by April Pond, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

March 3, 2010: LITTLE ROCK, AR – As spring training gets underway today, Jack Cobb won’t be running any wind sprints or signing any autographs.  He won’t spend an hour posing for the team photographer.  He won’t play cards with the other regulars in the clubhouse after being lifted in the third inning of a leisurely spring game.  Nor does he want to.

Jack Cobb is a free agent, and proud of it.  The Arkansan has spent the off-season away from baseball activities, focusing instead on developing his culinary career.  After the end of the baseball season, he moved back home to his native Mulberry and opened a restaurant named Aric’s.  The establishment has earned rave reviews from the local press and even scored Cobb a TV pilot for a cooking show on TLC.  Though the show has yet to be picked up, Cobb is confident of its eventual success.

Cobb shows all the signs of a player moving on with his life.  Yet Cobb refuses to claim his new direction amounts to a retirement from baseball – yet.

“I love baseball,” Cobb grinned at the counter of Aric’s.  “But I love this.  I mean, look at this place,” Cobb beamed, gesturing at the décor on the walls – memorabilia from his five seasons of baseball in the PEBA – and then pointing down to his chef’s apron, styled as a Bakersfield Bears jersey but with “Kinast” replacing “Bakersfield” across the front.  “I know what I want in life, and right now, I want to field orders, not grounders,” Cobb explained.

When pressed about his reasons for his current career change, Cobb became uncharacteristically quiet and changed topics.  The infamous shortstop ended last season in a utility role with the West Virginia Coal Sox, a role that Cobb publicly despised.  After holding a press conference prior to West Virginia’s first-ever playoff game against Florida, announcing his intention to explore free agency, the team responded by issuing Cobb his thirty-ninth player fine, a total which exceeds all other players in West Virginia franchise history combined.  Though Cobb left West Virginia in disgrace, he gave no public sign of taking a break from baseball until December, when he announced the opening of Aric’s.

Cobb says only one offer could bring him back to baseball anytime soon – a contract that includes partial ownership in the team.  Cobb cites the ill-fated plan to install him as player-manager of the Manchester Maulers, as well as his allegations that he was to become owner/general manager/manager/team captain of Bakersfield, as precedent for such a contract.  No team has been publically linked to Cobb all winter, most likely because the Manchester plan was never put in place.  Instead, it led to the downfall of then-GM Jeff Dudas.  The Bakersfield plan, if it ever existed, was destroyed by Cobb’s juice machine.  Cobb insists that his demands are reasonable since they mark a lower asking price than the Bakersfield deal.

Local reporters theorize the reason for Cobb’s demands revolve around his financial problems.  After the housing market crashed, Cobb traded his $12 million dollar home in Bakersfield for a Rolling Stones record collection.  “CDs are a great investment,” Cobb grinned.  When told that compact discs are not certificates of deposit – and that records are not compact discs – Cobb replied, “That’s what you think, smarty-pants.”

With his second house in Laredo destroyed in a house fire, Cobb’s money troubles were made public when he was fined in November for operating an unlicensed dog-washing business out of the back of his pickup truck in downtown Little Rock.  At 29, Cobb’s squandering of his contract money has been breathtakingly fast, even for a professional athlete.

As Cobb flipped a batch of his signature blueberry pancakes, he insisted that his restaurant venture was not the result of his contract demands or his financial woes.  “I’m a chef now,” he stated.  “It’s my calling in life.  I have big plans for this place.  I’m going to turn it into a franchise.  I have an Aric’s planned for every market – drive-throughs and five-star dining and family restaurants and sports bars.  I’m most excited about the revolving Aric’s.  I want to have one of those revolving restaurants in every city in the country.  Sure, some restaurant franchises dominate one niche.  McDonald’s has cornered the high-class market like nobody’s business.  Well, I’m going to win them all!  I’ve already written NASA to see what it would cost to get an Aric’s added to the payload of their next moon mission.  Big things are in store for me.”