God this was a chore to get through! It was unentertaining, bland and less about Cobb and more about discrediting and bashing previous Cobb biographers, especially Al Stump. Now I understand Stump was a disgrace to the literary community, largely fictionalizing his work, but the authors constant Stump bashing distracts from the topic at hand, Cobb, and marginalizes his work. This one is going to the used bookstore along with Stump's, as neither are keepers for the library... ( )

This book does an excellent job of setting the record straight. Like me and many other fans, the author had at the outset a mental picture of Ty Cobb as one of the most malicious people ever to don a baseball uniform. It turns out he didn’t sharpen his spikes, nor is there much evidence to sustain the charge that he was a virulent racist. And those three people he is said to have killed? Just legend.
Leerhsen doesn’t go to the other extreme, though. This is not hagiography. The Ty Cobb revealed in his book has a hairspring temper who did get involved in many fights both on and off the field. The author does the important work of placing this in context, both that of males in the overall society at the time and of the small subset of those males who played major league baseball. Looked at in this way, his violent streak was not atypical.
What was unusual was the intelligence and passion Cobb brought to the game in the pursuit of winning. Or was it personal glory? One telling anecdote comes from late in his life. He was having dinner with Grantland Rice, the writer, and old-time catcher “Nig” Clarke (player nicknames in those days were seldom politically correct). Clarke explained his trick of tagging at a runner barreling across home plate and throwing his glove aside, the sign that he had just gotten the third out of the inning. Umpires routinely called the runner out. “I missed you at least ten times at the plate, Ty—times when you were called out,” he concluded. Soon Rice had to restrain Cobb physically, upset that his (at the time, best) total of runs scored was ten short. To me, it seems that the hunger for personal record-setting is sufficient explanation for the tensions on the Tiger team throughout Cobb’s career; there is no need to allege a malignant personality.
Within a few years of arriving in the big leagues, though, Cobb was the driving force that led a team of perennial losers to three consecutive pennants. The astounding statistics that Cobb compiled over his career tell a remarkable story on their own, but Leerhsen evokes how exciting it was to be on the same field with him or to watch from the stands. His audacity and unpredictability, his boundless nervous energy, set him apart from equally-talented but less charismatic contemporaries such as Honus Wagner.
Trickier than conveying what it was like to watch Cobb is the task of portraying what it was like to be Cobb. Leerhsen sets out to do this as well and succeeds. Cobb had no sooner fulfilled his dream of arriving in the major leagues when his mother was charged with murdering his father, whom Ty idolized. To supplement that, he had to endure a rougher than usual rookie hazing from his teammates. Leerhsen may well be correct in suggesting that his two-month disappearance during his sophomore season was because of a nervous breakdown.
Perhaps the maniacal gleam in his eye, documented in many photos, was not just for show.
But how did Cobb get stuck with the reputation of unsavory ogre? In addition to recounting Cobb’s career dramatically, Leerhsen also documents the lasting damage done by Cobb’s ghostwriter, Al Stump. This prolific but unreliable wordsmith supplemented the inaccuracies in the resulting book with a purportedly tell-all account (mostly fictional) of the last ten months of Cobb’s life in a magazine article. Later on, when the baseball memorabilia market began to flourish, he sold Cobb-related items; how they came into his possession, though, was murky. Then he supplemented genuine Cobb letters with several fakes.
This side-story is an additional attraction of the book. It is evident, though, that Stump merely embellished a mythical Ty who already existed, one nurtured by the player himself from the start of his career. Perhaps more than any other player up to that time, he realized how much of the game was mental. Not only did this mean applying his own sharp, insomniac intelligence to the game nearly around the clock but also in what would now be called getting into the head of your opponent. He may never have intentionally spiked a fielder as he slid into a bag, but having players on the opposite team believe that he might, was unsettling. It was useful to cultivate the image of a maniac as he raced around the bases, but this persona overtook the real Ty who spent evenings after the game listening to Fritz Kreisler recordings and reading books. And scheming of ways to taunt and torment the other team tomorrow.
A very good read. ( )

It's unbelievable what can happen when a writer only uses quotes that he can properly source. It's even more unbelievable that it'd be more than 50 years after Ty Cobb's death before a writer would choose to do so in telling the story of the Georgia Peach.

In my opinion, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty is the most important baseball book published since Jim Bouton's Ball Four for both the story it tells and the myth it replaces. At this point in time, Cobb's legacy has become so tarnished that even the true story of his life may not save it, but if Charles Leerhsen's work is in vain, it's at least the best effort that could have possibly been put forth.

Leerhsen's greatest strengths are some of the greatest weaknesses of Cobb's previous biographers. Rather than spicing up an already-delicious narrative (e.g. Cobb's mom shot and killed his dad) by assuming the most scandalous version of events to be true (She must have been cheating on him and got caught!), Leerhsen shares all verifiable information about every important moment in Cobb's life, outlines previous misconceptions about each situation, and allows the reader to craft an informed opinion. This not only makes the book more accurate, but it also makes it a more enjoyable read.

I've been waiting for a book like this to come out for a long time, so I'll try not to sound too gushy about it, but it says a lot about the author that he originally intended to write this book about what a despicable man Ty Cobb was. He, like so many others in the baseball world (and the world of sports in general), thought of Cobb almost as a caricature, representing everything bad about sports before a more "civilized" era of decency and diversity swept men like him away. But when you dig deeper, as Leerhsen did, you find, like you would if you looked into just about anyone else, a human. ( )

I went into this book without much in the way of expectations. I can say that after finishing the title Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty I believe this will be on my best of the year list. Very pleasantly surprised with how human author Charles Leerhsen made the iconic Cobb. Is he the monster he's been made out to be or something a bit more real? How great was he on the diamond? Leerhsen has done a great job with the research and killing the myths that have dogged Cobb since the days he was on the diamonds. Great read! ( )

If you are a sports fan, especially a baseball fan, then this is an interesting read. It was great to listen to during the post season as the KC Royals battled the Houston Astros. I love baseball so I really enjoyed this book. ( )