Cobb: A Biography [Hardcover]

Al Stump (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1994

As a boy in the 1890s he went looking for thrills, jumping off barn roofs and walking tightropes in a rural Georgia that still burned with humiliation from the Civil War. As an old man in the 1960s he dared death, careening drunk along icy roads late at night; he picked fights, refused to take his medicine, and drove off all his friends and admirers. He went to his deathbed alone, clutching a loaded pistol and a bag containing millions of dollars worth of cash and securities. During the years in between, he became, according to the author of this new biography, "the most shrewd, inventive, lurid, detested, mysterious, and superb of all baseball players." He was Ty Cobb. In Cobb, author Al Stump tells how he was given a fascinating window into the Georgia Peach's life and times when the dying Cobb hired him in 1960 to ghost-write his autobiography. From those months with Cobb came Cobb's 1961 My Life in Baseball, a carefully sanitized justification of Cobb's life and career that was published shortly after the Hall-of-Famer's death. But much of what Cobb told him, and the darker side of Cobb's life, went unreported and untold. Until now.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Stump, Ty Cobb's ghostwriter for the 1961 autobiography My Life in Baseball, fleshes out the story in this bare-knuckle, shocking biography. Born in Georgia in 1886, Cobb began his baseball career with the Detroit Tigers in 1905 and stayed in the big leagues until 1928-all the time hated by his rivals and teammates alike because of his meanness and combativeness. The author portrays the highlights of Cobb's career: his first batting championship in 1907; his 96 stolen bases in 1915; and his three .400 seasons in 1911, 1912 and 1922. Stump also looks at Cobb's involvement in game-fixing in 1919, his time as a manager and his activities after retiring. He died in 1961. The most sensational aspects of the book deal with Cobb's personal life: his mother's murder of his father, millionaire Cobb's cheapness (no electricity or telephone in his house), wife beating, alcoholism and racial bigotry. Stump has written a biography of the "Georgia Peach" that will stun readers with its brutal candor. Photos. 25,000 first printing.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (October 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945575645
• ISBN-13: 978-0945575641
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( C ) > Cobb, Ty
  • #54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cobb the legend, July 5, 2000

By 

"radioactive_lemming" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cobb: A Biography (Paperback)

Was Tyrus Cobb as good as you imagined? Better.

Did Tyrus Cobb innovate the game? Absolutely.

Did a worse human being play the game? Maybe not.

Al Stump focused on the first and especially the third question above. Being a sports writer, Stump knows that a healthy legend and juicy scandel sells books. In this book Stump gives excellent descriptions of some of the most famous incidents in baseball- mostly from the mouth of Cobb with whom Stump spent parts of a year interviewing. Perhaps that time tainted Stump. For example, Stump repeatedly mentions the 'extreme cruelty' Charlotte Cobb used as grounds for divorce. He fails to mention that Mrs. Cobb stressed that it was mental and never physical abuse. Why? Perhaps Stump intended to paint Cobb as completly vile. Perhaps Cobb deserved it. But this important information for a book of nearly 500 pages to fail to mention. Stump keeps a highly negative focus on Cobb the man while building up Cobb the player.

I finished this book disliking Cobb the man, convinced Cobb the player would have dominated ANY era, and wanting to know more- so I read Alexander's book. Charles Alexander's "Ty Cobb" provides a more complete, less biased view of Cobb in about half the pages. The Stump book is more colorful however.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars this book no longer has any credibility, February 28, 2011

By 

Mark bennett "Mark" (portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cobb: A Biography (Paperback)

However well written this book is, its author has been totally disgraced and can no longer be considered any sort of trustworthy source for anything to do with Ty Cobb. Al Stump has been revealed in a variety of sources to have been a forger of memorabilia and documents related to Ty Cobb. In The National Pastime, the official publication of the Society for American Baseball Research, his reputation was completely destroyed in 2010.

He forged a Cobb diary that ended up being displayed prominently at the hall of fame until the FBI proved it was a fake in 2009. He even sold a shotgun he claimed was the gun that killed Cobbs father. The eventual problem being that Cobb's father wasn't killed by a shotgun.

We are left in a situation now where its difficult to know where to begin reconstructing who Ty Cobb was. The author of this book has so clouded the perception of who he was, that getting back to anything like the truth is going to be enormously difficult. But the first step toward the truth is banishing everything written by this person from being taken seriously.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly eye-opening, May 9, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Gloversville, Mississippi) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cobb: A Biography (Paperback)

This book is a quick read for baseball fans, and an interesting look at the psychosis of an American icon for non-baseball fans. Al Stump went through a living hell while writing Ty Cobb's ghost-written autobiography and thirty years later he tells Cobb's true story. The story of Cobb's obnoxious, cruel behavior is told in detail, with Stump's vicious pen tearing at the soul of the legend. It is rare in biographies to see a writer tear at the subject, but Stump does it as a reconciliation with his soul. In between the lines, Stump comes to terms with his own demons, and it brings the book to life. Every one of Cobb's misgivings and psychotic rampages is shown, and his one truly great asset, that of being the greatest baseball player of all time, is also given full credit. An amazing work for its balance between the two worlds of writing the truth and writing what our legends want us to see is covered. Al Stump wrote the story of an American legend in everyday life in Cobb, and leaves the reader one possible conclusion, Cobb isn't the man we want our children to emulate.