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"The greatness of Ty Cobb was something that had to be seen, and to see him was to remember him forever.”
-- Hall of Famer George Sisler, first baseman who played mainly for the St. Louis Browns
More than a century ago this month, a 21-year old outfielder named Ty Cobb had a fine day as he started his third full year with the Detroit Tigers.
The book, praised in early reviews, comes out May 12.
The season opener was against the White Sox at South Side Park in Chicago on April 14, 1908, and the author of a new Cobb biography tells how the future legend did.
"Cobb hit a single, double and homer, made two breathtaking catches (one a fence-climber, the other a full-body slider)," Charles Leerhsen posts Sunday on his Facebook book page.
"And when a disgusted White Sox fan threw a lemon at him, 'he accepted it with a bow of thanks,' one sportswriter tells us, 'and proceeded to suck it dry with pleasure.' "
Alas, the Sox won, 15-8 -- but the six-foot-one slugger shines on as an immortal star who's among six Tigers enshrined above center field at Comerica Park, where the season opens Monday afternoon against Minneapolis.
Leerhsen's 464-page hardback, "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty," comes out from Simon & Schuster on May 12 (yes, five weeks before Father's Day).
The Brooklyn author, a former Newsweek senior writer and Sports Illustrated executive editor (2002-08), came to Detroit during his research. Here's part of his promotion:
Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time.
When he retired in 1928, after 21 years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than 90 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.
Charles Leerhsen: "Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player."
Cobb "comes across as less odious and more interesting than his sinister reputation in this energetic biography," says a Publishers Weekly review.
Leerhsen cogently argues that stories of his attacks on African-Americans are greatly exaggerated, while his occasional statements of racially progressive views are ignored. Leerhsen also dismisses allegations that Cobb gratuitously spiked basemen.
This Cobb is no thug but a reflective, well-read baseball intellectual who combined athleticism and strategic cunning into remarkable on-field dynamism, blending superb batting, hell-for-leather base-running — he once stole second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches — and subtle psych-outs that gave opposing teams nervous breakdowns. . . .
This is a stimulating evocation of baseball’s rambunctious youth and the man who epitomized it.
