In the last year of his playing career, Ty Cobb gave a tobacco-juice and pitch stained bat he’d used to a then 19-year old player named Eddie Onslow, who’d joined the Detroit Tigers in 1912. A hundred years later, the bat has sold at the Fan Fest auction in Kansas City for a record $220,000. Onslow’s now 92-year old daughter consigned the Louisville Slugger, which was captured by Denver collector Tyler Tysdale.The bat had remained in Onslow’s family for four generations, and its documentation even extends to two letters between Cobb and Eddie Onslow, in which the bat is specifically mentioned. The previous record for a Ty Cobb bat was $137,000.
