Ty Cobb and Reality

We want to be remembered. But after that, we want the folks we admire to be remembered. And that, perhaps, speaks more of us than we may imagine.

The wish always survives. People will speak of it well after we're gone. In Detroit, we wish that Tyrus Raymond Cobb should be thought of as the greatest baseball player ever. But more than that, we wish that he was a better man than much of history portrays him.

This sort of enigma plagues us. We want our heroes to be larger than life; that much is understandable. Why worship them otherwise? Yet life gets in the way. We hear things, we read things, and even our conscience tells us we should think one way rather than another. Still, we want, very much in fact, to think another way.

The fact of the matter is we want heroes. Really, we need heroes. We need people to aspire towards. We need to know that there are others who care for others more than we do. So we overlay our needs across the imperfect.

So, enter Ty Cobb. The dirtiest player in all of baseball history. No one seems to dispute that. Yet there are many stories coming out which attempt to tell an alternate tale.

There's no point to going into the bad now. Cobb is dead and gone, and the dead deserve their good name. He was philanthropic in his private life, a demon on the diamond. An enigma; something we simply don't get. We wish that we were like the former. Yet we want to be the latter, even knowing there's something wrong with that.

We are of two such minds in America today. Does it drive us, inspire us, or condemn us? Does it make us all that we can be, or less than we should be?

Just asking.