Heart of a Tiger: Growing up with My Grandfather, Ty Cobb

by Herschel Cobb

Overview

Casey Award Winner: The Best Baseball Book of the Year

“Elegantly written and genuinely moving.” — Publishers Weekly

“An unforgettable story . . . that will alter how you feel about baseball’s most demonized star.” — Tom Stanton, author of Ty and the Babe

The previously untold legacy of Ty Cobb, the greatest baseball player who ever lived

Ty Cobb’s grandson Herschel saw a side of him that very few others did. While baseball fans were familiar with Cobb’s infamously cold competitive nature, his relationship with his own children was also deeply difficult. Despite this, Cobb embraced the opportunity to form a loving bond with his grandchildren during their summertime visits in his later years.

Herschel Cobb grew up in a chaotic, destructive household. His father was cruel and abusive, and his mother was an adulterous alcoholic. After his father died, when Herschel was eight he began to spend a portion of each summer with his grandfather. Along with his sister and brother, Herschel visited Ty Cobb at his home in Atherton, California, or at his cabin at Lake Tahoe. These days were filled with adventures, memorable incidents, and discoveries as “Granddaddy” warmed to having his “three redheads” with him.

Heart of a Tiger is Herschel Cobb’s moving account of how a retired sports star seized a second chance at having a close family, with his grandchildren the lucky recipients of his change of heart. He provided wisdom, laughter, and a consistent affection that left an indelible mark. He proved the enormous power of a grandparent to provide stability, love, and guidance. As he developed this new, wholly different legacy, in turn he would finally come to peace with himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770411302
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Herschel Cobb is the grandson of Ty Cobb. He lives in Menlo Park, CA.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 The Snake River, Idaho, 1949 1

2 223 Pierce St., Twin Fall, Idaho 34

3 The Passing of Two Sons 60

4 Mist and Clarity at Lake Tahoe 95

5 The North Shore Club 131

6 My First Visit to His Office 166

7 A Chance Meeting in the Night 199

8 Spencer Lane to Cave Rock, Through Lodi 225

9 "So, You Met Mr. Al Stump!" 246

10 July 17, 1961, and Beyond 273

Editorial Reviews

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.
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Publishers Weekly

Elegantly written and genuinely moving, this heartwarming account is sure to resonate with readers.” — Publishers Weekly

“Not your grandfather’s Ty Cobb? Perhaps not. But Ty Cobb was Herschel Cobb’s grandfather. And the story Herschel Cobb tells reveals a far gentler side to his grandfather, one buried deep beneath the persona Ty Cobb created during his playing days. Heart of a Tiger: Growing up with My Grandfather, Ty Cob is a warm, sentimental memoir. Herschel Cobb is not trying to write a revisionist history of his grandfather; he is merely retelling the memories he had of ‘Granddaddy,’ never realizing until he was a teenager that Ty Cobb was a famous — and sometimes polarizing — baseball player.” — Bob D’Angelo, Tampa Tribune

“I could rave about this book for hours and I feel I would still never do it justice. It’s a book that hooks the reader from the very beginning and in spite of the sometimes difficult content, keeps you hanging on until the very end.” — Charlene Martel, The Literary Word

“A personal memoir can enrich the statistical account, as does this one about the great Ty Cobb. Readers should find justice has been done to the Georgia Peach.” — Ron Kirbyson, the Winnipeg Free Press

“Actions sometimes speak louder than words. But Herschel Cobb’s words speak volumes on why The Georgia Peach just might have always been a peach of a man that no one could find out, unless you were kinfolk and not a prying member of the media like Al Stump trying to fulfill an assignment.” — Tom Hoffarth, Farther Off the Wall

From the Publisher

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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Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews