Cobb - Softcover

Stump, Al

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565121449 ISBN 13: 9781565121447

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1996

Synopsis

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

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Review

Not long before his death, Ty Cobb, as complex and haunted a human being as ever stepped onto a diamond, tapped a young writer named Al Stump to collaborate with him on his autobiography. The result, My Life in Baseball: The True Record, never came close to reaching first base; with Cobb (holder of the game's highest lifetime batting average and lowest lifetime reputation) calling the signals, it was an antiseptic whitewash, as false as its titular claim would have you believe otherwise. Hidden between the lines was the living hell that Cobb--reclusive, bitter, ravaged with cancer, in great pain, and shunned by the baseball community--put Stump through to make sure his demon-filled story was properly sanitized.

Some 30 years later, Stump brilliantly wrought his revenge with the best tool a writer can wield: absolute honesty. In Cobb, he rectifies his earlier cover-up and paints an unforgettable portrait of an unforgettable character: The Georgia Peach--pits and all. Not only does Stump painstakingly assemble the disparate pieces of Cobb's tangled personality and storied career, he also recounts in scrupulous detail the literal wild ride that comprised his months in the company of the dying baseball legend. It is, from its opening inscription ("To get along with me," Cobb told Stump, "don't increase my tension"), a tour de force, as good a sports biography as exists, and an altogether riveting telling of a riveting life. --Jeff Silverman

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1565121449
• ISBN 13: 9781565121447
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 457