A Money Player : Ty Cobb Was a Peach When It Came to Investments, Too

Major league spring training in 1961 brought together, for the last time, Ted Williams and his former adviser on the science of batting, Ty Cobb. Six months earlier, after 19 seasons with the Boston Red Sox and as holder of history’s sixth-best batting average, .344, Williams had retired.

Cobb, then 74, the all-time batting champion at .367, had four months to live.

The two sat over drinks in a motel at Scottsdale, Ariz., and Williams asked legendary multimillionaire Cobb, “Ty, do you really have that much loot?”

“Yes,” replied the crusty Georgian. “Don’t you? “

Cobb’s needle was out that day. Williams had long labored to lead baseball with a $125,000 salary and for years had invested well on the side. Yet, at 43 he could only shake his head over Cobb’s wealth. The best-paid of postwar stars uttered a soft “Jeeeeez!”

Similarly, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays never came close to the Dun & Bradstreet rating of financial phenomenon Tyrus Raymond Cobb. He was unique. Cobb probably accumulated more money from all sources than any other player.

At the end of his life in July, 1961, the former Detroit Tiger was worth $12.1 million, according to the Beverly Hills-San Francisco investment firm of E.G. Griffin Corp. Along with that came quarterly dividends from a thick portfolio of blue-chip stocks, bonds, bank interest, real estate, General Motors shares and mineral holdings of about $450,000. He was “Mr. Coca-Cola,” too, with 24,000 shares. For about 50 years, his fortune never stopped growing.

“He’s so rich that he owns half of Lake Tahoe and buys his Scotch by the barrel,” Fred Haney, the late Angel executive and 1920s teammate with the Tigers, once cracked.

Cobb liked to point out: “Everything I have originated with baseball. And it all started with a lousy $2,500 that Detroit paid me in 1907.”

The salaries of today’s major leaguers dwarf anything the 12-time American League batting champion collected in baseball. Yet, he ranks with modern players for wealth.

Cobb played 24 seasons, steadily cashing in what he had and adding more.

Cobb might have been among the game’s most-disliked players for his spiking of opponents, punching of fans and umpires and hell-raising off the field. But he could boast: “I was better than a millionaire in 1926, before I was 40, with two seasons left to play.”

In 1928 he could afford to make a $275,000 bid to buy the Cincinnati Reds. At one point, he was a director of two Georgia banks, in Augusta and Lavonia.

Cobb accomplished this even though his highest salary as a player was $85,000 in 1927. (Three years later Babe Ruth received $80,000.) Surviving a “fix” scandal involving him at Detroit, Cobb joined the Philadelphia Athletics at that figure.

Asked for details, Cobb said: “Well, I was no sit-on-my . . . guy. For example, Coca-Cola was a new drink on the market in 1918. Wall Street didn’t think much of it. I gambled the other way with a small 300-shares buy, then with bigger buys and then Coke jumped out of sight. It brought me more than $4 million as time went by.”

His self-taught skill at judging market trends, the advice of experts and luck kept the five- and six-figure checks coming in. Long before he died, the Cobb Educational Foundation put hundreds of needy Georgia students through college.

Asked once about a $60,000 lawsuit he had filed against the state of California to recover estate taxes he claimed were not owed, he snorted: “It’s small change, but I want it back!”

To the end of his life, Cobb was so intent on making profits that he could talk all afternoon about “leveraged buys,” but couldn’t recall where he first came around from first base to score on an infield out--one of Cobb’s patented, repeated “impossible” plays. It happened in Boston. He was vague about where he stole home twice in one game. That was Cleveland. His five home runs in back-to-back games? He did remember that at St. Louis in 1925, when he was 40.

In late retirement, Cobb read Fortune and Barrons more than he did the Sporting News. He owned a mansion in Atherton, Calif., that contained a stock ticker linking him with “the Street.”

“He buy or sells or sits tight for two hours each day,” reported Muddy Ruel, a onetime Washington Senator catcher and a frequent house guest.

Ruel once asked Cobb: “How did you do today?”

Cobb replied: “Made $12,000 or so.”

Comparing Cobb, the first man into the Hall of Fame, with the top-paid stars of the period between World War II and free agency leaves little doubt that he was the richest individual in the game’s history, club owners excepted. No one, active or retired, he believed, could match his holdings--what he called “my annuities.”

Joe DiMaggio, who retired in 1951 after reaching $100,000 a season, went to coaching the Oakland Athletics and selling hair tonic and coffee makers on TV. Stan Musial got into the restaurant business. Willie Mays, good for a reported $161,000 per year near the end of his career, needed to flack for an Atlantic City gambling house. Mickey Mantle, another $100,000 earner, wound up in public relations work in the insurance and casino fields. Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a dual holdout in 1966 to win, respectively, $125,000 and $100,000 contracts from the Dodgers. None of the above, though, ever was a millionaire.

“The boys don’t know how to multiply their money in a big way,” Cobb said in 1961. “With the way they spend it . . . with injuries cutting them down . . . with their tax situation . . . with bad investments . . . I’m not surprised that when they’re washed up they need to go looking for a job.”

A noisy critic, he made that observation 13 years before the Great Liberation Acts of 1974-75: Catfish Hunter vs. the Oakland Athletics and Andy Messersmith vs. the Dodgers.

Hunter, freed of the reserve clause vise by arbitrator Peter Seitz, went from a $100,000 salary at Oakland to a five-year contract with the Yankees worth $3.75 million. Messersmith won a similar verdict in arbitration a year later.

The two cases meant the death of the 95-year-old reserve clause, which bound a player to one team in perpetuity. Emancipation brought wild open-market bidding. Between 1989 and 1991, the average major league salary went from about $450,000 to a reported $891,000, and $2- and $3-million players became as common as .270 hitters and 12-game winners.

If Cobb were here today, he would be cheering. He worked under the restraints of the reserve clause for nearly a quarter-century, and in 1912 he was a leader in formation of the Base Ball Players Fraternity to fight monopoly. The BBPF union was precipitated by Cobb’s suspension for going into the stands to beat up a fan, bringing on a wholesale strike by the Tigers.

Eventually the BBPF numbered 1,200 members and over the decades led to the Major League Baseball Players Assn. of today.

“Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and I got together on this crazy trade union idea in ’11 and ‘12,” Cobb said. “Ballplayers were damned slaves. But we weren’t so crazy. We threatened a strike by everybody. And forced through a rule that no player could be traded to a lower league without all major clubs getting to bid for him. . . . We got our spring training expenses paid and more.”

He opposed the National Commission of baseball on basic benefits on through to his retirement in 1928, and he hoarded his funds. At Atherton, Cobb drove a dented old Lincoln that needed repair. He smoked dime cigars. A good tip to a taxi driver was 50 cents. He punched out a Palo Alto parking-lot attendant in an argument over his fee. He served his guests cucumber sandwiches.

“I wouldn’t mind being remembered as the best-heeled athlete ever,” he said.

Comparing Cobb to the $3-million ballplayers of 1991, prominent sports attorney Howard Slusher of Los Angeles says:

“There are several ways to look at it. Through much of Cobb’s career, federal and state taxes hadn’t been invented. When they did come along, taxes were low, as opposed to the very hurtful brackets of the present time. The down-and-dirty bottom line for stars paid in the millions is that they keep roughly 70% of it. Some keep more, some less.

“And there isn’t as much relief available to them in the form of tax shelters as you’d think.”

Salary deferments sometimes are used by players today, the ballclub agreeing to remit a fixed sum at a later date, such as at termination of employment. That is a legal method of putting aside large chunks until a day when the player is in a lower tax bracket.

Cobb never needed to do that, nor did he ever employ an agent to represent him.

“Hell, people like (owners) Frank Navin at Detroit, Connie Mack at Philly and John McGraw with the Giants were no smarter than me,” he said. “At times, they had to struggle to meet their payrolls.

“So I acted alone. I’d hold out in the spring for weeks, go work out with some other club, until I got what I wanted.”

Another thought on the rush to riches comes from Jimmie Reese, onetime roommate of Babe Ruth and at 86 the Angels’ conditioning coach.

“You’d better believe that if they were playing today, Cobb and Ruth would break banks,” he said. “They would fill every ballpark. It would take $40-to-$50 million on the season to sign them. Probably Ty and the Babe would hold part ownerships of franchises.”

And what would an underwear, coffee or shoe endorsement be worth to them? No record would be safe.

Another factor in measuring Cobb’s worth was real estate he owned in Georgia, Nevada and California in 1961.

“It’s worth about $20 million, and I bought the raw land back then for very little,” he said.

Then there was the $450,000 he drew quarterly from his municipal bonds, stock ventures and bank-deposit interest.

A famous eccentric, Cobb flew to Los Angeles from New York on April 26, 1961, to throw out the first ball at the home opener of a new team, the Los Angeles Angels. Beside his bed at the Town House Hotel, he kept a satchel containing $1 million in negotiable securities, inside a paper grocery bag.

“Keep your eye on it when I’m not here,” he instructed.

With some old ballplayers he was generous. He passed along tips on Coca-Cola stock and one San Francisco sports columnist allegedly came away with $300,000 because he took the advice. Others who did not listen rued the day.

After Mickey Cochrane was gravely injured in 1937 by a beanball and needed money, Cobb paid off his bills and supported the Hall of Famer for life.

Muddy Ruel said: “There were many more like Mickey he helped. Many.”

The late Casey Stengel had a story: “Back around 1938, Ty gave me some instruction on dropping the drag bunt and the double-steal and other stuff. . . . We got friendly. Then he told me to get into some new fields of east Texas oil. ‘Bet your shirt on it,’ ” he tells me.

“So I put up all I could borrow, just on his say-so. Well, I did better than all right.”

How much the tip helped Stengel isn’t known, but after the “Old Perfesser” died in Glendale in 1975, his estate was valued at more than $800,000.

Cobb liked to tell how he and money first got together--in a way previously unknown to sport.

A freckled kid of 18, he came up to Detroit from the Class-C Sally League late in 1905 for a $750 purchase price. He lived in a $10-a-week boarding house on the $1,200 the Tigers paid him that season. He learned how to hit the curve and in 1907 led the league with a .350-average. He repeated as batting leader in 1908-09 and his pay went from $2,500 to $9,000.

“By then, I had some money to gamble with and began hanging around the Detroit Stock Exchange,” Cobb said. “First thing I did was buy cotton futures, $1,000 worth. It didn’t go up until World War I and the need for uniforms. But when cotton did jump, I had a $7,500 profit.”

Soon after, he bought into a copper mine in Bisbee, Ariz. When a strike was made, he collected $15,000.

“The first real money I’d seen,” he said.

Then, with his .420 and .410 averages, he diversified. His fans included pioneer auto men John Dodge, David Buick, J.W. Packard and Ransom Olds of Oldsmobile, and that connection led to a move into auto stocks, just as America was entering a vehicular boom. He got into United Motors, later to become the industry giant General Motors, and kept the stock as a source of fat dividends.

Cobb invested income from what he was paid to endorse--tonic water, suspenders, cigarettes, cigars, soda-pop, laxative pills, chewing gum, Louisville Sluggers, baseball gloves, Chevrolet cars and much more--in land, livestock and promising market stocks.

“The best players were making $6,000 a season from clubs then,” he recalled. “I was worth over $300,000 after World War I.

“I passed up no chance to be independent of the game. In off-seasons I’d go into bush-league towns and pick up $800 to $1,000 for one exhibition appearance.”

Cobb was a greater name by 1917 than former rivals Nap Lajoie and Honus Wagner had been and wouldn’t face another challenger until Babe Ruth came along, slugging home runs, in the 1920s.

By then Cobb had starred in the first motion picture made about an athlete, appeared in stage plays and played golf with U.S. Presidents, senators and Wall Street hotshots. His social contacts were at a higher level than those of modern ballpark heroes. Knowing William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson opened more doors.

Shortly after Christmas of 1960, the failing Cobb was asked if he had fulfilled all of his financial ambitions.

“No,” he rasped. “I missed a hell of a big one. Around 1911, a man named George Cahill invented a system to light parks for night ball. It revolutionized the game. I got in there too late to buy into his company.”

Had Cobb derived a lot of satisfaction from becoming the No. 1 moneymaker?

“I’d trade it all for getting rid of what ails me,” he muttered.

Seven months later, he died of prostate cancer, which had been killing him for two years. The scene was Emory Hospital in Atlanta.

Before going, Cobb piled a stack of securities worth $1 million on a table beside his bed. Maybe he wanted to count them one more time.