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A look at baseball's all-time leaders in nearly every statistical category discusses his childhood, stellar career, his records, his personality, and more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

danny's book summary
I was reading The Story of Ty Cobb, Baseball's Greatest Playerby Gene Schoor. I liked this book becuseTyrus Raymond Cobb's point of veiw on baseball was very intresting. Alsoit was about baseball and I love baseball

When Ty Cobb was ten he knew that he wanted to be a baseball player and that's exactly what happend. But Ty's dad didn't like the idea of a "professional baseball player as a job." So when Ty made the Augusta ball club, he felt a little scared to ask for his father's permission to go. After awhile of trying to convince his father, his father gave in and said,"Don't comeback unless you make good." So with his dad's permission, he went. But there was a set back with Ty. He had anger control issues. So Augusta droped him. So Ty went to anniston for a season and did well. Then augusta picked him back up again. Then he went to Detroit. He and his teamates didn't get along at all.But even if they didn't like him, they still stuck up for him. When Ty got suspended for punchinga fan. The whole team went on strike.

The kind of reader who would like this book is a sports reader who's into the history of baseball, because like they say in the book, Ty was the greatest player

The Greatest Baseball Player of All-Time
This was a wonderfulbook about the greatest baseball player that has ever played the game, Ty Cobb.The story is well told and I appreciate any author that realizes Ty Cobb is better than Babe Ruth.I believe any real Ty Cobb fan would enjoy this book. ... Read more

Product Description

When the National Baseball Hall of Fame inducted its first class of players in 1936, Ty Cobb received more votes than any other player—even more than did fellow inductee Babe Ruth. Cobb, known as the Georgia Peach, was universally recognized as the best player from the dead ball era. He also had the reputation of being its most ferocious player. His fierce determination to succeed helped Cobb equal or surpass more offensive records than any other player, and his career average of .367 is still the highest of all time. Cobb's unyielding and often ferocious work ethic, though, made him many enemies, and his occasional episodes of violence marked an otherwise impeccable career. Baseball author Dan Holmes offers a fresh and fair-handed look at the life of baseball's first true superstar.

It has been said that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in professional sports. Baseball's All-Time Greatest Hitters presents biographies on Greenwood's selection for the 12 best hitters in Major League history, written by some of today's best baseball authors. These books present straightforward stories in accessible language for the high school researcher and the general reader alike. Each volume includes a timeline, bibliography, and index. In addition, each volume includes a Making of a Legend chapter that analyses the evolution of the player's fame and (in some cases) infamy.

Product Description
INSIDE BASEBALL and Cobb takes you through the truth of his childhood days, his parental opposition to baseball, his breaking into the minor league in Augusta,Ga., his entry into the Major Leagues and his experiences with the big league greats, and his opinion on the advantages and fundamentals of playing all the different positions on the team. Cobb talks of what made him so successful in baseball, he talks of how to stay in condition, sleeping and eating, he tells how he treated umpires, he talks of how to bat under most conditions and he tells how to throw and run the bases properly. His chapter onwhat constitutes a star ball playertruly epitomizes the psychology of the times. The book is available now in perfect bound paperback from www.insidebaseball.org. Wesley Fricks is an avid baseball researcher who has set out to restore Ty Cobb s reputation to its original state. He serves on the TY COBB Museum Advisory Board and he volunteers as the Museum's off-site historian.INSIDE BASEBALL With TY COBB A Book Every Major League Player Should Own!; Wesley Fricks, Editor; Aardvark Global Publishing [9587 So. Grandview Dr. Salt Lake City, UT 84092 USA], toll-free 1-800-614-3578. Published date April 1st 2007; $20.00; 238 pages; ISBN 978-1-4276-1738-5. Perfect bound paperback. The book size is 5.5 X 8.5 with images rather than pictures because some have not been printed in over 90 years.For more ordering information, please contact: www.aardvarkglobalpublishing.com or at www.tycobbmuseum.org , or at the book s official Website at www.insidebaseball.org . Or, send check or money order to 7603 Gulf Ct. Temple Terrace, Florida 33637 along with $4 shipping & handling and your order will be processed immediately. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Journal of Social History, published by Journal of Social History on September 22, 2009. The length of the article is 11818 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: This essay deciphers the complexities of early twentieth century American male sports spectator behavior by examining how baseball fans responded to one of the most controversial athletes of the early 20th century--Ty Cobb. By exploring the ways in which fans interpreted Cobb's fierce style of play, this essay argues baseball fans were active agents in the early stages of the emerging mass culture. Though they went to the ballpark for escape and release, fans responded to events on the field in ways that gave these events personal meaning. By cheering and booing, that is to say endorsing some behaviors and censuring others, early 20th century baseball fans projected their collective concerns about changing conceptions of masculinity onto the ball field. Specifically, they looked to stars like Cobb for evidence of ideal manhood. By their active participation in the game, fans tested Cobb, challenging him to display those attributes of manhood that they valued the most--especially that quality of manhood that they called nerve. More times than not, Cobb succeeded and thus became their hero--the personification of their hopes and dreams amidst the changing conceptions of manhood in the early 20th century.

Citation Details
Title: "The most popular unpopular man in baseball": baseball fans and Ty Cobb in the early 20th century.(SECTION I LEISURE AND SPECTATORSHIP)(Essay)
Author: Steve Tripp
Publication: Journal of Social History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2009
Publisher: Journal of Social History
Volume: 43Issue: 1Page: 67(23)

Article Type: Essay

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

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"Highly successful in knitting together this story of the life of a most remarkable and dedicated player - perhaps the most spirited baseball player ever to have graced the diamond." - "Library Journal". "I find little comfort in the popular picture of Cobb as a spike-slashing demon of the diamond with a wide streak of cruelty in his nature. The fights and feuds I was in have been steadily slanted to put me in the wrong...My critics have had their innings. I will have mine now." - Ty Cobb. "Frank, bitter, trend-setting autobiography." - "USA Today Baseball Weekly". "One of the most remarkable sports books ever written." - "Los Angeles Daily News". "The old Tiger still spits and snarls off the pages." - "Cooperstown Review". "Of Ty Cobb let it be said simply that he was the world's greatest ballplayer." - "New York Herald Tribune" (1961 editorial on Cobb's death). This Bison Book edition of "My Life in Baseball" is introduced by Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of a "Biography of Ty Cobb".Amazon.com Review
One of sports literature's great whitewashes and cover-ups, TyCobb's autobiography is anything but the "true record" of its titularclaim. Cobb was as haunted and complex a man as has ever sharpened apair of spikes, and, in his 70s, when he sat down to tell his story,he simply didn't want the whole of his truth revealed; he preferred toperpetuate his legend. What results, then, is a flawed fairy talefilled with colorful anecdotes and reminiscences that duck the demonsthat fueled Cobb's inspired play like a pitcher trying to hide from aline drive smashed in the direction of his eyeballs.

Interestingly,the story behind the book is far more raucous and compelling than thebook itself. Cobb, as violent and demanding at the end of his life ashe was in his playing heyday, virtually kidnapped Stump (one of themost honored sports writers of the late '50s and early '60s),subjecting almost every word and observation to Cobb's approval. Stumpfinally exacted his literary pound of flesh years later when he slidspikes high into Cobb's ghost with the publication of his marvelouslyrich--and real--accounting of Cobb's life in Cobb: ABiography. Stump not only nicked the fuzz off the GeorgiaPeach in that second effort, he recounted the harrowing circumstancesbehind the first. Together, the two books provide a fascinating prisminto a man's life and legacy, the first volume bending the light todiffuse the truth, the second straightening it out to preserveit. --Jeff Silverman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

TY Cobb
An in depth view of baseball's yesteryear from Ty Cobb's perspective when the game was very different from today's nice guys always finish best.A must read for those who wondered what baseball used to be like.

Ty Cobb, in his own words
I like to read about the past, the players, the games that influenced a national past time. Ty Cobb was his own man in a time when speaking out was looked at differently. He wanted to be the best, and in his mind he was the best baseball player in his era. The book is written in the same way. You can tell by the way he explains things that, in his mind, this is the way it happened. His style is easy to read, does not drag you down with prose or fancy wording, but he tends to get bogged down at times by details and stats that may or may not be true. He explains his childhood in a different light than other books written before his book, which is more on line to what may have really happened. It was a good read, with his stories and accounts of what occured during his playing days, the players he played with or against, and the tales and legends written about him during his career. I liked the book, the stories and his wit. Pick up the book, give it a try. You won't be waisting your time or money.

Fascinating introspection
It is well-known that Cobb used this autobiography as a means to shape his public image in a manner consistent in which he viewed himself, a noble honorable gentleman of the wrongfully subjugated South striving to be the greatest ballplayer ever. He takes liberties with the truth frequently attempting to justify his behavior from a victim's position, wrongfully accused and persecuted. On the surface this may seem to be an ordinary human response. However, in Cobb's case, the noble heights to which he attempts to project his intentions are fascinating. He tries to impress upon the reader that he was a success in everything he did--as an entrepreneur, a ballplayer, a war hero, golfer, celebrity, and man of politics, sophistication and aristrocracy. He even attempts to make the reader believe that he would be remarkable in any venture that he tried.
Read together with Stump's later companion biography entitled Cobb, a more complete picture of his life is formed. Cobb was a man maniacally driven to success by a deep fear of failure and being ordinary. He was rancorous and often hostile, intolerant of those he considered his inferior and likely very self-absorbed. What makes his story so fascinating is the perfect storm effect of it. Cobb was born in the heart of Dixie to a relatively well-regarded family a decade after the end of Reconstruction. He excelled in a game that was barely past its infancy and had not yet reached maturity or any sense of social respectability. The game was a regional sport focused in the Northeast, the southern and western most city was St. Louis. His rise to athletic fame occurred in a city (Detroit) where one of America's most important industries was just beginning to take rise. His alienation from his teammates, many of whom he shared a mutual dislike for due to religious and regional differences, allowed him to network with an auto entrepreneurial crowd as his athletic fame grew. Later, similar man meets moment opportunities arose in his life during WWI and when a Georgia pharmacist invented Coca-Cola. From a macro standpoint, he represented the New South and its engagement of the new 20th century.
As alluded to with Stump's later companion book, Cobb takes liberties with the truth casting himself in a more positive light. The same liberties may have been taken in the opposite direction with Stump's second book, as Stump himself was recognized as a somewhat self-serving promoter of his own work and may have accentuated the truth for his own benefit. Regardless, the actual truth probably lies somewhere between the two and each in their own right are fascinating looks at a deeply complex man.

'Refreshing' To Hear The Other Side Of The Story
This was a "refreshing" read, and by that I mean an interesting book written from an angle you never hear - from Ty Cobb's point of view.Cobb is such a hated figure in baseball history, I thought it would be fair to hear his side of the story, for once, and then make up my own mind.

Almost everyone in the media is so biased these days, I reccomended you get both sides of any story, if you can. If you think I'm exaggerating about the venom directed toward this Hall Of Famer, just read Jeff Silverman's review for Amazon.com on the title page here.

In Cobb's book, the Detroit Tiger admits being wrong a few times but not many. He points out where he was wronged, and in many cases it's hard to dispute.

Ty Cobb was so controversial that I have come to believe, after reading this book and other anti-Cobb accounts, that he was an extremely complex man.He did a lot of good, a lot of kind deeds, and yet he was cutthroat, bitter and nasty at the same time.I'm sure he was not fun to play with, but he wasn't the Devil as most people portray him today.

Those who criticize this book for being too biased are biased themselves.Believe me, it was very interesting to hear Cobb's side of the story and why he acted the way he did.With Cobb, who was a very literate man, you know he'll keep the book entertaining.Highly recommended.

Superb.Almost as great as Cobb himself.
Being an inveterate baseball fan since the days of Mickey Mantle, and having already spent considerable summers delving into the fascinating roots of the game, I had no grand expectations in starting this book, acquired at the Cobb museum in Georgia.To you, dear reader, I declare that this is among the very best pieces of baseball literature that I've had the privilege to experience.The book covers not only the physical aspects of Cobb's career--the sojourn in the minors, the early, somewhat less than stellar rookie season--but also the mental aspects of Cobb's approach.Here he details the innovations he brought to the game, the obstacles he overcame, the intra-team battles he fought, and later, his ability to transfer this tenacity and judgment to the business world.

A great book. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Hear the Tiger Roar
It seems fitting that the idea for Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb to write his autobiography in serial form came from a dispute over a book with a Detroit newspaper.

The iconic outfielder/manager for the Detroit Tigers agreed to pen 36 articles for publication from December 1925 to February 1926 in the New York Evening Journal after he reportedly squelched the release of an unauthorized biography by the Detroit News. My Twenty Years in Baseball (2009 paperback; Dover Publications, Inc.) includes the complete series in the newspaper and a wealth of photographs. It is edited by William R. Cobb, who is not a direct relation to Ty Cobb.

"To recall facts and incidents comes easy," writes Cobb, who was poised to enter his 21st and final season with the Tigers. He would end his career after playing in 1927 and 1928 for the Philadelphia Athletics.

The historical significance of the collection trumps the vital importance to baseball fans. This is Cobb in his own words - no ghost writer was involved - writing for a national audience through a major media outlet based in New York City. Cobb adeptly chronicles his ongoing career in Major League Baseball and delves into issues on the grand diamond of life.

"It's much easier for the man who doesn't have to think to say what the President of the United States SHOULD HAVE DONE," he writes. "If he had to tell the President what action he SHOULD take, he would probably be more generous, more thoughtful, anyway. First guessers are the men who make names for themselves.

"The man who is wise to his own ability is usually wise to that of his opponents."

Controversial signposts on Cobb's march to the majors are not sugarcoated. He discusses how family goals came into conflict with the signing of his first professional contract, the early disappointment on the field which ultimately led to a better opportunity in another uniform and a valuable lesson that was learned while eating popcorn.

Many stars come to life - Joe Jackson, Tris Speaker, Hal Chase, Roger Bresnahan, Clark Griffith, Walter Johnson, John McGraw - but Cobb especially digs into the dollars and cents of the game, while having a keen sense on how to market each installment.

"It is much easier to go out and buy an experienced ball player to fill a certain job than it is to train one for the job. Even the big newspapers of this country would hesitate to send a cub reporter to cover a national convention," he writes. "As I have said before, I have never been able to see the humorous side of baseball, even though I can laugh at the reminiscences of others. I was so deadly intent on mastering the game and everything struck me so serious that I failed to develop a baseball sense of humor.

"My days on the diamond have been rather stormy, due to my high-strung and rather fiery temper. Later on I will relate some of these rather sensational incidents and will present my side of them, but not in this chapter."

Cobb is brutally candid on the hazing he suffered in his early days with the Tigers, with one picture showing the professional consequences to his main antagonist. He also presents an intriguing angle to the 1920 tragedy of Cleveland's Ray Chapman being killed by a pitch thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees.Though his assessment on various facets of the game is outstanding, Cobb is at his best when he delivers solid takes on the best team he has seen and the greatest game ever played, along with grabbing a few lineup cards and penciling in an all-time team and all-star squads for the American and National leagues.

"I don't want this autobiography to be considered my valedictory," Cobb writes. "I could name many things that twenty years in baseball have taught me and made the effort worth while. I am not alone in this. These educational benefits have come to scores of ballplayers.

"Yes, after all. I think it pretty well worth while."

Ty Cobb was a Great Ballplayer who Flunked Human Being
Ty Cobb was an unbelievably gifted baseball player who retired in 1928 with a .367 lifetime batting average, twelve batting titles, and some ninety different major league records. Most of that time he played for the Detroit Tigers, and led them to several pennants. Toward the end of his career he played for the Philadelphia A's. Always he wanted to be first, and his competitiveness and ferocious temper made him a lightning rod for ill feelings throughout baseball. He was also an unrepentant bigot (never moving past his youth in the Jim Crow South), inveterate brawler (even to the extent of going into the stands to take on heckling fans), and addictive personality (his pursuit of liquor, women, and gambling was legendary).

This book is an unabridged account of Cobb's life as he wanted to be remembered in the pages of the "New York Evening Journal." It was originally published while he was still playing baseball in 1925. There is a lot of discussion of hitting and performances on the field with a "field of dreams" patina surrounding it. There is only a little about the demons that inhabited Cobb and ultimately came to consume him. Even so, he does tip his hat to that side of his persona when he admitted, "My days on the diamond have been rather stormy, due to my high-strung nature and rather fiery temper." Whenever controversies do arise he explains away his actions, even commenting, "To this day I believe that under the same circumstances, I would do the same thing again."

Ty Cobb was an exceptionally nasty and unlovable human being, but he was a superb ballplayer. He is certainly not my hero--I expect them to be better at life than he ever was--but I have to give him credit when it comes to is ability to hit a baseball. Nothing in this memoir changes my perception of him, but having it available once again in print is a positive development. The introduction by Paul Dickson and the foreword and editorial notes by William R. Cobb help to place the narrative into context. ... Read more

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Photographs and text present the on-the-field triumphs and off-the-field troubles of the man considered by many to be the greatest--and the most hated--ballplayer of all. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

COBB had a GOOD SIDE
TY COBB,THE GA PEACH WAS A COMPETIVE FIRE PLUG, BUT HE ALSO supported 36 ball players who could not survive without his help.He also established a hospital in Royston GA and set up college funds for kids to go to college who could not afford to.He really overcame alot of hardship while growing up AND THAT'S more than alot of can say. I got my info on Cobb from Al Stump's famous book on Cobb He is a hero to me in alot of ways. ... Read more