I remember that I said that Tommy Lee Jones could walk on the moon and wouldn't even need a spacesuit. This man is an incredible actor. He deserved the Oscar that he won for playing Lieutenant Gerard in The Fugitive. He played a tough guy with a heart of gold and was wonderful. In this film, however, he plays a very different role. EVERYONE HATED THIS BASEBALL LEGEND AND HE LOVED IT!!!That was the ad that accompanied this film. Ty Cobb may have been the greatest baseball player that ever lived. Even today, he has set records that other players have not passed. However, was he really a hero? I think that it is very interesting that this film came out about the same time that the O. J. Simpson case was grabbing the headlines because it brought into our collective minds the question. WHAT MAKES A HERO? Ty Cobb was a vicious bigot, he was a wife and a child beater and he murdered a man in cold blood. Someone said once that he was the most terrifying figure that you would ever encounter in a biography except for Adolf Hitler and some comparisons favor Hitler! They said that he makes Vince Lombardi look wishy washy! Tommy Lee Jones is excellent in portraying Cobb's egotism and cruelty but at the same time he makes you feel sorry for him. Cobb's father had been shot and killed when he was a young man (a classic Frued situation). However, it makes me think that Cobb was just a bad seed to begin with. Robert Wuhl plays Al Stump as an ignorant fool who finally just gives in and tells his friends that Cobb was a great man "know ye that a prince and a great man has fallen". He says that it wasn't because the kids of America needed heroes or some other nonsense it was because in the very end that I needed him to be a hero and I plead guilty because that is my weakness.
