The Relationship Factor
4/21/2011 8:02:20 AM
He  is considered one of the most successful athletes of the 20th century. For many, he defined the "win at all costs” attitude that made him the standard that his peers and many players after him would measure themselves. In 23 years of playing major league baseball, he set 90 records. He holds the career batting average record at .366. He won 12 batting titles, including 9 straight. He stole more bases and had more hits than anyone in the game. These records stood for half a century before being broken. When elected into the Hall of Fame, he had more votes than any of the other players voted in the same year: Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and even Babe Ruth.

But baseball was not his only success. He was a very savvy businessman. In the very early years of sports marketing, he became the spokesman for a fledgling beverage company in Atlanta: Coca Cola. He invested heavily in Coke and General Electric. Upon his death, his stock holdings in those two companies alone totaled over $11 million.

They nicknamed him, "the Georgia Peach.” It was a backhanded insult, because for all of his talent, the texture of Ty Cobb’s personality was more like a cocklebur than a peach. He just might have been both the best baseball player and the most hated baseball player of all time.  

So abrasive was Cobb that his own Detroit Tiger teammates sent congratulations to Cleveland’s Napoleon Lajoie when he edged Cobb for the AL batting title on the last day of the 1910 season. (Cobb later filed a complaint with the commissioner’s office and had one of Lajoie’s hits– a bunt that had been dropped by a catcher– overturned as a hit and regained the batting title.) Cobb was known to settle his differences with umpires toe-to-toe and bare-knuckled under the stands after the game. At a game in New York, Cobb entered the stands to beat a heckler who had lost his hands in an industrial accident. Cobb knocked the man to the ground and began to kick him, bloodying him with his cleats. When the onlookers urged him to stop because the man had no hands to defend himself, it was reported that Cobb shouted, "I don’t care if he doesn’t have any feet!” and continued the beating. Ty Cobb married and divorced twice. When his son, Ty, Jr. flunked out of Princeton University, the elder Cobb traveled to New Jersey and whipped his son to make sure he never failed again. For their remaining years, the two of them were estranged.

Late in his life, a professional scout for the Yankees recognized Ty Cobb sitting alone at the World Series. The man sat down with Cobb while the old baseball player reflected back on his life: the great athletic achievements, all the records he held and all the money he had made in business. Then a pensive Cobb stated that he would give it all up if a few of the guys he played with would just be willing to talk to him. 

What leadership lessons can we learn from the great Ty Cobb? I think it can be said that if you are going to be successful, the legacy you leave is not your wealth or business prowess, but how you treat other people. Relationships, whether they are good or bad, are the things that people remember. Record-setting achievement is great, but if no one is cheering for you in the end, it is a hollow victory. When life becomes all about you, your name in the record books will not equal the relationships you have made. It is said that when Ty Cobb entered the hospital before he died, he brought a brown paper bag with him stuffed with $1 million of bonds and a pistol. No one was going to beat him, not even in the end!

Secondly, life is a team sport, not an individual competition. For all of his great individual records, it should be noted that Ty Cobb’s teams never won the World Series. Why? Many speculate that Cobb was a drag on team morale. He never wanted anyone to surpass him in greatness, not even his teammates. He was a player/manager for five years with the Detroit Tigers. He was a dismal failure as a leader. If you are going to be a leader of people, you have to do more than just be a player. There are times when you need to be a coach and a cheerleader.

So if you are a person who has great ability – you are smart, capable and leading the pack – keep in mind that in order to be a leader of people, you cannot let your own success become the giant hurdle you and those around you cannot jump over.
 

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