Ty Cobb and the opening of the Detroit Stars' Hamtramck Park

[renf]

I recall reading years ago about Ty Cobb's returning to Hamtramck to throw out the first pitch was the Detroit Stars
opened their new baseball park in Hamtramck which still stands.
I was surprised given Mr. Cobb's reputation.


https://www.freep.com/story/sports/m...ticle_headline

[Lowell]

That article by Bill Dow is a very interesting read and revisionist history of Cobb's career that counters the sensationalized myths about him that arose from false histories written by hack writers in search of a buck.

I found this snippet about Cobb's family history most revealing.

“Race was never an issue in our family and my dad always spoke very highly of granddad,” she [Cobb's grand daughter] said. "People assume that Ty Cobb must have been a racist because he was raised in Georgia in the 1880s. In fact, he descended from a long line of abolitionists. As Charlie Leerhsen discovered, Ty’s great grandfather was a minister who was run out of town for preaching against slavery; his grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate army because of slavery; his father was an educator and Georgia state senator who spoke up for his black constituents and whose political career was in part cut short for having broken up a lynch mob.”

In his book, Leerhsen writes, “For years Cobb had publicly applauded the integration of organized baseball, cheering it louder than virtually any old-time star.”

In a 1952 Sporting News article on the integration of the Texas minor leagues, published before the Athletics, Pirates, Cardinals, Reds, Yankees, Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox had a black player on their rosters, Cobb stated:

“The Negro has the right to compete in sports and who’s to say they have not?” He later said, toward the end of his life: “The only player I would pay to see is Willie Mays.”

File that under, "Gee, I didn't know that!"