Cobb: A Biography

by Al Stump

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book; Spitball Award for Best Baseball Book of 1994; Basis for a major Hollywood motion picture. Now in paperback, the biography that baseball fans all across the country have been talking about. Al Stump redefined America's perception of one of its most famous sports heroes with this gripping look at a man who walked the line between greatness and psychosis. Based on Stump's interviews with Ty Cobb while ghostwriting the Hall-of-Famer's 1961 autobiography, this award-winning new account of Cobb's life and times reveals both the darkness and the brilliance of the "Georgia Peach." "The most powerful baseball biography I have read."--Roger Kahn, author of THE BOYS OF SUMMER

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565127173
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	01/03/1996
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	468
Sales rank:	574,697
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Al Stump (1916-1995) was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. During World War II, he was a war correspondent, and afterward he worked as a sportswriter for national and regional publications, including Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, True Magazine, American Heritage, Los Angeles Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He wrote—both independently and in collaboration with famous athletes—six books, including Ty Cobb's My Life in Baseball, Sam Snead's Education of a Golfer, Champions Against Odds, and The Champion Breed. His article, "Ty Cobb's Wild 10-Month Fight to Live," written for True Magazine, won the Best American Sport Story award of 1962. It was the basis for the 1994 motion picture Cobb, directed by Ron Shelton.

Editorial Reviews

Stump, Ty Cobb's ghostwriter for the 1961 autobiography My Life in Baseball, fleshes out the story in this bare-knuckle, shocking biography. Born in Georgia in 1886, Cobb began his baseball career with the Detroit Tigers in 1905 and stayed in the big leagues until 1928-all the time hated by his rivals and teammates alike because of his meanness and combativeness. The author portrays the highlights of Cobb's career: his first batting championship in 1907; his 96 stolen bases in 1915; and his three .400 seasons in 1911, 1912 and 1922. Stump also looks at Cobb's involvement in game-fixing in 1919, his time as a manager and his activities after retiring. He died in 1961. The most sensational aspects of the book deal with Cobb's personal life: his mother's murder of his father, millionaire Cobb's cheapness (no electricity or telephone in his house), wife beating, alcoholism and racial bigotry. Stump has written a biography of the ``Georgia Peach'' that will stun readers with its brutal candor. Photos. 25,000 first printing. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Baseball great Ty Cobb was considered a borderline psychopath, both on the field and off. Noted sportswriter Stump collaborated with Cobb in his 1961 autobiography, My Life in Baseball. Here, Stump succeeds in producing the definitive biography of this mercurial man. Most of the details of Cobb's life are familiar to baseball fans, but Stump goes beyond the basic facts and accepted truisms and delves into many areas the ordinary fan may not be aware of. The story of the killing of Cobb's father by his mother remains a mystery, but Stump recounts the incident exhaustively, along with many others. Ultimately, the reader can fathom why Cobb evolved into the most hated man in baseball. It is said that genius is often tinged with madness; in Cobb's case that is certainly true. Reading Cobb's autobiography along with this book presents an interesting contrast. Highly recommended for all libraries.-William O. Scheeren, Hempfield Area H.S. Lib., Greensburg, Pa.

Library Journal

During the last year of Ty Cobb's life, 1960-61, sportswriter Al Stump lived and traveled with the legendary Georgia Peach, ghostwriting what would be a sanitized, self-serving autobiography. What Stump saw of Cobb, though, was anything but sanitized: a raging, near-psychotic, bilious man who carried $1 million in negotiable securities and a loaded gun with him at all times; a man consumed with hate, who had alienated all those close to him over 73 years of life; a man whose phenomenal, still-unmatched achievements in baseball (a .367 lifetime batting average, for example) seemed fueled by rage--at the death of his father, killed accidentally by his mother; at umpires, opponents, and teammates alike; and, especially, at blacks, toward whom Cobb spewed racist venom throughout his life. Unable to tell the real story in Cobb's own book, Stump later wrote an oft-reprinted piece for True" magazine detailing the splenetic Hall of Famer's last days; he has now extended the story to Cobb's entire life. The result is an alternately chilling and oddly moving tale of athletic excellence and personal chaos. Combining the best and worst of American individualism in one ferocious package, Cobb defies our attempts to make sense of him. We resist the idea of a psychotic Huck Finn. A film based on Stump's version of Cobb's story, starring Tommy Lee Jones, will open in November, ensuring demand for what ranks as one of the best baseball biographies of recent years.

Bill Ott