Actually, "remade" probably isn't the right word... but I'd like to see a movie made about Ty Cobb that reflects what we know about him today. When I was really into baseball growing up, Cobb was thought to be a nasty, racist, awful human being, but that's really not the case. I'd really like to watch a well-made movie that portrayed Cobb (and MLB back then) as he was.
shareWhat was Ty Cobb actually like?
shareHe was portrayed by Al Stump as being a racist, violent man... just a nasty piece of work (I think Stump wrote a biography about Cobb, if I remember correctly...but the stories from that biography have largely been discredited). Cobb was indeed a hard-nosed baseball player and he did get into some "dust-ups" at times (although I'd like to point out that was true of most of the players back then... they played as hard as they could, so they wouldn't have to go back to work in the salt mines). However, he wasn't really "racist" and he was a "philanthropist" also.
Cobb was a very smart businessman (he made a ton of money investing in Coca-Cola) and he wasn't "universally despised" by former players as he was often portrayed (e.g., he was friends with Babe Ruth and they would play exhibition golf matches after their playing days were over). He wasn't perfect... but he wasn't the "monster" that he was portrayed as in this movie.
That would be great. He was clearly a hard-ass, but baseball at the turn of the century when he played, was a very rough game. Lots of singles, steals, double-plays, high sliders, batters getting hit - it would be cool to see it portrayed somewhat accurately, warts and all.
Another thing, as Cobb said, most all those old crackers played w/ Blacks in Cuba. So they weren't totally isolated from one another competitively. That would be another cool dimension to explore.
Cobb, for whatever reason, got a raw deal. One guy did a hatchet job on him, and no one bothered to set the record straight for decades, when plenty of people were still around to provide first-hand background.
Yes, it's really too bad that the truth didn't come out for years. I really like Ron Shelton (who directed this movie) and I think he would have a really good job directing a "factual movie" about Cobb. As you alluded to, Cobb wasn't a saint but he wasn't nearly as terrible as he was portrayed in this movie.
I liked your idea of exploring the "Cuban aspect" of MLB back then. It's interesting to me that we've had a lot of MLB players come from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Japan, et.al., over the years. I've forgotten a lot of "baseball history" in that regard, since I'm not nearly the baseball fan now that I used to be. A movie or documentary detailing the "foreign aspect" of MLB would be very interesting to me.