How Cobb Got Along With Others

Cobb did not get along with many people, both inside and outside baseball. He felt alone most of the time in Detroit, mostly because he was one of few Southerners in the majors, let alone Detroit. As a rookie, he was treated as all rookies were. His teammates mostly ignored him or played seemingly innocent pranks on him, like sawing his bats in half. He got along fine with some teammates, but there was friction from the very beginning between him and Matty McIntyre, a Tiger outfielder.

Soon, his teammates began to ostracize the Cobb, afraid that he might take a position away from one of them, which he shortly did. They also interpreted the Georgian's quiet manner as conceit, which added to their dislike of him. Cobb felt that McIntyre incited his teammates against him, and was fearful enough to keep a loaded pistol by his bed.

Halfway through his first full season, 1906, Cobb came down with what his manager, Bill Armour, called a "stomach illness," causing him to miss several weeks while resting in Detroit. He may have undergone surgery to remove an ulcer during this time, but there has never been conclusive evidence one way or the other. The emotional strain from the Tigers had done him in, in only his second season. When he returned, relations with McIntyre did not improve. During the first game of a doubleheader in St. Louis on October 6, he and McIntyre argued over who should catch a fly ball, while the ball landed between them and the batter, George Stone, circled the bases for an inside-the-park home run, with Cobb and McIntyre arguing the entire time. The pitcher, Ed Siever, bawled Cobb out in the clubhouse, and later attacked Cobb in the hotel lobby. Cobb floored Siever with a right and pounded on him while he lay on the ground. Cobb supposedly stayed awake all night in his Pullman berth with his gun on his lap during that night's train ride to Chicago.

His relations with his fellow Tigers worsened to the point where even good-natured men like Charley Schmidt came to blows with Cobb for slapping a black woman. Schmidt knew to stand up for all women and had to teach Cobb a lesson. Their scuffle was quickly broken up by teammates, but not before Cobb knew Schmidt could lick him. Later, a newspaper reported that Cobb had said he could beat anybody on the team, and Schmidt took exception to that, and again soundly beat the increasingly nettlesome Southerner.

No matter how well he or the team performed, even during Detroit's three pennant-winning seasons, he simply did not get along with anyone on the team. Thus Cobb spent most of his time alone. By 1908 Cobb and McIntyre had learned to tolerate each other, mostly by keeping out of each other's way. Manager Hughie Jennings separated them in the outfield by putting Sam Crawford in center, and things went more or less smoothly in that arrangement.

The team harmony was superficial and short-lived, however, as Cobb again had a falling out with not only McIntyre, but also Donie Bush, Davy Jones and Sam Crawford. McIntyre demanded to be traded, and there were rumors about Cobb being traded, but Frank Navin knew that Cobb was far too valuable to be traded an account of petty disagreements. He stayed, and the team had to live with him.

Cobb spent as little time as he could with the rest of the team, and that included missing most of spring training each year. He had several reasons for doing this, but most of them revolved around his desire to avoid his teammates. He did keep himself in shape year round, and that minimized the amount of time he needed to get up to major league playing level. He also did not care for the spring training accommodations or locations. The time he spent away from spring training was also time that he could spend with his family.

When he became manager of the Tigers for the 1921 season, he instituted some changes for spring training to make it more to his liking. These changes were also to his players' liking and helped make him popular early on with the players. His popularity then slowly faded because of some of his more unusual practices. He was perhaps a too zealous proponent of platooning right-handed batters against left-handed pitchers and vice versa. On some occasions, he would start a righty pitcher, and then change to a lefty after one batter, forcing the other manager to make lineup changes early in the game. He would also make frequent trips to the mound from centerfield, slowing down games and annoying fans. By the end of his managerial career in 1926, Detroit fans would regularly boo him when he went to the mound.

He also got players to push one another to do better, as with Harry Heilmann and Bobby Veach. Cobb got Heilmann to ride Veach, but neglected to tell Veach that he had put Heilmann up to it, and the two never got along after that season. The greatest fault found with his managerial style was that he expected everyone to be as good as he and would often punish those who weren't.

| Home | | Family | | Skills | | Relationships | | Aftermath |