OT: Review new Ty Cobb bio; Sports book recommendations
A review and a request for good books to read.
First, I just finished "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty" by Charles Leerhsen. It is an exhaustively researched biography (c. 2015) that makes a revelatory claim that Cobb's reputation has been badly smeared by a book by Al Stump and popular culture in general. The book reveals that while Cobb was indeed a feirce competitor with a bad temper (confined mostly to the field), he was also very intelligent, well-read, and widely respected and even revered by his peers. Of course he had his bad side, and was quick to find himself in a brawl. All of which this book addresses head on. One thing's certain: Cobb was enormously successful and admired in his time. One could claim that he was really America's first sports superstar.
Leerhsen also addresses widely held claims that Cobb was a racist--and convincingly blows them out of the water. In fact, Cobb's family were abolitionists, and Cobb himself was outspoken that black players should be allowed to play in the major leagues well before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. He also had a black man who worked as a valet before eventually becoming a key member of Cobb's business empire for decades. Al Stump was hired by Cobb in his later years to do his autobiography, and much of the work Stump eventually published was written as Cobb was dying and even after he died. Cobb hated the book and demanded that Stump pull it, but he died and the book was published. Stump's book was pure garbage, most of it made up by Stump who is revealed to be a con man and a charlatan who was looking to cash in on Cobb's fame and indeed did so for many years after Cobb's death, including forging Cobb's signature thousands of times. The absolute worst of what Stump published has become "common knowledge" about Cobb and was the stuff of which the libelous Tommy Lee Jones "Cobb" movie was made. This book, for me at least, redeems Cobb's reputation and convinces me that he was not only the greatest ballplayer of all time, but also a gentleman and a heroic, if flawed, character. Anyone who wishes to dispute this would have to present evidence that stands up to the scrutiny of Leerhsen's research.
On that note, I'm looking for something else to read. Any suggestions on great sports books? Could be anything--not just biography but also historical, business of sports, etc. Great ones I can recall off the top of my head are "Seabiscuit," "Into Thin Air," and "Moneyball." Thanks!
I was just about to enter the double post thread and make reference to the rare "double post" - but lo and behold, here comes the triple. Nice work!
(BANG)
Feinstein's A Season on the Brink is an interesting profile of Bobby Knight, so if you're into character studies I'd check it out. Been on a bit of a Michael Jordan kick recently and I'd recommend both Roland Lazenby's Michael Jordan: The Life and David Halberstam's Playing for Keeps. (That being said, the best thing ever written about Jordan is probably Wright Thompson's "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building.") I've also heard that Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game is excellent. AJ Liebling's The Sweet Science is another one I've heard great things about that is on my wish list.
The Amateurs is a great read about would-be Olympians.
Read almost every word Halberstam has written and I agree. For some reason my favorite is "Summer of '49" which dealt mostly with the Yankees/Red Sox/Dimaggio/Wiliams pennant race.
Close is Halberstams: "The Teammates" about the lifelong friendships between Red Sox teammates Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doer. I cried like an idiot on every other page.
tl:dr
If you like Baseball, I really enjoyed Tim Kurkjian's book "I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies". I read it last year and was really entertained. It is a compliation of some great baseball stories over Kurkjian's lifetime of covering baseball and his fascination with stats and box scores.
Another decent baseball book is Men at Work by George Will. It might seem a ittle dated, but is a pretty interesting look at the approach players and managers take in trying to gain an edge.
The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle
I will second the perfect mile and it is somewhat topical given the current Nike Breaking2 project going on right now.
Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball wasn't horrible. Biased and funny in all the ways you would expect.
Boys In The Boat - Brown (About the 1936 Olympic Rowing Team)
A Fighters Heart - Sheridan (Great look into the world of fighting)
Season of Life - Marx (Cant remember why I loved it, but a good Football book)
Open - Agassi (One of the best Autobiographys in sports out there)
Boys in the Boat is a fabulous book to read. Very entertaining and informative. I hope they turn it into a movie.
Open - Found this book very interesting and forthcoming. I always liked Agassi and this book gives you an inside look at everything he has gone through in his life. Now I would find it interesting to read a similar book about Steffi Graf, wish she would write one.
I am currently reading "The Family that Conqured Everest" Very good book so far. I really enjoyed into thin air and this is somewhat similar and interesting.
Bronx Zoo (Peter Golenbock/Sparky Lyle) - late '70's Yankees. It made me LOL.
The Bad Guys Won (Jeff Pearlman) - 1986 Mets. Also funny.
(I have wayyy too many books about sports/baseball, but if you want some feel-good summer reading, I'd start there).
John Adams is a great bio about a kid who wants to be a centerfielder and ends up saving our nation by securing the funds from the Netherlands to continue our war of independence.
Or was he?
"You Gotta Have Wa" by Robert Whiting. It's about an American playing in the Japan League and having to adapt to the culture and the way the game is played. Interesting, I always thought Japan just kind of co-opted our game after WWII, but no, their passion for the game is very intense and it goes back more than a century.
Ernie Harwell wrote several great little books of all the anecdotes he had picked up over the years. Very light, fun, often hilarious reading.
I totally wore out Diamond Gems by Ernie when I was little. A lot of the stories are apocrypha, or oft-repeated stories with the places changed, or just old jokes, but they're still everything from chuckleworthy to downright hysterical.
I think Cobb's reputation was effectively killed by none other than UM alum Daniel Okrent in Ken Burns' "Baseball". Okrent was a major source for the documentary and he really goes out of his way to single out Cobb, even calling him a black mark on baseball.
Well this book has multiple quotes from Cobb himself saying he thought blacks should be able to play in the majors. This was during his playing days, in the mid-20s. That was downright revolutionary thinking for that time. The old story about Cobb beating up a black porter in a hotel is revealed to be true--all except for the fact that the porter was a white man.
Yes, the author mentions the Burns film as one of the dissipators of the more well-known smears of Cobb. He also mentions more than once the scene in "Field of Dreams" where Shoeless Joe Jackson says "We thought about asking Cobb (to play), but none of us liked the son of a bitch when he was alive, so we told him to stick it!"
In fact Cobb and Jackson admired each other as players and were good friends their entire lives. Cobb even went out of his way to help Jackson in his later years after he struggled from losing his career in baseball due to the "Black Sox" scandal.
Some good new books:
"Gunslinger" by Jeff Pearlman: great in-depth look at Brett Favre.
"The Boy Who Knew Too Much" by Cathy Byrd: "true" story written by a mother who thinks her son is actually the re-incarnated Lou Gehrig. I treated it mostly like a work of fiction and thought it was a pretty entertaining read.
You have already read two of my favorites: Seabiscuit and Moneyball. I would also recommend Season on the Brink.
Our own Jamie Mac (James Macmillan), who is featured on the podcasts during football season wrote an interesting book about the 1906 Cubs and White Sox. That Cubs team could have an argument for greatest team of all time, but they get dismissed because they lost that series.
Jerry Izenberg's Greatest Game Ever Played is also great. It's about the last game of the 1986 Mets-Astros playoff series. I was younger when I read that one but I found it riveting.
That was a great game, but it was the 1980 Astros-Phillies NLCS that stands as one of the greatest playoff series of all time.
Played basketball at Occidental commencing in 2011. I don't think that the career went beyond college.
Did the book delineate his Coca -Cola holdings? They were purportedly substantial.
Doesn't go into too much detail about how much stock, but yes Cobb's early investments in Coca Cola and General Motors made him a very rich man.
I don't consider chess a sport, but Bobby Fischer Goes to War was outstanding.
Also if you enjoyed Moneyball, I'd recommend "The Only Rule is it Has to Work." Fascinating and entertaining read about trying to incorporate analytics into minor league baseball. Also "where nobody knows your name" is a great read about life in the baseball minors.
is a novel about a young boy growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s who is a baseball fanatic in search of a hero. He fixates on a rookie on the Giants and starts writing him letters. It is a quick read as it is written in the form of letters, post cards, newspaper articles, etc. It tracks their friendship with lots of humor. I realize you probably prefer non-fiction, but this is an enjoyable summer read. Author is Steve Kluger.
Read this.
"Massacre at Winged Foot." Best golf book I've read. The US Open the year after Miller's 63.
Two by John McPhee, who is the king of the unbelievably long but still somehow riveting essay and one of my favorite writers:
Levels of the Game, about Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner
A Sense of Where You Are, about Bill Bradley as a basketball player, written long before he entered politics
Josh Hamilton's biography, "Beyond Belief". This book is extremely intense and delves deep into Josh's out-of-control drug usage. I definitely recommend.
Read "The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber" by Julian Rubinstein, the real-life tale of a goofy Transylvanian hockey player who turns from terrible goalkeeper to folk hero after he starts robbing banks, politely.
The Basket Counts by Matt Christopher.
More on Cobb: Ty and The Babe Baseball's Fiercest Rivals: A Surprising Friendship and the 1941 Has-Beens Golf Championship by Tom Stanton, author of The Final Season