Two controversial baseball players come to mind immediately when I think of Coca-Cola: Ty Cobb and Richie Allen.
The Georgia Peach
Born in Narrow, Georgia, Tyrus Raymond “Ty” Cobb was as adversarial as they come, not only for his style of play, but also because he deplored the integration of the game.
Three weeks before his major league debut, Cobb’s mother accidentally shot and killed his father with a shotgun. Years later, Ty would attribute his aggressive playing style to the fact that his father never saw him play a big league game.
He had a lifetime batting average of .367, which still stands today as the best of all time. He played the game so hard that when he was dying, he would swallow a bottle of bourbon and a quart of milk in an effort to ease the relentless pain.
When Cobb died in 1961, his investment portfolio included lucrative early stakes in companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors that were large enough to be worth the modern equivalent of hundreds of millions (and potentially billions) of dollars today.
Richie (Dick) Allen
The other day I was listening to the Phillies-Nationals game on the car radio. The announcer described a gargantuan home run that Bryce Harper hit to straightaway center field.
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It reminded me of the way Richie Allen’s home runs used to be described. Allen’s name came up a few weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about him since. Five months ago he finished one vote shy of making baseball’s prestigious Hall of Fame. He played in Philadelphia, St. Louis, L.A. and Chicago.
He was traded for Curt Flood (among others) who refused to play in Philadelphia, forever changing the game of baseball, by being instrumental in largely overturning the reserve clause.
From Wampum, Pennsylvania, Allen was a seven-time All Star who won the ’64 Rookie of the Year award as well as the 1972 American League MVP for the Chicago White Sox. He was as imposing a hitter as Bob Gibson was as a pitcher (Gibson once refused to leave the mound when Roberto Clemente broke his leg with a line drive). Willie Mays said he never saw anyone hit the ball harder than Allen.
In 1965, Allen hit a home run off Ray Washburn which cleared Connie Mack Stadium’s Coca-Cola sign in left center field. The ball was estimated to have travelled 539 feet. It prompted Willie “Pops” Stargell to declare “Now I know why they (Phillies fans) boo Richie all the time. When he hits a home run, there’s no souvenir.”
After leaving Philadelphia, he asked that people call him “Dick” because Richie, he said, was a little boy’s name. He was also an R&B singer with a band called the “Groovy Grooves.” His record label called him “Rich.”
Attached is an image of him and his “word art.” He also wrote “Coke” around first base. The commissioner told him to stop writing in the dirt. The next day he wrote “Why?” and “No.” He also wrote “Mom” saying she was the only one that could tell him what to do.
Slogans
It’s interesting that both these players will be forever sketched on my mind when I think of Coca-Cola. When Cobb broke into the big leagues, the beverage company’s slogan was “Coca-Cola revives and sustains.” When Allen made it to the majors, their slogan was “Things go better with Coke.”
