Crump: Ty Cobbs & His Twin Falls Tie

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Ty Cobb, the irascible Detroit Tigers right-fielder who was the first player voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Less well known is that Cobb, a Georgian who eventually retired to California, was a Twin Falls businessman during the 1940s and ’50s. In his third season in the major leagues — 1907 — Cobb began buying Coca-Cola stock and doing magazine and newspaper endorsements for the Atlanta-based beverage maker. By the time he died, he owned 20,000 shares of stock and bottling plants in Twin Falls; Bend, Ore., and Santa Maria, Calif. Cobb invested well elsewhere, but his relationship with Coke alone made him a rich man/ Steve Crump , Twin Falls Times-News. More here. (AP file photo: Ty Cobb used to make his cleats razor sharp so as to better steal a base or break up a double play.)