October 12, 1908: Ty Cobb is a lousy human, but a great baseball player. Cubs lose World Series gam

Let's be honest here ... despite being a fairly deplorable human being, I bet Ty Cobb was amazing to watch on the baseball diamond. Today in World Series game three he went 4-5, stole two bases, and led the Tigers to an 8-3 victory. The Cubs still led the Series 2-1, but it was essentially do-or-die time for the Tigers, who needed to do so on the road or face returning home to Detroit in a fairly impossible 3-0 hole.

Ty Cobb legging out a single in game 3 ... Oct. 12, 1908

Cobb had a great season for the Tigers ... leading the American League with a .324 average, as well as finishing first in the AL in hits, doubles, triples, and RBIs as well. Oh and this was all at the ripe young age of 21, only his third season in the majors. Cobb debuted at the age of 18 in 1905, so basically he was the turn of the century's version of Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, etc etc (except way more racist and mean).

Again ... regardless of the fact that he was a pretty crappy human, he had to be fun as hell to watch play baseball, especially given how he was pretty much all out hustle on every single play. The game three recap in the Tribune today said Cobb produced "base running which raised so much dust it will require at least two days to settle it."

I mean, in 1911 the dude won the MVP by batting .420, stealing 83 bases, knocking in a 127 runs, and pounding out 248 hits. That's a pretty freakin' amazing season!

Cobb attempting to steal home in game 3 ... Oct. 12, 1908 (he was out BTW)

So yeah ... today was not the Cubs' day. They had a 3-1 lead heading into the 4th inning, but the Tigers managed to tag pitcher Jack Pfiester with five runs on their way to a fairly easy 8-3 victory. The Series now heads back to Detroit for games four and five, somewhat putting the pressure on the Cubs to win on the road despite currently holding a 2-1 lead overall.

One other note from the game ... attendance continues to be a problem, and the it looks like the culprit is ticket scalping. Today's game drew 14,543 ... down 3,000 from yesterday, and well below the 20,000+ the Cubs drew at the West Side Grounds in the 1907 World Series.

The Tribune had a huge write-up about angry fans complaining to both the newspaper and the Cubs box office about the fact that they were unable to purchase tickets from the ticket window, while at the same time scalpers were already offering "premium" seats before anything had even been released to the public.

Fans on the field after the game

And here's the extra shady part ... the individual teams were in charge of their own tickets back then, so the finger was immediately being pointed at Cubs management. And here's why ... as I pointed out yesterday, the players actually pull in the bulk of the ticket profits from the World Series games (67% to the owner's 33%).

So the Tribune estimated that 15,000 fans were unable to buy tickets to the past two games, resulting in a loss of about $25,000 in revenue for the players ... revenue that the OWNERS would have to pay out. Now I have no real proof (since I researched this for all of about 3 minutes), but it certainly looks shady to me that owners just happened to let scalpers cheat the players out of $25K. Hmmmmmmm.

Regardless, the Cubs now hop the train for the short trip back to Detroit for tomorrow's game four showdown. Game one pitchers Mordecai Brown and Ed Summers have had two whole days rest each, so naturally that's plenty of time to wheel them back out there again to pitch!