No. I'm sure it's well-known to baseball history buffs, but my knowledge generally goes back to the 1950s, as that's when my dad started watching, and I get a lot from him.
Tyus Cobb was one of the 3-4 greatest hitters of all time and arguably the most underrated player in baseball history. You can hate the man for being a racist and a punk, but make no mistake, he was a GREAT baseball player.
Ty Cobb?? Where do I start?? I have heard the op's story and what makes that story so remarkable was the fact that his teammates actually stood behind him on this! Also heard about the Honus Wagner incident although that has been disputed. Supposedly Cobb wouldn't even room with Babe Ruth when they were on a barnstorming tour because he had heard that Ruth had some black blood in him. Another famous Cobb story was that one year, he was neck and neck with Napoleon aka Larry Lajoie for the AL batting title: "The Lajoie-Cobb rivalry reached a peak in 1910, when the Chalmers Auto Company (a direct predecessor to modern-day Chrysler) promised a car to the batting leader (and MVP) that year. Cobb took the final two games of the 1910 season off, confident that his average was high enough to win the AL batting title unless Lajoie had a near-perfect final day. Lajoie, a far more popular player than Cobb, was allowed by the opposing St. Louis Browns to go 8-for-8 in a season-ending doubleheader. After a "sun-hindered" fly ball went for a triple and another batted ball landed for a cleanly hit single, Lajoie had five subsequent "hits" – bunt singles dropped in front of third baseman Red Corriden, who was playing closer to shallow left field on orders of manager Jack O'Connor. Lajoie also laid down a sixth bunt that was muffed for an error—officially giving him a hitless at-bat and dropping his average. O'Connor and coach Harry Howell then offered a new wardrobe to the official scorer, a woman, if she changed it to a hit. She refused, and the resulting uproar resulted in O'Connor and Howell being kicked out of baseball for life. As it turns out, Lajoie's average is not the only one tainted by controversy; Cobb's average might have been inflated by counting a game twice in his statistics when one day he went 2-for-3, as researchers discovered 70 years later. In the end, the Chalmers Auto Company avoided taking sides in the dispute by awarding cars to both Cobb and Lajoie for their thrilling batting race." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nap_Lajoie#Rivalry_with_Ty_Cobb Oh and Rube Waddell was absolutely nuts - read one story about how he roomed with this one guy and the guy would not room with him unless he quit eating crackers in bed. So, Connie Mack re-did Waddell's contract to forbid him from eating crackers in bed.
Yeah, in a 1996 biography, it's a quote from Wagner. However, he didn't say he punched him; he said he tagged him out so hard he needed stitches on his lip. And no mention of Cobb's bench cheering. Cobb disputed the whole story in the '50s. Cobb was pretty young in '09 and Wagner was a superstar vet. Prior to the series the biography states that Cobb was very gracious in his complements of the aging vet and very respectful. so, who knows. But a punch doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Wagner quote.
