Ty Cobb Game-Used, Autographed Bat

Five seasons in one piece of ash

The bat is a J.F. Hillerich & Son professional model, the maker's Louisville Slugger, measuring 34.5 inches and weighing 39.2 ounces. Like other bats of its era it carries no stamped player name on the barrel. What identifies it is the wear: cleat marks across the upper barrel, ball marks on the front and right side, a handle wrapped in tape in a spiral pattern, and about two dozen nails driven in where the grain swelled after hundreds of impacts.

The authenticator's letter treats those marks as Cobb signatures. Cobb knocked dirt from his spikes against the barrel, which left the heavily pocked surface collectors call a Cobb trait, and period photographs show him with taped handles, a feature that rarely survives on his bats. The letter also found the length and weight consistent with other Cobb bats in its records.

The bat is dated to 1910 through 1914, the most productive five-season stretch of Cobb's career. Over those years he batted .396 by the official count, including .419 in 1911, when he was named the American League's Most Valuable Player, and .409 in 1912. One collector news report puts the five-year mark at .397 and the 1911 average at .420; the figures here follow the official record.

The Georgia Peach

Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born December 18, 1886, in The Narrows, Georgia, and grew up in Royston, where by age 14 he was playing on the town team. On August 8, 1905, his father was shot and killed by Cobb's mother, who said she mistook him for a burglar; she was acquitted in 1906. Just over three weeks later, on August 30, 1905, Cobb made his debut with the Detroit Tigers, who had bought him for $700.

He was a thinking player as much as a hitting one. Teammate Sam Crawford said Cobb 'outthought' the opposition, and he kicked bases toward the next bag to gain inches. He was also combustible: on May 15, 1912, in New York, he went into the stands after a heckler. The league suspended him, his Tigers teammates refused to play until he was reinstated, and the protest is remembered as the first players' strike.

When he retired after two seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1928, Cobb held the career records for games (3,034), at-bats (11,440), runs (2,245), hits (4,189), total bases (5,854), stolen bases (897) and batting average (.366). He won 12 batting titles. In 1936 he was elected to the Hall of Fame in its first class on 222 of 226 ballots. Wise investments, including early stakes in Coca-Cola and United Motors, made him wealthy. He died in Atlanta on July 17, 1961.

A brewer, a ballclub and an early collector

The inscription, 'To Mr. Maier From Ty Cobb, Sept. 18th, 14,' names Edward R. Maier, a California brewery owner who ran the Vernon Tigers of the Pacific Coast League. Vernon was a small railroad town about five miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Maier is considered one of the first documented collectors of game-used bats, and he gathered lumber from major leaguers including Cobb, Babe Ruth, Frank 'Home Run' Baker, Tris Speaker and Sam Crawford.

Maier's club wandered while he owned it. It played as the Venice Tigers for part of the 1913 to 1915 period, because Venice was the only other 'wet' city in Los Angeles County, and moved back to Vernon in July 1915. Sources differ on exactly when the move to Venice began. Maier sold controlling interest to the silent film star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle in early 1919 and took the club back late that year; the Tigers won Pacific Coast League pennants in 1919 and 1920.

One preview of the 2022 sale said Maier sold the bat itself to Arbuckle in 1919. The catalog description and the team's history say it was the ballclub Maier sold to Arbuckle, and that the bats stayed in the Maier family until the collection was released to collectors in 1993. This page follows the catalog.

Detroit, 1910 to 1914

Cobb used this bat during the run in which he led the American League in hitting every season. The 1910 title was contested: on the last day, St. Louis manager Jack O'Connor had his rookie third baseman play deep, and Nap Lajoie bunted for seven hits. Lajoie's average is the higher one, but Major League Baseball still recognizes Cobb as the 1910 champion.

On September 6, 1913, the Cleveland photographer Louis Van Oeyen posed Cobb and 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson facing each other, each with three bats on his shoulder. That season Cobb won the batting title and Jackson finished second; one report gives their averages as .390 and .373, and the official record lists Cobb at .389. The tallest bat on Cobb's right shoulder, marked by concentric 'V' patterns in its grain, is this one.

By 1914 Cobb was still the league's best hitter, winning the title at .368 in 98 games. That summer, Boston's American League club bought a young pitcher named Babe Ruth from Baltimore on July 9, Europe went to war in August, and the Panama Canal opened to traffic. Cobb signed this bat on September 18, 1914.

From a family collection to a $1.62 million sale

Maier's family released his collection to the collecting world in 1993. The Cobb bat sold again in 2017 at a live auction held during baseball's All-Star FanFest, carrying an estimate of $100,000 to $200,000. Houston oil and gas broker Justin Cornett won it for $155,000, or $187,000 with the buyer's premium. 'I would have paid well over that,' he said. 'It was so heavy (39.2 ounces) and exudes Ty Cobb.'

In July 2018 Cornett, a collector of early baseball photographs, noticed that the top bat on Cobb's shoulder in the Van Oeyen photo looked 'eerily similar' to his own. He sent the image to the PSA/DNA bat authenticator John Taube, who asked him to overnight the bat and called back within an hour of receiving it. 'It's very obvious when you see the grain line,' Taube said. The bat was described as possibly the hobby's earliest photo-matched game-used item, and Cornett said he had offered to lend it to the Hall of Fame.

A second match followed: a circa 1912-13 photograph of Cobb at Comiskey Park in Chicago, in which, according to the letter, 'the grain pattern on the front of the bat from the handle to the center brand is a perfect match.' With both matches documented, the bat returned to auction in November 2022 in a fall sports catalog sale in Dallas, previewed with an estimate of $2 million and an opening-week bid of $650,000.

It sold on November 18, 2022, for $1.62 million. The result was the most ever paid at auction for a Ty Cobb item and fell just short of the $1.68 million paid that August for a signed, game-used Babe Ruth bat, then the record for any game-used bat. The page does not identify the 2022 consignor or buyer.

How to tell this bat from other Cobb gamers

Several game-used Cobb bats survive, and some have sold for seven figures. In March 2021 a different Cobb bat, a 34.5-inch, 40.1-ounce Hillerich & Bradsby that Cobb noted he had used through his last season in 1928, sold privately for $1.1 million. That bat has its tape fully intact and a tobacco-stained barrel; it is not this one.

This bat is identified by its J.F. Hillerich & Son markings, its 34.5-inch, 39.2-ounce dimensions, the nail repairs, the spiral handle tape, the fountain-pen inscription to Maier dated September 18, 1914, and its two photo matches. Its PSA/DNA grade is GU 10, and it carries letters from PSA/DNA and a separate photo-matching service.

The numbers

1910 season

140 G, 508 AB, 106 R, 194 H, 35 2B, 13 3B, 8 HR, 91 RBI, 65 SB, .382 BA

1911 season

146 G, 592 AB, 148 R, 248 H, 47 2B, 24 3B, 8 HR, 127 RBI, 83 SB, .419 BA, .620 SLG. AL MVP.

1912 season

140 G, 553 AB, 119 R, 226 H, 30 2B, 23 3B, 7 HR, 83 RBI, 61 SB, .409 BA

1913 season

122 G, 429 AB, 70 R, 167 H, 18 2B, 16 3B, 4 HR, 67 RBI, 51 SB, .389 BA

1914 season

98 G, 345 AB, 69 R, 127 H, 22 2B, 11 3B, 2 HR, 57 RBI, 35 SB, .368 BA. AL batting champion.

1910-1914 combined

962 H in 2,427 AB, .396

Career (1905-1928)

3,034 G, 4,189 H, 2,245 R, 897 SB, .366 BA, 12 batting titles

Hall of Fame

Inaugural class, 1936; 222 of 226 ballots

Timeline

1. Dec 18, 1886

   Tyrus Raymond Cobb is born in The Narrows, Georgia.

2. Aug 30, 1905

   Cobb makes his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers.

3. 1910

   The earliest season to which the bat is dated. Cobb hits .382.

4. 1911

   Cobb hits .419 with 248 hits and is named American League MVP.

5. May 15, 1912

   Cobb goes into the stands after a heckler in New York; his suspension sets off the first players' strike.

6. Sep 6, 1913

   Louis Van Oeyen photographs Cobb and Joe Jackson; this bat is on Cobb's shoulder.

7. Sep 18, 1914

   Cobb inscribes the bat to Eddie Maier, owner of the Vernon Tigers.

8. 1919

   Maier sells controlling interest in his ballclub to Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, then resumes running it late in the year.

9. Sep 11, 1928

   Cobb plays his final game, with the Philadelphia Athletics.

10. 1936

    Cobb is elected to the Hall of Fame in its first class.

11. Jul 17, 1961

    Cobb dies in Atlanta at 74.

12. 1993

    The Maier family releases Eddie Maier's bat collection to collectors.

13. 2017

    The bat sells at an All-Star FanFest auction to Houston collector Justin Cornett for $187,000 with premium.

14. Jul 2018

    Cornett matches the bat to the 1913 Cobb and Jackson photograph.

15. Oct 27, 2022

    A preview of the fall auction reports a $650,000 bid and a $2 million estimate.

16. Nov 18, 2022

    The bat sells at auction in Dallas for $1.62 million, the most for any Cobb item at auction.

The world in 1914

• Jan 5, 1914

  Ford announces an eight-hour day and a $5 daily minimum wage.

• Apr 20, 1914

  The Ludlow Massacre: the Colorado National Guard attacks a striking miners' tent colony, killing 24.

• Apr 21, 1914

  U.S. sailors and Marines land at Veracruz, Mexico.

• Jul 9, 1914

  The Boston Red Sox buy Babe Ruth's contract from Baltimore of the International League.

• Aug 4, 1914

  Germany invades Belgium and the United States declares neutrality in the European war.

• Aug 15, 1914

  The Panama Canal opens with the passage of the steamship Ancon.

• Sep 26, 1914

  The Federal Trade Commission is established.

• Oct 1914

  The Boston Braves sweep the Philadelphia Athletics, the first four-game sweep in World Series history.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Ty Cobb Game-Used, Autographed Bat is number 52 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (51 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The bat has no player name stamped on the barrel, which is correct for its era; it is identified by wear, inscription and photographs.
• About two dozen nails were driven into the bat to hold down grain that swelled from repeated impacts.
• The 1913 photo match was found by the bat's owner, who was trying to match a Lou Gehrig bat when he spotted it.
• Eddie Maier's ballclub was briefly owned by silent film star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle in 1919.
• The 2022 price fell just $60,000 short of the $1.68 million paid weeks earlier for a game-used Babe Ruth bat.
• Cobb's mother shot and killed his father just over three weeks before Cobb's major league debut.