Cobb

I've been reading Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, widely regarded as the best book on this great ballplayer of the pre-Ruth era (mostly). It's a really fun read, most of all for the way it captures the world of early 20th-century baseball.

Anyway, those were the days that baseball was full of truly colorful "characters." I find myself going to Baseball Reference to look them up. Baseball Reference is great for stat geeks like me. You can look up a player's record, or a whole team's. And of course one of the things you'll notice when you look up team rosters from that era is all the unusual names.

For example, the 1935 Detroit Tigers. This was long after the Cobb era of course. But look at the names! You had Goose Goslin, Gee Walker (aka, the madman from Mississippi) and his brother Hub Walker too, Flea Clifton, Heinie Schuble, and the pitchers Schoolboy Rowe, General Crowder, and of course Firpo Marberry.

Firpo Marberry!