Ty Cobb was an interesting fella....

yankeeno7

Found these list of Ty Cobb quotes...some interesting, some funny...

"A ball bat is a wondrous weapon."

"Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest."

"Baseball was one-hundred percent of my life." Source: The Tumult and the Shouting (Grantland Rice, 1954)

"Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher." Source: The Tiger Wore Spikes (John McCallum, 1956)

"He (Shoeless Joe Jackson) was the finest natural hitter in the history of the game."

"His (Walter Johnson) fastball looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed."

"I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me, but I beat the b*stards and left them in the ditch." Source: The Early Years (Harold Seymour, 1989)

"I have observed that baseball is not unlike a war, and when you come right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery."

"I may have been fierce, but never low or underhand." Source: Baseball As I Have Known It (Fred Lieb, 1977)

"I'm coming down on the next pitch, Krauthead (Honus Wagner)." Source: Ken Burns' Baseball (1994)

"I never could stand losing. Second place didn't interest me. I had a fire in my belly."

"I regret to this day that I never went to college. I feel I should have been a doctor."

"Just speed, raw speed, blinding speed, too much speed (Walter Johnson's fastball)."

"Speed is a great asset; but it's greater when it's combined with quickness - and there's a big difference." Source: The Tumult and the Shouting (Grantland Rice, 1954)

"That boy (Mickey) Mantle is a good one."

"That god damned Dutchman (Honus Wagner) is the only man in the game I can't scare."

"The base paths belonged to me, the runner. The rules gave me the right. I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault."

"The crowd makes the ballgame."

"The great American game should be an unrelenting war of nerves." Source: Giants of Baseball (Bill Gutman, 1975)

"The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that's it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it." Source: Widely Attributed (1925)

"The way those clubs shift against Ted Williams, I can't understand how he can be so stupid not to accept the challenge to him and hit to left field." Source: The Sporting News (08/04/1948)

"To get along with me, don't increase my tension."

"When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch." Source: The Giants of the Polo Grounds (Noel Hynd, 1996)

"When I came to Detroit I was just a mild-mannered Sunday-school boy."

"You (Stan Musial) can still run and you still can hit. Drink a little wine before dinner and you'll play for years." Source: The National Pastime (Fall 1982)

"You've got to remember - I'm seventy-three." On why he would only hit .300 against today's pitchers.

sbfinley

I read a story that recalled about a time he overheard a group of writers gushing over Ruth. He called him a circus attraction and related that hitting a homer is easy. They challenged him and he preceded to hit three in his first three at bats the next game. He then tripled in his fourth at bat and stole home.

addicted2ebay

A great moment in my life was getting my first t206 Cobb card. Growing up in Detroit he was always #1 in my book.

dennis07

I once spent several hours on ancestry.com reading Atlanta Journal / Constitution newspaper articles from the early 1900's about
Cobb and his exploits. Interesting indeed.

LeonLuckey

Thanks for sharing. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about Cobb...