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July 1 - We start off White History Month with the 31st Most Iconic White AmericanTy Cobb "The Georgia Peach" was the best all-around baseball player that ever lived.Cobb was known for his aggressive base running style and his ability to hit to all fields. He won nine consecutive AL batting titles from 1907 to 1915 and three more in his career. He hit .320 or better for 22 consecutive seasons including over .400 three times.In 1909, he led the league in home runs for the only time in his career and won the Triple Crown. Cobb’s best offensive season was 1911 when he led the AL in every major offensive category except home runs including hits, runs, RBI, batting average and slugging percentage. He was named AL MVP."He didn't outhit and he didn't outrun them, he out thought them," said Hall of Fame teammate Sam Crawford."I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one even close to him. He was the greatest all time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing," said Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel.When Cobb made it to first—which he did more often than anyone else; he had three seasons in which he batted over .400—the fun had just begun. He understood the rhythms of the game and he constantly fooled around with them, keeping everyone nervous and off balance. The sportswriters called it “psychological baseball.” His stated intention was to be a “mental hazard for the opposition,” and he did this by hopping around in the batter’s box—constantly changing his stance as the pitcher released the ball—and then, when he got on base, hopping around some more, chattering, making false starts, limping around and feigning injury, and running when it was least expected. He still holds the record for stealing home, doing so 54 times. He once stole second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches, and another time turned a tap back to the pitcher into an inside-the-park home run.“The greatness of Ty Cobb was something that had to be seen,” George Sisler said, “and to see him was to remember him forever.” Cobb often admitted that he was not a natural, the way Shoeless Joe Jackson was; he worked hard to turn himself into a ballplayer. He had nine styles of slides in his repertoire: the hook, the fade-away, the straight-ahead, the short or swoop slide (“which I invented because of my small ankles”), the head-first, the Chicago slide (referred to by him but never explained), the first-base slide, the home-plate slide, and the cuttle-fish slide—so named because he purposely sprayed dirt with his spikes the way squid-like creatures squirt ink. Coming in, he would watch the infielder’s eyes to determine which slide to employ.To this day, he holds many MLB records. His combined total of 4,065 runs scored and runs batted in. The highest career batting average (.366). The most career batting titles with 12. In 1907, Cobb reached first and then stole second, third and home. He accomplished the feat four times during his career, still an MLB record.In 1909, he won the Triple Crown by hitting .377 with 107 RBI and nine home runs, all inside the park, thus becoming the only player to lead his league in home runs in a season without hitting a ball over the fence.On May 12, 1911, he scored from first base on a single to right field, then scored another run from second base on a wild pitch. In the seventh inning, he tied the game with a two-run double. The Highlanders catcher vehemently argued the safe call at second base with the umpire in question, going on at such length that the other Highlanders infielders gathered nearby to watch. Realizing that no one on the Highlanders had called time, Cobb strolled unobserved to third base, and then casually walked towards home plate as if to get a better view of the argument. He then suddenly broke into a run and slid into home plate for the eventual winning run.In 1917, Cobb hit in 35 consecutive games, still the only player with two 35-game hitting streaks (including his 40-game streak in 1911).On August 19, 1921, in the second game of a doubleheader against Elmer Myers of the Boston Red Sox, Cobb collected his 3,000th hit. Aged 34 at the time, he is still the youngest ballplayer to reach that milestone, and in the fewest at-bats.On May 5, 1925, during a series against and because of the popularity of Babe Ruth, Cobb told a reporter that, for the first time in his career, he was going to try to hit home runs, saying he wanted to show that he could hit home runs but simply chose not to. That day, he went 6 for 6, with two singles, a double and three homers. The next day Cobb had three more hits, two of which were home runs. The single his first time up gave him nine consecutive hits over three games. Afterwards reverted to his old playing style. Describing his gameplay strategy in 1930, he said, "My system was all offense. I believed in putting up a mental hazard for the other fellow. If we were five or six runs ahead, I'd try some wild play, such as going from first to home on a single. This helped to make the other side hurry the play in a close game later on. I worked out all the angles I could think of, to keep them guessing and hurrying." In the same interview, Cobb talked about having noticed a throwing tendency of first baseman Hal Chase but having to wait two full years until the opportunity came to exploit it. By unexpectedly altering his own baserunning tendencies, he was able to surprise Chase and score the winning run of the game in question.Cobb was born in 1886 in Narrows, Georgia, a small rural community of farmers that was unincorporated. Cobb attributed his ferocious play to his late father, saying, "I did it for my father. He never got to see me play ... but I knew he was watching me, and I never let him down." Cobb passed away on July 17, 1961 (the patriotic white history month). Cobb's legacy, includes a large college scholarship fund for Georgia residents financed by his early investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors. By the time he died, he held over 20,000 shares of stock in Coca-Cola and owned bottling plants in Santa Maria, California, Twin Falls, Idaho, and Bend, Oregon.....