Cobb: A Biography
From SoSH
Author: Al Stump
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Date Published: 1996
Summary: This book provides an honest, revealing, and spellbinding account of a gifted baseball player who also happened to be a thoroughly unlikeable person. Beginning with a traumatic childhood that helped shape Ty Cobb's misanthropic personality, the book outlines his life and baseball career, giving a realistic account of his numerous achievements as well as his terrifying cruelty. The author, who spent hundreds of hours with Ty Cobb in the ballplayer's final days, manages to provide fascinating insights into Cobb's motivations and beliefs, and the book captivates the reader from beginning to end. In addition, the book provides a glimpse into the baseball world of Ty Cobb's times and shows how one great player helped to shape the game. This book is a must-read account of a fascinating person and ballplayer -- one of the best and most engaging biographies that I've ever read.
From Soxblog.com: "One of my favorite authors of all-time, Ernest Hemingway, probably summed up the essence of Ty Cobb best in his one sentence description of his sometime friend, sometime hunting buddy: 'Ty Cobb, the greatest of all ballplayers - and an absolute shit.'"
