I used to believe he was an aggressive racist man who tried to keep black players out of the league as violently as possible, giving rise to media like Soundgarden’s Ty Cobb

But I’m now reading through his Wikipedia article, and I can’t quite work him out.

He’s definitely aggressive, and has a “hard-headed fuck-you-all” attitude to life. It looks like the racist allegations against him might have just been slander caused by another player (Schmidt).

There’s one altercation he has with a cement worker whose work he ruined by stepping in it, and then escalated into something more… but as far as I can see that’s it.

He just seems like a good player who’s a bit heavy handed and loud mouthed, and fights anyone who he perceives does him wrong, regardless of background or skin color.

There’s one story that made me giggle a bit:

Cobb climbed into the stands and attacked Lucker, who it turned out was handicapped (he had lost all of one hand and three fingers on his other hand in an industrial accident).

Some onlookers shouted at him to stop because the man had no hands, to which Cobb reportedly retorted, “I don’t care if he got no feet!”

According to Russo, the crowd cheered Cobb on in the fight. Though extremely rare in the 21st century, attacking fans was not so unusual an activity in the early years of baseball.