Heart of a Tiger

February 25, 2013
Born into a wildly dysfunctional household, Cobb grew up with a skewed perspective on family: his abusive father had a cruel streak, and his emotionally distant, alcoholic mother freely admitted she didn't want kids in the first place. That all changed after his father died and he and his siblings began to spend summers with their grandfather, the legendary baseball player Ty Cobb. There, his days were spent swimming and boating instead of living in fear. Though Ty Cobb had a reputation for surliness and a very aggressive playing style on the ball field, the man portrayed here is incredibly warm, showering his grandchildren with love and encouragement. This bounty of spirit extended to others as well, as Herschel Cobb recalls helping the aging sportsman mail off countless autographed baseballs to young admirers; he also recounts the elder Cobb helping out friends and former teammates who'd fallen on hard times. Elegantly written and genuinely moving, this heartwarming account is sure to resonate with readers.

March 1, 2013
The greatest baseball player of the dead ball era, and the most widely despised, tenderly remembered by his grandson. Herschel Cobb grew up the middle child of alcoholic parents, his father a near-300-pound bruiser who physically and mentally tortured him until a heart attack put an end to the madness when the boy was 8; his mother, cruelly indifferent to the abuse, disastrously remarried and continued to administer her own brand of emotional pain. The only solace came from his Granddaddy's occasional visits, phone calls, letters and, most of all, from summers spent with the old man at Lake Tahoe. There, Herschel learned lessons in humility, persistence, charity, self-reliance and responsibility. By then, Ty Cobb was well past his baseball heyday, at arm's length from his surviving children, alone with his fabulous wealth from prescient investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors. He appeared to acknowledge the hash he'd made of his personal life--"Hersch, it was my fault. It was my fault"--and he reached out to his grandchildren in a way quite at odds with his ferocious reputation. A large part of this narrative's charm lies in the little boy's gradual awakening to his grandfather's towering achievements in baseball and to his controversial legacy: "Granddaddy, what did you do? Who are you really?" The question turns out to be not so easily answered. Ty, almost pathologically competitive, famously played with a sharp-elbowed, spikes-high intensity that earned him many admirers and few friends. Particularly for those whose image of the Georgia Peach derives solely from the infamous Al Stump biography and the ensuing Tommy Lee Jones movie, this portrait of the lion in winter will come as a surprise. A gentle, affecting memoir.

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February 15, 2013

Imagine growing up with history's most aggressive ballplayer, Ty Cobb, as your personal refuge. Herschel Cobb, now 70 years old, presents a memoir of his northern California youth, as much about the torments he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic and abusive parents as about the summers he spent away from them, throughout much of his boyhood, with his paternal grandfather, Ty Cobb. Cobb is still legendary, not only for his unsurpassed MLB records (e.g., his .367 lifetime batting average) but for his fierce base running and stealing and his volatile temperament on and off the field. But that was not the Cobb that his grandson knew, as he relates in a flowing narrative jam-packed with recreated dialog (although never acknowledged as such). Ty Cobb had become a rich man through savvy investing. The death of two of his sons--his namesake of brain cancer and the author's father from drink--affected him deeply; he mellowed in old age. The author portrays a loving grandfather who was privately generous and a source of stability to his grandchildren. VERDICT Although fans of baseball's golden age will be curious, this will be more to the taste of readers of survivors' memoirs.--MH

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