Four of a Kind

Quick now, what do Ty Cobb, Ernest Hemingway, John Berryman, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have in common? Answer: each to a greater or lesser degree held his mother responsible for the death of his father.

Hamlet's case is the most notorious, primarily because he had a world-class playwright to lay it out for him. In addition he was able, courtesy of that same playwright, to make use of his father's ghost in underscoring the depth and extent of the treachery. Ghosts can be aces in these matters, especially when, as here, they perform the dual role of victim and witness. The other three men, limited by their own corporeality and not being characters in a play, had no such access to the supernatural—at least so far as we know.

Of the three Cobb's case was probably the most gruesome. His father was shotgunned to death by his mother in tawdry circumstances one hot August night in Narrows, Georgia. The father had suspected the mother, a much younger woman, of infidelity and had returned home unannounced in the middle of the night to catch her at it. She, mistaking the silhouette at her bedroom window (so she said) for a burglar, had lifted the shotgun and emptied both barrels. A jury acquitted her of voluntary manslaughter.

This happened just as Cobb was embarking on his legendary career as one of baseball's all-time greats. Before he was finished he would hold records for most hits, most runs scored, most stolen bases, most batting titles, highest career batting average, most games played, most at-bats, and dozens of other mosts. Many of his records still stand. Cobb was by all accounts a fierce competitor; one sportswriter described him as "daring to the point of dementia." He was despised by the players on other teams for his slashing, take-no-prisoners style of play and was heartily disliked by his own teammates. He was surly, foul-mouthed, a racist, and an all-around bad actor. You did not want to cross Ty Cobb. In explaining himself in later years he said, "My father had his head blown off when I was eighteen years old—by a member of my own family. I didn't get over that. I've never gotten over it."

As for his baseball accomplishments: "I did it for my father," he said. "He never got to see me play. But I knew he was watching me … and I never let him down." But I knew he was watching me. Maybe there was an element of the supernatural at work in Cobb's case, after all. Note also by a member of my own family. An interesting circumlocution. Why was Cobb unable to say by my own mother? His biographer Al Stump (Cobb, Algonquin Books, 1994) says Cobb provided financial support for his mother for a while after the killing, "but well before her 1936 death he had sent his mother to live with others and largely eliminated her from his life." She may have been acquitted by a jury but not by the townspeople of Royston, Georgia, where the Cobb family lived, and not, apparently, by Ty. The townspeople considered her a murderess. The name of her supposed lover, a local man, was well known, and aspects of the tragedy were much gossiped about. Cobb's father had been a distinguished local citizen: a county schools commissioner and a former state senator. "My father," Cobb told Stump, "was the greatest man I ever knew. He was a scholar, state senator, editor, and philosopher—a saintly man. I worshipped him. So did all the people around here."

Cobb had been, as he said, eighteen years old at the time of the killing—a heavy load for a teenager to take on. The killing took place in 1905. Two years later Ty Cobb led the American League in hitting—with a .350 batting average—at that time the youngest player ever to do so.

The circumstances of John Berryman's father's death were remarkably similar to those of Cobb's. The death was...