Ty Cobb
A Terrible Beauty
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4.3 • 52 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating and authoritative biography of perhaps the most controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb—“The best work ever written on this American sports legend: It’s a major reconsideration of a reputation unfairly maligned for decades” (The Boston Globe).
Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player ever. His lifetime batting average is still the highest in history, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don’t tell half of Cobb’s tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: When the Hall of Fame began in 1936, he was the first player voted in.
But Cobb was also one of the game’s most controversial characters. He got in a lot of fights, on and off the field, and was often accused of being overly aggressive. Even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce competitor, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, his reputation morphed into that of a virulent racist who also hated children and women, and was in turn hated by his peers.
How did this happen? Who is the real Ty Cobb? Setting the record straight, Charles Leerhsen pushed aside the myths, traveled to Georgia and Detroit, and re-traced Cobb’s journey from the shy son of a professor and state senator who was progressive on race for his time to America’s first true sports celebrity. The result is a “noble [and] convincing” (The New York Times Book Review) biography that is “groundbreaking, thorough, and compelling…The most complete, well-researched, and thorough treatment that has ever been written” (The Tampa Tribune).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The legendary Tigers outfielder of the early 20th century, who may have been the greatest hitter in baseball history and is often depicted as a violent racist, comes across as less odious and more interesting than his sinister reputation in this energetic biography. Former Sports Illustrated editor Leerhsen (Crazy Good) depicts the Georgia Peach as a two-fisted man of seething ambition, prickly hauteur, and hair-trigger temper who fought just about anyone: opponents, teammates, a disabled heckler in the stand, an elevator boy, and a waitress. Leerhsen cogently argues that stories of his attacks on African-Americans are greatly exaggerated while his occasional statements of racially progressive views are ignored. Leerhsen also dismisses allegations that Cobb gratuitously spiked basemen. This Cobb is no thug but a reflective, well-read baseball intellectual who combined athleticism and strategic cunning into remarkable on-field dynamism, blending superb batting, hell-for-leather base-running he once stole second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches and subtle psych-outs that gave opposing teams nervous breakdowns. Leerhsen wraps his penetrating profile of Cobb in gripping play-by-play rundowns and a colorful portrait of the anarchic "dead-ball" era, when players played drunk and fans chased offending umpires from the field. This is a stimulating evocation of baseball's rambunctious youth and the man who epitomized it. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Everything you were told about Ty Cobb is a lie
This book is a testament to one of the greatest, and most maliciously besmirched, baseball titans ever to play. I have heard the mischaracterizations, and still picked up the book, once I was informed the lies that dominated the narrative. The journalistic malfeasance, and “fake news” that would shame any living being is brought to light, and shown to be gossip and selfish ambition. I absolutely loved Leerhsen’s book and recommend it to all who think they know how villainous Ty Cobb was. You are in for a shock when you read Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty.