Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up With My Grandfather, Ty Cobb

by Herschel Cobb

  When dinner and the stories were finished, it was late, and Louise had long since cleaned up the dishes and retired to her room. It was easy to talk Granddaddy out of having to take a bath, and Susan did not resist his suggestion that she get ready for bed, and he would take care of “the boys.” I took our suitcases into the front bedroom. I wanted to explore, but Granddaddy was standing there, and I was so tired, I happily crawled into one of the huge single beds. By the time Granddaddy kissed Kit, he was asleep.

  He pulled the sheet and covers up to my chin, put his left hand gently on the nape of my neck, and kissed my cheek. He didn’t say anything, but brushed my hair back from my forehead and looked for a moment straight into me. On his way out he stood in the doorway, looked back over Kit and me, switched off the light, and pulled the door so that it was slightly ajar. I felt the warmth of the covers envelop my body, nuzzled into the pillow, and fell asleep.

  Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up with a start at a loud thud down the hall. I opened my eyes but didn’t move a muscle. That created the strangest sensation of being there and not being there. The room was softly illuminated by moonlight coming in through the windows. Swinging my legs out of bed broke the floating sensation, and I realized I wanted to go to the bathroom. I opened the bedroom door and peered down the hallway. It was dark, and I couldn’t see anything, so I started walking with my left hand against the wall as a guide.

  “Who’s that?” a voice asked sharply, grabbing the strength out of my legs. I really wanted to pee.

  “It’s me, Hersch.” My voice came out sounding much calmer than I felt.

  “Hersch, what are you doing up at this hour? It’s nearly three in the morning.”

  “Granddaddy!” That’s all I said, because at that instant he turned on the hallway light.

  I looked at him and gasped. “What happened to your legs?” He was wearing a short, faded blue and brownish-red robe he’d bought years ago, and both of his legs, from the middle of his thighs to his ankles, were exposed to the light. They were marked all over by huge scars that looked violet-red, with large ridges crisscrossing over other ridges. There was almost no skin left. Scars on top of scars. On his right leg was a huge red ridge that ran all the way down his thigh, across the inside of his knee, down his calf. Another long, wide ridge covered the inside of his left leg, disappearing up into his robe. More scars pocked the outside of his left leg, and one of them went from his left thigh, down the outside of his knee and halfway down the rear of his calf. His ankles looked like somebody had taken a knife and hacked away without stopping to leave any tissue untouched. Some scars were so red, they looked fresh, as if they might start bleeding right then and there. Some were so large, his flesh must have been gashed open time after time. The horrible sight was seared on my eyeballs. I was repulsed and shocked and worried at what I saw.

  The look on my face must have said it all. He stood there in front of me, motionless.

  “I couldn’t sleep either. Don’t sleep well anymore, it seems.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom, right away, Granddaddy,” I said, with more than a little urgency.

  “Right here,” he said as he motioned toward a door. He reached in and turned on the light. “Quiet, now, everybody’s asleep. It’s too late for you to be up.”

  “What happened to your legs?”

  He glanced down at himself and replied slowly in a voice he never used, as though he saw the used, beaten legs of a spent warrior. “Hersch, that’s a long story. Want some milk or something to eat?”

  He was standing behind me, filling the doorway, and when I finished I said, “Yeah, I’m hungry. Do you have any Ritz?” He looked puzzled, so I repeated, “You know, Ritz crackers.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess we can go and see.” His voice was resigned, but he was smiling again. I followed him down the hall, and when we went through the arch into the living room, he put his hand on my shoulder. “Hungry, huh? Does this happen every night? Ritz crackers?”

  “Yup,” I said, very sure of myself, a little more at ease with some words spoken. “Grandma always has lots of Ritz around.”

  His slippers scratched along the carpet in the living room, but his walk was steady. His hand on my shoulder felt heavy, and I wondered if he was using me for balance. I was concerned, especially after I’d seen his legs. But halfway through the living room, he squeezed my shoulders next to my neck and worked his hand over toward my left arm. “You’ve got some muskles there, young man.” His silly pronunciation of muscles broke the tension. His balance was fine, and I felt my body relaxing.

  The moonlight coming through the living room windows provided just enough light that we didn’t turn on any lights until we reached the kitchen. When I clicked the overhead light on, it was dim, just bright enough that we wouldn’t bump into anything. His kitchen was old with soap-board countertops, an ancient sink, and cupboards showing flaking paint, not like Grandma’s, whose kitchen was newer and brighter. Granddaddy started opening cabinets, looking for crackers. I went to the fridge and took out a bottle of milk.

  The light from the fridge shone on his robe, and I looked over my shoulder at him. His robe stood out like a cartoon costume with its geometric design and red, turquoise, and brownish-yellow colors. It was practically worn out, with threads hanging here and there, and tufts of material where the weave had caught on something and pulled out.

  “Where’d you get the robe?” I immediately realized I didn’t know what I was asking, but I’d opened my mouth and that’s what came out, and I was stuck with it.

  The look on his face was a mix of mild disapproval and squeamishness. “Got it in Nevada, at an Indian trading post. Supposed to bring good luck.” He changed the subject. “Here are the crackers. You want the whole box?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “You want some milk?”

  “No, don’t drink milk. Doesn’t agree with me anymore.”

  We sat at the table in the kitchen. In the dull light, glancing at each other, munching away. I enjoyed being with Granddaddy, alone, eating Ritz crackers, late at night. I didn’t want it to end, so I kept eating crackers and sipping milk. Then he stood up and went to the sink to get a glass of water, and I saw his legs again.

  “Granddaddy, what happened to your legs?” I was hesitant to pry, but shocked and couldn’t imagine how much they must hurt. I wanted to know what had happened to him.

  He looked down at himself, almost as if he were discovering something new. “Oh, that.”

  “Do they hurt?” I asked.

  “They ache a little. More at night.” His voice was withdrawn, having to talk about a pain that would never go away. I continued eating crackers, waiting for him to say more. The questions on my face were unavoidable, and so was the silence that began to build up.

  Finally, he broke it. “When I first started, you know, broke into the majors, I was pretty fast. I figured when I got to first base, the base path to second and third belonged to me. That’s the rule. I liked to steal second, and third. It really rattled the pitcher and his infield. And I was pretty good at it. You know, I told you about the sliding pit in my backyard. I started practicing before I was fifteen. So I stole as often as I could.”

  He sipped his water before he went on. “I guess, at first, they figured I was lucky, but my hook slide worked nearly every time. In my second year, I started stealing again, as often as I could. They had to try to stop me, so they used their spikes on me. They wanted to scare me.” He wasn’t embellishing a tale; he was reporting the facts as they happened to him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, their spikes. They jumped up in the air as I came into second base and came down with their spikes digging into my thigh. Cut the hell out of me. I was using my hook slide just fine, but I was laid out like a fish in a frying pan. Wide open. The first guy who did it, I remember his face as he climbed off of me and said, ‘That’s what you’re going to get every time you come down to my base, got it?’
That was supposed to scare me, stop me from stealing, but it didn’t. Just made me mad as hell. Hurt like hell too. Blood was all over my pants, but the ump didn’t even say boo. I was safe at second, and mad as a bee. So, I stole third on the next pitch!” His eyes now had that special twinkle.

  I had stopped chewing, and my hand held my milk glass in midair while he spoke. “Couldn’t you do something?”

  “Not really. The game was young and played pretty rough. That was 1906. The players had to be tough. And the spikes were a little longer than today. It happened a lot. Some teams had bastards—excuse me, Hersch—that were worse than others. I was nineteen, my second year in the majors. They had a mind to stop me right then and there. When I went in with my hook, my arms were back, and I was keeping my body as long and low as I could. Only problem was, I couldn’t defend myself.”

  He was only nineteen. I thought, “I’m going to be fourteen in a few months and nineteen in five years—just five years from now.” I imagined spikes gouging into my thighs and blood spurting out of the cleat tracks. I felt a burst of anger at this deliberate attack. “What did you do?” I thought back to my Middle League game, when everybody was yelling at me to steal second base. I could see in my mind some guy getting ready to dig his spikes into my leg.

  “I was bloody a lot. Your grandmother took care of my legs at night. Used everything she knew—some salves, compounds, ointments. Wrapped them up pretty tight. But I busted open the scabs sliding. Then she thought of hanging towels down the inside of my pants, to protect my legs. I tied them onto my belt. When I tried it and it worked, I ruined most of the towels in the house. That was in Detroit. So, that’s what I did on both legs. It saved my legs when I slid, and helped when the spikes came down on me.”

  “Grandma fixed you up?” My voice was timid, but I had to get into it. It was an unspoken rule in his house, but as noticeable as if it were in neon lights in every room: Nobody mentions her. And “her” was Charlie Lombard Cobb, my grandmother, his ex-wife, mother of his children, including my dad, griever for the lost children, survivor, and still taking care of him in important ways. She was the one who made sure that Susan, Kit, and I spent two or three weeks every summer with him. He had brought her name up, broken his imposed silence, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away. I bit my lip and continued. “Grandma took care of your legs?”

  “Well, yeah. Nobody else to. I wasn’t making any money as a ball player. Pitiful. First time I got into a bath, the bleeding started again. Damn.” He paused, catching himself. “Don’t use that word, Hersch. There was bright red blood everywhere. So we stopped that, and just used towels and sponges. Then iodine, and then all these compresses, with powders inside. She got some mixes and herbs from the country people back in Augusta. Amazing people, really. Knew a lot about healing without going to the doctor. Guess they had to, being way out in the country.”

  He took a breath, as if reminding himself he was in the kitchen with me and not on the base paths in Detroit’s Bennet Park, and went on. “The bleeding stopped okay. And I could still play hard. It happened a lot, I guess she fixed me up a lot. Sliding was rough on these old legs. The spikes were worse.” He trailed off a little, his eyes drifting around the old kitchen, probably unchanged since he bought the house in 1932.

  “All the time you played? You got spiked all the time?” I asked. “What about the other players?”

  “Not every guy at second or third tried to spike me. But there were a lot over the years. Guys wanted to stop me. Then, later on, young players, new ones, wanted to make a name for themselves.”

  “Granddaddy,” I interrupted, blurting out, “did you spike a guy on purpose? They told me you did. Did you?” I swallowed hard. I didn’t plan to ask that way, but all of a sudden, after two years of wondering about all the tales I’d heard, it came out. I could see the accusation caught him unexpectedly. He withdrew a little from the table, and then leaned way over toward me.

  “Hersch, we were in the middle of a series. I was having a terrific year. The second baseman had told everybody to tell me that if I came down, you know, tried to steal second, he was going to put his spikes through me and stop me for good. I wanted him to know I was coming down if I had the chance, and I’d be ready for him. I was ready to give what I was going to get.”

  Now the old tales took on a new aspect. He placed them in the context of the punishment he endured all those years. My eyes were huge and my mouth was open. He continued, “Well, I got my chance and broke good, and I was heated up. I went in, intending to catch the corner of the bag with my right toe, and my left leg was free. I was ready and probably would have. No doubt, Hersch, I was ready. The throw was late, and he made the catch, but I was already there. He didn’t even jump in the air or try to get me. I guess it was bluff, or maybe he knew I was never going to quit. He never made the threat again.

  “I never spiked anyone on purpose. My purpose—and I was determined—was to get my foot to the bag. That was it.”

  “What about in the picture? In the office,” I said. “Is that Home Run Baker?”

  “That’s not Baker,” he told me. “That’s a different player. Jimmy Austin.” He quickly got back on track. “But, oh, yeah. Yep. I was accused by Baker. Baker was furious. But a camera guy was there and snapped one. A lot of heat and yelling. And when he finally developed his picture and showed it around, it was a clean steal. My spikes were low, practically in the dirt. But by that time, what was said was said. In and out of the sports pages. I got a pretty raw deal in the newspapers, but I kept on playing hard. Hersch, I knocked over my share of guys. That’s for sure. And I got my bumps and cuts. Didn’t cry about it, though. I’m not ashamed. I wanted to win. And nobody was going to stop me.”

  I wanted him to reach over and touch me. That didn’t happen. He was no longer the gentle grandfather who showed me how to bat and throw, who held me on his lap and asked me if I wanted a cigar, or ate peach ice cream with me. His voice was not angry but absolutely firm in its conviction. The fierceness opened a distance between us. Yet I thought I knew how he felt. I got out of my chair and climbed into his lap and buried my face in his chest. His arms wound around me, and his squeeze nearly took my breath away. I felt his chin on the top of my head and heard his heart pounding under my ear. I did not want to move.

  When he relaxed a bit, I kept my head low and asked a muffled question, “What about Ruth?”

  He pushed me apart so he could see my face. “Hersch Cobb, what have you been reading?”

  “The book Aunt Shirley gave me. The one about you by Mr. McCallum,” I said.

  “Oh, is that right?” I could feel the chuckle in his chest. “Well, I’ll be. Now, this is the end, young man, no more questions tonight.”

  I thought he was going to put me off his lap and run me off to bed. But, no, in a voice that sounded like it came from deep inside, he explained, “Hersch, Ruth came along, hit home runs, and the fans loved it. The more he hit, the more they loved it. My style of play was passing. I could see it. That was hard on me, and I didn’t like it one bit. Not one bit. Oh, I hit those five in two games, but I knew that wasn’t my game.” He smiled at this admission and pulled me close. In a minute I slid off, thinking he might keep talking.

  “I liked Ruth, but while we were competing, I gave him a rough time. He was sensitive and I could say things that got to him, under his skin. Know what I mean?” He paused.

  “I think so; those other kids in Middle League got to me,” I quietly replied.

  “I was a little personal on the Babe, maybe too much. It was the only way with him; he was a great hitter and only slumped when he was bothered. So I razzed him about the way he looked, and he was sensitive to that and it worked.” His voice had become reticent, as if he didn’t like admitting this part of his past.

  “Afterward, after baseball, we saw each other more and I liked him. We played that crazy ‘has-beens’ golf match. I grew to admire him, had a little affection for him too. Boy, could he
eat! I felt sorry at the way he ended. Sick, very sick, and without much. One time I told him to buy Coke, but I don’t think he understood.”

  “Mr. McCallum says you played for twenty-four years. You did better than anybody.”

  “Hersch, I love baseball. It was my life. I played hard every game.”

  Somehow, I slipped and said, “How come you quit?”

  I’d made a mistake and instantly knew it. He bristled, sat straight up, and began in a tone that shook me, “I never quit! I stopped playing!”

  I swallowed hard, the moment tinged by the briefest thought of my dad.

  “Sorry, Hersch, I know what you’re getting at.” He collected himself, remembering exactly what it felt like to say good-bye to a life he wished would last forever. “I knew if I played another year, it would be miserable. I only hit .323 in 1928 and knew I’d drop below .300 if I had another go. I wanted to go out on top. I think I did. Tris was going too, two old dogs headed for a rest. I miss ’em. Ruth, Tris, the others.” He finished in almost a mumble, carrying a sadness that flowed over when he told me, “Hersch, make a bunch of friends in your life, ones that stick with you.” I understood.

  Our conversation about his baseball career came to an end. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to get you to bed. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  His hand found my shoulder and used it to help him stand. He gave me a pat on my back, told me to put the milk in the fridge and to follow him. I grabbed his hand as we left the kitchen. His hand shifted to my shoulder as we ambled through the living room, with him both guiding me and being supported by me. His legs were still violet-red and horrifying. The short old robe looked as funny as ever.

  The next morning, I opened the bedroom door and found Susan standing outside, eager to hear what I’d uncovered in the front bedroom. We looked around together, but the passing of time had removed all but the barest remnants of our family’s history. The curtains had turned yellow and stiff with age, the doilies on the dresser were pressed and clean, its drawers were empty, and the closet had hangers but no clothes. Still, the two single beds told a story: the large four-poster bed frames were elegantly carved, the linens and pillow covers were smooth as silk, but the beds were separated by a wide space.