Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1 Becoming Ty Cobb
2 The Game
3 “The Professional Teach”
4 Honor
5 The Players’ Ethic
6 Fans
7 "The Most Unpopular Popular Man in Baseball"
8 Cobb in the Age of Ruth
9 Protecting a Legacy
Selected Bibliography
Index
Steve Tripp teaches social and cultural American history at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
Before baseball icons Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle,
there was the prickly, talented Ty Cobb, whose life is the subject
of this revealing biography by Tripp, a professor of history at
Grand State University. In a career spanning from 1907 into the
early 1920s, Cobb, labeled by Tripp as a 'combative and egocentric
Southerner from the backwoods of Georgia,' was the first celebrity
baseball player, achieving most games played, most plate
appearances, most hits, most runs, most stolen bases, most batting
titles, and highest lifetime batting average by his career’s end.
His biographer highlights Cobb’s competitive nature, quoting New
York sportswriter Paul Gallico as saying the death of Cobb’s father
brought out a fury, cruelty, and viciousness in his playing that
hadn’t previously been present in baseball. Cobb, disliked by his
teammates and opponents, is termed an example of true Southern
manhood; he was set apart by his drawl and actions, and his belief
that black people were inferior to whites. His 'gritty,
go-for-broke' play showed his obsession of staying on top, and his
aggressive game, including playing through injuries, earning him
stardom, adoration, and endorsements. Tripp’s stunning account of
Cobb as a mythic player and manager is a complex glimpse into a
tormented personality.
*Publishers Weekly*
In this biography, Tripp skillfully links Ty Cobb’s life and
baseball career to broad social patterns, particularly a muscular
form of masculinity. According to Tripp, Cobb preferred to
socialize with men and kept his distance from women—including his
mother, both of his wives, and his daughters. Tripp traces Cobb’s
preference for male socialization from his childhood in the
post-Reconstruction South through his Hall of Fame career in Major
League Baseball. When Cobb launched his baseball career, the sport
had developed the reputation as a ruggedly masculine and even rowdy
pastime. Baseball, therefore, represented the ideal outlet for Cobb
to live out his fondness for socializing with men. With the
examination of Cobb through the lens of masculinity, Tripp blends
and illustrates an analysis of white American masculinity with a
chronicle of an American sports legend. In Cobb’s era, American
masculinity promoted the dominance of white men, stressed the
importance of honor, and reflected the racial legacy of slavery.
Cobb embodied all aspects of American masculinity; these defined
how he played the game of baseball and how he treated others away
from the baseball diamond. Summing Up: Recommended. All
readers.
*CHOICE*
Steven Elliott Tripp's Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood,
however, demonstrates how a skilled historian can cause us to
rethink a figure we believe we know. Tripp's book is one of the
best recent studies not only of baseball but of southern and
American masculinity as well…. On every page Tripp displays a
thorough command of the scholarly literature on baseball and on
American history more broadly. Anyone who wishes better to
understand American masculinity and the appeal of baseball in the
early twentieth century should consider Tripp's measured,
persuasive reading of Ty Cobb.
*Journal of Southern History*
Tripp’s work is a nice complement — and a refreshing, different
view — to the volume of works about Ty Cobb.
*The Sports Bookie: A sports blog by Bob D’Angelo*
The past few years Ty Cobb has been as popular in the baseball book
world as ever. There are contradicting stories about his
personality that have arisen over the past few years and has
changed the ways in which people perceive Cobb. No matter where you
lie on the subject their is never going to be a definitive answer
as to the man’s personality, but that will not stop the book world
from trying. The author takes a unique approach on this one and
reviews Cobb’s personality from a rural Southern upbringing and the
mentality of the times. He compares it to the current day
expectations of social behavior and shows the differences and
transgressions. Tripp also reviews Cobb’s place as a sports icon in
Cultural, Social and Gender histories, both within the game and our
country. It is a unique approach on a man that passed more than a
half century ago and sheds some interesting ideas on what Ty Cobb
was all about. Time marches on and so may be the ever changing
legacy of Ty Cobb.
*Gregg's Baseball Bookcase*
"A judicious corrective to the many myths surrounding Ty Cobb, and
above all, a book that embeds this fascinating star in the context
of his times and the game he played so well. Tripp has grasped an
essential truth about Cobb as a man obsessed with near-perfection
and greatness, both of which he attained at times, but shaped by
the values of the South and his family. Both a learned and moving
portrayal of Cobb that will recast him in a positive light."
*Thomas W. Zeiler, author of Ambassadors in Pinstripes: The
Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American
Empire*
"Steve Tripp’s Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is a
provocative portrait of a player who was both a catalyst to
baseball's emergence as the nation's game and its most reviled
warrior. This perceptive book is about notions of manhood and honor
during troubled times, and how they played out on and off the
field."
*Rob Ruck, author of Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the
Black and Latin Game and professor of Sport History at the
University of Pittsburgh*
“A wonderfully full-scale, analytical treatment of the tempestuous
hero in his own times and in his own terms, Steve Tripp explains
how Cobb came to represent a popular, nationwide version of
aggressive manhood at the very moment that it was under a massive
assault.”
*Benjamin G. Rader, author of Baseball: A History of America’s
Game*
"Steven Tripp's compelling book is the first work to place Ty Cobb
fully in the context of his times. The result is much more than a
biography. Here is a rich and nuanced study of how the culture of
manhood shaped the making and meaning of one of the greatest, and
most controversial, players who ever lived."
*Louis P. Masur, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and
History at Rutgers University and author of Autumn Glory:
Baseball's First World Series, Rutgers University*
“Steven Tripp’s Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is a
first-rate biography of one of the most interesting characters in
all of sport. It is also an excellent social history of America at
the beginning of the twentieth century. The great Detroit Tigers
outfielder stepped onto the national stage just as the United
States came of age as a political, economic and military
juggernaut. Best of all, Tripp weaves it all together—our national
pastime, a gifted athlete, a troubled man, and a defining moment
for American masculinity. Ty Cobb, baseball and turn-of-the-century
America come to life in these pages.”
*Elliott Gorn, Professor of History, Loyola University Chicago*
“Steven Elliott Tripp’s Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is
an exemplary work of cultural history. With engaging prose,
impressive research, and an admirable amount of historical empathy,
he gives us the definitive treatment of Ty Cobb and his place in
American popular culture. I enjoyed this book immensely.”
*John McMillian, Associate Professor of History, Georgia State
University, and author of Beatles Vs. Stones*
“In this fresh and fascinating approach to Ty Cobb, Steve Tripp’s
critical and yet sympathetic analysis moves beyond basic biography
to explain baseball’s first celebrity and perhaps most
controversial player. Tripp tells a compelling story of a complex
man and by contrasting the conflicting values of the rural American
South into the expanding cities of the North like Cobb’s adopted
Detroit, we learn about both sport and the changing values of the
modernizing twentieth century United States. This is an important
book for students of sport and of American history.”
*Orville Vernon Burton, Creativity Professor of Humanities,
Professor of History, Pan African Studies, and Sociology, Clemson
University and author The Age of Lincoln*
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