Full disclosure: I have not finished Charles Leerhsen’s new biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty
The book has generally been getting good reviews. I posted a link to the one in the May 31 issue of the NY Times Sunday book supplement which said, among other things,
“[I]f Leerhsen is a mostly effective advocate for Cobb, he’s not always an elegant one. It might have behooved him to dispatch Stump’s integrity in the opening pages and then let his own case speak for itself throughout, rather than frequently and sometimes clumsily referring back to Stump and other previous writers when presenting his own version of events. The book is crowded with rhetorical furniture. He also occasionally goes on too long with his own conjectures, as when he tries to figure out where Cobb disappeared to for 44 days during the 1906 season. Conventional wisdom says he had a nervous breakdown and went to a psychiatric retreat; Leerhsen believes that’s possible, but sets the odds of it “at about 60-40.”
In several cases, Leerhsen absolves Cobb of a larger sin but leaves the underlying sin intact. In others, the biographer goes too far in sympathizing with his subject.
Leerhsen himself posted this comment to the Bookshelf:
I was pleased with the full-page New York Times review of TY COBB: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY, which was largely positive and described the book as “noble,” “convincing” and “full of whimsical detail.”
The author has a good attitude. He chooses to focus on the positive rather than dwell on the less-positive (which is not to say negative). And in the hundred or so pages I have read, I have found it to be an interesting presentation.
Among the other things Leerhsen contends is that Cobb was a product of his era and probably no worse, and in many ways more evolved, than his fellow southerners in terms of race philosophy. In addition, Cobb’s style of play was probably representative of the era; it’s just that he had much more talent than his contemporaries. Leehrsen rationalizes Cobb’s drive as he points to flaws in the works of previous Cobb biographers, particularly Al Stump (at this point in my reading).
Over the years, I think several researchers have come to the conclusion that Stump’s work with and about Cobb took liberties when it came to accuracy and several sportswriters are jumping on the bandwagon that perhaps Cobb wasn’t such a bad guy/monster after all.
The fact that Cobb was elected to the Hall of Fame is neither here nor there, to my mind. There are several inductees whose personal lives may not have been worthy of sainthood; this is real life, not some Jack Armstrong story.
I think my main concern is Leerhsen’s constant dismissal of those previous works. (On the other hand, at least Leerhsen didn’t name his book War on the Basepaths: The Definitive Biography of Ty Cobb
Ultimately, a lot of what we “know” about Cobb comes from the pens and typewriters of reporters and scribes who, for lack of a better phrase, weren’t shy about “elaborating” on the truth. Anything to sell papers, right? Seems standards of journalistic integrity weren’t too high on the list of priorities.
A sampling of the coverage of Leerhsen’s work:
- From the Macon Telegraph
- From the New York Post
- An audio interview with the author on Atlanta’s NPR affiliate
- The Times also published this piece by their sports media writer Richard Sandomir
Now, I don’t know Leerhsen (met him briefly at Gelf Magazine’s recent Varsity Letters program where he shared the stage with Jon Pessah, author of The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers
Sandomir writes, “[Leerhsen] is also critical of a previous Cobb biographer, Charles Alexander, for writing that a bellhop and a night watchman who were involved with Cobb in a hotel fight in 1909 were black. Alexander cited contemporary accounts for the claim, but Leerhsen said he found none.” Not sure what that proves one way or the other. Is he questioning Alexander’s methods? Calling him a liar? Implying that he fabricated those “contemporary accounts?” Although that’s not to say that those accounts were true, however. The ability to conduct research has greatly improved over the past two decades since the last “serious” Cobb bio was published, by Leerhsen’s reckoning. I guess that’s why we keep getting new biographies on Abraham Lincoln.
Leerhsen cherry-picked the Boston Globe review by Allen Barra, selecting this quote for his Facebook page:”Not only the best work ever written on this American sports legend: It’s a major reconsideration of a reputation unfairly maligned for decades.”
A fuller examination of Barra’s piece, at least to my mind, offers a slightly different slant:
Yogi Berra was a cheating sociopath; Stan Musial a hardcore user of performance-enhancing drugs; and Jackie Robinson a gutless wimp.
All of these preposterous propositions are easier to accept than Charles Leerhsen’s in “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” — that Cobb was a loyal teammate and straight-arrow ballplayer, tough but fair, something of an intellectual (or what passed for same in World War I-era baseball), and — please pause after reading this so you can absorb it fully — a racial moderate in favor of fairness for black ballplayers.
But if veteran sportswriter Leerhsen is correct about Cobb — and his book is assiduously researched and his points lucidly expressed — then “A Terrible Beauty” is not only the best work ever written on this American sports legend: It’s a major reconsideration of a reputation unfairly maligned for decades. [my emphasis]
See the difference?
Now, you could say, “But, Ron, aren’t you cherry-picking?” And you might be right. I’m showing my prejudice against what I perceive — rightly or wrongly — as self-aggrandizement. Again, not my style. Maybe I’d be better off it it were.
So, to be fair (or at least give the impression of fairness), I’ll conclude with some more of Barra’s review: “Leerhsen’s version of Cobb reads true because, for the first time ever, he is presented as a fully rounded human being with a sense of humor and a genuine capacity for making friends (even Babe Ruth, whom he criticized as a player) as well as enemies.”
is available on Amazon.com,
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Interesting to see how other writers view different works. I have my copy but haven't read a page. As a player and baseball writer, it will be interesting.
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