiles and who won and what the consequences of winning or losing were. Hi There 15:13, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No Fault Divorce Laws

"No Fault Divorce" did not become popular until 1970, when it was explicitly adopted in California, and thereafter spread to most of the rest of the United States. Prior to that time, a divorce was not granted unless one spouse could prove that the other spouse was guilty of misconduct. What constituted the requisite misconduct varied from state to state. In South Carolina, prior to 1949, divorce was not permitted for any reason, not even if the other spouse had committed adultery. In New York, prior to 1967, adultery was the only ground for divorce. Other states were more liberal, permitting divorce on the ground of cruelty, desertion, non-support, habitual intemperance, etc.

Also, under a doctrine known as "recrimination," a spouse could not obtain a divorce if he or she had engaged in misconduct. For example, if Wife sued Husband for divorce on the ground of adultery, and Husband could show that Wife was also guilty of adultery, the divorce would be denied.

So, if Mrs. Cobb sued for divorce, and he counterfiled and won, it probably means that one of two things was true: (1) he was able to show that he was not guilty of the conduct charged, or (2) even if he was, Mrs. Cobb had engaged in some sort of misconduct, and was not entitled to a divorce. A third possibility to consider is that, in some cases, Georgia law provides for a trial by jury in divorce cases. If there was a jury in the case of Cobb v. Cobb, the locals may have been unwilling to return a finding of guilt against the legendary Ty Cobb!

Note: Even in the pre-no fault era, some states were liberal. For example, Nevada had a very short residency period (six weeks). Prior to 1957, Florida had a 90-day residency period and a very elastic notion of what constituted cruelty.

John Paul Parks (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

First pro athlete in movies...?

Cobb was not the first. For example, fellow baseball star Christy Mathewson had already appeared in three movies in 1913-1915. Heavyweight boxing champion "Gentleman" Jim Corbett had multiple credits. If you consider auto racing a sport, Barney Oldfield had also starred in multiple films. There are other examples.

POV?

This whole page is an overly favourable worship of Ty Cobb. Not anywhere are his infamous acts of violence and humiliation owards people of black descent mentioned. Wikipedia is supposed to be a balanced source of information, not a piece of one sided hero worship of a man of appalling character who happened to do well at baseball.

Provided that you adhere to these guidlines: neutral point of view, verifiability, and can cite reliable sources, you're welcome to edit the article yourself. I recommend discussing your changes on this talk page, first, but baldfaced complaining accomplishes little when the solution is right at your fingertips. Thanks.


Naps?

From the article: "Very near the end of the season, Cobb’s Tigers had a long series against Jackson and the Naps." .. who are the Naps? --Mike Schiraldi 20:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The naps were/are the Indians. They were given that nickname because of Napoleon Lajoie.Tecmobowl 20:35, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Team names weren't always official and hard-and-fast, as they are today. For just a few examples- for a while, the Boston Braves were known as the Boston Bees. The Washington Senators were often known as the Nats (short for Nationals). The Phillies were sometimes called the Quakers. Also, a little off the subject, Napoleon Lajoie was, more often than not, referred to as Larry Lajoie (or at least as often as he was known as Nap or Napoleon. It was a much more colorful time in baseball, up to the 1960s, when nicknames seem to have disappeared, including colorful nicknames of teams that weren't officially designated by "Major League Baseball, Incorporated." Slater79 21:54, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Move the Al Stump Section?

Should the Al Stump section be moved to a new page specifically about Al Stump? Although I don't know much about him, he was a very famous writer. Perhaps he deserves his own page. Just a thought. --Tecmobowl 22:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Removing un-sourced content

Per Wp:cite#Tagging_unsourced_material, I'm removing all of the un-sourced material. If anyone has a source, please feel free to add some content back. I will remove everything from the meat of the article. The intro needs to be re-written. If i don't do that tonight, i will leave the un-sourced material until that time. // Tecmobowl 05:09, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

GA on hold

After reviewing the article according to the GA criteria I have decided to put the article on hold until some things are fixed. Most of these are easy to fix and shouldn't take too long. Adding the inline citations will probably take more time, but are the most important in me passing the article. Some of them are simply statistics which should be easy to find.

  1. Add wikilinks or further clarify: silhouette, batting average (somewhere early in the article for readers who don't know what it means), hazing, American League pennant, bunt, shenanigans, umpire, heckler, nigger, strike, sandlot, brain tumor, will, & scholarships. Fixed all mentioned and numerous more. Let me know if I missed any.
  2. "William Cobb suspected his wife of infidelity, and was sneaking past his own bedroom window to catch her in the act; she only saw the silhouette of what she presumed to be an intruder, and, acting in self-defense, shot and killed her husband." It would probably be best to break this up into two statements.Completely rewrote the last part of this paragraph - please see if this addresses the issue.
  3. Is Spring Training capitalized? If it is, leave it. If not, fix it. - You are correct, "spring training" is not capitalized. I also wikified it as there is an entry for it.
  4. There appears to be a hard return between the fourth and fifth paragraphs in the Early years section that should be removed. Spacing issue appears to be a result of the quote box and the image proximity. Another editor has worked on it to make it less obvious, but the space still is noticeable.
  5. "It was also in 1909 that Charles M. Conlon snapped his famous photograph of a grimacing Ty Cobb sliding into third base amid a cloud of dirt, which visually captured the grit and ferocity of Cobb's playing style." This statement mentions a photo, if you can, add it to the article. It may be available for free use since it was taken in 1909.
  6. "Perhaps what angered him the most about Ruth was that despite Ruth's total disregard for his physical condition and traditional baseball, he was still an overwhelming success and brought fans to the ballparks in record numbers to see him set his own records." Don't user perhaps, this sounds like OR. Rewrote beginning of sentence to begin "In spite of Ruth's total diregard...."
  7. Misspelled: yougest -> youngest (last paragraph in the 1915-1921 section),
  8. "Universally disliked (even by the members of his own team) but a legendary player, Cobb's management style left a lot to be desired. He expected as much from his players as he gave, and most of the men did not meet his standard." This sounds a little POV, try rewording it a little better, and it should probably be standards. Rewrite done, let me know how it looks.
  9. "Leonard was unable to convince either Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis or the public that the two had done anything for which they deserved to be kicked out of baseball." Incorporate this sentence into the paragraph above or below it, or expand upon it. Expanded this section and cited it. Please check additional text for any other problems.
  10. "This marriage also failed as she later filed for divorce. She felt that he was simply too difficult to get along with when he was drunk. However, Cobb counter filed and won the suit." These statements could use cleanup and inline citations; also, what suit? Cited refs for his marriage and subsequent divorce. Could not find any details around the actual divorce so I removed the last two sentences.
  11. "He, like everyone else, found Cobb difficult at best, and impossible at worst." Reword this statement to be more encyclopedic. In trying to research this to find an actual McCallum quote, I decided to remove completely as there isn't a reliable source that backs up this sentiment. I did add more info around the actula book and supplied refs to the book itself and a review in the New York Times of the book. Hope this is acceptable.
  12. "Publicly, however, Cobb claimed not to have any regrets: "I've been lucky. I have no right to be regretful of what I did" .[39]" Fix spacing of the period.
  13. "At the time of his death. Cobb's estate was reported to be worth at least US$11,780,000 - $10 million worth of General Electric stock and $1.78 million in Coke stock. [43]" Move inline citation directly after the period.
  14. For the image of the baseball card, add a description under the card explaining what it is (year, team, etc.)

Add inline citations for:

  • He then went to try out for the Anniston Steelers of the semi-pro Tennessee-Alabama League, with his father's stern admonition still ringing in his ears: "Don't come home a failure."
  • He would never hit below that mark again.
  • In one notable 1907 game, Cobb reached first, stole second, stole third, and then stole home on consecutive attempts.
  • By the time he died, he owned three bottling plants, in Santa Maria, California; Twin Falls, Idaho; and Bend, Oregon; and owned over 20,000 shares of stock.
  • After some wrangling, American League president Ban Johnson declared all batting averages official, with Cobb seemingly hanging on to win, .3850687 to .3840947.
  • The Chalmers people, however, decided to award an automobile to both Cobb and Lajoie.
  • The commissioner's committee voted unanimously to leave the numbers unchanged, but this ruling has typically been ignored by the game's statisticians. Completely rewrote this section, and added several additional refs. Please recheck to see if this introduced any new issues.
  • Cobb's dominance at the plate is suggested by this statistic: he struck out swinging only twice during the entire 1911 season.
  • When onlookers shouted at Cobb to stop because the man had no hands, Cobb reportedly replied, "I don't care if he has no feet!"
  • While Cobb preached ascetic self-denial, Ruth gorged on hot dogs, beer, and women.
  • His 16 total bases set a new AL record.
  • Cobb finally called it quits from a 22-year career as a Tiger in November 1926.
  • With their careers largely overlapping, Ty Cobb faced Johnson more times than any other batter-pitcher matchup in baseball history. Rewrote to say they faced each other many times and moved claim of the most # of matchups to the talk page.
  • Cobb retired a very rich and successful man. He spent his retirement pursuing his off-season activities of hunting, golfing and fishing, full-time. He also traveled extensively, both with and without his family. His other pastime was trading stocks and bonds, increasing his immense personal wealth.
  • "He always wanted us to work s hard as we could at anything we did," Cobb's son James told sportswriter Ira Berkow in 1969. "Just as he did." Moved from article to talk page in case some one is able to cite later.
  • By then, Cobb drank and smoked heavily, and spent a great deal of time complaining about the collapse of baseball since the arrival of Ruth. cited and changed wording a bit to match source (replaced bit about Cobb with Modern players comment).
  • It was on a hunting trip near his Lake Tahoe home that Cobb's long-range plans were going to be cut short, as he collapsed in pain and was diagnosed with prostate cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and Bright's disease, a degenerative kidney disorder. removed unverifiable info and cited.
  • He returned to his Lake Tahoe lodge with painkillers and bourbon to try to ease his constant pain. Moved from article to talk page in case some one is able to cite later.
  • He checked into Emory Hospital for the last time in June 1961, bringing with him a paper bag with a million or so dollars in securities and his Luger pistol. (Also change a million or so to something like "about a million dollars in securities") added citation and added more specifics about the securities per the cited refernce. Also changed Luger to pistol and I haven't seen the gun make specified in some of the more reliable sources used so far.

Feel free to check the items off as you complete them, you have seven days to fix them all. When you are finished fixing these or if you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. --Nehrams2020 10:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Moving uncited quotes here until citation becomse available

At the suggestion of the GA reviewer, I am going to move several uncited quotes currently in the article to the talk page until a citation if found.

  • Ty Cobb faced Johnson more times than any other batter-pitcher matchup in baseball history.
  • "He always wanted us to work as hard as we could at anything we did," Cobb's son James told sportswriter Ira Berkow in 1969. "Just as he did."
  • Cobb returned to his Lake Tahoe lodge with painkillers and bourbon to try to ease his constant pain.

--Roswell native 06:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

GA passed

I have passed this article according to the GA criteria. I am impressed with the amount of suggestions fixed and citations added in such a short period. The article is well-written and has plenty of images that help exhibit the material. Be sure to cite any new information that is added to help this article keep its high quality. Consider taking it to a peer review and then FAC. As a side note, the GAC currently has a backlog that could use experienced users' assistance. If you have the time, come review an article or two. Again, good work, the article looks great. --Nehrams2020 08:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Claude Lueker Incident

I read that Cobb was actually cheered by the crowd after he beat up Lueker and that his team came out of the dugout with bats in case he needed backup.

Only 2 "swinging" strikeouts in 1911

The article says, he struck out swinging only twice during the entire 1911 season, citing an article that supports it: http://www.thebaseballpage.com/players/cobbty01.php The cited page says (at the bottom):

Sources used for the Ty Cobb Player Page: Ty Cobb: A Biography, by Dan Holmes; The Tiger Wore Spikes, by John McCallum; Interviews with Richard Bak and Marc Okkonen, Ty Cobb, by Charles Alexander.

While I appreciate that it's properly cited, I think it's doubtful enough to remove it:

  • Strikeouts were not recorded in 1911 (see http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cobbty01.shtml )
  • 2 strikeouts in his 591 at bats would be a AB/K ratio of 295 (to 1), the all-time record for a season, and by far the 20th century record (http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/ABpSO_season.shtml )
  • It specifies swinging strikeouts, so arguably Cobb struck out more. But if he only struck out swinging twice, how many times did Cobb watch the third strike? 2? 5? 10? If we say 8, which I think is a lot, he'd have 10 total Ks, which means an AB/K ratio of 59.1, which would be approx. the 29th best season in the 20th century (see link above).
  • For the years strikeouts were recorded (1913 and following):
    • His career AB/K ratio was 21.1 (see bottom of his stat page, linked above)
    • His AB/K ratio improved steadily (which I think is true of most players), not exceeding 20 until he was 31 years old, and not exceeding 30 until he was 36. In 1911 he was 24 years old.
    • His best (nearly) full season was his last one (1927 - 134 G), 41.8 AB/K

I'm guessing the Baseball Page is repeating an unfounded rumor, and the evidence weighs heavily against the story. Next, I will provide statistical evidence of how many Cobbs can dance on a the head of a pin. :) Guanxi 02:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Good points. I have moved the quote here so other folks can refer to it and possibly cite other reliable sources to back up this claim, until then I agree that it does not belong in the article.--Roswell native 04:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


Parking quote here about Only 2 "swinging" strikeouts in 1911

Cobb's dominance at the plate is suggested by this statistic: he struck out swinging only twice during the entire 1911 season.[1]

Post professional career

The source for the Joe Jackson story (reference #70) is dubious at best. I would like to see a different source for that claim. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lecollye (talk • contribs) 17:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

Moving Gabe Kapler addition here for rewrite before readding

I am moving the added info below from the article to the talk page because it was cut and pasted in it's entirety from the quote source.

  • Needs to be rewritten in new prose
  • Need to be worked into the legacy section (rather than a Miscellaneous section - whihc is really a trivia section IMHO.
  • I think the statement about Cobb being an anti-semite needs some additional cites - I'm not arguing it isn't true (in fact, my own POV is that it is almost certainly true), just that I have read a lot about Cobb recently, and I have seen no mention about his anti-semitism - every story I found focused on his racism towards blacks. If this is the only source we can find, then I think it's being given undue weight. It would be preferable to cite additional sources.

Portion moved here was: On Sept. 27, 1999, the Tigers played their last game in Tiger Stadium, with players in the starting lineup wearing uniform numbers of great Tigers of the past. But Gabe Kapler's jersey was blank. The reason was that Kapler was wearing Cobb's number -- which, since Cobb played in the era before uniform numbers existed, was no number at all. The larger irony: while Kapler is Jewish, Cobb was a notorious anti-Semite.[1]

--Roswell native 22:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

OK ... if you think that this article could be improved with more footnotes, here is another cite as to a virulent ... anti-Semite.... http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:nAkOWOXOqeYJ:entertainment.westword.com/1995-01-18/film/fit-to-be-ty/+%22ty+cobb%22+anti-semite&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=39&gl=us ... and note that his racism is already mentioned in the third para of the article. --Epeefleche 23:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Differences with stats...

  • I've looked at Baseball Almanac stats for Cobb and at Retrosheet stats for Cobb, and they also differ from B-R.com and MLB. Those two sites essentially match up with B-R except, but differ in baserunning stats. Those two sites include have another year of caught stealings credited, so he has over 200 of them. The Almanac keeps the same stolen base figure, but Retrosheet gives him one fewer (891). Obviously, we don't need to include the stat lines from those respective sites, but should there be a mention of them on the page? -- transaspie 21:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
    • You must list the official MLB stats. And you could list any or all of the others, with proper reference(s). To choose one and assert it as being correct (as some previous editors have done) is a POV violation. And the disparity among the various fan-based stats sites demonstrates their fallibility. Baseball Bugs 03:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
      • The MLB ones are certainly the ones we mention in the article, I wasn't going to change that. I was just thinking that we mention them as a way of showing further inconsistencies with the stats. Sadly, it's irrelevant at the moment because of the fact 1/3 of the article has apparently gone missing...  :( transaspie 04:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
        • When I changed it recently, the POV-pushers were citing the non-MLB stats as established fact, which is not the case at all, as your research demonstrates. I'll have to see what you mean about parts of the article disappearing, though. Hopefully I didn't zap something by mistake. Baseball Bugs 12:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
        • One user made substantial changes on the 28th, including rubbing out the MLB stats. I put it back to that point (actually to one of your update points). Any significant changes since then by yourself or others would have to be recovered by them. Baseball Bugs 12:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Source of Stats

Why must we use MLB's stats? If others are more accurate, why not use them? For example, suppose on July 1, 1915 Cobb got 3 hits, but MLB erroneously states he had 2 hits. Should we misinform readers and say he had 2 hits? I believe we should publish the facts of what happened, and not MLB's story. It may be difficult at times to determine the true facts, but I don't think MLB has a special claim on accuracy. Guanxi 21:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

What's going on with the article?

  • I am very confused at the moment. It wasn't long ago that this article was a GA-class article with 90-100 cites. Now it's at 20 cites and it is flagged for not being verifiable. Why is this happening? I mean, I know what caused it, since I watch recent changes, but I can't understand why it's ended up like this. It makes no sense that we've taken one of the few decent baseball articles out there and destroyed it. -- transaspie 03:57, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • This is one of the reasons why I picked this article back up. I have actually put in a good deal of work some months ago as a starting off point and I have no idea what has really happened. I'm tring to chip away at it a little bit at a time. Sometimes this means removing content in preparation for restructuring the article. I did move most of the content for 1910 Chalmers Award to its' own article. This was due to the fact that the article is excessively long (i forget the WP link for that information), that the information in that section was long enough and substantial enough to deserve its' own page, and because the debate over his statistics is hotly debatable and therefor subject to massive amounts of editing. This article is one of the many that will always change a great deal and just needs to be revisited every now and then. // Tecmobowl 04:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Technically, what happened over the last few months was that it became a good article. The fact it got long was part of it the reason it earned that status; it became comprehensive and sourced and it was duly rewarded for it. A player like Cobb is going to have a long article...that's just the result of him being a legend and having a lot more written about him. It just seems really drastic to remove 27K of text and citations. I can't understand how a good article would be so messed up that it would need such a complete overhaul. I'm sure you know what you're doing to this article, but it's just...something that my silly little mind can't really comprehend at the moment. -- transaspie 05:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh the article will remain long, there is no question. Again, i just siphoned off some of the content and moved it to 1910 Chalmers Award. I too am trying to figure out what happened to all the citations. Certainly anything you can do to help would be much appreciated. // Tecmobowl 05:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Somehow, when you rewrote the article to be more neutral, you inadvertently did something. The revision summary shows major differences between the two articles. I will give you the benefit of a doubt there because I don't know how exactly that could've happened. But 40% of the text was lost and 75% of the citations were removed when you accidentally did that. 27.5KB were removed, and only 4 KB of them are now in the Chalmers Award article. A lot is unaccounted for. I am certainly willing to fix it but I feel like it'll just get reverted. I'm a little afraid of fixing it for that reason. I know you meant well with what you edited...and I know you're not intentionally doing anything wrong...but unfortunately it had some unintended effects which have bothered me. -- transaspie 05:53, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with transapie: The article was very good, and much of the quality work is now gone. Also, some editors are too willing to revert other's changes: We need to respect others' input as much as possible and form consensus where disagreement is unavoidable. If each editor does what they think is 'right', we will only have endless disagreements. Guanxi 13:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Response to Transaspie - Well to be honest with you, I have no idea. I'll often times dig up old versions that were well written and use information from them. It looks as if I made a lot more changes than I intended to. Feel free to revert or edit or whatever. I did intentionally move the 1910 chalmers content out, but that doesn't seem to be the issue. To be honest, I'm not sure what I did. As for the statements of cobb's greatness, i will comment later when i return from lunch..etc...etc.. // Tecmobowl 16:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is, when other editors tried to make those changes, they got reverted back to the previous state. Promise you won't do that if I have a go at it. -- transaspie 19:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm really just fed up with this whole thing, you people want to focus on who knows what for who knows why.... you do your thing and i'll do mine. Keep the information factual and unbiased and we'll be good to go. // Tecmobowl 19:33, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Good Article Review

  • I'm sorry for doing this...but I'm putting Ty Cobb through a Good Article Review. I would prefer not being so dramatic, but this is the only conceivable way I can think of to get this madness to stop. -- transaspie 06:24, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Is Cobb "widely considered one of the greatest players ever"?

Perhaps input from others can help here. An editor keeps reverting the following as NPOV:

Cobb is widely considered one of the greatest players ever

You can find previous discussion so far at User talk:Tecmobowl#NPOV on Ty Cobb page and User talk:Guanxi#NPOV on Cobb; but to summarize my beliefs (I don't want to speak for Tecmobowl):

  • It's factually true: Not everyone believes it, but that's not what is claimed nor is that Wikipedia's standard -- but I'd be surprised if anyone disputes that it's the opinion of the overwhelming majority.
  • It's important: It's the primary reason for Cobb's notability, and essential information for someone reading about Cobb for the first time.
  • It is NPOV: The NPOV page itself offers an example of just such a statement in the A simple forumation section.
  • The reversions should stop -- See WP:Resolving disputes: If another editor disagrees, the proper response is not to revert but to improve it -- find something on which everyone agrees. If that's impossible, take it to the Talk page.

I'm going to post the edit again; if someone disagrees, I encourage them to not revert but to improve it -- help find a solution (again, per WP:Resolving disputes). I've tried to find a solution, but the only response has been more reversions. Guanxi 17:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

    • This is the problem: People write that Cobb is the greatest ever in the article...but is there anything in the article that reinforces that belief? No. No. No. The reason Tecmobowl deletes is because the claim is unsubstantiated. If you look at Michael Jordan's page, the introduction to his article clearly mentions him as one of the greatest, and the section on his legacy reinforces this belief. That's how you're supposed to do it. No one's made an attempt to do it here. If you get a few paragraphs about how Cobb is considered one of the all-time greats, and not just mention the results of polls in passing (the fact he is third all-time on TSN's top 100 list is mentioned as an aside in the end of a paragraph and his appearance on the All-Century team isn't even mentioned in the article and is only shown on a template at the bottom of the page) then you can write something like 'Cobb is considered one of the greatest players of all time'. Otherwise, the reverting will continue... -- transaspie 19:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • transaspie -
  • Interesting idea about backing it up further down in the article: That would certainly be better. I agree we should add the polls to the Legacy section. I can also name Bill James off the top of my head; do you know of any others? Note that the Legacy section covers his enduring records now (as of yesterday).
  • I think it is otherwise supported later in the article: The intro lists his dozens of records and HoF balloting, the 1910 sections says he was MVP; the 1911 says he led the league in many categories; 1915 begins with him setting the SB record, his consecutive batting titles, & his consecutive games w/ hits; the other sections mention many other successes; and finally the Legacy section now discusses his records (added yesterday). What else do you think we should add (besides the polls)?
  • Tecmobowl doesn't give the reasons you attribute to him; he says it's non-NPOV, which is different. I don't see how you can speak for him?
  • the reverting will continue... -- isn't that a bit of an ultimatum? I could say the same thing, but how would that help the article? I think your suggestions are a big help though, so thanks.
Guanxi 21:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Ooh...yeah that did sound rather confrontational at the end. Sorry about that. Anyway, I have been looking up sources which would mention his status. I'm trying to find direct quotes from people about Ty Cobb which would help improve the article. All I've got is an article by Shirley Povich which means him being the greatest of all-time as an aside...which might help because Povich was well-regarded as a writer. I'm basically looking for quotes because there's the old adage about lies, damned lies, and statistics, so we can't solely rely on them. I mean, I don't know what 90 records he held and what 43 he supposedly has now. As for Tecmobowl...yeah, the reverts were about NPOV. The fact we did nothing to support the claim is why he kept deleting the line. This is simply my opinion, and your mileage may vary. -- transaspie 21:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Looking around for polls, I came upon the following:
Guanxi 23:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
    • This is the best way to explain why i've been doing what i've been doing. Here is a direct copy of a paragraph in the introductory section of the Babe Ruth article. Without making any claims of how "widely" considered he is or is not, it provides the reader with unbiased information that allows them to make their own interpretation:
"In 1969, he was named baseball's Greatest Player Ever in a ballot commemorating the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Ruth Number 1 on the list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players." The next year, baseball fans named Ruth to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team."
That is the ideal way of communicating the concept. // Tecmobowl 22:15, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, how's this as a compromise (not the exact wording, but the general idea): Most baseball historians and journalists [writers?] name Cobb among the greatest ever, including [prominent citations go here]. I realize it's not exactly what either of us want, but here are my thoughts:
  • Baseball historians and journalists is much more specific than the vague 'they' implied by the current version (and being specific is strongly recommended by the NPOV article section I cited above, now that I re-read it). I think we could include fans, but I don't think that adds anything, so I don't mind leaving it out.
  • I still feel like limiting it only to specific polls implies that maybe the others don't think so. We can't list the thousands/millions who think so, but I think we need to refer to them somehow.
  • It substantiates the claim as best it can be substantiated.
  • We now have plenty of citations -- see the discussion above with transapie
Guanxi 23:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Now that I changed it to 'historians and journalists' (see Status as of ~14:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC), below) I think it sounds odd -- what about the fans? However, if someone wants to leave out fans, I'm willing to do so. Guanxi 14:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
How about "fans who are students of the game's history" or some such? If you took the average teenage fan, they might never have heard of Ty Cobb. They are more likely to have heard of Babe Ruth. Speaking of which, "one of the greatest" has no POV issue. Anyone who would dispute that statement about Cobb clearly knows nothing about the game's history. It's good not to say the greatest, because that would be POV-pushing. I think the answer to that question is Ruth, and in the dead ball era, some of Cobb's own contemporaries thought Wagner was better than Cobb. All 3 of them are charter members of the Hall, so that tells you something. d:) Baseball Bugs 16:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

(I wrote this about the same time as Guanxi, actually...)

  • Tecmo, though it is accurate and fair, it also makes for a very weak lead. It is perfectly fine to say that he is an all-time great if you give it proper treatment in the article. As I said earlier, the article on Michael Jordan does well on this. Bill Russell has a bold statement about his defense which is touched upon in his legacy section and is effectively reiterated with various cited statements throughout the article. Wayne Gretzky is an earlier featured example with a different format, he has references to his greatness from one source mentioned directly in the article and other references cited in the introduction. Tim Duncan is a good article, and that also has a reference to his greatness in the lead which is cited by facts. Anyway, enough about other players, back to Tyrus...
The point is that it's acceptable to say he is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time. BUT, we just have to reinforce it by other means besides statistics and polls...if we can't, then the statement doesn't deserve to be there. If we CAN reinforce it and cite reliable sources that do...then it shouldn't be a problem if we say that he is "widely considered one of the best hitters in baseball history" or something like that in the lead...we can show why he is with references. Hope that makes sense. -- transaspie 23:58, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands of citations that call Cobb either the greatest or one of the greatest. Likewise for Ruth. Ruth usually wins out nowadays for the greatest, because his accomplishments overshadow Cobb's in several ways. In their crossover time of the early 1920s, it is a "given" that Ruth replaced Cobb as the guy that was considered to be the greatest in the game at that time. It is POV-pushing to say that either is the greatest. But to deny that they both are widely considered to be among the greatest is ridiculous; as well as being a weak lead, as the editor above notes, and which was my point to the unnamed editor that kept posting that "POV" claim for those statements. Baseball Bugs 01:14, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Status as of ~14:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I haven't heard responses to my responses above; if I don't, I'll assume there's no objection.
  • I'm going to wait until transaspie figures out a plan, below, so I don't waste time on something that will change anyway.
  • I'm going to wait because I don't have time do it now anyway
  • I will change it to say 'historians and journalists', because it's quick, easy, preferred by some, probably unobjectionable to others, and fits WP:NPOV recommendations.

Guanxi 14:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Excellent Cobb resource

Bill Burgess wants to prove Cobb is the greatest ever. His definite POV (among other things) makes him unsuitable as a Wikipedia source, but he's amassed an amazing amount of research that we could use. Guanxi 23:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Saving GA status...

I sort of want to tune people into what editors been saying about this article in its GA review:

  • "...looks like some very bad instability."
  • "...currently not the same article [that] passed a few months ago."
  • "...it's in shambles."
  • "...the article's virtually destroyed now and is in need of a complete fix-up."

It has been suggested that the article should be reverted to the version that resembled the article that was given GA status in March.

Would it be okay if I reverted the article back to the way it was? The only necessary change is that the section on the Chalmers Award should be shortened since it has its own page. And, if it really has to come to it, the removal of any lines saying that he is considered one of baseball's greatest hitters or something. I don't want this article to get delisted... -- transaspie 02:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you determine precisely which version was the "good article"? And don't forget to retain the MLB.com stats, in case the so-called "good article" only includes the privately-researched stats. Baseball Bugs 03:10, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Roger. The stats contradict themselves in that article, so my re-working of them for the current version needs to also be taken into consideration. Baseball Bugs 05:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I didn't immediately see where the contradiction was...but I will take your word for it. Was there anything else in that article that had been worked on in other versions but not in that one? -- transaspie 10:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I was simply looking for ".366" vs. ".367", which is the starting point. Probably you would have to open 2 browser sessions (the GA version vs. the current version) and look at them side by side. Then open a third session to edit the GA version and apply appropriate changes. Then wait for you-know-who to revert the whole thing. Baseball Bugs 12:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • As much as I prefer the old version and support your efforts to rescue the article, I don't think we should mass revert. The edits are already made; the only way to fix the article is to improve (or when necessary, undo) them -- even the worst edit probably includes something worth retaining. I know that's time-consuming, but nobody is in a position to revert many legitimate edits in order to save themselves time, effectively prioritizing their goals over everyone else's. Baseball Bugs objects to the loss of his edits -- wouldn't every other editor say the same thing? It's possible that that doing it properly won't be time-consuming because I suspect that only a few edits will need much attention. Guanxi 13:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Then do it the reverse way: Put the two articles next to each other, and tweak the current article as needed. That should prevent the loss of good edits. Baseball Bugs 15:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
      • There were over 70 citations lost in the revert. It is time consuming to find them all. This is the quickest way I know how to restore them. I do not know how everyone else wants this article to be, I just want it to be back to something resembling what it was because I do not want this article to lose its status. Of course, if it really has to come down to it, I can fix them manually. -- transaspie 21:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
        • Then go ahead and revert to that date. I can always add my stuff back in. I had to do it once already after you-know-who F-ed it up. Baseball Bugs 23:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
          • Done. Look it over and change what needs to be changed. If I trimmed too much of the Chalmers section (to account for it being in its own article) you can do something about that. -- transaspie 00:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
        • You say, I do not know how everyone else wants this article to be, I just want it to be back to something resembling what it was because I do not want this article to lose its status -- I do prefer the old version, but I don't think we should revert everyone else's changes to achieve the objectives of a few of us. Guanxi 15:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
          • Guanxi, the Good Article Reviewers were very negative at the state of this article. Three of them suggested that the article be delisted in its previous state. You may've been fine with the article, but you may well have been alone in that regard. I needed to go with popular opinion on this. Plus, as far as I've researched, much of the data we added to the shorter article had already been part of the longer version. -- transaspie 18:39, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
            • transaspie - I've said 3 or 4 times -- I personally prefer the version that you are advocating; I agree with you that's a better article. But two (or three) editors can't just decide to revert everyone else's work. Popular opinion = you and Baseball Bugs. I understand the GA reviews and agree with them, but the way to make it GA again is to improve it, not revert it. See Help:Reverting, esp. the "Do not" section. Guanxi 19:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
              • I misread your statement about the article...when you said "old article" I didn't know which one you meant, sorry 'bout that. Anyway there was more than me and Bugs, there were three Good Article Reviewers who weren't fond of the article, and reverting the article was suggested by two of them and accepted by a third. It wasn't just 2 people. But either way, let's just drop the situation and...apparently, only complain about dodgy sources. -- transaspie 23:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
                • Sorry, I can see how that could have been confusing. In any case, I'm happy to be agreeable, but to what do you want to agree when you say let's just drop the situation? Do you mean, use the newer version (and presumably fix the mistakes)? If you want to stick with the older version, I'm afraid I disagree, but if we haven't agreed yet let's not waste more time on it and try some sort of arbitration. I think Wikipedia:Requests for comment is appropriate, but I've never used it. I'll support whatever the RfC concludes. Thanks for your efforts and for being so reasonable. If I had more time, I'd fix it myself, but I don't for the next few weeks. Guanxi 00:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I requested that an admin lock the page while we work this out (WP:RFP) -- otherwise we may end up merging the changes to two version which would take even more time ... Guanxi 15:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • That will also keep the Ron Liebman sockpuppet from screwing around with it, as he did again this morning. Baseball Bugs 16:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Cobb's accepted figures among responsible historians are .366 average, 4189 hits, and 11 batting titles. (Some people amazingly find this painful to accept)! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ellyabe (talk • contribs) 17:54, June 6, 2007.
      • Please provide at least 3 independent references for this please, preferably more. Include specific web addresses (if websites) or ISBN and page #s (if books). Thank you, from the one, the only, the original Ebyabe. Accept no substitutes. :) -Ebyabe 22:38, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Number of records held: 43 or 90

Our very good cite (http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-514151_ITM - a scholarly journal) says he set 90 during his career and held 43 at retirement. Why does that keep getting changed? Is there a better source? Guanxi 16:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

  • There's no good source for this. I did original research with the Sporting News baseball record book, and the name Ty Cobb appears on 37 regular season records and 2 World Series records, for 39 overall. The lead lists 5 of his records that have been broken since his retirement...which would claim that he now holds 38 records. 43 sounds more like the number he was holding at the time of the article was written...particularly since every other source is 90 and this is the only source claiming 43.

Unless I can get a list of records he held at the time of his retirement...I cannot say he held 43 records or 90 records...I can only say he's credited with 90 because that's the popular figure. -- transaspie 18:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

    • I question the wisdom of perpetuating this 90 number which is starting to sound like an old wives tale. If you can find a source that lists the ones he currently holds, and casually reported that many sources say he held about 90 ML and AL records when he retired, that would be good. Or maybe it already says that. Baseball Bugs 18:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
      • 90 is becoming a rather dubious total in my opinion, because of the inability of sources to back up the claim. But I don't know how else to do it properly without using original research or weasel words. This is just a widely cited figure like the 4,191 hits. That's really I can say about his records at the moment. -- transaspie 18:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Why is everyone saying there's no good source? What's wrong with the citation in the article (which I linked to above)? Guanxi 19:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, it's cited. But I wonder if it's something that everyone keeps repeating without investigating. If he really held 90, then there has to be a list somewhere. The 90 is cited, so it could probably stand for now. I just don't think it should stop there. Baseball Bugs 19:55, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
      • There's some confusion: The citation says, A) He set 90 records during his career; and B) He still held 43 records when he retired. People keep changing it to say he held 90 records when he retired (which is a more common story, but possibly a rumor). I'm asking, why change it when the cite is very good? I agree both may be unfounded rumors, but I have some confidence in that cite because, 1) It's in a scholarly journal, and 2) the author is the only one (AFAIK) careful enough -- or knowledgeable enough -- to distinguish between Cobb setting 90 at one time or another, but only retaining 43 on retirement. Guanxi 00:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
        • That's fine, it would just be nice, or ideal, to know what they actually were/are. We know what some of them are, of course, but by no means all. But someone had to have been keeping track. I just wonder where those "tracks" are. Baseball Bugs 00:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
          • I actually purchased the article (the link is to an abstract), but our scholarly author (a full tenured economics prof. at a university) does not cite his source. I recommend the article, though. Where on Wikipedia do I expense my $5? Guanxi 01:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I was going to say, let's delete the whole thing -- 43 or 90, since we lack a good source and it sounds like a rumor. But, someone will post it again if it's missing completely, so I think we're better off with the seemingly more accurate info from Professor Peach (the article cited). Guanxi 01:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
    • I started looking at various sources for records, and quickly gave up. It all depends on how you define a "record". There's MLB career stats, of course. There's single-season stats. There's game stats. Those are records. After that, you start getting into some dubious areas. Like "most years batted over .320" or some such. That's not a record, that's just an arbitrary dividing point. I could say "most years batted over .001" and maybe the winner would be Nolan Ryan or some such, I don't know. If a reliable source makes a claim, you could says "so-and-so says...", otherwise you could just fall back to the weaselly "many records". Baseball Bugs 01:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
      • The Sporting News record book is full of those stats. When I saw the 90 number for the first time, my first thought was "There's not even 90 stats!". But you can extrapolate stats in enough ways to create them...but even so 90's a bit much. (BTW, you're using some really silly examples :)) 43 is a little more arbitrary, but unless the professor told us the records he holds, then it's still just speculative and possible still full of all those stats. After all, there's only about a dozen-so positive stats and only a few ways you can skew them. I refuse to do "many records" because editors tag statements like that. An alternative is merely mentioning the records, the really really important ones, at more depth. The 90 record claim might be better suited for the Legacy section or something like that...even if it's just hearsay, it's a widely claimed figured that helps boost his legacy. But anyways...if you two want to try your hand at the lead to make it fit your style (much like I apparently have did with mine, based on comments)...go ahead. After all, it'd be great if I didn't have to do all of the fixing myself. -- transaspie 03:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC) (P.S., can we get more than 3 people to care about this article right now? *g*)
      • An idea popped into my mind...how bout a sub-article along the lines of Career acheivements of Ty Cobb or something like that. Several of these pages have been popping up for prominent basketball players, and certainly an article like that would work perfect for the Cobbs of the world. Those pages are very welcoming to those records that you criticized earlier, BB. Maybe it won't prove that he held 90 records when he retired or 43 records when he retired, but it would certainly be useful. -- transaspie 05:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
        • If so, I'd like to see a similar one for Ruth, as he and Cobb were the subject of much comparison in their day... the ultimate "apples and oranges", maybe, although they did share one thing in common, which was the desire to win. Can you imagine them on the same team? The greatest "small ball" player matched up with the greatest "power" player? They'd be unbeatable. If they didn't kill each other. Baseball Bugs 08:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • What a shock, you guys have gotten the page locked. This is very easy to resolve people. 1) you add a section that discusses the two different presentations of Cobb's statistics. In relevant portions of the article, you then point to that section. OR 2) You use the first opportunity to write a note (using the <ref></ref> tags). Then just cite that note where ever necessary. //Tecmobowl 06:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I am very ashamed that you guys got this article locked. I told you guys that you could fix this article, and the only thing you can think of is preventing people from editing it for a week? I'm sorry, but that is stupid. INCREDIBLY stupid. Right now, I feel like I have wasted my time trying to save this article. -- transaspie 17:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
  • transaspie says, I told you guys that you could fix this article -- Where did you say that and what do you mean? Do you mean that you won't object to undoing the mass reversion? This post is my 3rd attempt to get this question answered (see above on the talk page). If it's not answered here, I'll assume you don't object. I value your input, but ... Guanxi 14:24, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
  • In case nobody reads what's been posted to the discussion page (see above) since June 6th, it was locked as a practicality, to save us a massive amount of work. I'm not sure what the big deal is, unless you like doing unnecessary work (let me know -- I've got plenty for you!). However, if transaspie doesn't respond soon, we may be back where we started. Guanxi 14:24, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Just revert the god damn thing back to where YOU want it. I'm through caring about this page anymore. You have no idea how psychologically draining this has been to me...I tried to do what's right for the article and I have one lone dissenter who believes we should have the article which an admin stated was destroyed and believes I fucked up, and the other user who supported the revert criticizing me for changing the lead to be more accurate. I do not want to talk about this anymore because this whole situation has honestly and seriously driven me to the point of insanity. I am through caring about this article. -- transaspie 17:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
  • FWIW, we only disagree over one point. Even smart, well-intentioned people can disagree. I hope you will change your mind and continue to contribute to the article. Guanxi 00:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the article, Take II

*sigh* Okay, I'm willing to give it another shot. Seeing how I'm responsible for this article being protected (let us not talk anymore about whether anyone is to blame for it), I can responsible for unprotecting this article. Unlike some disputes, this one can be fixed logically and amicably.

I think you're incorrect about there being one point we're disagreeing about. What you've wanted to do is revert the article to its destroyed state. Part of my loss of sanity came because I simply could not understand why you would want an article that was destroyed. First off, can you agree to accept the article's length as it is now? If you've already done that...great, we're in business.

The main dispute you're thinking of involves the number of records he has. I will say this about the sources...I am pretty sure he didn't hold 43 records when he retired, and I'm even surer that he didn't hold 90 when he retired. I don't have the full text of James Peach's article, so I can't tell if he backs up his claim or if he only uses numbers that go so far over the casual readers heads that it makes even less sense than it did when it started. All the casual reader really needs to know is the important career stats, batting average, hits, runs, doubles, triples, stolen bases...the stats that an average reader, one that may not have baseball knowledge, can find reference to on most sites and can quickly understand. The esoteric records that Cobb has, the types that show up in the Sporting News record book for example, have no interest to such readers. As such, I would like to simply remove my claim about how many records he has from the lead.

I planned on moving the claim to legacy instead. Here, I need to stick with the 90 record claim. I am not going to say that he HOLDS 90 records, he's just CREDITED with 90. It's a widely cited stat which helps boost his legacy...fuck if I know if it's true. No other place besides that one source makes the 43 record claim that you want to support. The fact it's being made in an economics magazine partially makes me want to find other sources for such a claim...i.e., a source that specializes in sports.

I know you are intent on putting this outlying and, in my eyes, yet-to-be-verified claim in this article...how exactly do you want to do this? Tell me how you want to do this because it will make things a lot easier on us.

That is all I have for now. If we are able to co-operate, then I've got nothing against putting my time and energy into this article again.

Let's get this thing unlocked. -- transaspie 14:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You two can work out the general issues, and the question of how many records Cobb has and/or used to have. My main issue with this article has been with certain past editors who insisted that 4,189 is the "true" hits figure, and ignoring the official MLB figures. The current article lists both, and the explanation for that situation, and that's how it should be. I don't think it needs to be locked anymore, but I'm not doing much with it now, either. Baseball Bugs 16:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
  • transaspie - There's some misunderstanding: The only issue I'm concerned with, and the only disagreement we had (AFAIK) is that I believed we shouldn't mass revert other editors' changes. Anything else is a misunderstanding; I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, but I honestly think that if you read what I wrote with 'fresh' eyes -- forgetting any dispute we have -- you'll agree. In particular:
    • I don't object at all to the article length -- go to town -- but again, I strongly believe that needs to be achieved by improving on, not mass reverting, edits.
    • As we agreed in the section above, when the lock was removed I reverted to the 'non-GA' version (17:15, 5 June 2007). I then restored all subsequent edits (except the reversion, so from 03:41, 6 June 2007 to the present). Part of one edit changed a paragraph that no longer exists, so I omitted that, but noted it in the comments.
    • As for the number of records: I never felt one way or the other about it -- I was trying to get more input from you before making up my own mind. Your point -- that 43 is from only one source, which has little inherent expertise in the subject -- is an excellent one. Peach does not back up the number in the article. I agree we should remove the 43 unless we find more support.
    • For the number of records: I think we must include the 90 number -- if we don't, someone will add it later, so let's do it correctly. I think it should say he's widely rumored to have set 90 records (and maybe say that he definitely set a large number of records, including X, Y, Z, etc.). Credited sounds too official to me, but I could live with it. Whichever you use, I won't object.
Have fun. Guanxi 04:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
No, I am not going to have fun. I asked you to accept the article's length as it is now and instead you got YOUR way.
This article will be delisted because you are the ONLY person who wanted the article in this state. I mean, even Tecmo was supportive of the revert. And I had to accept YOUR way just to get this reverted. You are responsible for this article losing it's good status. I should not be the only one responsible for getting it back.
When I am not screaming at the top of my lungs due to the anger I feel that I have to put up with this article again (I am sadly not kidding when I say this), I will be glad to help. I will NOT, however, do this on my own.
*sigh* You won. I can't believe I've frickin' let you win. -- transaspie 06:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
As long as I am in my current mental state, I honestly cannot edit this article. This is your responsibility for the time being. I hate myself too much for involving myself in fixing this article. I seriously just want to cry right now...or hospitalize myself. -- transaspie 08:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the article: A fresh start

OK, I'm going to try to organize this ... in case any one else wants to help (?). Guanxi 14:42, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Where we are now

There's a general consensus that many edits between 03:30, 30 May 2007 and 17:15, 5 June 2007 removed valuable content and otherwise reduced the article's quality.

What to do? The Wikipedia way is,

Be respectful to others and their points of view. This means primarily: Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it.

That means we need to take each edit and improve on it -- keep the good parts, improve the less desirable parts, and when necessary, undo the destructive parts.

How to do it

It's simple:

  1. Go to the History page
  2. Find the next edit that needs review (see list below)
  3. Next to it, click the last link; that will display the changes made for that entry.
  4. Where undesired changes are made, simply copy the content from the previous version (the one of the left) into the current article. Again, let's respect others' work: Retain as much of the edit as possible; improve, don't revert.
  5. On the list below, check off the edit you reviewed

Also, to save some effort, beware of text that is edited several times -- there's no need to relive history by repeating each revision.

Track what's done

I'll list the edits that need review below. If you do one, check it off, so we don't duplicate each other's efforts. I'll check off ones which were subsequently reverted (that I can easily identify).

x 03:55, 30 May 2007
04:39, 30 May 2007
05:10, 30 May 2007
05:11, 30 May 2007
05:14, 30 May 2007
06:22, 30 May 2007
x 21:09, 30 May 2007 206.15.237.60
x 21:09, 30 May 2007 MartinBot
02:48, 31 May 2007
15:35, 31 May 2007
21:12, 31 May 2007
21:17, 31 May 2007
01:57, 1 June 2007
19:36, 1 June 2007
x 01:46, 2 June 2007
01:51, 2 June 2007
x 03:44, 2 June 2007
x 05:07, 2 June 2007
x 05:55, 2 June 2007
15:28, 2 June 2007
17:37, 2 June 2007
21:13, 2 June 2007
00:00, 4 June 2007
04:31, 4 June 2007
04:32, 4 June 2007
04:38, 4 June 2007
08:29, 4 June 2007
22:40, 4 June 2007
23:19, 4 June 2007
23:36, 4 June 2007
23:37, 4 June 2007
14:12, 5 June 2007
x 16:12, 5 June 2007
x 16:25, 5 June 2007
x 16:43, 5 June 2007
x 16:51, 5 June 2007
x 17:15, 5 June 2007

Status - (essentially) done!

The article is now mostly fixed. It looks like most of the damage was in one edit, 03:55, 30 May 2007, which I just spent a few hours manually fixing. The subsequent edits may need review, but I think we might be able to ignore them and move on at last. :-)) ! Guanxi 16:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, nice! Great job. Mad props to you. You've saved us a lot of hassle and you've saved a GA-quality article. -- transaspie 21:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank goodness. I still don't know what the heck happened with that edit of mine. I suspect that because I use firefox, i copied from the wrong "page" (blah...blah..blah..). In any event, a few things can still be done and then this baby is ready to rock. I think we should consider removing the records set from the introduction due to their "contentious" nature. Regardless, I'll let this sit for a few days before chiming in.//Tecmobowl 09:31, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup

I did a lot of WP:MOS cleanup work, but this article should be thoroughly cited to retain GA status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned almost a year ago that this article needed to be thoroughly cited; recently, a number of non-reliable websources were added. Also, publishers aren't provided, any of the citations are incomplete and incorrect, and dates aren't correctly and consistently formatted. The article needs to be sourced to reliable sources. The new additions also include a mixture of citation and cite family templates; the two different types of citations have different styles and shouldn't be mixed: see WP:CITE#Citation styles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Can you give an example? There are are so many citations there I can't follow it. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Abuser?

Is it true Ty used to severely abuse his dog, even kicking him off the porch and throwing him on the ground? Smuckers It has to be good 08:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Only when he was in a jam. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the old photo?

I thought the old photo was much better, much more evocative of his personality. Guanxi (talk) 00:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Ty Cobb/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are a number of serious issues that need to be addressed.

  • It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
The prose seem generally OK, maybe a 6/10.
Something is wrong with the quote boxes used in the article (fixed)
  • It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
This question over reliable sources needs to be addressed: what are the sources and are they reliable. In addition, I noticed several references that should be combined but are seperate at the moment.
  • It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  • It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  • It is stable.
  • It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  • Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN again. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards--Jackyd101 (talk) 10:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I have fixed the issue with the quote boxes (one too many pipes). I will take a closer look at the prose later tonight. caknuck ° resolves to be more caknuck-y 01:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. The really big problem is this supposedly unreliable source. It does look questionable to me, but it should be either confirmed as reliable (in which case explain why here) or replaced.--Jackyd101 (talk) 00:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
There are still unreliable source tags in this article. If these are not sorted out in one week then this article will be delisted.--Jackyd101 (talk) 12:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Since there has clearly been some work ongoing then I will give this another week, but please deal with all the unreliable source tags by this time next week.--Jackyd101 (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
There are still unaddressed tags in this article! I'm sorry but this article has been on hold long enough and I am delisting it from GA. Please improve the article and relist it at WP:GAN.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

There continue to be minor skirmishes over career hits and batting average. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Racism

Unresolved
 – If true, a significant aspect of coverage of the subject is missing.

Not that it offends me, but isn't Ty Cobb the most notorious racist in all of baseball? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.226.109.1 (talk) 16:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an expert but that's what I'd always learned. I find it extremely suspicious that the man I've always heard both in person and in media described as the worst person in sports history doesn't even have a controversy or criticism section! I remember speculation that Jackie Robinson might get a statue in Comerica Park (along with the other retired players/numbers retired by the Tiger) mentioned as notable only because it would have had the sweet irony of making ty cobb roll in his grave.Blaimjos (talk) 05:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure he was any more racist than the typical white guy of his era. But he was alive and well when baseball integrated, and it might be possible to find out what he thought about it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Ken Burns' Baseball gives significant coverage to Cobb's racism by providing several detailed accounts of physical altercations, disparaging remarks, and other such incidents. As to the post above which suggests that Cobb was "the typical white guy of his era" what about players like Walter Johnson or Honus Wagner? Were they atypical white guys then? Ty Cobb is undoubtedly one of, if not the best, baseball players of all time. This fact, however, does not allow for the too-casual dismissal of his constant and unabashed racism which this article features. - A concerned fan and reader.

Ty Cobb was quoted as saying Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays were great players, and no man (if qualified) should be denied a job based on his skin color. He opened a hospital in Baltimore that served African Americans, and started a scholarship fund that helped poor Georgia students (regardless of race). I don't think he was any more racist than other white people from Georgia during his time. His father was a senator the opposed tax policies geared to only African Americans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.128.214.129 (talk) 20:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Restored image

  • Ty Cobb safe at third, August 1924
  • before restoration
    before restoration
  • after restoration (5.62MB, 4,510 × 2,844 pixels)
    after restoration (5.62MB, 4,510 × 2,844 pixels)

Hi all, I've located a public domain image of Ty Cobb, restored it, and added the restored version to the article. It's about ten times the resolution of most of the images here. Will be nominating it for featured picture. Best regards, DurovaCharge! 07:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. And today's quiz: Where was the picture taken? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Looks great! Rlendog (talk) 15:21, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments. Btw I'm not sure where this was taken. From the advertisement's I'll guess Detroit? (50% chance of being right since I haven't looked up the 1924 schedule). Cheers, DurovaCharge! 07:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Other references I've seen on the internet say August 16, 1924, at Washington, D.C., specificially at Griffith Stadium, which was my first guess anyway, due to the large (and empty) outfield bleacher. I'm not convinced it wasn't a "posed" shot, but it's still a good shot of Cobb sliding into third. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Note how this reference [2] mentions the specific date and location, and also includes a blurb about Washington having gone on to win the World Series that year - and that they were mostly called the "Nationals" by the locals. It was later that "Senators" became the more commonly-used name of that team. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
You beat me to it. The other date that seems to be listed as a possibility (Aug. 19) the Tigers were also playing Washington at Griffith Stadium. The empty bleacher still seems a bit ironic given that this was the Senators/Nationals only World Championship season and that Aug. 16 1924 at least was a Saturday. Rlendog (talk) 07:48, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
That's why I wonder if it was posed. In any case, here's how to quickly ID it as D.C., assuming it's not an interleague exhibition game. Just be aware of the look of the jewel box parks of 1924, and you can narrow it down: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Washington... Boston and Detroit had high walls in left and no bleachers, so they're out. Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis had much narrower bleacher sections than this one. New York was of comparable size but configured differently. The photo fits Washington, and it's the only candidate left, so that's where it is. d:) Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Posed or not, getting timing this good was lucky. The technology wasn't very good at capturing this kind of action yet. I'll trust you about the stadium. DurovaCharge! 07:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. It's a little hard to tell if it's the home or road Detroit uniform, because the 1924 uniforms were identical except they wore gray on the road, and you can't see the shirt of the third baseman. As for the ballpark, I know my jewel box ballparks, and identifying ballparks and uniforms are a couple of ways of identifying specifics of photos. Fortunately, we already have a date on this one, and it seems to fit the circumstances. Notice, by the way, how close the photographer obviously was to the action. In those days, it was common practice for photographers to be standing on the field in foul ground. That enabled some great closeup photos that you can't quite get anymore, because the photographers have to stay some distance away, and the use of zoom and telephoto lenses distorts the image somewhat. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:49, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Although Cobb's uniform is clearly darker than the 3rd baseman's.Rlendog (talk) 07:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
You're right. Road grays. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
By the way, the 3rd baseman is most likely Ossie Bluege, who played in 102 games at 3rd for Washington in 1924, although Doc Prothro played in 45 games at 3rd and Tommy Taylor played in 16. Rlendog (talk) 07:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Appears to be kind of stocky, so if you had photos of all those guys, you could probably figure it out. One other thing to ponder: Note the width of those bleachers, and also the height at the back. It was about 400 feet to the front of the wall in left-center. Mickey Mantle's famous "tape measure" shot hit the top of the back wall and bounced out into the street. That boy was seriously strong. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you guys are great. If you come up with anything definitive feel free to add it to the featured picture candidacy. BTW (I don't think this counts as canvassing since you're already discussing it) you're also free to review the nom. DurovaCharge! 17:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Will its presence at that other website, and the fact that its newer than 1922, cause any problems? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
This image entered public domain by a gift of the copyright owner. DurovaCharge! 17:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Roger. So as far as we know, it's Cobb stealing third on August 16, 1924, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Washington Nationals, as they were then known, who would go on to win their only D.C.-based World Series that year, over the N.Y. Giants. Assuming the date's right, the Tigers won 5-2. [3] Unfortunately, the box score is not available except by paying for it. The Nats finished 92-62, 2 games ahead of the defending World Series champion Yankees, and 6 games ahead of the Tigers. [4] Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 18:10, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
It's unfortunate that Retrosheet has all the Senators box scores for 1923 and 1925, but not for 1924. I'm almost curious enough to pay Baseball Almanac the $10 for the box score, but that would probably take a while to arrive. Maybe Retrosheet will get 1924 up soon. Rlendog (talk) 20:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
At the close of action on the 16th, the Yanks led by 1/2 game over Detroit, with the Nats 3 games back. [5] A furious fight to the finish, and the Yanks missed by just a couple of staging a fourth consecutive Yanks-Giants World Series. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 18:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Is it plausible that this may have been shot during pregame pratice? Or as a posed shot after the game ended? DurovaCharge! 18:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's plausible. One clue, in addition to the empty seats, is the casual stance of the left fielder. I wonder if the original copyright owner knows anything about the specifics of the photo? For example, the famous Conlon photo of Cobb sliding into third base, one of the most famous baseball photos ever taken, was definitely game-action. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 18:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed the left fielder until you pointed him out. Assuming this is gane footage, that is almost certainly Hall of Famer Goose Goslin, since he played every game in left field for the Senators in 1924, although Nemo Leibold and Wid Matthews each got a few left field innings in. Rlendog (talk) 20:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, Retrosheet has the box score for the game on Aug. 16, 1924.[6] Ossie Bluege was the 3rd baseman and Goose Goslin was the left fielder. Attendance is not shown, so it is still possible that the empty bleachers are due to the photo being taken outside the game. But Cobb did have a triple during the game, so the photo is almost certainly of that. Rlendog (talk) 18:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Cobb's Hit Total

MLB endorsed Total Baseball as its official encyclopedia ( Schwarz, Alan. The Numbers Game : Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004), which endorsed the view of 4189 hits as Ty Cobb's proper hit total, which was independently verified by SABR's Baseball Records Committee. MLB.com's web page does not have encyclopedic status and, in fact, takes its lead from other sources (the change of Hack Wilson's 190 RBI to 191 RBI was because of SABR's research).

MLB has the power to call Ty Cobb's batting average whatever they want, but for the purposes of an actual wikipedia entry, the actual statistics are a bit of factual data, not owned or able to be copyrighted by MLB, so statistics (as opposed to awards), come down to Wikipedia's policies for use of statistics, which emphasizes that the peer-reviewed, community accepted numbers are preferable. Otherwise, it would be impossible to have entries such on things far more important such as the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, simply because the "official record" says no such famine took place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dan Szymborski (talk • contribs) 14:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I have requested an editor ruling on this issue.

DSZ (talk) 14:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Comparing baseball stats to a human tragedy is offensive. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
In any case, the last time I checked, the Elias Sports Bureau is the official statistician of MLB, and they show Cobb as .367 and 4,191. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
And Total Baseball is the official encyclopedia of MLB, which shows .366 and 4,189. So it comes down to verifiability of sources, which is John Thorn and SABR in the 1980s or an anonymous dead guy collating newspaper box scores a century ago. Which one do you feel is more verifiable?DSZ (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
And they haven't published in 5 years. Seems to me I heard they went bust. Meanwhile the ESB is alive and kicking. If you don't know who the Elias Sports Bureau is, maybe you need to find out. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I darn well know who Elias is, but Elias isn't a source of research for 1916 unless one of the Siwof brothers have the powers of deities to make the double-counted game of 1916 actually happen. Your obsession with "official" status is pretty silly and beside the point; we have verifiable research that counted the hit total in 1916 as being wrong. We do not have verifiable research that counted the hit total in 1916 as being right. Verifiable, multi-sourced, research takes precedence over hundred-year-old, unverifiable research. That is wikipedia's standard for use of statistics, that peer-reviewed, verifiable research takes precedence.
DSZ (talk) 15:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
So where are Total Baseball's current stats kept? Are they publicly visible? And it's not an "obsession", it's that unfair standards are being applied. Has every ballplayer's every stat been re-examined? Or is it just Cobb in 1910? I recall in 1968 when baseball gave its official endorsement to the MacMillan encyclopedia. They withdrew their endorsement when the records came out differently in some cases. That was supposedly meticulously researched also, and yet the numbers continue to change over time. There is no clear evidence that ANY of these so-called reliable sources is really reliable. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:16, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
The stats are now kept at baseball-databank.org, which supplies the data used on baseball-reference and sites such as ESPN. The verifiability of a double-counted game is quite easy (I got 1910 and 1916 confused - my memory is failing me in my old age), it's already noted in source under the Chalmers Award section - Ban Johnson had jurisdiction over what a private company could consider to be a fact, not jurisdiction over an independent encyclopedia that has a standard of verifiability for statistics. MLB's position that Ty Cobb has 4191 hits is no more than an unverifiable claim in the context of a Wikipedia entry and when there is verifiable research that shows of a double-counted game and no verifiable research that disproves that premise, verifiable research takes precedent.
DSZ (talk) 15:44, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
What I want from this, if anyone in the baseball project cares, is to decide what sources we are going to consider to be the "overriding" source on this topic. This has bounced back and forth for awhile now. I think it comes down to who "owns" the records. Does MLB own the records? Or are they in the public domain? No one from 1910 is around to explain how or why they double-counted a game. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Or maybe it was a behind-the-scenes attempt to make up to Cobb for the cheating that occurred in Lajoie's favor to try to deprive Cobb of a title. No way to know at this point. If it was a make-up attempt, what Johnson really should have done was to declare that final game a forfeit and to throw out its stats, but he didn't do that. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
After talking it over with an administrator that there are no clear standards here for what would be the preferable number to have in the statistics box, I would be content with the change I've recently made or a change of the variety (in order to be more internally consistent with style), which links to the dispute section but leaving the .367 intact, as a compromise resolution for this issue. Or we can drag in more baseball stat guys and fight about it for another week. I'm really not meaning to get testy here - I deal with statistics for a living and the difference between official and verifiable sources is one that comes up quite frequently
As for owning statistics, NBA v. Motorola and Feist v. Rural Phone are still the governing cases; MLB can only own a presentation of facts, not facts themselves.DSZ (talk) 15:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
I would be fine with displaying ".366 or .367" in the infobox. The article fully explains the discrepancy. I just don't think it's appropriate to label .366 as absolute, unless consensus among the figger filberts here is that we should do that. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 16:00, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, I could drag some more SABR guys in here, but I'm content with a minor infobox change, in the interests of peace. We don't want to end up on that WIKIPEDIA Lamest Edit Wars page.
DSZ (talk) 16:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Since SABR published a book on the matter, they would not be an independent source of arguments. But either way, just keep Liebman out of it. Although he would probably say he has his own evidence that Cobb's career number was actually .379. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 16:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, I was talking about other statheads, not so much the official organization. I was unaware of the Ron Liebman issue! No wonder you guys are wary of baseball statheads with easy-to-forge names suddenly making changes. DSZ (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Given that there are contradictory references, and that the one that's apparently incorrect is the one that's more widely known, I agree that it'd make sense to list both numbers with a brief note explaining the discrepancy. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 19:00, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Killing

This article used to address the fact that (as per Al Stump's 1961 biography and Charles Alexander's 1985 biography, and repeated on many websites) Cobb claimed to have killed a mugger in self-defense. It also explained why baseball historians think this probably didn't happen. However, at some point over the intervening years, this bit was removed.

Any objection to restoring it? DS (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I added a note to the talk page some months ago. It ended up in an archive:

In The National Pastime, #17, 1996 edition (published by the Society for American Baseball Research), Doug Roberts titles an article "Ty Cobb Did Not Commit Murder." Roberts researched Detroit autopsy reports for August and September of 1912, and found no violent deaths from head trauma. He concludes that, no matter how Cobb may have bragged, he didn't pistol whip anybody to death, though he did find a record of Cobb's being mugged on August 12 in the press. WHPratt (talk) 01:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC) WHPratt

I was concerned that the issue might come up again. It might be beneficial to raise and dismiss the point in the article proper to guard against further misinformation.WHPratt (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Definitely needs to be mentioned (along with a synopsis of Roberts' refutation). There's no way to know what actually happened, of course - whether Cobb didn't actually fight the mugger, or whether Cobb only thought he'd killed him; should we mention these possibilities? DS (talk) 22:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Not without reliable sources, or it would be original research. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:34, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Speculation about it might come up again - it was referred to in this recent column. Does seem odd to me that it is not referenced at all. Even if not true, the speculation about it is arguably sufficiently noteworthy in itself. --Legis (talk - contribs) 16:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Recent edit warring

Stale
 – Months without a repeat have passed.

I believe the source of the edit warring is a sockpuppet of a long-term vandal (from at least 2007), who is interested in baseball-related articles. More information can be found here. I'd recommend indef blocking of the user, if it turns out they're a sockpuppet. But be prepared for more vandalism to this article once the protection on it expires. --Ebyabe (talk) 17:00, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

1915-1921

I think the last two paragraphs of this section, concerning an anecdote about proving to a reporter that he could hit for power as well as Ruth, should be deleted. First, it's based around an anecdote that supposedly happened in 1925, not from 1915 to 1921. More importantly, the anecdote is not supported by the references provided, just Cobb's stats for those two days. Finally, the quote from Cobb in the final paragraph is not in response to a question about who is the best hitter Cobb ever saw, but who is the hardest hitter he ever saw. The quote thus no longer fits as a counter to the previous paragraph. I don't know how to use wikipedia well enough to know when those paragraphs were added or what their revision history is, but I can't confirm the anecdote and it sounds apocryphal. I suggest that both paragraphs simply be deleted. Eloq (talk) 07:33, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Post-delisting issues

See also racism thread immediately below; two editors now effectively claim the article is incomplete in its coverage of significant aspects of the subject. D'oh. Other than that, what's the hold up? It's already 2010 now. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

How can we get the hits/average situation stable? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


"The Tigers had finished second in 1922, but were 16 games behind the Yankees." This is incorrect, the St.Louis Browns finish second to the Yankees in 1922 -- they finished one game behind the Yanks that season. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.80.150 (talk) 19:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Post professional career

Resolved
 – Fixed.

The second paragraph under this heading erroneously links the name of one of Cobb's sons to Roy Cobb, the World War II veteran. Because the article is locked, I can't fix it. 70.63.146.67 (talk) 21:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)pergish1

That was a weird one. I fixed it. Thanks. Wknight94 talk 21:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC

WHAT ABOUT L'N'H'S'R?

If I recall correctly, one of the substitute Tigers on that day back in 1912 had a name so long that the scorekeeper rendered it as "L'N'H'S'R." (say it: Len-HAW-ser). That player's identity has never been determined, and he is usually referred to as "Four Apostrophes." 99.246.159.26 (talk · contribs)

Some box scores had his full last name, which was Leinhauser. Here's the Retrosheet line on Bill Leinhauser:[7] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

1919 Get 7 pounch out in 10 season?

In the section "Move to Philadelphia" it's mentioned that "[Dutch] Leonard accused former pitcher and outfielder Smoky Joe Wood and Cobb of betting on 1919 Get 7 pounch out in 10 season, a Tiger-Cleveland game played in Detroit on September 25, 1919". Is this a gambling term or gibberish? I think that if it's a legitimate gambling term, it needs to either be explained or just removed and stated that they were accused of betting on the Tiger-Cleveland game. Otherwise, it's just confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.202.210.134 (talk) 18:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It's gibberish. I'll look for the source of the vandalism. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:20, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Three separate vandalisms on Oct 27. I'll fix it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Done. Thanks for being alert! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Army service -- officer or enlisted?

The one reference regarding Cobb's military service has him quoted as enlisting. He "wore" captains bars, but that looks like a dog&pony show for the trainees. We do not have info showing Cobb as commissioned. Accordingly, I'm changing the category for him to US Army personnel.--S. Rich (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Its documented in various sources (see Ty Cobb: A Biography by Dan Holmes) that he was commissioned as a Captain in the Chemical Warfare Service. He served with Christy Mathewson and Branch Rickey in the unit. All three were comissioned as captains. They were in the unit basically as a part of a PR strategy to deal with fear of poison gas attacks among the public. But while it was for PR, what they were doing was very dangerous. They were repeatedly exposed to gas in "training exercises". Mathewson's life was shortened due to exposure to the gas. 75.20.229.120 (talk) 00:07, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Disputed Batting Average

The article says that his career batting average is .367, but it later says .366. I have also seen these disputed sources, but the same article cannot dispute itself within just words of itself. Something needs to be done so that the article does not tarnish the reputation of Wikipedia. Joey Gallo (talk) 01:19, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The aricle's final paragraphs explain that Cobb's exact at-bat and hit totals are in question, and identify the season under scrutiny. There could be more detail, but I think what's there is adequate to explain why there are varying figures. This sort of dispute exists for many statistics from the earlier days, and some might never be resolved definitively. WHPratt (talk) 12:45, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
There is a statistical discrepancy and it is mentioned in the article - not much more is needed as it isn't an earth-shattering issue and is common amongst turn-of-the-century/1910's/20's players as WHPratt rightly states. And I'm not sure how long you've been on Wiki, but there is no reputation to tarnish as this page is one of the better ones... To imply that having a difference in one stat out of all that text somehow besmirches the page in particular and Wiki as a whole is "interesting" to say the least. Ckruschke (talk) 19:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)Ckruschke I have been on Wikipedia for a few days. I used strong wording to get the point across. I know it was a good article, but it seems weird that one site would have two different numbers for one stat. I know that old players may have disputed or even unknown stats, but a person reading the article may want to see the more often used batting average. Either one still gives Cobb a big lead over Hornsby for career batting average. Joey Gallo (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I am somewhat surprised to note that Cobb's stats are still in question. Given the importance of his numbers, I'd have expected that all of the surviving accounts of all of his games should have been gone over at least once. However, some of his daily totals must still be in question, and some detailed explanation would be fascinating. WHPratt (talk) 03:10, 22 June 2014 (UTC) Is it because the official scorers are more organized now? Joey Gallo (talk) 12:55, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


In 1969 the official baseball encyclopedia was commissioned, and old documents were combed to update the records, things like pre-1920 runs batted in. This effort was incomplete, but it established methods and standards, and many of the remaining gaps have been filled in since then. Given the built-in check and balances and redundancies, I'm rather sure that no hits have been lost or gained lately.WHPratt (talk) 12:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Typo in Strikeouts?

The discrepancy between strikeouts between the two websites that the statistics are listed from is HUGE (300-something vs 600-something). Typo?

I looked at the actual references for the two sets of stats. The MLB.com stats don't include any strikeouts from 1905 to 1912. It looks like Cobb's strikeout rate during that time was at its highest according to Baseball Reference. I don't think that strikeouts were counted as an official offensive statistic until 1913. EricEnfermero HOWDY! 09:47, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Up until about 1969, strikeout data for the 1910s and before had been unrecorded. The site retrosheet.org has Cobb at 681 career strikeouts. Their data is gathered from surviving scoresheets. They don't even flag this total as "incomplete" as they do with Cobb's caught stealing, intentional walks, grounded into double play and a few more stats, so they must think it's reliable. The 300-odd figure must be the total for the later years that dsidn't have to be reconstructed. WHPratt (talk) 13:41, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

All of the Al Stump sourced material should be removed.

Al Stump has long-ago been revealed to a totally unreliable source. This is a man who has been shown to have been a forger and a con-man who sold invented Cobb items repeatedly. There is simply no basis by which he can be considered a reliable source on Cobb anymore. All the stories about Cobb that exclusively source to Stump should be removed. 70.234.227.209 (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't look like anyone replied to this comment by the anon editor, but I have the same concern. If Al Stump has been shown to time and again fictionalized and sensationalized the life and times of Ty Cobb, most recently concretely proven in the 2010 peer-reviewed article (http://haulsofshame.com/Final%20SABR%20Article%20-%20as%20published_6744.pdf), as well as manufactured baseball and personnal memoribilia that he attributed to Cobb, how can we keep anything in this article that is attributed to either of Stump's three books? This would obviously be a major haircut as sentences/quotes/sections attributed to Stump are sprinkled throughout the page, but I would volunteer to attempt it. Ckruschke (talk) 15:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

Agreed, Stump is not a reliable source. The new book by Leerhsen might prove a valuable source (and certainly further debunks the Stump myths). I've linked a review of it: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/books/review/ty-cobb-a-terrible-beauty-by-charles-leerhsen.html (2 July 2015) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.95.126.175 (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Thirded. Stump was a fraud and a charlatan who made up stuff to suit his bank account. Anything citing any of his works should be removed ASAP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.112.197.50 (talk) 08:54, 9 July 2015 (UTC) 209.112.197.50 (talk) 08:56, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Must also include the secondary sources which reference Stump's work. So who's going to do the heavy lifting :)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ty Cobb/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==GA Reassessment==
This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Ty Cobb/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are a number of serious issues that need to be addressed.

  • It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
The prose seem generally OK, maybe a 6/10.
Something is wrong with the quote boxes used in the article (fixed)
  • It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
This question over reliable sources needs to be addressed: what are the sources and are they reliable. In addition, I noticed several references that should be combined but are seperate at the moment.
  • It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  • It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  • It is stable.
  • It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  • Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN again. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards--Jackyd101 (talk) 10:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I have fixed the issue with the quote boxes (one too many pipes). I will take a closer look at the prose later tonight. caknuck ° resolves to be more caknuck-y 01:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. The really big problem is this supposedly unreliable source. It does look questionable to me, but it should be either confirmed as reliable (in which case explain why here) or replaced.--Jackyd101 (talk) 00:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
There are still unreliable source tags in this article. If these are not sorted out in one week then this article will be delisted.--Jackyd101 (talk) 12:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Since there has clearly been some work ongoing then I will give this another week, but please deal with all the unreliable source tags by this time next week.--Jackyd101 (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
There are still unaddressed tags in this article! I'm sorry but this article has been on hold long enough and I am delisting it from GA. Please improve the article and relist it at WP:GAN.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
There continue to be minor skirmishes over career hits and batting average. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Last edited at 13:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC). Substituted at 16:01, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Suggest a Complete Revision

Having just finished Leerhsen's Terrible Beauty, it is obvious that Cobb's page needs revised. Going forward Leerhsen should be considered the definitive resource if only for the simple fact that he actually fact checked the various other works on Cobb. Suggest removing the references to racism. (Leerhsen notes that despite the prevailing opinion there is only one account of Cobb referencing race and it was an indifferent statement acceptable for the time period.) Also suggest removing the section about Sam Crawford. Considering that Cobb had feuds with numerous teammates, it is unnecessary to focus on just one of the rivalries. Lastly, would suggest that a section focusing on the ground truth of Cobb and Al Stump's brief relationship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razzanof (talk • contribs) 04:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

"Cobb was notorious for sliding into bases feet first, with his spikes high"

This line from the intro should be deleted. One of its two "sources" is an ESPN reader's mailbag, and the other is a photograph! That is pretty bad. 2602:306:CFEA:170:7DC9:E70B:5264:70EB (talk) 00:06, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Questionable source for reports of Bigotry

I'm changing the start to the second paragraph in the Reported Violence and Bigotry section. Currently it reads:

"While, "[s]tories of Cobb's racial intolerance were well documented", during his playing days, after Cobb left the game he appeared to have a change of heart regarding race.[19]"

However the source provides two examples, one of this (attacking a black laborer) is not in anyway confirmed to be racially motivated and the second (attacking a black grounds keeper and his wife) is an incident this wiki entry already describes as "now considered dubious at best". RedRamage (talk) 13:22, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

File:Ty Cobb sliding2-edit1.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Ty Cobb sliding2-edit1.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on July 17, 2016. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2016-07-17. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:47, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Ty Cobb
Ty Cobb (1886–1961), shown here sliding into third base on August 16, 1924, was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) outfielder. He spent twenty-two seasons with the Detroit Tigers, including six as the team's player-manager, and finished his career with the Philadelphia Athletics. During this time Cobb set ninety MLB records, though his abilities were sometimes overshadowed by his surly temperament and aggressive playing style. In 1936 Cobb was made an inaugural member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and in 1999 editors at the Sporting News ranked him third on their list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players".Photo: National Photo Company; restoration: Lise Broer; crop: jjron
Archive – More featured pictures...

A new bio with a different look at Cobb

Charles Leerhsen’s new biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty is a book that repudiates much of what is in our article. It is largely intended to rehabilitate its subject’s reputation. I have only just heard about the book on the radio w/a discussion with the author. WE (Wikipedia Editors) may need to do a rewrite soon. Buster Seven Talk 07:10, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Wording may need work

" Reported victims of his sudden uncontrollable rages through the years included a black groundskeeper who attempted to shake Cobb's hand, along with his wife, though this story (see above) is now considered dubious at best ... "

Shouldn't that read "attempted to shake Cobb's hand, along with his wife's ..."? If he'd really shaken the lady, I could see why Cobb got upset. Or maybe the offense was for the man to approach Cobb in the presence of his wife. Whatever. WHPratt (talk) 15:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

So it was the other guy's wife who got attacked? Yet another interpretation. I think I was justified in asking for clarification! WHPratt (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
   The wording can be improved (and will be, if it hasn't already and unless something shinier distracts me), but i'm distressed that no one has noted here the only reasonable construction that can be put on the quoted passage, in spite of its tortured syntax:
Two people who were among the reported victims .... were a black groundskeeper (and even his [look back a few more words for the noun for which "his" is the referent] wife), when that colleague attempted ....
IMO, it's clear how to fix it; i hope the confusion does not reflect ignorance of the American racism of their time, including
physical contact constituting contaminating, and
whites' presumption that race negated the chivalric convention against insulting a man in front of his own wife.
--Jerzy•t 04:09, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

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#nward?

I assume that this is a typo, I further assume this to mean what I think it means, and I can't believe this needs to be here at all. There can be a different section title.

Chriscrutch (talk) 07:26, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

It looks like it read "onward" until the o was replaced with a pound sign. There are more year ranges after this section, so "1911 and onward" doesn't fit particularly well. I changed it to "1911-1914" for now. EricEnfermero (Talk) 08:10, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Let's work to remove Al Stump citations from this article

It is widely agreed upon now that Stump's biography was wholly inaccurate. Can we work together to rewrite this article sans Stump citations? Kingturtle = (talk) 02:25, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Trivia & unsourced material removed

Efforts to create a Ty Cobb Memorial in Royston initially failed, primarily because most of the artifacts from his life were sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and the Georgia town was viewed as too remote to make a memorial worthwhile. But ultimately, on July 17, 1998, the 37th anniversary of Cobb's death, the Ty Cobb Museum and the Franklin County Sports Hall of Fame opened its doors in Royston. On that day, Cobb was one of the first members to be inducted into the Franklin County Sports Hall of Fame.

On August 30, 2005, his hometown hosted a 1905 baseball game to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Cobb's first major league game. Players in the game included many of Cobb's descendants as well as many citizens from his hometown of Royston. Another early-20th-century baseball game was played in his hometown at Cobb Field on September 30, 2006, with Cobb's descendants and Roystonians again playing. Cobb's personal batboy from his major league years was also in attendance, and threw out the first pitch.

In addition to the aforementioned film, Ty Cobb's legacy also includes legions of collectors of his early tobacco card issues, as well as game used memorabilia and autographs. Perhaps the most curious item is a 1909 Ty Cobb Cigarettes pack, leaving some to believe Cobb either had, or attempted to have, his own brand of cigarettes. Very little about the card is known other than its similarity to the 1909 T206 Red Portrait card published by the American Tobacco Company, and until 2005 only a handful were known to exist. That year, a sizable cache of the cards was brought to auction by the family of a Royston, Georgia, man who had stored them in a book for almost 100 years.[2][unreliable source?].

The new baseball stadium at Hampden–Sydney College is named Ty Cobb Ballpark.

The band Soundgarden recorded a song "Ty Cobb" in the album Down on the Upside in 1996. However, the song wasn't actually written about Ty Cobb, it was given the name because the lyrics reminded their bassist Ben Shepherd of him.[3]

Celtic-Punk band Flatfoot 56 composed and recorded a song about Ty Cobb as a part of their album Odd Boat released in March 2017.[4]

References
  1. ^ "Career Stats for Ty Cobb". thebaseballpage.com. Retrieved 2007-03-23.
  2. ^ Kossuth, James. "Ty Cobb. The Georgia Peach". Retrieved April 18, 2008.
  3. ^ Cross, Charles R. "The Joys of Noise: Soundgarden Throw a High-Frequency Sludgefest". Rolling Stone. February 8, 1996.
  4. ^ Ty Cobb by Flatfoot 56, retrieved September 21, 2017

I've removed this text from the § Legacy section pending more authoritative sourcing. The first few paragraphs might be appropriate if they had published, reliable sources establishing due weight, while the last few bits are just miscellaneous trivia. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:40, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't Follow

Regarding the rivalry with Sam Crawford, the article states: "Although they may not have spoken to each other, Cobb and Crawford developed an ability to communicate non-verbally with looks and nods on the base paths. They became one of the most successful double steal pairings in baseball history.[159]"

I don't dispute that they made a lot of double steals; in fact, if they didn't actually hold the record for that I'd be surprised. The implication that that was due to some uncanny communication is dubious. Is that from the referenced biography, or a Wikipedia editor's own good idea? Either way, it doesn't follow. What do you need to get a double steal? First you need one guy to get to second base, then a second guy gets on first, then they attempt the double steal. Well, Cobb got on second base more than anybody. He averaged 48 stolen bases and 39 doubles per 162 games according to baseall-reference.com. Given that he stole more bases than anyone, and stole home several times, we can be sure he stole third quite a few times. So if you have one guy who steals third a whole lot, to be the greatest double-steal combo in history, all the second guy has to do is 1) play behind Cobb for years 2) get on first a reasonable percentage of the time 3) also be a prolific base-stealer. Crawford had a 300 lifetime batting average and over 300 bases stolen, so while not in Cobb's class, he qualifies.

They don't need to communicate. Crawford just has to go when Cobb goes. He could just be watching to see when Cobb goes, or they could both be getting signals from the third base coach. I'm guessing Cobb didn't signal Crawford; he probably didn't care that much whether Crawford stole second behind him, and he wouldn't want to tip off the defense (not that they didn't know he was going anyway, but they didn't know when).

I'd like to see this corrected, but I don't know the best way, and I don't want to get overruled.Wood Monkey 19:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)


RfC: What should we give as Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average?

There is unanimous consensus for listing ".366" as Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average. There is also consensus for a footnote or notice clarifying the evidence for using this statistic. Toadspike (talk) 17:12, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What should we give as Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average?

  • ".366"
  • ".367"
  • ".366 or .367"
  • Other, please specify.

(NBI think it's fair to say that if there is a decision, it should apply to all places in all articles where Cobb's lifetime average is given, agreed?) Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Survey

They didn't, but it doesn't matter. Stats are records of facts. There are lots of stats that governments and other official bodies such as MLB can't change altho they would sure like to. Historical facts are stubborn like that. If you look at Cobb's player page at MLB.com it actually does still say .367 (altho all the other statements, that I have found, of Cobb's lifetime average on other MLB.com page give .366, or else ".366 or .367 depending on source"). MLB flat-out said that they were going to stick with .367 now and forever in defiance of the facts and research and (I infer) any new research discoveries that come up ever, because, well, they can. "Because we can" is actually the entirety of their argument. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
  • .366, per Herostratus's details below. However, it might be useful to (just in this article) explain why .367 sometimes still comes up (i.e., in older sources).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:15, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
  • .366, the details below seem to paint an overwhelming case that this should be a slam dunk. Nemov (talk) 17:56, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
  • .366, as per Herostratus' comments, though we should cite why the number changed from .367, to forego any talkpage back-n-forth on the subject and potentially destabilize the article. In short, note the actual average while noting why others thought it higher. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 19:19, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, I was going to add a FAQ to the talkpage about it, but then I realized we need a decision first. Also, on first use in this article, and maybe other articles, we should link to sources. (As a matter of fact, we could have a whole short article on the matter. There's plenty of reliable material for several paragraphs, including coverage in notable mainstream publications, to make a perfectly acceptable GNG article, and I mean we have covered all kinds of obscure disputes and so on. You could add a paragraph to this article instead, but the dispute isn't really about Ty Cobb per se and the article's long enough already maybe. Herostratus (talk) 20:54, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
    One or more paragraphs in this article should be fine. While it's "legal" to create an article on any topic that can pass GNG, in practice many perma-stubs just get merged, and I think that would happen with a very short article on Cobb's average.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
    I suppose so... this article is starting to bump up against the bottom of the recommended max size tho. But a brief mention, maybe a longer footnote exposition at first use as suggested below, and also a FAQ on the talk page, would work, yeah. Herostratus (talk) 09:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    Ah I see there already is a good section, Ty Cobb#Regular season statistics. Probably should be renamed. Anyway, I've had people who haven't drilled down that far that just come and change the figures in the infobox and lede, so the RfC was necessary... I added a hidden note not to change the figure, which I couldn't have if I wasn't sure editors agreed. Also will write a talkpage FAQ someday. Herostratus (talk) 07:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
  • .366 – The majority of reliable sources given below align with this value. The first use of the value in the article can include a footnote discussing the correction of the old cited value of .367 to the correct value of .366 if this is a contentious issue in baseball statistics. --Guest2625 (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • .366 – the arguments for this average are compelling. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:26, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • .366 - per the above arguments. BogLogs (talk) 12:21, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended discussion

The matter is not in dispute. It just isn't, is all. I have looked into this matter, and found that every disinterested human person who has considered the matter with any skill and diligence agrees that Cobb's lifetime average, as near as we can humanly figure from our exhaustive research to this point, was .366.

There's a problem because, for many decades after Cobb retired, .367 was believed to the correct number, and three+ entire generations of American baseball fans (Silent, Boomers, Xers) grew up believing it, and two others (Lost, Greatest) died believing it. But that's wrong. He actually batted .366. We know that that now, because starting in the 1980s, exhaustive and fully transparent research by a number of skilled, intelligent, respected, and professional historians and analysts has shown this. But, we still get the .367 number here, a lot, and there's constant wrangling, and let's end this for crying out loud.

There are many reliable sources and, without a single exception, all -- all -- agree on this point, including of course the Baseball Hall Of Fame and all the baseball encyclopedias. All of them. For more details and proof, see the thread Talk:Ty Cobb#It's time and past time to fix the batting average thing above (which also describes how Major League Baseball, for egregiously self-serving business reasons of its own, pretends to dispute the facts, which confuses some editors and gives an argument from authority cover for trolls. Thank you for your time. Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

  • I haven't looked to see how it is written, but maybe go by current reliable sources and include some discussion about how the number has changed over time like you write above? Good luck. --Malerooster (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
I would point out, to anyone who thinks that Cobb is being cheated out of .001 on his lifetime batting average, that .366 is a more impressive number than .367. Anyone who achieved 11 hits in 30 at-bats has a .367 average. So does anyone else whose hits and at-bats are in the simple ratio 11/30. I would suspect that, over the past century, there are numerous major leaguers who collected 11 hits in their first 30 at bats, and that a few of them got no further chances for some reason or another. However, to have an average that rounds off to .366 requires at least 1000 at-bats (e.g., 366-for-1000 or 439-for-1200). This would represent several seasons of excellence, and no one besides Cobb has maintained this level for even this long. Whereas .367 can be a fluke, it requires a great hitter to achieve .366. (This may seem paradoxical at first glance, but consider that any pitcher who has a 3-2 record for his career has a .600 winning percentage. It took Walter Johnson many years and 400+ wins to ring in at .599.) WHPratt (talk) 17:01, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
This... is interesting. Is it really true that you can't divide two numbers to get .366 unless the number being divided is over 1000 or more. Huh. Herostratus (talk) 06:16, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Okay, 183/500 is also .366 exactly, but I don't think you can do it in fewer than 500 at-bats, unless 183 and 500 have a common factor, and they don't: 183 is 3 * 61, both of which are prime numbers, and neither is a factor of 500. Still, it's a lot more difficult to do this in 500 than it is to attain .367 in just 30. (Joe Jackson may have been in that range in his early seasons, but as he's another world-class hitter, it only goes to support my point.) WHPratt (talk) 04:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I stand corrected. Going from the philosophical and intuitive to the empirical, I ran a program to compute all possible combinations of at bats and hits from 1,000 AB on down, checking for those between .365 and .368 when rounded to three decimal places and found over a hundred combinations that would yield .366 in print. They range from 366/999 through 134/366 all the way down to 15/41. (Also found quite a few more that rang in at .367.) So, you’re right: it’s not all that rare.
So, I wouldn’t use this argument to demonstrate that .366 is more noteworthy than .367. I suspect that similar logic would be convincing that it takes a good hitter to bat .299, whereas a lot of blokes can manage 3-for-10, but that maybe the repeating 6’s in 0.366666667 complicate things. Actually, methods for rounding off decimals vary. Some would round .3665 up all the time, whereas others would apply different rules. Unless some real mathematician wants to advise, I’ll drop the argument. WHPratt (talk) 16:11, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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