[byrone]

Originally Posted by djson1

Whether or not Cobb truly deserved a bad rep as he has is debatable. But there seems to be a great turnaround PR move by his supporters and family to un-tarnish a lot of his bad image in recent decades. There’s no doubt that Al Stump lost a ton of credibility as a writer (and his fake memorabilia and forgeries certainly didn’t help). However, there still seems to be a lot of anecdotes by players and fans of just how bad of a personality he did have. He may have even been a big racist, but he DID grow up in a time in Georgia where just about everybody was racist and it was just about acceptable. I’m sure he would have been more “PC” if he grew up in this day and age.

All the bad personality aspects aside, I still greatly admire Cobb for the player he was and his great hitting ability. The bottom line is, we can’t really rate a baseball player on his personality unless you actually knew or at least met the guy in person. Many of us collectors have probably met guys like Musial and Gwynn and thought how nice they were…and they truly were nice guys! But I can’t say if Cobb was truly nice just based on some articles and sample letters he wrote. Just because he thanked people in letters, doesn’t mean he was a really nice guy (I’m not saying he was really bad either).

By the way, I heard Tris Speaker was one of the biggest racists in the game too, but I still admire him for his playing ability.

Interesting stuff here on Cobb and racism

http://baseballguru.com/bburgess/ana...burgess02.html