Ty Cobb - The Georgia Peach

We took a side trip to the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston, Georgia before heading south to Savannah. I've read a few books about Ty Cobb among them The Tiger Wore Spikes: An Informal Biography of Ty Cobb that was published in 1956  and an autobiography, My Life in Baseball: The True Record, with writer Al Stumpand, and came to appreciate how good a baseball player he was so, because we were so close, we (well....I decided) to swing by and visit the place. http://tycobbmuseum.org/

The museum sign needs some work. You can see our coach in the background where we parked.

The museum is one of the wings inside the Joe A. Adams Professional Building (medical facility). Kind of low-key huh?

Compare Ty Cobb's modest Museum with this one...Babe Ruth's Museum.

Entering the mega-metropolis of Royston, Georgia where they Museum is located. Population: 2,500

Entrance into the museum in the foyer of the building. There are two large posters of Cobb to the upper right and left.

Lifetime batting average of .367...highest of all time. More on a comparison of his average to modern day batters later.

First thing you see when you enter are these bats with notable events on each.

First Player Voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 with the highest vote percentage of all nominated !

The first Baseball Hall of Fame class consisted of:

Ty Cobb (outfielder) 222 votes out of 226 - 98.2%

Babe Ruth (pitcher, outfielder) 215 votes  out of 226 - 95.1%

Honus Wagner (shortstop) 215 votes out of 226 - 95.1%

Christy Mathewson (pitcher) 205 votes out of 226 - 90.7%

Walter Johnson (pitcher) 189 votes out of 226 - 87.6%

Now...a bit about his hitting ability:

I worked up a chart comparing 11 years of Cobb's batting averages from 1908-1919 to modern day players from 2001-2011. He bated higher every year than anyone today. As a matter of fact, his average of over 24 seasons is higher than almost every one year shown below! The man could hit !

Look at his rankings over the span of his career. A few that are not listed is that he averaged over .400 three times, batted below .320 only one year, won 9 batting titles IN A ROW (1907-1915)!

Notice his hands...they're separated. He gives the reason below. I find it interesting that no one has tried to emulate this technique even though he was such a prolific hitter.

DON'T GRIP YOUR BAT AT THE VERY END; leave say an inch or two. ALSO, LEAVE AT LEAST AN INCH OR MORE SPACE BETWEEN YOUR HANDS; that gives you balance and control of bat, and also keeps hands from interfering with each other during swing.
http://www.beabetterhitter.com/text/funstuff/Ty%20Cobb%20Hitting%20tips/TyCobbsHittingTips.htm

Cobb averaged 48 stolen bases over his career including 96 one year and 54 steals of home ! This was another area he studied to improve year after year.

Now for some shots of the interior. Even reading everything and watching the movie, it took only about and hour and a half to complete the tour. I was the only one inside. I asked the museum curator "How's business?" She replied, "It's been great today (this was a Saturday)...we've had SIX people come through already !"  She was great.

Cobb was one of the first players to do endorsements. He went with Coca-Cola. As a matter of fact, he was one of the largest stockholders in Coke as it got started. This made him quite wealthy over his lifetime.

Someone's private collection that has been donated for viewing.

Cobb's famous base-stealing shoes. Legend has it he used to "sharpen" them on the concrete side of the dugout before a game to intimidate the infielders because he used to come in to the base spikes high.

Again, notice the split hand grip on the bat. My friend, Dick Howell pointed out that his number has never been retired at Detroit Tigers stadium....why?.... because, in his day, they had no numbers !



Give this to your kid when he's playing baseball today and he'll give you a look like...wha???

To compare....today's typical glove.

Baseball card

Special baseball card for Baseball's Greatest collection.

A smattering of Ty Cobb baseball cards from over the years.

Another old baseball card...not sure how much this is worth.

The start of this baseball career.

There are lots of stories about how competitive and mean ("a real SOB) Cobb was. When he first came up, the other players did not appreciate his talent as it meant that, if he made the team, their share would be decreased by one more player...plus he was pretty cocky. They would go out of their way to belittle and humiliate him. So naturally, he fought back. Over they years, he never lost his competitive nature but his teammates realized he would help them win so they began to accept him. That's the short version.

Cobb was very generous during his career...to the point where, if one of the players was down on their luck, due to poor financial decisions, he would slip them monthly money until they got stable.

The Ty Cobb Museum doesn't gloss over his faults, which is evident from the sign that adorns the entrance to the small shrine.

"No player in history," it says, "generated more emotion, created more havoc, bruised more egos and left more bitterness than Tyrus Raymond Cobb, a snarling wildcat who cut a bloody path to baseball immortality."

But the museum also has displays on his generosity, which included sizable donations to start the Ty Cobb Healthcare System (which now includes three hospitals, three long-term care facilities and one assisted-living complex).

He stated the Ty Cobb Educational Foundation (which doles out some $600,000 a year in scholarships to students both black and white).

Kim stayed in the car. Ty Cobb? Baseball? Oh, that game they play with a ball?

I LOVED being the place...just soaking it all in. This was a real treat. Hope you enjoyed this post.

Steve


For more of Cobb's life...the good and the bad...
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=2146613

Great Smoky Mountains

Before we came to the Great Smoky Mountains (GSM) we had some preconceived notions. Kim thought that we would drive through forested valleys and come across quaint, small, old towns that we could explore. I had similar thoughts as well as open valleys where crops were grown and people lived. Neither was quite correct....

There is one major road going west to east going through the Newfound Gap. No real settlements were noted along this route. The only settlements and habitations were Cade's Cove and Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.

Newfound Gap road...so named because, instead of the old, more tortuous route, this one was found, hence New Found. We took our van up this road....not a road for RVs like ours. We did this one in the van.

The marker to the right is where the visitor's center/entrance is located. The cleared area to the far left is Cade's Cove which is about the only place that people lived and farmed in the area.



This is a close up of Cade's Cove. Notice the farm lands.

Here is what the land looked like at Cade's Cove...wide open farmland to grow corn and other crops for market.

A very unique cantilever barn that was a common design.

Compare this aerial photo of Roaring Fork Road with Cade's Cove...doesn't look too promising does it?

There is a road down there (Roaring Fork) that we took that had homes where other people and families tried to eke out a living.

Here is what the Roaring Fork families land and homes looked like...rocky, hilly, dense. They had to clear the land to grow their crops.

Barn in the background. Notice the rocks?

Another barn built amongst the rocks. Many times this would be the first building built so that their animals could be safe as well as a place to store food and wood.

These homes were all built by hand and hard labor.

Note the craftsmanship on how they put the logs together. I don't guess these people carried any fat on them!

This was a washing sink on the backporch hewed out of one log.

Believe it or not, this is where one family had their crop of corn !

"Smokey" vs. "Smoky"

If you think we spelled it wrong, you're in the majority. Wrong, but in the majority. Both are common spellings. But if you want to be correct about it, spell it the way the National Park Service does - the Great Smoky Mountains.

We spell it both ways on this web site for a reason. If you're searching for accommodations in the "smokey" mountains, you'll come across this website.

History of the name is vague at best. The park is named for the mist or blue haze that surrounds the mountains resulting from the interaction between the moist environment of streams and waterfalls and the thick vegetation. The Cherokee name for the area, Sha-co-na-qe, means "place of blue smoke." . The Cherokee Indians, the earliest settlers in these mountains, revered them as the sacred ancestral home of the entire Cherokee Nation, which at one time stretched from Georgia to the Ohio River.



Rising upward through the blue "smoke" arc thirty-six miles of mountain peaks standing five thousand feet or more above sea level, sixteen of which exceed six thousand feet

During the mid-nineteenth century, a number of American atlas publishers produced engraved maps of the United States, its regions, and individual states. Some of these maps were the earliest to show localities eventually incorporated into Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The 1861 Johnson and Browning map of North Carolina identifies the "Iron or Great Smokey Mts," as well as Cade's Cove in Tennessee, which was first settled by Americans in the early nineteenth century. Evidence of the frontier community established there is present today in the partially preserved residences, churches and other buildings exhibited in Cade's Cove, which is one of the most visited sites in the park.

Cade's Cove is inside the park where 700 people in the area lived by 1850.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, encompassing some of the oldest mountains on earth, is located in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. The state boundary line bisects the park, which is one of the largest in the eastern United States. Measuring fifty-four miles long and nineteen miles across at its widest point the park consists of slightly more than half a million acres. Great Smoky Mountains National Park attracts the largest number of visitors annually of any national park, perhaps because it is located within a day's drive of over 60 percent of the nation's population. In recent years, more than nine million visitors have come to the park each year.

So at "Smoky" Falls we follow the proper spelling, despite that to most Americans it looks like poor spelling. http://www.smokyfalls.com/smokeysmoky.html

One day we drove to Clingmans Dome to see the vistas. Unfortunately, it was foggy all the way up. At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is the highest point in Tennessee, and the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi. Only Mt. Mitchell (6,684 feet) and Mt. Craig (6,647), both located in Mt. Mitchell State Park in western North Carolina, rise higher.

We could not go very fast on the way up.....about 25 miles of this.

As we climbed in elevation, the visibility got worse and worse. We were driving early in the morning so there was no traffic.

This is the walking path up to the observation tower...about 3/4 of a mile on a constant uphill....pant, pant, pant.

This is the start of the circular ramp to the top.

The tower is a terrific viewing spot...even if it does look like a spaceship.

The fog is trying lift.

So much for the vistas....it sure was beautiful anyway though...with those creeping clouds.

 Kim decided to stay in the car instead of hiking up the path to the tower. As I walked up, I heard some serious rustling in the bushes to my left.

I heard three distinct "crunching" noises...like something in there was eating !

I crept closer...slowly...quietly...wondering what the heck was in there !?

All of sudden, this big mama bear pokes here head out, looks in my direction (I'm about 20 feet away!), scowls..as if to say, "Well, what do YOU want"??

"Nothing to see here....I'm going to go now !!" I replied....and proceeded to hotfoot it up the trail, looking back constantly. Pretty exciting!

The next day, while driving Roaring Fork road, we came across a baby bear and a big, bad-looking male bear. WOW !

This "little" guy was right above our car. Kim yells out, "You're gonna want to see this"

Do not feed the bears !

This dumb lady went down to take pictures...she's about 15 feet from him.

Apparently, seeing the bears is one of the park's most cherished things to anticipate when visiting so we felt fortunate to see more than three.

The park had a few nice rivers flowing through it right next to the roads. We probably took about 600 photos in all. Gotta love digital cameras.

We had a very nice time...about 5 days worth of driving around and hiking. Great Smoky Mountains is a nice place to visit. Don't go in July or August. It gets PACKED !

Hope you enjoyed this one...long...but no way else to show it all...and we only covered about a quarter of what we saw.