rks in all human blood and is ready, anxious, and restless to arise and reign.” At seventeen, Ty rebelled. “I was being held in some sort of bondage” he remembered. “So I decided I would become a ballplayer and get away.” When he left home for the minors in Alabama and Tennessee his Father told him “not to come home a failure.” That admonition, Cobb recalled, “put more determination in me than my father ever knew. My overwhelming need was to prove myself as a man”(Ward 83). Ty arrived in Detroit on August 29, 1905 after a three-day train ride from Georgia. He made his debut against New York Highlander (later the Yankees) ace pitcher jack Your name 4Chesboro. Immediately Cobb drew attention to himself as a precocious rookie by swinging three bats in the on-deck circle. The reaction to him doing so indicates that he may have been one of the first players to ever swing multiple bats in the on-deck circle. He showed determination and character in his first major league at bat, driving a two-strike pitch from the fourty game winner into the outfield for a double. The rest of his rookie season did not go as smoothly for Cobb, however. The very next day he slid head first into second base, only to have Kid Elberfeld, the Highlander second baseman, dig his knee into the back of Cobb’s neck, grinding his face in the dirt. That was the last time Cobb slid head first into a base. Cobb had consistency problems with his glove, which plagued him for his first few months with the Tigers. On some days he was brilliant in the field, and on others it seemed like he was playing with a bag of popcorn in his hand. Overall, Cobb’s first season in the majors, short as it was, showed enough promise for the Tigers to sign him to a lucrative $1500.00 contract for the 1906 season. His 1905 experience taught Cobb that he was going to have to work extremely hard to be as go...
