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    Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty
    Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty
    Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty
    Audiobook15 hours

    Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

    Written by Charles Leerhsen

    Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Finally—a fascinating and authoritative biography of perhaps the most controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb.

    Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, 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: “Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam,” one columnist wrote. 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. In his day, even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce and fiery competitor. Because his philosophy was to “create a mental hazard for the other man,” he had his enemies, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, something strange happened: his reputation morphed into that of a monster—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. In the process, he tells of a life overflowing with incident and a man who cut his own path through his times—a man we thought we knew but really didn’t.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 12, 2015
    ISBN9781501226496
    Author

    Charles Leerhsen

    Charles Leerhsen is a former executive editor at Sports Illustrated. He has written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times. His books include Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty; Crazy Good: The Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America; Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500; and Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Sarah Saffian. Visit him at Leerhsen.com.

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    Reviews for Ty Cobb

    4.5/5

    72 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A well-researched and eloquently written book on Cobb. Mr Leershen’s work attempts to shatter the myths that surrounded Cobb during and after his playing days. Ty Cobb the monster who wielded a revolver and attacked men and women of color. Ty Cobb the base running banshee who sharpened his spikes with maniacal glee. The infamous accounts are put on trail and the results are somewhat surprising.
    • 5/5
      This was a fantastic book. It really told the complete and true story of Ty Cobb. It’s obvious that the author did his research unlike many of the previous biographies written about Cobb. I also appreciate that it points out several falsehoods made by other authors and screenwriters.
    • 5/5
      Most accurately told story of the great Tyrus Raymond Cobb
    • 5/5
      A balanced work that dispels some of the myths behind the greatest player of all time. The author did significant research to create a portrait of a player often judged too harshly for his demeanor and his quest for excellence and the pressures it brought with it.
    • 4/5
      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!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      We are in a golden age of baseball biographies. From Jane Leavy's brilliant The Last Boy to Neil Lanctot's sublime Campy: the Two Lives of Roy Campanella, I seem to spend more time these days reading about baseball than watching it. Add to that list, Charles Leerhsen's new biography of Ty Cobb. And I think I want to put it at the top. Leerhsen manages to enter a crowded field and write something completely original, as well as something as daring as his subject was on the base paths. His biography of "King Cobb," as he was known in Detroit, is subtitled a "Terrible Beauty," but it really should be the "Smearing of Ty Cobb."Make no mistake. Leerhsen is not a Ty Cobb apologist. He is simply a very competent public defender assigned to the task of taking up the side of the monster. What Leershen finds is that many of the crimes Cobb is accused of were simply made up by hack writers looking to sell a story. Everyone knows Cobb killed three people in Detroit, right? Never happened. Everyone knows that Ty Cobb tried to rape a cocktail waitress in Nevada. Tommy Lee Jones portrayed it in the movie of Cobb. Only thing is that it was simply made up by the screenwriter. Leerhsen even disproves the myth that Cobb sharpened his spikes.Leerhsen does not argue for sainthood. But he passionately and scrupulously makes the point that Ty Cobb is not a boogeyman of whom any random evil dead to spice up baseball history with a villain. Again, Leerhsen never attempts to sugar coat. He just discovers over and over that so many of the Cobb crimes don't stand up when the sources are tracked down. Cobb's greatest moment of infamy, his alleged attack on an African-American groundskeeper, appears to have been simply made up by a player who had been brutally hazing a young Ty Cobb in cahoots with a manager that was trying to convince Detroit's ownership to trade young Ty for a veteran bat. Leerhsen does not sweep anything under the rug. He goes in search of as much dirt as he can find and continually comes up empty. Was Ty Cobb a virulent racist? Leerhsen can find no primary sources. While Cobb, a product of his era, subscribed to the prevailing notions of white supremacy in his day, Leerhsen finds more evidence that Cobb was slightly better than the norm. HIs father, a Georgia politician, had helped defeat a KKK initiative to de-fund African-American schools. In his later years, Cobb would express unconditional support for Jackie Robinson and called for the fair treatment of the pioneering African-American baseball players.