Product Description 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. From School Library Journal The conventional wisdom about Ty Cobb is that he was a vicious baseball player who spiked infielders on purpose, a vicious racist who couldn't be in the same room with a black person, and an all-around vicious human being who died friendless and hated. While never sugarcoating Cobb's enormous temper and willingness to brawl—facts Cobb himself never disputed—Leerhsen's remarkable new biography reaches back to primary documents that stand this wisdom on its head. The grandson of one of the few courageous abolitionist politicians in Georgia, Cobb was among the first to applaud the breaking of the color barrier, and there seems to be no evidence of his racism. The myth of Cobb's supposedly violent play was largely based on a handful of very minor affairs, which all the principals agreed were overblown, coupled with his psychological style, which tended to scare opponents but not hurt them physically. And his legend as a hated man is belied by the fact that he was truly baseball's first superstar, beloved by the nation, and only eclipsed when the lively ball (a style of baseball with an emphasis on home runs) and Babe Ruth supplanted his version of the game. Leerhsen finds that the myth of Cobb was perpetuated almost entirely by a single man, Al Stump, the ghostwriter of an autobiography commissioned by Cobb but never approved by him, as he was too sick to review it. No prior knowledge of Cobb or his myth is necessary to enjoy this book, although it will help. VERDICT This eminently readable biography is a fantastic piece of research and a perfect starting point for teens interested in the early years of baseball.—Mark Flowers, Rio Vista Library, CA Review “No matter what you think of Ty Cobb, you’ll want to read Charles Leerhsen’s fascinating biography, as he dispels rumors, exposes frauds, and challenges everything you thought you knew about the most controversial individual ever to play the great game of baseball.” Author: Kevin Baker, author of Sometimes You See It Coming "Not only the best work ever written on this American sports legend: It’s a major reconsideration of a reputation unfairly maligned for decades." Autho