Charles Leerhsen – Ty Cobb - History Author Show

September 28, 2015 – Even casual baseball fans can name the game’s greatest heroes, and its most infamous villain: Ty Cobb. Yes, it’s something that even Yankees and Red Sox fans can agree on: “The Georgia Peach” wasn’t a very nice fellow. But what if everyone is wrong? What if, like Ulysses S. Grant, Ty Cobb’s enemies were just more prolific writers than his friends? What if by accepting the view of Ty Cobb as a belligerent racist and dirty player, we’re smearing baseball’s all-time great, and abetting a century of shoddy reporting?

If so, then someone should set the historical record straight. Well, that’s exactly what Charles Leerhsen set out to do in his New York Times best-seller, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, Mr. Leerhsen questioned all the accepted truths about Cobb and found the facts striking out.

We hope you’ll pour yourself a cold one, tear open a box of Cracker Jacks, and play ball with Charles Leerhsen and Ty Cobb … A Terrible Beauty.

[waltdude]

Thank you so much for setting the record straight. Ken Burns owes the Cobb Family an apology for maligning his legacy. Now I

question every film he has made.

[jecasey]

This was such a great interview, I wish it were longer. Two classy guys having an informative conversation. The discussion was in a most respectful balance with the interviewer and the author asking and answering questions in a way that presented the subject matter clearly and credibly. I felt better for hearing it.

[SteveGee]

Leerhsen is the 23&Me for sports writing. Convenient narratives are tough to correct. The book is excellent. When research is emphasized, many false narratives are dispelled.

[timorthelame]

Leerhsen did a great job of researching and writing about Cobb.

[patrickstewart]

Great interview as a baseball historian I’ve read so many articles that are the truth and the truth never get out until now

[bt]

What's interesting is, if listen to some of the old player interviews who were teammates with Cobb, or played alongside him, get different stories. Like Sam Crawford who was a teammate for many years, Crawford always said that "Cobb never had a friend in baseball" and really didn't have anything positive at all to say about him.  

Then people like Smokey Joe Wood, said that Cobb was one of his "Very best friends in baseball", and he played against him! Still a somewhat mysterious figure. Would like to hear a thorough account of Shoeless Joe Jackson one day too. What type of person was he?

[bt]

But make no doubt about it, Ty Cobb was never known as a less than intellectually sharp fellow! Even Al Stump I think at least gave him that.

[Batman]

Charles and The podcast host, you two are amazing and I’ve known a lot of this information already as a millenial that lived in the era of that damn movie Cobb by Tommy lee Jones. I’ll be honest as a young kid seeing that movie, I just went with it and kind of just believed/assumed it was “truth” until I dig deep into Cobb research and the movie was absolutely fabricated & the dumbass Al Stump wanted to hype his book up so he was probably ticked off because Cobb told him generally not to put fluff into the writings . I set people straight ALL the time setting the record straight when I’m on a baseball thread or somewhere I know dumbassery is being portrayed about Ty

Cobb was a pioneer and a trail blazer . He was the first sport legend . Cadete first above Ruth in hall of fame and everyone knew it including Ruth . One lady commented in a like she was all knowing and said Babe Ruth was homeless that’s why he went into a boarding school haha. It was a reform school because his parents thought he needed it for discipline because Ruth was a little roughian haha.

Cobb pioneered a ton and I’m glad charles brought up chunks of factual information. Ruth fanboys want to say Ruth changed the game lol guess who changed the game before him COBB . People are dumbfounded, I know baseball history and I’ve also played into college & I had a grandfather in the professional baseball world. He would tell me stories about old time baseball all the time. He’d have stars under lined in old baseball digests and tell me to read them . Cobb changed the game of baseball and people want to say “dead ball” era lol it was dead because the god damn ball wasn’t juiced as much as well as the players. Cobb treated the game like war and played it like a marine going full speed into a brick wall and a practitioner of baseball. He was supposed to be a doctor and he was a world war 1 Veteran . Ofcourse he thought of baseball as war, it’s a great táctica to supercede and he called baseball “ It’s a battle for supremacy” Manly/hardnosed supremacy of the fittest

[kumarg]

Wuhl did an interview on opie and anthony. Wuhl didnt like the evidence presented by this book.