100 years ago today...

truly one of the most intriguing figures in the history of sport. i have a theory that in order to get 4,000 major league hits one needs to be a little bit psycho. cobb and pete rose are the only two to achieve this number and both are insane.



Cobb joined the Tigers on Aug. 30, 1905, as a wispy-haired 18-year-old call-up from the Class C Augusta Tourists. Malcolm Bingay later sang the Peach's praises as the original Iffy the Dopester. "Nobody ever knew what he would do -- anywhere or at any time," marveled Iffy.

Unfortunately for Cobb's reputation, that sense of uncertainty extended to situations outside the ballpark. In one of Cobb's shameful episodes, he once left his flabbergasted guests inside his Detroit home and drove to a local meat market to confront a merchant who had sold his wife 20 cents' worth of spoiled fish for that evening's dinner.

More unsavory than the fish in question was Cobb's method of conflict resolution. Cobb, like most Southern boys of the time, had grown up around firearms, and often carried a small revolver with him. After extracting an apology from the butcher at gunpoint, he got into a fistfight with his husky assistant. Soon police joined in the melee. The Tigers star was tossed in jail, fined $50, and missed much of the rest of the season because of a fractured thumb.

Brilliant, boorish and to a certain extent misunderstood, Cobb remains one of the most compelling sports figures ever. A century after he broke into the major leagues, historians and biographers are still trying to sort out this complex and often self-contradictory character.