Spinning Ty Cobb

Ty Cobb wasn't such a bad guy — really.

That's what Tom Stanton, author of “Ty and the Babe,” is out to prove with his self-styled “Ty Cobb Reputation Reformation Campaign.” His objective is simply “to crack that hardened image of Ty Cobb.”

Now he's offering a free bumper sticker, “Ty Cobb-Still A Peach,” playing off the late Cobb's “Georgia Peach” nickname to anyone who sends him a self-addressed envelope.

His book, recently released in paperback after its hardcover publication by St. Martin's Press last year, explores the relationship between Cobb and Babe Ruth, who were reputedly fierce on-field competitors but off-field friends.

Stanton says Cobb's image as the dirty player who sharpened his spikes in the dugout for hard slides into infielders was an invention of two rookie teammates on the Detroit Tigers.

“People have this image of Cobb as the nastiest, dirtiest man to put on spikes,” says Stanton, who claims that Cobb was a “southern gentleman.”

Stanton's most compelling evidence: the Ty Cobb Memorial Hospital that Cobb financed, and a scholarship fund that still exists.

But he concedes that Cobb himself fostered his tough guy image through writer Tom Stump, whose fictionalized bio of the ballplayer put it on the record.