Ty Cobb love-fest

"Baseball is a red-blooded game for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and all that implies; a struggle for supremacy; a survival of the fittest." Tyrus Raymond Cobb.
In my opinion Ty Cobb was the greatest Baseball player of all time. You can compare his career and stats to any other player throughout the history of our great game. Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Josh Gibson, even up to today's players like Albert Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez, no one comes close. One of the greatest managers of all time Casey Stengel once said " I never saw anyone like Cobb. No one even came close to him as the greatest ballplayer. Ruth was sensational. Cobb went beyond that. When he wiggled those wild eyes at a pitcher, you knew you were looking at the one bird no one could beat. It was like he was superhuman." From the time Cobb got his first hit against Jack Chesbro of the New York Highlanders (presently the Yankees) and turned it into a double scoring two runs, he batted .300 23 consecutive years. That's insane! Show me another player who has done that in any era. In 11,434 at bats Cobb only struck out 357 times. That's dumb founding. Willie Mays (Ernie Harwell's all-time greatest player) had 10,881 career at bats and struck out 1,526 times. There's no comparison. But this isn't just a blog comparing stats between great ballplayers. This is a Ty Cobb love-fest. When Mr. Cobb retired in 1928 after playing 22 out of his 24 big league seasons with the Detroit Tigers he owned 83 Major League Baseball records. There's no comparison.
I believe generations of baseball fans have been brain washed by east coast writers and media, namely in New York and Boston; that Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays were the greatest. Why? Because they're New York and Boston players and everyone likes there own. I'm not saying they were not great players, because they were. I'm just saying Ty Cobb beats all of them. There is no comparison. I might sound like a conspiracy theorist with my brain washing idea, but look at Ken Burns PBS Baseball documentary. It glorifies the fore mentioned three and demonizes and vilifies Cobb. Why? Ken Burns is from suburban Boston and every intellectual writer/scholar he has comment in his documentary is from New York or Boston with the exception of George Will and Shelby Foote (there from Southern Illinois and Mississippi, respectively). But they all have an east coast/New York, Boston bias. They like their own. It was the same in the early 20th century with the two greatest pitchers of the era. Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators and Christy Matthewson of the New York Giants. The New York writers were obsessed in making Matthewson out to be the better pitcher, when in fact Johnson was the better of the two. The only mark against Johnson was he played in Washington instead of New York. It was the same for Cobb, if he had played in New York or Boston instead of Detroit, he would be immortalized in elementary school text books like Ruth is today.
Cobb had his problems in society, but so did Ruth. It's just the New York writers covered up Ruth's immoralities and did not when it came to the great Cobb. Cobb is known as a racist, and he probably was, but so was 99% of everyone that grew up south of the Mason Dixon line at that time. Ruth was a womanizer and a pedophile, sleeping with countless underage girls. But womanizing is socially acceptable. I'm not defending Cobb's racism one bit, it was disgusting. But I want it to be known that over 700 African-American kids in Georgia have gone to college for free because of Ty Cobb's scholarships for high school students in rural Georgia. Babe Ruth didn't leave behind a scholarship fund. But this is not an essay on Baseball morals though. This is an essay on why Ty Cobb was the best. Cobb was the best because he played with every fiber in his body to succeed. He had to fight and claw his way to the top and he did just that. That's one reason I respect him so much. "I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me...tried every dirty trick to cut me down. But I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch." Cobb said. When asked why he fought so hard in Baseball Cobb replied, " I did it for my father, who was an exalted man. They killed him when he was still young. They blew his head off the same week I became a major-leaguer. He never got to see me play. Not one game, not an inning. But I knew he was watching me... and I never let him down. Never." You have to respect that, at least I do. No other Baseball player in any other era dominated his sport the way Cobb dominated the game from 1905-1928. The man hit .420 and has a lifetime batting average of .367 with 4,190 hits and 897 stolen bases. "Ty Cobb was the most volatile, the most fear-inspiring presence ever to appear on a baseball field. His equal is not likely to come along again." said Cobb biographer Charles Alexander. Cobb was the greatest. Cobb is Baseball and Detroit should be proud to call him our own.