Cobb:
A Biography by Al
Stump 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 - Amazon.com Paperback from Algonquin Books
Book Published: March, 1996
Ty
Cobb (Baseball Legends) by Norman L. MacHt, Jim Murray (Introduction)
(Library Binding - December 1992)
My
Life in Baseball : The True Record by Ty Cobb, et al
One of sports literature's great whitewashes and cover-ups, Ty Cobb's
autobiography is anything but the "true record" of its titular claim. Cobb
was as haunted and complex a man as has ever sharpened a pair of spikes,
and, in his 70s, when he sat down to tell his story, he simply didn't want
the whole of his truth revealed; he preferred to perpetuate his legend.
What results, then, is a flawed fairy tale filled with colorful anecdotes
and reminiscences that duck the demons that fueled Cobb's inspired play
like a pitcher trying to hide from a line drive smashed in the direction
of his eyeballs.
Interestingly, the story behind the book is far more raucous and compelling
than the book itself. Cobb, as violent and demanding at the end of his
life as he was in his playing heyday, virtually kidnapped Stump (one of
the most honored sports writers of the late '50s and early '60s), subjecting
almost every word and observation to Cobb's approval. Stump finally exacted
his literary pound of flesh years later when he slid spikes high into Cobb's
ghost with the publication of his marvelously rich--and real--accounting
of Cobb's life in Cobb: A Biography. Stump not only nicked the fuzz
off the Georgia Peach in that second effort, he recounted the harrowing
circumstances behind the first. Together, the two books provide a fascinating
prism into a man's life and legacy, the first volume bending the light
to diffuse the truth, the second straightening it out to preserve it. Amazon.com--Jeff
Silverman Paperback from Univ of Nebraska Pr
Book Published: March, 1993
