Ty Cobb: A Biography

by Dan Holmes

When the National Baseball Hall of Fame inducted its first class of players in 1936, Ty Cobb received more votes than any other player―even more than did fellow inductee Babe Ruth. Cobb, known as the Georgia Peach, was universally recognized as the best player from the dead ball era. He also had the reputation of being its most ferocious player. His fierce determination to succeed helped Cobb equal or surpass more offensive records than any other player, and his career average of .367 is still the highest of all time. Cobb's unyielding and often ferocious work ethic, though, made him many enemies, and his occasional episodes of violence marked an otherwise impeccable career. Baseball author Dan Holmes offers a fresh and fair-handed look at the life of baseball's first true superstar.

It has been said that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in professional sports. Baseball's All-Time Greatest Hitters presents biographies on Greenwood's selection for the 12 best hitters in Major League history, written by some of today's best baseball authors. These books present straightforward stories in accessible language for the high school researcher and the general reader alike. Each volume includes a timeline, bibliography, and index. In addition, each volume includes a Making of a Legend chapter that analyses the evolution of the player's fame and (in some cases) infamy.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2004

About the author

Once caught a whale with a piece of bread.

If you like someone, you should tell them.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow! Early in this book I was thinking it was amateurishly written, and I was debating with myself whether I would review it as such here. Because I feel bad for authors when they get panned like that. But as it went along it got much worse than amateurish. It's riddled with syntax problems (a training "regiment" rather than "regimen", e. g.), egregious grammatical errors ("He ordered the league statisticians to give Cobb credit for a suspended game earlier in the season, in which Ty had went 1 for 2." "Manush had tore up the southern leagues...." (p. 96). "...who had began his career..." (p. 114)) and bad editing ( "In the second game Ty lined collected two singles."). The author acknowledges it's his first book (he writes for the Hall of Fame website), but one would hope he at least grasped basic English grammar! Also, where the hell was his editor?! I actually feel a little sorry for the author, because his editor at least should have been able to save him from this embarrassment.
Also, be warned that this is really a biography of Cobb the baseball player, with excruciating detail about his stats every season he played, and very little about the man--his marriages, children, non-baseball activities are barely mentioned. The book is part of a series called "Baseball's All Time Greatest Hitters, so that's fair enough, but I'm getting frustrated by my inability to find a good, balanced, well-rounded biography of Cobb.