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Monday, February 28, 2011

Familiar Faces / Strange Places: Ty Cobb / Athletics

Ty Cobb is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. When the first Hall of Fame class was elected in 1936, he received the most votes of any player, receiving 222 out of a possible 226 votes. Fellow inductees Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner got seven less votes than Cobb. He played his last game in the majors in 1928, and he still holds the career record for highest batting average and most batting titles.

He spent the first 22 years of his unbelievable career in Detroit. In 1926 he was coerced into retirement because of some gambling allegations. Once his name was cleared, he was allowed to be a "free agent" and sign with anyone he wanted. He chose the Philadelphia Athletics. He spent two seasons in Philly before calling it quits for good, hitting an incredible .357 at age 40 and .323 at age 41.

Some interesting things about Cobb. He never won a World Series. His Detroit Tigers won three consecutive AL crowns (1907-08- 09) but lost all three World Series match ups (including two to the Cubs). In 1909 he won the AL Triple Crown, his HR title consisted of 9 inside the park home runs. He won the first AL MVP award, in 1911, when he hit .420 -- it ended up to be his only MVP.

4 comments:

Johngy said...

At the risk of being redundant...very cool.

Johngy said...

Also, I tried emailing, but it keeps bouncing back. I was going to suggest a Mike Squires card from his years of coaching the Blue Jays. Of course, he doesn't have nearly the star appeal as any of the greats you have done.

Dick Allen Hall of Fame said...

Have you seen my new email?
DAHOF15 at gmail.com

Anthony Hughes said...

A year late, but hey, I just ran across this. It's very cool.

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