Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood
A Red-Blooded Sport for Red-Blooded Men
By (author) Steven Elliott Tripp
Not available to order
Publication date:
15 July 2016Length of book:
424 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442251922
Ty Cobb called baseball a “red-blooded game for red-blooded men,” warning that “molly coddles had better stay out.” By this, Cobb meant that baseball was the ultimate expression of the masculine ideal – a game of aggression, rivalry, physical and mental dexterity, self-reliance, and primal honor. For over twenty years, Cobb expressed his fierce brand of manhood in ballparks throughout the American Northeast, gaining for himself a level of celebrity that was unsurpassed in the early twentieth century. Fans idolized Cobb not only because he was the best player in the game, but because his boisterous and combative style of play satisfied their desire for exhibitions of visceral manhood. They found in Cobb an antidote for what they feared were the corrupting influences of over-civilization.
With balance, precision, and empathy, Steven Elliott Tripp brings the era to life in a narrative Publisher’s Weekly has called “stunning.” In contrast to recent biographies of Cobb that have tried to minimize his more brutish behavior and minimize his racial antipathies, Tripp contextualizes Cobb, placing him squarely within the cultural milieu of both the rural South of his birth and the Northern sporting culture of his professional career. Moreover, Tripp’s reconstruction of early twentieth-century sporting culture isolates an important source of modern America’s culture of hyper-masculinity.
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is both an important work of social and cultural history and an absorbing tale of ambition and the quest for dominance. Tripp has written the rare narrative that is as appealing to scholars as it is to general readers and sports enthusiasts.
With balance, precision, and empathy, Steven Elliott Tripp brings the era to life in a narrative Publisher’s Weekly has called “stunning.” In contrast to recent biographies of Cobb that have tried to minimize his more brutish behavior and minimize his racial antipathies, Tripp contextualizes Cobb, placing him squarely within the cultural milieu of both the rural South of his birth and the Northern sporting culture of his professional career. Moreover, Tripp’s reconstruction of early twentieth-century sporting culture isolates an important source of modern America’s culture of hyper-masculinity.
Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is both an important work of social and cultural history and an absorbing tale of ambition and the quest for dominance. Tripp has written the rare narrative that is as appealing to scholars as it is to general readers and sports enthusiasts.
In this biography, Tripp skillfully links Ty Cobb’s life and baseball career to broad social patterns, particularly a muscular form of masculinity. According to Tripp, Cobb preferred to socialize with men and kept his distance from women—including his mother, both of his wives, and his daughters. Tripp traces Cobb’s preference for male socialization from his childhood in the post-Reconstruction South through his Hall of Fame career in Major League Baseball. When Cobb launched his baseball career, the sport had developed the reputation as a ruggedly masculine and even rowdy pastime. Baseball, therefore, represented the ideal outlet for Cobb to live out his fondness for socializing with men. With the examination of Cobb through the lens of masculinity, Tripp blends and illustrates an analysis of white American masculinity with a chronicle of an American sports legend. In Cobb’s era, American masculinity promoted the dominance of white men, stressed the importance of honor, and reflected the racial legacy of slavery. Cobb embodied all aspects of American masculinity; these defined how he played the game of baseball and how he treated others away from the baseball diamond. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.