Ty Cobb Makes Barry Bonds Look Like Strawberry Shortcake

The Sports Biotch would like to take a moment to welcome her very first guest writer, B M McManus. When he isn't writing overly-critical comments on my blog, B shares his thoughts on a variety of topics with the world (or maybe just his mom...ooooooh) here.

This time, though, he's insisted on attempting to out-do me by venturing into the sports blogging arena. Is he better than me at this sports blogging thing? Doubtful. Does he at least deserve some space on thesportsbiotch.com to share his sports thoughts? Sure, I don't really give a damn. Enjoy.

Hating Barry Bonds seems as much the national pastime as baseball itself. The reasons for Barry-hate are abundant and obvious. First, the assumption that he used steroids kinda falls into the same category as the theory of evolution; no one saw it happen and there isn't any test that directly proves it happened, but you'd have to be crazy to deny it. Second, the man is an arrogant douchebag.

That said, cheating and douchebaggery are hardly the exception among elite hitters: more like the rule. The other day, I was discussing baseball history with the Sports Biotch, and it struck me; Barry Bonds is a cute, cuddly, remarkably well-adjusted version of Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb makes Barry Bonds look like Strawberry Shortcake.

Cobb and Strawbarry are hardly the only cheating a-holes to become baseball icons. I could compare Barry to any number of elite players with total success. However, I won't, because Barry's attitude--"the whole world is trying to screw me, but that's okay, cuz I'm the best"--is so much like Ty's more antisocial view of life: "I had to fight all my life just to survive. They were all against me. Tried every dirty trick to cut me down, but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch." Also, perhaps not coincidentally, Ty and Barry are probably the best hitters in the history of the game. Cobb is the clear king of hitting for average (career BA=.366), and I don't need to tell anyone what Bonds can do.

Greatest Hits of Ty and Strawbarry:

Barry Bonds:
-Probably used steroids.
-Is somewhat selfish and impolite, especially to the media.

Ty Cobb:
-Sharpened his spikes to make infielders fear injury every time he took a base. Regularly threatened to injure infielders who tagged him out.
-Probably fixed games. Let off by the Commissioner when Cobb threatened to reveal further corruption.
-Kicked a hotel chambermaid in the stomach after she expressed disapproval at his use of the N-word.
-Had a long history of domestic violence.
-Refused to join his team on a Cuban tour, saying "darkies' place is in the stands or as clubhouse help."
-Fought a black groundskeeper during Spring Training over the condition of the practice field. Choked the groundskeeper's wife when she intervened.
-Attacked a heckler who had lost his hands in an industrial accident. When spectators told him to stop because his target had no hands, Cobb said, "I don't care if he has no feet."
-Slapped a black elevator operator for being "uppity." When a black night watchman intervened, Cobb took out a knife and stabbed him.
-After Cobb's son failed out of Princeton, Cobb traveled to Princeton to beat and horsewhip his son.
-At the plate, arranged to fight an umpire under the grandstand after the game. Teammates broke up the fight after Cobb had knocked the umpire to the ground and began choking him. "I fight to kill," Cobb said at the time.

At this point, you may be asking what I'm driving at. Or you may just be marveling at what a badass mofo Ty Cobb was. Either way, here's my point; Strawbarry's behavior has received a very different public reception from Cobb's much more extreme behavior.

Ty Cobb didn't really get punished for his entertaining, yet ridiculously unacceptable behavior, and it didn't tarnish his legacy. Cobb was elected into the Hall of Fame on the inaugural ballot by one of the largest margins in history. Cobb got many more votes than Babe Ruth, who was elected in the same year. On a slightly related note, the public hasn't seen fit to direct their scorn at other steroid-using baseball players, just at Barry. Public scorn is fantastic, but it's only productive in improving a-holes' behavior when it is consistently applied. This inconsistent application of public scorn is interesting, and it raises two questions for me:

1) Is Bonds derided so much and so often for his various misdeeds because he deserves a tarnished legacy, or due to the influence of uniformly negative portrayal in the media?

2) Does the media have ulterior motives and/or unique reasons to rail against Strawbarry? Barry's relationship with the media is fairly complicated, and I don't really blame Barry for being unfriendly to the media; the journalistic attacks on his alcoholic father definitely made an impression on the young Barry. Are journalists trying to make an example of Bonds because of his particularly antagonistic attitude towards members of the media?

- B M McManus