Ty Cobb

Ty Cobb was an American Major League Baseball outfielder whose 24-season MLB career produced one of the most-iconic baseball-statistical records in American sports history — including the .366 lifetime batting average that has stood as the all-time MLB record for over 90 years. He was born Tyrus Raymond Cobb on December 18, 1886, in The Narrows, Banks County, Georgia, into an Southern family. His father William Herschel Cobb was an state senator and county-school commissioner.

His professional baseball career began in 1905 with the Detroit Tigers at age 18. The 1905 family tragedy — in which his mother shot and killed his father in their Royston, Georgia home (under disputed circumstances that led to her acquittal on involuntary manslaughter charges) — shaped his personality and his notoriously combative on-field play across his entire career.

His 22-season Detroit Tigers career (1905–1926) and his 2-season Philadelphia Athletics career (1927–1928) produced the 4,189 career hits — a MLB record that stood for 57 years until Pete Rose surpassed it on September 11, 1985. His .366 lifetime batting average has remained the all-time MLB record continuously since his 1928 retirement. He won the 1909 American League Most Valuable Player Award, the 12 batting titles (including nine consecutive titles from 1907 to 1915 — an American League record), and the 892 career stolen bases (an MLB record at the time of his retirement).

He was inducted as one of the five inaugural members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 (alongside Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, and Christy Mathewson). His 222 votes were the most of the inaugural class. His post-baseball reputation has been complicated by recurring biographical assessments of his on-field temper, his racist views, and his violent confrontations across his career — though some recent biographical reassessments have revised some of the most-extreme claims about his racial views. He died on July 17, 1961, at age 74, in Atlanta, Georgia.

His name Ty is the English short form of various names beginning with Ty- (Tyler, Tyrone, Tyson, Tyrese). Ty has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.