Ty Cobb: Bad Boy of Baseball (Step into Reading, Step 4, paper)

Rating:
Summary: Ty Cobb: A great baseball player but a lousy human being
Review: As Sydelle A. Kramer points out at the end of this juvenile biography of Ty Cobb, "He may have been the game's most exciting athlete ever--but he was not a good man." Of course, this makes you wonder why Cobb would be an appropriate subject for a Step 4 Book for students in Grades 2-4. Karmer does not make off on the darker details on Cobb's life, telling about how he beat up a handicapped heckler in the stands and stabbed a black night watchman. At the same time Kramer makes it clear why Ty Cobb defined baseball for the the first two decades of this century, until Babe Ruth changed the game from speed to power. So what is the value of having young readers learn about someone who was among the first men elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame but the most hated man in his sport? Because it raises an issue that confronts kids today with their sports heroes: what happens when talent atheletes do stupid, horrible and criminal things? Maybe talking about somebody from the past will make it easier for kids to come to grips with these issues and then think about applying them to the current bad boys of baseball or any other sport.

Rating:
Summary: Ty Cobb: A great baseball player but a lousy human being
Review: As Sydelle A. Kramer points out at the end of this juvenile biography of Ty Cobb, "He may have been the game's most exciting athlete ever--but he was not a good man." Of course, this makes you wonder why Cobb would be an appropriate subject for a Step 4 Book for students in Grades 2-4. Karmer does not make off on the darker details on Cobb's life, telling about how he beat up a handicapped heckler in the stands and stabbed a black night watchman. At the same time Kramer makes it clear why Ty Cobb defined baseball for the the first two decades of this century, until Babe Ruth changed the game from speed to power. So what is the value of having young readers learn about someone who was among the first men elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame but the most hated man in his sport? Because it raises an issue that confronts kids today with their sports heroes: what happens when talent atheletes do stupid, horrible and criminal things? Maybe talking about somebody from the past will make it easier for kids to come to grips with these issues and then think about applying them to the current bad boys of baseball or any other sport.