As you can read below he had arms, but not many fingers.
http://boatagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2012/05/this-day-in-baseball-history-cobb.html
The headline in this post, as is common in such things, loses in nuance what it gains in concision. How would you have reacted if I had written instead, “Cobb Attacks Disabled Racist Fan”? Or, better yet: “Cobb Attacks Disabled, Racist Tammany Hack”?
Heckler Claude Lucker (also spelled Lueker or Leuker, depending on the paper) worked as a page in the office of “Big Tom” Foley, the saloon keeper and Tammany Hall boss for whom New York courthouse Foley Square is named. From the start of the game at Hilltop Park, home of the Highlanders, he had been taunting Cobb something royal. The Tigers star had repeatedly warned Lucker (with whom he had exchanged insults at prior games) to stop, to no avail.
In the fourth inning, Cobb struck back with an insult of his own. At this point, Lucker came up with what the outfielder must have felt to be a verbal spitball: the epithet “half-n***** <censored for DU by JVS>.”
Cobb’s subsequent over-the-top reaction derived from the equivalent of a perfect storm: frustration over the 10-13 record his team brought to the stadium; his previous run-ins with Lucker; distaste for any association whatsoever with African-Americans, and even assaults on three different ones; an unstable temperament to begin with (no doubt worsened by shame over his father’s shooting by his wife’s lover); and, to top it all, teammate Sam Crawford’s question about what he would do about Lucker’s latest remark.
Cobb’s response was to scale the left-field fence, kick his tormenter till he fell down, then punch him mercilessly. None of the accounts I have read are clear about whether the star knew beforehand about Lucker’s significant handicaps (loss of one hand through a printing-press accident, as well as a couple of fingers on the other), but he certainly was aware by the time he was done flailing at him. An additional cry from a shocked onlooker (“that man has no hands!”) only seemed to heighten Cobb’s anger: “I don’t care if he has no feet!” he shot back.
And while Cobb was a despicable human being, he didn't threaten the integrity of the game by cheating.
He may have killed someone though.
http://www.foxsports.com/detroit/story/a-century-later-did-ty-cobb-kill-a-man-081312
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