Talk:Ty Cobb

Time for a rewrite

This article has metamorphosed into a goofy, lickspittle apologia for Cobb, filled with unfounded personal attacks on his previous biographers and loaded with dubious praise sung by revisionists with obvious and severe bias, including a hagiography by a member of Cobb's family. Look forward to a return to objectivity in this article in the near future. ComicsAreJustAllRight (talk) 07:52, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

"goofy, lickspittle apologia for Cobb" You are obviously not the one to objectively do this.Hilltrot (talk) 21:06, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

   We need an article that reflects both the reverence and the contempt that have been shown for Cobb. I haven't made any judgement about whether early December's revision was sound or not. However, IMO, your personal attack on CAJAR's (i.e., a colleague's) fitness reflects unfavorably on your judgment, even if that colleague's criticism of the revision that she or he refers to should turn out to be deficient in objectivity. In any case, nothing in this discussion counts as evidence that Cobb-haters collectively, let alone the colleague in question, would wreak havoc upon the article that would be worse than what might reasonably be construed both as

• an attempt to intimidate a colleague, and
• one motivated by an alarmist view of what you seem to regard as evidence of non-objectivity.

--Jerzy•t 04:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Good morning, men (and women). Heated discussion aside, has this article been edited since then to your approval, or what more needs to be done? Personally, I don't know of any more significant edits to be made, because the article looks like it could make for a decent Good Article Nominee. But I'm just a rookie, and that is merely my opinion. :) --DD2009 14:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidudeh (talk • contribs)

I am a bit concerned that the recent scholarship about Cobb, which is heavily tilted towards the "he was actually a good guy" thesis, is moving public perception of Cobb (not just on Wikipedia) towards being what I also perceive as being a bit too easy on Cobb. So I'm going to at least marginally get the back of ComicsAreJustAllRight, as I think that an America still wrestling with its demons where race is concerned is awfully anxious to give Cobb a clean bill of health. Also, when a comment like "a goofy, lickspittle apologia" is made and people respond by singing 1000 different choruses of how-dare-you but not explaining why the coverage _isn't_ a goofy, lickspittle apologia, it makes me distrust the response, not the comment. All of this said, I think it's clear that sources people did once trust (like Al Stump) are now exposed as far less than trustworthy, so there does need to be some reckoning with that fact. What would concern me about this article is if the citation disappeared of the story about Cobb thrashing a fan in the stands because the fan suggested he was of African-American origin. No one has debunked that story, there are scoodles of witnesses, and Cobb (as indicated in the article) admitted in his autobiography that the reason he thrashed the fan was because the fan suggested something about Cobb's mother's "color". That's pretty slam-dunk, in my view, that, even if Cobb was capable of being a good guy or evolving towards non-racism, there was at least one really prominent moment where he was neither good nor non-racist. I am glad that story still has the prominence in this article that it deserves.

Anyway, just wanted ComicsAreJustAllRight to know I am listening, and watching this page along with you to see if revisionists revise more than they should. To the other editors, I also just want to remind you that just because someone phrased a criticism in a way you think is hurtful to your feelings, that doesn't mean you can ignore the criticism. The focus (as DD2009 seems to get) should always be on what's best for the page. Zachary Klaas (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

While I don't want to sound like an apologist for Cobb, the fan who he beat up had called him a "half-n----r". So I think it's fair to say that the fan was himself a racist. If someone was writing an old-fashioned, heroic biography of Cobb for children, they could tell the story by saying that "Cobb angrily confronted a spectator to object to the fan's use of a racial slur referring to African-Americans", which is literally true, albeit not the full story. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

At the very least, the article needs to stop using Al Stump as a source, as his Cobb biography has widely been discredited. —Chimino (talk) 04:39, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

It's time and past time to fix the batting average thing

We have Ty Cobb's batting average as .367. I get that the boomers grew up on this number, but its been decades since SABR has shown this to be very likely wrong: .366 is the correct number. It's embarrassing that Wikipedia is the sole scholarly-type source giving this badly outdated and probably wrong data. Let's don't.

So, some googling gets me these web source that give Cobb's batting average as .366:

1. Baseball Reference (4,189 hits in 11,440 at bats)
2. Baseball Hall of Fame (4,189 hits in 11,440 at bats)
3. SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
4. FanGraphs (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
5. Retrosheet (4,189 hits in 11,439 at bats)
6. The Baseball Cube (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
7. Baseball Almanac (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
8. ESPN (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)

SABR is the most reliable source of baseball history, including statistics, hands down. Here are a couple of SABR articles that really get into the weeds on this matter:

• Appendix 1: Ty Cobb’s Hit Totals and Lifetime Batting Average
• How Many Hits Did Ty Cobb Make in His Major League Career? What Is His Lifetime Batting Average?

The Hall of Fame has official status with Major League Baseball and is a large, well-known, and generally respected museum with its own Official Historian. Baseball Reference is a large and complex site "often used by major media organizations and baseball broadcasters as a source for statistics" and is highly visible (Alexa rank 6,635); it was started as a doctoral dissertation in applied math by a sabermetrician. FanGraphs and ESPN are large and serious enterprises, and supported by our {{Baseballstats}} template, as is Retrosheet, a non-profit with strong ties to SABR. Baseball Cube used to be but isn't any longer.

Web sources (not including us) that say Cobb's batting average was .367:

1. Major League Baseball (4,191 hits in 11,429 at bats)
2. Nobody else on the planet with any standing that I could find.

With books it's a little different; Ty Cobb: A Biography By Dan Holmes (2004) has .367, while Ty Cobb, A Fearful Beauty (2015) by Charles Leehrson has .366. There are a bunch of other books on each side of the matter; I didn't check them, but I assume none of them did their own research and just picked the source they liked.

How did we get here?

So, the background to this "dispute" is this: for many decades after Cobb retired, his batting average was given as .367. boomers were brought up on this number, and for that matter their parents too. It was one of baseball's "iconic" numbers, like Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in a season; if a casual fan knew like 10 or even 5 historic numbers, .367 would be one of them. But, much later (starting around 1980) people like Pete Palmer and Jim Thorn and SABR did a deep forensic analysis of old box scores, and determined that the actual number was .366.

Well, the boomers really resented that, same as their dads had resented Roger Maris's 61 home runs. Many people refused to accept the new number. This wasn't on the basis of criticism of SABR's methodology or presentation of alternative research or anything like that. It was pure boomer pig-headedness. Arguments were of the nature of "That's not how I was taught" and "Who are these pencilneck geeks to mess with baseball's sacred numbers" and "This fact distresses me" and "Dammit, I saw Cobb play when I was a boy" and even "Well whatever, but .367 should be grandfathered in as permanent because it's been the accepted value for so long".

Early on in the book [Ty Cobb, A Fearful Beauty (2015)] the author sates that Cobb’s lifetime batting average is .366. What? Wait a minute! Must be a typo. Everyone knows Cobb’s average was .367. I quickly e-mailed the author to alert him of this egregious error. Leerhsen replied that he and his publisher decided to go with the .366 after consulting a baseball historian, likely one of those revisionist historians with way too much time on his hands. As a certified Cobb nut, it was like getting a knife plunged deep into my chest. Hacking off a whole point from Cobb’s average! I can gloss over this oversight, just as long as we all understand that Cobb’s official batting average is .367, as recognized by MLB.[1]

It says here that MLB, led by Bowie Kuhn, was in this camp: "As the leader of a sport that always sold its present, Kunh tried to make the matter go away". Note sold: this is a business decision, not a research decision. I guess they are still not backing down from that still. (Scrolling up a couple pages in that book (which is The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwarz (2005)), there's a description of the first anlysis of the problem, by Pete Palmer in 1981.)

Anyway "historian with way too much time on his hands" does not strike me as a very useful refutation of research. If there are better arguments, let's hear them. Statistics is a real discipline. History is real discipline. Research is a real thing. Real people have applied their time, energy, and intelligence to the matter. So as far as the records that we have show, .366 is the correct number (Of course, many facts in this world we can't be 100% sure of; it could be .365 or .368 or something, but we go with the best data that we have). Thus, the world of people who pay attention to this came to accept .366. All of them.

Except MLB/Elias. Why? Well first of all understand is that MLB is a business organization. It does business stuff like make the schedule and negotiate labor contracts and so on. They're not a history organization or any kind of academic or intellectual entity. Another thing to understand is that is no such thing as an "official history" of anything, generally. Certainly not for baseball. There is no one organization that can "officially" say how how many people lived in the Roman Empire, or if Homer was a single real person, or exactly why Runnymede happened, or how many hits Ty Cobb had, such that we have to say "Well, that's the official story, so right or wrong we have to go with that". There are only different historians using different methods to come up with different answers, and people -- including us -- have to weigh all that and decide what's most likely correct.

How does Elias come up with .367? I don't know, because they're a private for-profit business and they don't reveal their methodologies (I don't think; they didn't use to anyway), if they even have any methodologies beyond "MLB told us to use that number, and the client is always right". Elias does have science type people on staff (two Research Directors, a Director of Research, a Senior Research Director, and more). What they do I don't know; they don't publish papers as far as I can tell. Maybe there's other ways to find out how they came up with .367. Absent that, we're left with just argument from authority.

(Here, we have the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2013-2014 with "history can be rewritten [but] the past can also be unyielding". Yes it can. But that doesn't have anything to do with our mission. We don't tell our readers that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag or that Mrs. Murphy's cow started the Chicago fire just because a lot of people think so or were brought up thinking so and don't want to change. We shouldn't make an exception here.

Anyway, this was talked about at Talk:Ty Cobb/Archive 1#Cobb's Hit Total and it wasn't resolved, but it was considered to be a trivial matter. It's not trivial, and it's way past time to end this embarrassment. I propose to do so absent cogent objection. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• Support .366 as First Ranter. Herostratus (talk) 17:44, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
• Weak Support .367* (when listed as rounded to thousandths place) as the "official" value given by Major League Baseball, but note that the actual value is near unanimously accepted as .366. He's still the BA leader either way. Klohinx^talk 05:13, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
  

Just for the record, I checked my dusty old copy of the hallowed The Baseball Encyclopedia, The Macmillan Company, 1969, second edition. This book was a landmark in its time with regard to detail, and was thus extremely influential. It has (p. 689) Cobb with career totals of 4,192 H in 11,437 AB. (I remembered this as the only place where I say his hits in excess of 4,191.) This ratio is .366529684, which they reasonably round to .367 for display purposes. On p. 64, "Lifetime Batting Leaders" Cobb is listed (first, of course) with .367, and his hits are shown as 4192. Macmillan must have corrected this in a subsequent edition, but I don't know which and when. WHPratt (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC) I see that the 4,192 figure is mentioned in the article The Baseball Encyclopedia, though there's no explanation of when it was depricated. It might be a good thing that 4,192 wasn't mentioned in the Ty Cobb article! I would suggest that the Cobb total controversy should be covered in a separate, comprehensive article to which this one could link. WHPratt (talk) 17:32, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't Follow

Regarding the rivalry with Sam Crawford, the article states: "Although they may not have spoken to each other, Cobb and Crawford developed an ability to communicate non-verbally with looks and nods on the base paths. They became one of the most successful double steal pairings in baseball history.[159]"

I don't dispute that they made a lot of double steals; in fact, if they didn't actually hold the record for that I'd be surprised. The implication that that was due to some uncanny communication is dubious. Is that from the referenced biography, or a Wikipedia editor's own good idea? Either way, it doesn't follow. What do you need to get a double steal? First you need one guy to get to second base, then a second guy gets on first, then they attempt the double steal. Well, Cobb got on second base more than anybody. He averaged 48 stolen bases and 39 doubles per 162 games according to baseall-reference.com. Given that he stole more bases than anyone, and stole home several times, we can be sure he stole third quite a few times. So if you have one guy who steals third a whole lot, to be the greatest double-steal combo in history, all the second guy has to do is 1) play behind Cobb for years 2) get on first a reasonable percentage of the time 3) also be a prolific base-stealer. Crawford had a 300 lifetime batting average and over 300 bases stolen, so while not in Cobb's class, he qualifies.

They don't need to communicate. Crawford just has to go when Cobb goes. He could just be watching to see when Cobb goes, or they could both be getting signals from the third base coach. I'm guessing Cobb didn't signal Crawford; he probably didn't care that much whether Crawford stole second behind him, and he wouldn't want to tip off the defense (not that they didn't know he was going anyway, but they didn't know when).

I'd like to see this corrected, but I don't know the best way, and I don't want to get overruled.Wood Monkey 19:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

RfC: What should we give as Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

What should we give as Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average?

• ".366"
• ".367"
• ".366 or .367"
• Other, please specify.

(NBI think it's fair to say that if there is a decision, it should apply to all places in all articles where Cobb's lifetime average is given, agreed?) Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• .366. Reasons given below. The only way to dispute this is argument from authority (see below), and I call on the closer to discount those. Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
• .366 - Can't remember exactly when, but I do believe MLB changed his stat a few years ago. GoodDay (talk) 07:21, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

They didn't, but it doesn't matter. Stats are records of facts. There are lots of stats that governments and other official bodies such as MLB can't change altho they would sure like to. Historical facts are stubborn like that. If you look at Cobb's player page at MLB.com it actually does still say .367 (altho all the other statements, that I have found, of Cobb's lifetime average on other MLB.com page give .366, or else ".366 or .367 depending on source"). MLB flat-out said that they were going to stick with .367 now and forever in defiance of the facts and research and (I infer) any new research discoveries that come up ever, because, well, they can. "Because we can" is actually the entirety of their argument. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

• .366, per Herostratus's details below. However, it might be useful to (just in this article) explain why .367 sometimes still comes up (i.e., in older sources).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:15, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

• .366, the details below seem to paint an overwhelming case that this should be a slam dunk. Nemov (talk) 17:56, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
• .366, as per Herostratus' comments, though we should cite why the number changed from .367, to forego any talkpage back-n-forth on the subject and potentially destabilize the article. In short, note the actual average while noting why others thought it higher. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 19:19, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I was going to add a FAQ to the talkpage about it, but then I realized we need a decision first. Also, on first use in this article, and maybe other articles, we should link to sources. (As a matter of fact, we could have a whole short article on the matter. There's plenty of reliable material for several paragraphs, including coverage in notable mainstream publications, to make a perfectly acceptable GNG article, and I mean we have covered all kinds of obscure disputes and so on. You could add a paragraph to this article instead, but the dispute isn't really about Ty Cobb per se and the article's long enough already maybe. Herostratus (talk) 20:54, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

  One or more paragraphs in this article should be fine. While it's "legal" to create an article on any topic that can pass GNG, in practice many perma-stubs just get merged, and I think that would happen with a very short article on Cobb's average.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

  I suppose so... this article is starting to bump up against the bottom of the recommended max size tho. But a brief mention, maybe a longer footnote exposition at first use as suggested below, and also a FAQ on the talk page, would work, yeah. Herostratus (talk) 09:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

  Ah I see there already is a good section, Ty Cobb#Regular season statistics. Probably should be renamed. Anyway, I've had people who haven't drilled down that far that just come and change the figures in the infobox and lede, so the RfC was necessary... I added a hidden note not to change the figure, which I couldn't have if I wasn't sure editors agreed. Also will write a talkpage FAQ someday. Herostratus (talk) 07:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

• .366 – The majority of reliable sources given below align with this value. The first use of the value in the article can include a footnote discussing the correction of the old cited value of .367 to the correct value of .366 if this is a contentious issue in baseball statistics. --Guest2625 (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
• .366 – the arguments for this average are compelling. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:26, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
• .366 - per the above arguments. BogLogs (talk) 12:21, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended discussion

The matter is not in dispute. It just isn't, is all. I have looked into this matter, and found that every disinterested human person who has considered the matter with any skill and diligence agrees that Cobb's lifetime average, as near as we can humanly figure from our exhaustive research to this point, was .366.

There's a problem because, for many decades after Cobb retired, .367 was believed to the correct number, and three+ entire generations of American baseball fans (Silent, Boomers, Xers) grew up believing it, and two others (Lost, Greatest) died believing it. But that's wrong. He actually batted .366. We know that that now, because starting in the 1980s, exhaustive and fully transparent research by a number of skilled, intelligent, respected, and professional historians and analysts has shown this. But, we still get the .367 number here, a lot, and there's constant wrangling, and let's end this for crying out loud.

There are many reliable sources and, without a single exception, all -- all -- agree on this point, including of course the Baseball Hall Of Fame and all the baseball encyclopedias. All of them. For more details and proof, see the thread Talk:Ty Cobb#It's time and past time to fix the batting average thing above (which also describes how Major League Baseball, for egregiously self-serving business reasons of its own, pretends to dispute the facts, which confuses some editors and gives an argument from authority cover for trolls. Thank you for your time. Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

• I haven't looked to see how it is written, but maybe go by current reliable sources and include some discussion about how the number has changed over time like you write above? Good luck. --Malerooster (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I would point out, to anyone who thinks that Cobb is being cheated out of .001 on his lifetime batting average, that .366 is a more impressive number than .367. Anyone who achieved 11 hits in 30 at-bats has a .367 average. So does anyone else whose hits and at-bats are in the simple ratio 11/30. I would suspect that, over the past century, there are numerous major leaguers who collected 11 hits in their first 30 at bats, and that a few of them got no further chances for some reason or another. However, to have an average that rounds off to .366 requires at least 1000 at-bats (e.g., 366-for-1000 or 439-for-1200). This would represent several seasons of excellence, and no one besides Cobb has maintained this level for even this long. Whereas .367 can be a fluke, it requires a great hitter to achieve .366. (This may seem paradoxical at first glance, but consider that any pitcher who has a 3-2 record for his career has a .600 winning percentage. It took Walter Johnson many years and 400+ wins to ring in at .599.) WHPratt (talk) 17:01, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

This... is interesting. Is it really true that you can't divide two numbers to get .366 unless the number being divided is over 1000 or more. Huh. Herostratus (talk) 06:16, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Okay, 183/500 is also .366 exactly, but I don't think you can do it in fewer than 500 at-bats, unless 183 and 500 have a common factor, and they don't: 183 is 3 * 61, both of which are prime numbers, and neither is a factor of 500. Still, it's a lot more difficult to do this in 500 than it is to attain .367 in just 30. (Joe Jackson may have been in that range in his early seasons, but as he's another world-class hitter, it only goes to support my point.) WHPratt (talk) 04:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Going from the philosophical and intuitive to the empirical, I ran a program to compute all possible combinations of at bats and hits from 1,000 AB on down, checking for those between .365 and .368 when rounded to three decimal places and found over a hundred combinations that would yield .366 in print. They range from 366/999 through 134/366 all the way down to 15/41. (Also found quite a few more that rang in at .367.) So, you’re right: it’s not all that rare.

So, I wouldn’t use this argument to demonstrate that .366 is more noteworthy than .367. I suspect that similar logic would be convincing that it takes a good hitter to bat .299, whereas a lot of blokes can manage 3-for-10, but that maybe the repeating 6’s in 0.366666667 complicate things. Actually, methods for rounding off decimals vary. Some would round .3665 up all the time, whereas others would apply different rules. Unless some real mathematician wants to advise, I’ll drop the argument. WHPratt (talk) 16:11, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.