Marshall Tankersley, Student Editor

In an age of instant access news (and gossip), it is all too easy to be in the position of having to discern what is truth and what is either lies or half-truths. Combined with the powerful sense of disassociation that comes from viewing famous figures as larger-than-life titans rather than flesh-and-blood people, society tends to be fed on a diet of information made up to fit a pre-constructed narrative, rather than pure, hard facts. In such a situation, people and events can be misunderstood and beaten into a shape that best fits the archetype presented by the reteller, instead of in its true form.

While this may seem to be a phenomenon unique to modern society, the sad fact is that this is not so, as such was the sad posthumous fate of Tyrus Richmond Cobb. A well-regarded baseball player in the early years of the 20th Century, Ty Cobb’s name became besmirched through the actions and writings of Al Stump, a would-be journalist. Ty Cobb’s story provides modern storytellers (and yes, that includes news reporters or anyone involved in communication) with both a warning and a reminder to pursue truth itself as the goal. When truth becomes something that is swept away in order to create a ‘successful story’ that sells books or advertising on the web, journalism suffers…and then we all suffer.

First of all, one must understand the caricature that has been presented as the real Ty Cobb ever since Al Stump’s scribbles were published in the early 1960s. This version, Stump presents Ty Cobb as a raging maniac, a man who thought nothing of killing another person in a fit of rage, a volcano constantly waiting to erupt. This Cobb would beat attempted muggers to a faceless pulp or try to assault helpless women, and was all-in-all a reprehensible human being. Stump’s attention to truth and detail extended to his presentation of other aspects of the baseball player’s life, such as casting the story of the tragic demise of his father as an act of revenge by his mother and of creating tales about Cobb’s mannerisms and actions during a period when Stump reportedly lived with him.

Because he was dead, Ty Cobb was unable to refute the posthumous caricature that Stump created of him, and the baseball player was forever tarnished in the media as a supremely dishonorable and rather reprehensible individual. Stump took advantage of the public trust he was given as a reporter, and told his readers lies when they expected the truth. So when Hollywood made a movie that featured Cobb as the moral monster of Stump’s fictions, most moviegoers never questioned this Cobb legend.

Although prevalent in our modern consciousness, Al Stump’s claims (and thus the claims of the movie that he helped to produce) are untrue because the itinerant journalist can be caught out in many of his stories. For example, no records exist of Ty Cobb’s mutilation of the mugger. Stump’s story about the death of Cobb’s father is inaccurate concerning many basic facts such as the weapon used and the layout of the house. Stump’s account of his time spent with Cobb, many of which are featured in the film, are either demonstrably untrue or unable to be proven.

Ty Cobb the man was far better than the caricature Stump claimed he was. Cobb was an honorable player, taking pride in his not ‘spiking’ others intentionally, he respected his fans (especially the young ones who looked up to him), and he maintained his cool during such incidents as the Chalmers Award fiasco. Granted, he had quite the temper (and did do some reprehensible things because of it, such as essentially holding up a grocer to make him apologize to his wife, or beating up a foulmouthed yet physically disabled heckler in the bleachers), but so did many baseball players of his time.

However, Stump’s Cobb is not a depiction of a flawed human being. No, Stump’s Cobb is wholly evil, and Stump dismisses the good in favor of an evil caricature. In his book Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, author Charles Leerhsen relates how he discovered the holes in Stump’s story:

The more I reread and considered the writings of Al Stump, the more the unrealness of his scenes and dialogues nagged at me. Then I saw, or saw again, something that I thought was really a step too far. It was something that occurred in Stump’s infamous True Magazine article of late 1961, specifically in an anecdote about how Cobb had commissioned a portrait of himself just before his death. Stump’s intention in this case was to iustrate Cobb’s callousness towards the artist he’d promised to hire for the project, but it had a very different effect on me… What ultimately tipped the scales, though, was a quote that Stump used to finish the story. Stump’s Cobb, after checking the preliminary sketches and seeing a living corpse with ‘sagging cheeks and a think neck,’ supposedly cancelled the portrait, telling the artist, ‘I wouldn’t let you recalcimine my toilet!’ I simply didn’t believe that any human being ever said, ‘I wouldn’t let you recalcimine my toilet!’ (Ty Cobb, 380-381)

After further investigation, Leerhsen discovered other holes in Stump’s writing and accounts of Cobb, though it was quite interesting to me that this unraveling of the Stump mythos was started by something seemingly so mundane as a phrase Cobb used that did not quite seem right. However, Leerhsen’s instincts were correct and the flaws he found in Stump’s other work were numerous.

There can hardly be any greater betrayal than someone whose profession requires integrity betraying that trust in turning to lies, certainly not when it transforms and damages the character of a man respected by the country. Al Stump saw that he could make a quick buck by ‘revealing’ that the great man was really a monster, and so he did so—regardless of whether it was fact. In pursuing money instead of truth, Stump dealt damage to Ty Cobb and Cobb’s character that still resonates today.

Stump’s disgraceful actions and character should be a warning to journalists today—while the allure of monetary gain or fame may be alluring, the journalist’s first allegiance is to the truth. To depart from the truth on any level in the process of reporting a story is a betrayal of the highest order. Stump’s obsession with besmirching the character of Ty Cobb with unverifiable information or outright false stories ended up casting the once-heralded sports hero into the gutter of public opinion, and it has never truly recovered. Furthermore, the story of Al Stump illustrates why the trust that most Americans have in the media is so low.

Every person in existence has a good side and a bad side, and a qualified storyteller and journalist will relate both in truth, not emphasize one over the other. Rather than following Al Stump’s example, a Christian reporter should seek to shed light on the truth, not repeat or seek out unverifiable sources that speak only bad things about his or her subject. If God prizes truth so highly, so must those who follow Him, especially those who possess the power to either destroy or build up with their words.

We must never take the power of our words lightly—they may seem small or inconsequential things, but they have the power to destroy lives. Careless and opportunist words can also destroy journalism as a profession and as a medium for information.

If we always choose to pursue truth in journalism, then all will be well.