Synopsis
In the wake of Charles Leerhsen's pro-Cobb 2015 Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty (Simon & Schuster), Howard W. Rosenberg's Ty Cobb Unleashed: The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist (Tile Books) is the go-to first source on Cobb's persona, including racially - for a balanced look at "the Georgia Peach."
For example, Cobb was reported in a next-day article in June 1911 as having thrown balls, in an amusement park game, at the face of a live black person, at the then-famous Glen Echo amusement park in Maryland right outside of Washington, D.C. That detail had not appeared in any prior Cobb book or article. The accurate presentation of that detail should be important because while the Simon & Schuster book disposed of any case that Cobb was a violent racist, the following argument can still be made. Quoting from Ty Cobb Unleashed: "For those who might want to argue the point, my book does offer up the possibility of still calling him one - for having no qualms about throwing a baseball at a black man's head, provided that the black man was willing, for money, to take the risk of being hit."
Also novel in Ty Cobb Unleashed is contemporaneous reporting in the offseason of 1912-13, that Cobb had declined an offer to perform in a minstrel act with his good friend George Evans of the Honey Boy Minstrels, by reportedly merely saying, "My wife won't let me." As a sign of how Cobb's legacy these days, thanks to the Internet, can be rewritten at will, a mash-up of both of those details (and the argumentation spun in the book) appears below in a (naturally and popular) one-star review.
While the historiography of Babe Ruth, the player closest to Cobb in votes for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, has engendered limited controversy since the work of three mid-1970s authors, the Cobb one is riddled with mines. Leerhsen's book both settled some controversies and started new ones. Perhaps the biggest new controversy it created is on whether Cobb has been fairly cast as having been a racist.
A trifecta of features may make Ty Cobb Unleashed one of the most significant baseball biographical books. Firstly, it performs a hard-to-find public service by comparing the technical quality of the Simon & Schuster book and a second cradle-to-grave 2015 one that was also touted as authoritative or definitive: Tim Hornbaker's overlooked War on the Basepaths: The Definitive Biography of Ty Cobb (Sports Publishing). For decades, media watchdogs have been largely passive (and especially lately) in shedding light on the books of nonfiction publishers from a nuts-and-bolts perspective. Ty Cobb Unleashed does the legwork for them and recommends a practice that publishers should adhere to in revisionist history titles.
Secondly, biographically on Cobb, it resolves differences between the two books, especially on the tricky subject of racism. It also textually is the first Cobb one to stress his 32-year post-career, 1929 to 1961. That span includes 1960 and 1961, the featured years in the 1994 movie "Cobb" starring Tommy Lee Jones. The movie, a limited release in theaters, has gained a second wind as an online video rental. The first of three appendices points out aspects of the movie that the author found substantiation for (or lack thereof). Some of the results should be surprising. Ty Cobb Unleashed also presents a fresh take on the accuracy of Cobb's controversial 1961 co-author, Al Stump. While reinforcing or raising new criticisms about a subsequent Stump 1961 article and 1994 book, it shows where the primary record lends a helping hand to some of his colorful or biting prose.
Thirdly, it is the rare history book that allows the reader to immediately deduce what has not previously appeared in a modern-day book or article - based on a crediting scheme in the main text.
Review
"Rosenberg, as much as is possible, assays [the] myths [about Cobb] and returns a portrait of a man of his time as well as a useful and insightful critique into the literature surrounding Cobb." - Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 1, 2018
"If anyone still has doubts about the true feelings of Ty Cobb in regards to racial matters Howard W. Rosenberg's 'Ty Cobb Unleashed - The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist' (Tile) should assuage them." - Ron Wynn, Tennessee Tribune, July 19, 2018
"Rosenberg brings a line editor's eye to the other Cobb biographies." - Bob D'Angelo, ussporthistory.com, September 22, 2018
"Rosenberg has blown it out of the ball park with his massive amount of research that fills his book with colorful stories, rarely seen photographs and tons of hard-to-challenge information." - Don Rhodes, Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle (and author of the 2008 book Ty Cobb: Safe at Home), January 17, 2019
"Rosenberg, who previously profiled Cap Anson and King Kelly, makes excellent use of anecdotes, quotes, and notes in this fine self-published book." - Dan Schlossberg, Sports Collectors Digest, January 25, 2019
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