Cobb
      
Director: Ron Shelton
Year: 1994
Rating: 5.5
The baseball season is winding down and my Boston Red Sox don't look like they will be playing in the post-season again. For a while there they were playing good ball and it seemed possible, but the dog days of August did them in. Next year. But I thought I would watch a baseball movie. Ty Cobb. Perhaps the greatest ball player of all time. At least the records would suggest so. Hit over .400 three times, ended with a lifetime batting average of .366. But those were different times - he was clearly the greatest hitter of his generation though I would say Ruth had a greater impact. It is impossible to compare players from one generation to another. Too many things have changed - the ball, integration, ball parks, money, relief pitchers, designated hitters. One could argue that in every measurable sport such as track, swimming, weightlifting - athletes are faster, stronger, bigger and better trained - but the great thing about baseball is all that stuff doesn't really matter as much as in other sports. Small men can still make it to the Majors, out of shape as well, even a few fat men. Baseball is about smarts and able to pick up the curve. Pitchers who throw in the low 90s can still be very effective and that is no faster than pitchers from 100-years ago. At the end of the day, it is a contest of two men - one on one - the pitcher trying to get the batter out. Cobb averaged 3.5 hits per 10 times at bat and that made him one of the greatest ever.



But the general consensus is that Cobb was also the biggest prick ever to play the game - on the field and off - and this film certainly testifies to that. A racist, rapist, belligerent, wife-beating, bragging monster. But this wasn't the sport's movie I was expecting. I wanted Cobb during his playing days. I wanted to see him go up against the other greats. The big moments. The clutch hitting. After he signed up with the Detroit Tigers in 1905, they won the American League pennant in 1907, 1908 and 1909 - but there is none of that. Instead, the film is about Cobb when he is 70-years-old and has become a bitter, paranoid crazy old bastard. He has decided that he wants a reporter to write a book about him. The truth. As he sees it. He gets sportswriter Al Stump to come stay with him and he tells him his story - but expects Stump to write only about what a great player he was. The film becomes as much about Stump as it does Cobb. He becomes a Boswell to the ranting, raging maniacal Cobb in his last days.



They go off to Reno where Cobb tries to rape a woman (Lolita Davidovich), gives a racist rant on stage, beats up Stump, shoots off his gun in a casino and is a general threat to anyone around him. Cobb is played by Tommy Lee Jones who has always struck me as a mean prick - though in real life he may be all peaches and cream - so he is perfect for this role - and Stump is played effectively by Robert Wuhl. This is an astonishingly negative portrait of Cobb and the film says it is based on a book by Stump. But which one? His first book on Cobb came out soon after Cobb died in 1961 and it was by all accounts a standard this is a great man book - very typical of the times.



Decades later he wrote another book that was very critical of Cobb.  Other sportswriters have since researched Cobb and said Stump's books were filled with false stories and a lot of lies. So, don't take this film as the gospel truth about Cobb. He was no doubt a man of him times - meaning he was probably a racist and as tough as they get on the field. Maybe off as well. Not that Cobb has ever been a hero of mine, but I just found this to be a real slam. Hell, I just wanted a movie about playing baseball in the beginning of the 20th century with the old uniforms, small gloves, knock-down pitches, drinking in the club house. In one of the few flashbacks - that is Roger Clemens pitching to Cobb. That Clemens didn't get into the Hall of Fame is a crime.