It had been just over 20 years since General George Tecumseh Sherman laid waste to Georgia — marauding, raping, and pillaging on his “March to the Sea.” But in 1886, a new phoenix was rising in the Peach State.
John Stith Pemberton, a Confederate veteran and drug store owner in Atlanta — and with a medical degree of his own — had recently developed a product designed to cure those afflicted with the various diseases brought about by society's rapid "urbanization." He called it Pemberton's French Wine Coca.
Pemberton's version was a knock-off of Vin Mariani, a concoction of French wine and cocaethylene (cocaine mixed with alcohol), a Parisian drink quite popular with Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, and Arthur Conan Doyle, amongst others.
Pemberton marketed his beverage to "upper class intellectuals" and as a cure for morphine addiction. This was a particular concern of his, for he was also addicted to morphine thanks to injuries sustained in the War Between the States. He believed that French wine coca was a "panacea" and would help him kick his morphine habit.
Another of Pemberton's marketing claims was that his beverage was "a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs." His American version was reportedly popular with former president Ulysses Grant when the former Union general was writing his memoirs and convalescing from throat cancer.
However, in 1885, Atlanta and Fulton County enacted "temperance" legislation which forced Pemberton to reconfigure his beverage and exclude the alcohol. In postbellum Georgia, cocaine was less of a concern.
On May 8, 1886, Colonel Pemberton revealed his non-alcoholic, prescription-free medicinal elixir to the world. He also renamed it.
Six score and 18 years later, this strange brew now has a stranglehold on the global soft-drink market.
“Coca-Cola” remains one of the biggest and most notable brands in the world. The cocaine was removed — without legislation — from the recipe in 1899, due to a societal stigma surrounding excessive use of the drug. The coca leaves (sans-cocaine) still reportedly serve as a flavor agent in this soft drink.
Several months after Coke's introduction, a young chap was born, on December 18, in The Narrows, Georgia to the wife of a state senator. The family eventually moved to the North Georgia town of Royston. As a child, he took to the "carpetbaggers game" of baseball like a duck does to water.
By the time this fellow died at age 74, he had parlayed his Georgia roots, on-field dominance, fame, savvy, and business acumen into the ownership of $2.1 million of Coca-Cola stock — and a reported net worth of at least $12.1 million.
For several years this man lived in the tony San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Atherton and regularly vacationed at his compound on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
On one occasion, while watching the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals, he happened to stumble upon the talents of a young center fielder. He took a shining to this son of Sicilian immigrants, and eventually became Joe DiMaggio's first “agent” when Joe D negotiated his first contract with the Yankees.
Later, on occasion, he'd retreat to the Ochoco Mountains of Oregon for deer hunts and to shoot upland game birds. One of the Coca-Cola bottling plants he owned was in Bend, the small Central Oregon town not far from those hunting grounds.
Near the end of his life, he left the West behind and moved back home to Georgia.
On July 9, 1961, at 11:59 am, another New York Yankee sent a telegram to this man, now in an Atlanta hospital:
“SAW WHERE YOU WERE IN FOR A REST JUST WANTED TO SAY REST WELL AND THANKS FOR ALL YOUR ADVICE ON HITTING IT HAS HELPED ME.
MICKEY MANTLE.”
Over the course of 24 seasons in the major leagues that man in the hospital had amassed 4,191 hits, the most of all-time until Pete Rose broke the record in 1985.
Eight days after that Western Union wire from The Mick, on July 17, 1961, “The Georgia Peach,” Tyrus Raymond Cobb, went west for good.
As always,
Brian
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