One thing that his mediocre 1905 batting experience taught Cobb was that he was going to have to work extremely hard to be as good as he wanted to be. There was something about hitting that Cobb loved, compelling him to seek perfection. When he was younger, he fell in love with the feeling of a well-struck ball. "That bat literally tingled in my hand. It gave off an electric impulse that traveled through my body and told me I'd found the one endeavor that I could do well" (Cobb, 39). Not hitting well was not something that Cobb would stand for; he devised a plan.
Part of his plan was to gain weight, which he did in the off-season, and grow a few inches (although that was beyond his control), playing much of his career at 6'1", 175. The other part of his plan was to learn to hit lefties. Knowing that the only way he would learn was through practice, he wanted to get into the starting lineup in 1906 so that he might face lefties in game situations. Experience taught him how to hit lefties: he stood at the back of the batter's box, instead of the middle, where he stood for righties. This allowed him more time to follow a lefty's curveball, which tailed away from a left-handed batter. With that extra split second, he watched the pitch and poked it into left field instead of trying to pull it. He also closed his stance and shortened his swing, which provided him the bat control he needed.
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| Cobb's famous hands-apart grip. |
Always have a belligerent, take-charge attitude up there. You can cultivate quite a "mad on" while awaiting your turn at bat, a cold determination to ram the ball down the pitcher's throat. You'd be surprised how effective it is. It will show up in your walk, in your eyes, in the way you hould your head, the stance you take. Now the pitcher is fearing you.Cobb wasn't going to let anyone stand in his way, least of all pitchers, no matter who or how great they were.They used to say of my cocksure strut, "Look at Cobb—he thinks he owns the park." Well, I'd rather be called a swellhead than a bad hitter (Cobb, 157).
One pitcher against whom Cobb needed more than intense hatred was Walter Johnson, The Big Train. Johnson put the fear of God in the entire American League when he showed up in 1907 with a blazing fastball that made most hitters feel like he was throwing watermelon seeds. Cobb recalls his first encounter with Johnson:
The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy wind-up—and then something went past that made me flinch. The ball came in so fast that I wondered if he had a concealed gun on his person. I hardly saw the pitch, but I heard it. The thing just hissed with danger (Cobb, 65).Meanwhile, Cobb, a believer in pseudoscience, claimed that his knowledge of phrenology (the study of the size and shape of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character) told him that Johnson was kind-hearted and even-tempered and was afraid to hit anyone with his pitches (It seems that simple human compassion could also have kept Johnson from throwing his lightning-fast pitches too close to a batter). So Cobb crowded the plate, and Johnson, apparently not willing to brush Cobb back, had to pitch him outside, where Cobb could hit the ball to the opposite field. In his 67 career games against Johnson, according to Alexander, Cobb hit the all-time shutout leader for a .335 batting average (56). According to Bak, Cobb hit Johnson for a .366 average (44). In his critically acclaimed and thoroughly researched biography of Johnson, Jack Kavanagh mentions only Alexander's number. In any event, while Johnson may have had the rest of the American League under his thumb throughout his career, Cobb held his own against The Big Train.
Cobb learned to hit all of the American League well enough to capture his first batting title in 1907, the youngest ever to do so, two months shy of his twenty-first birthday.
In 1910, Cobb spent the entire season fighting with Napoleon Lajoie for the batting title in a race that came down to the final day. The dust that the race stirred up, however, took much longer to settle.
Cobb was on fire for much of the 1911 season. In late July, Cobb was hitting .426, helped considerably by a 40 game hitting streak, the longest of his career, that had ended on July 4th. On July 11 (or 12, believe it or not, sources vary), he stole second, third and home on three straight pitches (I did this in 1991 on my Babe Ruth team; it isn't easy and requires more luck than anything else). Cobb was so hot that he was talking about getting 300 hits and breaking the all-time record of .4921. But in August, Cobb's torrid season began to cool down when a case of bronchitis began to wear him down. He took a few days off to recover, and still managed to put together a phenomenal campaign. What Cobb finished with was an incredible .420 average, with 248 hits, 147 runs scored, 144 RBI, 83 stolen bases, and the league lead in doubles, triples, and slugging average. He was awarded another Chalmers, this time for being voted the AL MVP by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
As the 1910s progressed, a young slugger from Baltimore began to make waves in Boston both as a power hitter and a pitcher. After Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees in 1919, he would forever change the nature of the baseball and the game that Cobb had mastered.
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| Cobb with the Athletics |
Cobb came out of his brief retirement in 1927 to play two seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack. He played and hit with the same fire and determination at age 40 as he had shown as an 18-year-old rookie. What his comeback showed to all was that his batting skills had not diminished at all; it was only his speed that had left him.
Cobb's greatest milestone came as an Athletic, for it was with them that on 19 July 1927, at Detroit, he became the first player ever to reach 4000 hits. This hit, like his very first, almost 22 years earlier, was a double.
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