"Finally--a fascinating and authoritative biography of perhaps the most controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's...

Al Stump redefined America's perception of one of its most famous sports heroes with this gripping look at a man who walked the line between greatness and psychosis. Based on Stump's interviews with Ty Cobb while ghostwriting the Hall-of-Famer's 1961 autobiography, this award-winning new account of Cobb's life and times reveals both the darkness and the brilliance of the "Georgia Peach."

Baseball legend Ty Cobb asks sportswriter Al Stump to write his biography. Cobb lives down his reputation as an extremely difficult person. While driving across country to a banquet at the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cobb tells Stump about his life but his gun wielding, drinking and drug use get them into many scrapes along the way. Stump writes both the version Cobb dictates to him and the version he himself sees, but he only publishes Cobb's version....

"When the United States officially entered World War I in 1917, it was woefully underprepared for chemical warfare, in which the British, French, and Germans had been engaged since 1915. In response, the U.S. Army created an entirely new branch: the Chemical Warfare Service. The army turned to trained chemists and engineers to lead the charge--and called on an array of others, including baseball players, to fill out the ranks. The Gas and Flame Men...

In 1910 auto magnate Hugh Chalmers offered an automobile to the baseball player with the highest batting average that season. What followed was a batting race unlike any before or since, between the greatest but most despised hitter, Detroit?s Ty Cobb, and the American League?s first superstar, Cleveland?s popular Napoleon Lajoie. This book captures the excitement of this strange contest?one that has yet to be resolved.