Steven Elliott Tripp

This curious, large ramble through the mind of Ty Cobb seeks to identify the origins of his sociopathy in the Southern code of honor under which he was raised. Put otherwise, the author seeks to establish that those traits which so offend the man of today, his truculence, racism, egotism, and disdain for rules and sportsmanship, were perceived by Cobb as virtues and carefully nurtured ones at that. The author then proceeds to link these traits to how they were perceived in the baseball world of that time and, ultimately, to society at large. To his credit, the author doesn't demonize Cobb--I have seen him compared, and negatively at that, to Herr Hitler--but he avoids this Scylla at the price of coasting too near the Charybdis of justifying Cobb's malevolence. Personally, I liked this book best when he stepped back from psychoanalyzing Cobb and surveyed the world of ragtime baseball; he relates fascinating details about many a player and sportswriter I thought I had read a great deal about. Be that as it may, he offers a lot of insight into Cobb and kept this reader's interest alive throughout a pretty long book.… (meer)