Was Ty Cobb Racist?

[soxfan1468927]

i dont always read the threads, i respond to the headline. i aint got time for that. we werent all fooled...baseball history was.

shoeless joe is another one that is highly overblown...

joe wanted to play and win those games.

What's funny is, this is the part many have been fooled into believing.

 

[JohnU]

What's funny is, this is the part many have been fooled into believing.

I honestly think Jackson and the others were expected to affect the SCORE of the games, not necessarily LOSE them. It's an important distinction because the gamblers were keenly aware of their business, as is to be expected. There are people all the time who fall for the "tell ya what I'm gonna do..." and get agreement on something.
It's also possible that Lefty Williams and Cicotte understood the agreement differently than Jackson or Gandil or Risburg ... all we know is that the indictment failed to convict the players.
What happened after that is more important to me, because it underscored the power that the East Coast baseball establishment had. They hired Landis who -- a full year later -- systematically broke up the best team in MLB at the time and allowed for the peaceful transfer of financial power to shift to New York.

The Yankees had just built this enormous ballpark to fit the needs of the one guy who had already become the stuff of MYTH. That was 1920-21. There is more to this than coincidene, IMHO.

Which is NOT to say that the fix wasn't in.

An anecdote to that story is that Eddie Roush, who played for the Reds, went to his grave deeply saddened that nobody ever gave his team any credit for having won that series. He always felt like they had played well enough to have their victory stand on its own merit.

None of this is about Ty Cobb, however.
I would have loved to watch Cobb and Jackson in their prime.