My first love as a child outside of my family was baseball.  Hence, whenever there is a film featuring the sport, then I am likely to watch it.  With all the movies I have reviewed for The Legionnaire, the more well-known options in this regard have been covered.  When I began addressing non-theatrical releases, my favorite movie about America’s favorite pastime, The Natural (1984), was among the first titles I wrote about for the blog.  There have been some silly entries, like Rookie of the Year (1993), and more serious ones such as Eight Men Out (1988).  I wish I could say they are all good because it is difficult to find actors that can deliver credible lines while also looking the part on the field.  In any case, I am always on the lookout for other motion pictures about this cherished subject.  As such, I am surprised it took me this long to get to Cobb (1994), the biopic about arguably the greatest player of all time, Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones).  There are a few moments that grated against my Catholic sensibilities, and it is not really about the sport, but if nothing else, I can check it off the list.

The film begins with a list of Cobb’s on-field accomplishments, along with some archival footage from the real-life person.  He is the stuff of legends that keeps fans and sports writers alike arguing for years.  A group of the latter gather at a bar when in walks in one of their more famous number, Al Stump (Robert Wuhl).  As they bicker about the greatest in any number of fields, the telephone rings and it is for Al.  On the other end is Ty, and the legendary player is asking that Al come and ghost write Ty’s autobiography.  Al is enthralled, but his colleagues preach caution, speaking of the hall-of-famer’s mercurial reputation.  All the same, Al sees it as the opportunity of a lifetime, and he is soon driving up the side of a Sierra Navada mountain to Ty’s Lake Tahoe estate.  Since retiring from the sport, much of Ty’s time has been spent on playing the stock market.  Throughout the film, when he is not wildly yelling about something, randomly firing one of his guns, or both, he is buying and selling shares of various companies.  Upon Al’s arrival, all three of these activities are going on, which has chased away Willie (Lou Myers), an African American assistant.  It is not the most auspicious of introductions for the starstruck Al, and indeed he is ready to give up on his first day on the job.  He manages to make it to the next morning, typing away as Ty is up to more of the same antics.  In the middle of his gesticulations, Ty notices that Al is not writing the most flattering words.  In response, Ty brandishes a gun at Al and demands that the author be more faithful to the subject’s testimony.  Ty also orders Al to accompany the retiree to nearby Reno, where Ty wishes to get up to all manner of debauchery.  So determined is Ty that they go immediately that he demands they set out in a snow storm.  Between the booze and the pills, it is little wonder that Ty turns his vehicle over.  Al comes to the rescue, but Ty once more brandishes a firearm and insists they continue on with Ty driving Al’s vehicle.  Miraculously, they make it to their destination, though with Ty crashing the car into a snowbank on the outskirts of the city.  Shortly thereafter, he leads them into a nightclub where he is recognized and invited on stage to talk.  Smiling the entire way, once he gets in front of a microphone, he launches into a profanity laced, racist diatribe.  Meanwhile, Al sneaks away and notices Ramona (Lolita Davidovich), a cigarette girl they had encountered at the motel.  Because Al is having marital problems, he flirts with Romana and they go back to his room.  Before anything else can happen, Ty kicks in the door and drags Ramona to his chambers.  Gun in hand, he makes her strip, but stops short of anything more inappropriate.  Instead, he pays her $1,000 to tell everyone that they had a good time, and she hastily leaves.  It is the shooting inside the casino when he sees Ramona with Willie that gets the baseball player and writer kicked out of Reno.  There is another goal in mind.  Though it is weeks away, Ty has been invited to a special dinner for players enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  This means a long drive, and he spends most of it speaking into a tape recorder about the fundamentals of playing the game the correct way in his view.  To this point, you would be right to think of him as a monster.  However, there are also moments of vulnerability with Al when Ty reveals aspects of his Baptist upbringing in Georgia, and how his mother, Amanda Chitwood Cobb (Rhoda Griffis), had accidentally murdered his father, William Herschel Cobb (J. Kenneth Campbell).  Ty does not want these more personal stories in his book because, as he begins to realize that he could die at any time, he is concerned about leaving behind a legacy of greatness.  One can see this when Al and Ty finally arrive in Cooperstown.  Though the fans and his fellow old timers cheer him publicly, there are more private concerns.  They come out while Ty watches the tribute they play of his career during the dinner.  While everyone else sees clips of his play, he is haunted by visions of abusing his wife and other nefarious deeds.  Though Al is able to calm him down, Ty is denied entrance to an afterparty being hosted by Rogers Hornsby (Tommy Bush).  It gets no better when they next visit his hometown in Georgia.  Stopping at the home owned by his daughter, she says she does not want to see him.  Ty takes his grief out on Al, the tirade culminating at the Cobb family mausoleum.  There, when Al points out the hypocritic desire of wanting all the Cobbs there, Ty changes his story about his father’s death, saying it had been Amanda’s lover that killed William.  It brings Al up short, and they spend the night drinking.  Al is further set off when a process server (Bradley Whitford) delivers Al’s wife’s divorce papers.  Al does not take it well and eventually falls asleep in a drunken stupor.  It is while he is incapacitated that Ty finds the secret notes Al had been taking of their more intimate conversations.  Enraged, Ty is about to shoot Al when the old man begins coughing up blood.  Al finds Ty the next morning checked into a hospital.  Though no less angry, Ty tells Al to write whatever he wants.  With a smile on his face and gun shots ringing out in the background, Al returns home.  The final scene is of him back with his writer friends telling a story about Ty.

One of the things that is difficult about the final story Al tells about Cobb is that it is not easy to know whether it is fact or fiction.  Part of this is due to the film.  In order to assuage Ty, Al assures the legend that he will write only what Ty wishes to put in print.  Al’s hands are tied because his agent had given Ty full editorial control.  Meanwhile, Al had been surreptitiously recording information on various bits of paper and keeping it a secret from Ty.  However, there is more to the story than what is on screen.  The movie is based on the real-life Al Stump’s 1994 book Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man in Baseball.  It made for sensational copy upon its publication, and led to the movie of the same title (sans the subtitle).  However, since then many of its findings have been called into question, and Stump has been accused of fabricating much of his characterization of Cobb.  As a Catholic, or anyone for that matter, honesty is important.  There is no price too high to pay for integrity.  This sort of attitude mirrors that of the martyrs, who paid the ultimate price for staying true to the Faith.  It may be a strong statement to make, but behaving any other way is cowardice.  Neither does one want to be a sociopath.  Being bluntly open about everything is not behaving in a Christ-like manner.  In the case of Al and Ty, they are two sides of the same cowardly coin.  Al is glory seeking, willing to cheat and lie in order to get a great story.  As for Ty, he does not want people to know the seedier aspects of his life.  He freely admits to chasing glory. I realize that I had said a moment ago that much of what you see here is probably a lie.  Nonetheless, that does not diminish the fact that everyone has their bad side.  It is how we deal with it that counts, and God wants all of us, good and bad.

There is a lot of bad in Cobb, and I do not mean that just in terms of how he is portrayed.  There is foul language and nudity in it, the latter of which I was not expecting.  With these factors, and the fact that much of this is made up, I would recommend passing on this one.