https://www.detroitathletic.com/blog/2016/02/18/cobb-book-martin-book-win-awards/
Pair of books about the Tigers win major baseball literary awards.
Detroit Athletic
If anyone ever tells you that the Detroit Tigers don?t make good fodder for books, you can tell them just how wrong they are. All one has to do is to point to two baseball books from 2015. Both are biographies of former Tigers (one a Hall of Fame player and the other a controversial manager) that recently swept the two largest awards that are given to books centered on baseball.
The news that Bill Pennington?s masterful Billy Martin: Baseball?s Flawed Genius has won the Seymour Medal, given out by the Society for American Baseball Research, completes the clean sweep for books about Tiger alumni. Earlier in the winter, the editors of Spitball Magazine announced that they had given their prestigious Casey Award to Charles Leerhsen for his exhaustive volume, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. Given the selection of these awards, I think we can reasonably say that research and writing about the Tigers remains as vigorous and worthwhile as ever.
Billy Martin?s life makes fascinating reading
Let?s begin with Pennington. Although Billy Martin is best remembered for both his playing and managing days with the New York Yankees, he also spent nearly three seasons as manager of the Tigers, guiding the team to an American League East title during the strike-marred season of 1972. Pennington devotes parts of three chapters of his book to Martin?s years with the Tigers, chronicling Billy the Kid?s efforts to break up the cliques that had developed during the Mayo Smith years, detailing Martin?s feuds with players ranging from Jim Northrup to Ken ?Hawk? Harrelson, and chronicling his clashes with Tigers star Willie Horton. Pennington, a longtime writer for the New York Times, also examines Martin?s support of John Hiller?s comeback from a heart attack and his involvement in the infamous 1973 ?vaseline incident? that led directly to his own firing.
Pennington?s motivation to write the Martin book stemmed from his years covering the Yankees as a beat writer during the 1980s, when the franchise could rarely go consecutive days without some new controversy. Although efforts at capturing Martin in a full-length biography had been made repeatedly, Pennington felt that something was missing in the portrayals of Martin. ?The picture of Billy Martin seemed very incomplete to me,? said Pennington. ?It does bug me that people know him only as the guy who got fired a lot or that he got in a lot of bar fights or fights with his players ? It?s a cartoon character that?s built up around him. And yes, all those things happened and they?re all part of his complex story? But then there are all these other parts, too. He lived a very interesting life, the sort of life that could only happen in America in the 20th century.?
In order to flesh out a full portrayal of a complicated man, Pennington interviewed over 225 people for the book. That is a mind-numbing number. Among those interviewed were all four of Martin?s wives. Pennington succeeded in questioning a number of people who had never before spoken on the record about the controversial Martin. In some cases, it took persistence and convincing, but Pennington rarely fell short in efforts to reach those closest to Martin.
One of the Martin myths that Pennington overturned was the notion that Martin was a full-out racist. To the contrary, Pennington found that many of the players who felt a special kinship with Martin were African Americans or Latinos, from Rod Carew to Lenny Randle to Rickey Henderson. On the other hand, Martin did seem to have problems with players of Jewish heritage, particularly veteran left-hander Ken Holtzman, whom Martin buried in the Yankee bullpen during the team?s world championship seasons of 1977 and ?78.
Cobb book dispels many myths
Leerhsen?s book matched Pennington?s, not only in terms of depth and detail, but also in terms of dispelling some of the rumored notions about the controversial Ty Cobb. First and foremost, Leerhsen succeeds in overturning the mythology that Cobb was a virulent racist. As Leerhsen explained, Cobb?s father ?descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a preacher who got run out of town for preaching against slavery. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate army because of the slavery issue. His father was a state senator who stood up for the rights of his black constituents and once broke up a lynch mob.?
Cobb himself said little publicly about the issue of race. When he did, he spoke out in favor of black players receiving their full chance to play in both the major leagues and minor leagues. As Leerhsen discovered, Cobb told The Sporting News that ?the Negro should be accepted into baseball wholeheartedly and not grudgingly.? Those do not sound like the words of a racist.
Leerhsen also disputes the belief that Cobb played the game so violently that he actually filed the spikes on his shoes to make them sharper. Leerhsen found no evidence that Cobb ever did such a thing; in fact, he uncovered a letter that Cobb wrote to American League President Ban Johnson, asking him to legislate against the practice of ?sliding high? into opposing baserunners.
Much of Cobb?s false persona had been created by the late Al Stump, who wrote two different books about Cobb in which he alleged that the Hall of Famer was an out-of-control wild man and an unquestioned racist. Although Leerhsen did not set out to disprove Stump, the research took him in that direction. By the end of the book, Leerhsen fully succeeds in discrediting Stump while creating a far more complex and nuanced portrait of the Hall of Fame outfielder.
That is not to say that Leerhsen whitewashed Cobb, either. The book details many of the controversial episodes of Cobb?s life, including the horrific occasion when he threw an African-American chamber maid down a set of stairs. Leerhsen does not avoid the Cobb fights, including the time that he brawled with a teammate (a pitcher named Ed Siever, whom Cobb left in a state of unconsciousness) or the occasion that Cobb made his way into the stands and proceeded to pummel a fan who had a deformed hand. The man was missing seven fingers, but Cobb continued his assault against the heckler.
It?s all there in Leerhsen?s work, a 449-page volume that should stand as the definitive biography of Cobb. In much the same way, Pennington?s biography stands above the rest, which include some decent attempts at capturing Martin, but nothing so comprehensive. So if you?re looking for something substantial to read between now and Opening Day, pick up one of these books, if not both.
There?s more good news on the way, too. A new book, called Playing With Tigers, has been written by former Tigers farmhand George Gmelch. The book examines the life of a minor league ballplayer in the 1960s. It has already received rave reviews, with some calling it a minor league version of Jim Bouton?s Ball Four.
Yes, the history of the Detroit Tigers? franchise is alive and well.
