Louis Roney: Ty One On

In 1928, when I was 7 years old, Ty Cobb retired from baseball. He was known as “the Georgia peach,” and his name was right up there with Babe Ruth’s. Ty was, as I was, a native Georgian, he being from Royston, and the state of Georgia was proud of the man and his baseball prowess.

His all-time batting average was .366, a number never approached by any other player. Cobb was the first man ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ty “stole home” 54 times – a record never equaled – and on five occasions scored a run by stealing second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches. Would I have loved to have seen that!

Cobb himself wrote, “In legend I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport.” Cobb’s reputation for violence was exaggerated by his first biographer and now, most of those stories have been discredited. Cobb’s father was a state senator and was vehemently opposed to Ty’s childhood wish to play professional baseball. His father’s advice was, “don’t come home a failure.” Ty was sold to the Detroit Tigers in 1905 for $750 – the equivalent of $19,753 today! His father was killed by his mother in a tragic accident and never saw Ty play baseball. At 18, Cobb was the youngest player in the American league. At 19, he became a “celebrity spokesman” for the Coca Cola company and he himself soon owned three bottling plants. Save one year, Cobb played solely for the Detroit Tigers, winning every record and award in sight – at bats, batting average, bases stolen, home runs hit, etc. Cobb insisted that others live up to his winning standards and he incurred much wrath — he had a thin skin...

Cobb died a very rich man and his Cobb Educational Foundation has supported numerous young Georgians’ college educations and the Foundation is still ongoing today.

My grandmother knew Ty Cobb and received a beautiful vase from the Detroit Tigers in memory of her service overseeing the teams spring training meal requirements!

•A man I used to know battled continuously with alcohol – he stubbornly refused to see himself as the loser he clearly had become.

One day in a moment of sudden clarity he admitted the truth to himself, that he had never ever been a match for alcohol, that he could never win for a moment against it. My friend bravely gave up the fight, and the booze. He then began to fight other “can win” battles for prizes he had always highly esteemed. With one stroke he had made himself a winner not only in his own eyes but in other people’s eyes as well. He is now a free spirit.

He once told me that the most terrifying thing in his drinking years had been finding out the next morning the painful truth of the things he had said and done the night before. He couldn’t remember these things, but on the other hand, he couldn’t deny them either. The truth that will come out is usually “the awful truth.”

Some see truth as a goal we are often hoping to reach and are never quite managing to do it. In view of the fact that the very truth that purportedly should set us free is by its very nature highly illusive, would seem to make our task of being truthful as verging on impossible.

God knows haven’t we all invented innocuous falsehoods to dull the cutting edge of painful truths? Don’t such rationalizations allow us to utilize “no-no prevarications” disguised as kindness, mercy or pity?

Will we be excused in the hereafter for having told our neighbor that we saw her husband leave the office on Friday afternoon with a suitcase in one hand, and not add that he held his secretary’s hand in the other? The truth and the whole truth are two different propositions –

and we daren’t ever forget that, when we start opening all the doors.

Aldous Huxley wrote, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”

Bismarck stated, “When you want to fool the world, tell the truth!”

“The pure and simple truth, is rarely pure, and never simple,” said Oscar Wilde.

“Parents always want their children to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – unless there are visitors present.” – Anon.

“All men are born truthful, and die liars.” – Vauvenargues “Many things that seem too good to be true, are!” – LR