Tyrus: An American Legend

Rating:
Summary: warning: Historical Fiction!!
Review: I bought this book thinking it was a biography on Ty Cobb. It turns out, it's historical fiction, based on 1 year from Cobb's life, when his father died. Now granted it may be well researched, for that one year, but, it's still fiction...

Rating:
Summary: A Compassionate Portrait of Ty Cobb (for a change)
Review: I was very pleased with the story and the style of writing was unique without being difficult. As a yankee in the south I found the thoughts of young Tyrus interesting. The baseball situations in the book are very well written and the description of Detroit on the advent of the automobile even more so...like I said worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Worth picking up, baseball fan or not
Review: I was very pleased with the story and the style of writing was unique without being difficult. As a yankee in the south I found the thoughts of young Tyrus interesting. The baseball situations in the book are very well written and the description of Detroit on the advent of the automobile even more so...like I said worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Tyrus is Terrific
Review: Patrick Creevy is an excellant writer. He is able to make the reader actually feel emotions, especially the pain and anguish that Ty Cobb experienced as a major league rookie.This book is not light reading but without question is well worth the effort. After reading some sentences and paragraphs, I paused, astounded at Creevy's insights and his writing ability. I wondered how he thought of what I had just read. I particularly liked the trial of Cobb's mother. Rather than simply describing the process and the testimony, Creevy captured the emotional roller coaster of examination and cross-examination. I highly reccomend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Ty Cobb's Baptism Of Fire
Review: This novel offers the reader insight into the troubled mind and tortured soul of one of baseball's most remarkable players, Ty Cobb. A brief introduction to Cobb for non-baseball fans: he began a 24-year-career in the major leagues in 1905 and went on to set more records than any other player. Until Pete Rose came along, he had the most hits of any player in history; Rickey Henderson has finally surpassed his record for most stolen bases. But Cobb's lifetime batting average of .367, highest ever, is surely unchallengable.

But there was more to Cobb than the numbers. He was the most aggressive and hated man ever to step onto a ballfield. He was widely charged with being a dirty ballplayer--an accusation he fiercely denied until his dying day. An actual Cobb quote on the cover of the book accurately sums up his attitude toward the game: "Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's a struggle for supremacy, survival of the fittest."

What was the wellspring of this passion? Cobb's life was truly the stuff of tragedy. In an afterword, Creevy describes Cobb as an American Hamlet, and the paralells are there. In the summer of 1905, Ty's second in professional ball, his mother shot and killed his father, who had been trying to enter their home through a second-story window. Amanda Cobb claimed that she thought William Cobb was a burglar. There was never any certain explanation as to why the senior Cobb attempted to enter the home in this way, though rumors of marital problems abounded. Just days after this tragedy, Cobb was called to the big leagues for a trial with the Detroit Tigers. The following spring, Cobb received permission from the club to miss the opening week of training so that he could attend his mother's trial on manslaughter charges.

Creevy's story is set entirely in these pivotal few months of Cobb's life. Using the historical record as his framework, he vividly brings to life the furies burning inside this supremely talented and supremely troubled young man. The reader travels with Cobb on his lonely journey north; experiences his anguish as his new teammates greet him with indifference or hostility; and feels his desperation as he struggles to establish his position in the game. In some cases, the author has used the novelist's license of invention; in other instances he's taken incidents from later in Cobb's career and moved them back to his rookie season. (This is explained in the afterword.)

The past couple of decades have brought some fine biographies of Cobb. But anyone who wants a more complete understanding of the man can also profit from this work. I was going to call this an outstanding baseball novel, but it's really about much more than the grand American game.--William C. Hall

Rating:
Summary: Ty Cobb's Baptism Of Fire
Review: This novel offers the reader insight into the troubled mind and tortured soul of one of baseball's most remarkable players, Ty Cobb. A brief introduction to Cobb for non-baseball fans: he began a 24-year-career in the major leagues in 1905 and went on to set more records than any other player. Until Pete Rose came along, he had the most hits of any player in history; Rickey Henderson has finally surpassed his record for most stolen bases. But Cobb's lifetime batting average of .367, highest ever, is surely unchallengable.

But there was more to Cobb than the numbers. He was the most aggressive and hated man ever to step onto a ballfield. He was widely charged with being a dirty ballplayer--an accusation he fiercely denied until his dying day. An actual Cobb quote on the cover of the book accurately sums up his attitude toward the game: "Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's a struggle for supremacy, survival of the fittest."

What was the wellspring of this passion? Cobb's life was truly the stuff of tragedy. In an afterword, Creevy describes Cobb as an American Hamlet, and the paralells are there. In the summer of 1905, Ty's second in professional ball, his mother shot and killed his father, who had been trying to enter their home through a second-story window. Amanda Cobb claimed that she thought William Cobb was a burglar. There was never any certain explanation as to why the senior Cobb attempted to enter the home in this way, though rumors of marital problems abounded. Just days after this tragedy, Cobb was called to the big leagues for a trial with the Detroit Tigers. The following spring, Cobb received permission from the club to miss the opening week of training so that he could attend his mother's trial on manslaughter charges.

Creevy's story is set entirely in these pivotal few months of Cobb's life. Using the historical record as his framework, he vividly brings to life the furies burning inside this supremely talented and supremely troubled young man. The reader travels with Cobb on his lonely journey north; experiences his anguish as his new teammates greet him with indifference or hostility; and feels his desperation as he struggles to establish his position in the game. In some cases, the author has used the novelist's license of invention; in other instances he's taken incidents from later in Cobb's career and moved them back to his rookie season. (This is explained in the afterword.)

The past couple of decades have brought some fine biographies of Cobb. But anyone who wants a more complete understanding of the man can also profit from this work. I was going to call this an outstanding baseball novel, but it's really about much more than the grand American game.--William C. Hall

Rating:
Summary: Finally, the pendulum has swings back!
Review: Trends come and trends go. In the world of men's fashion, few yearn for the return of the bell-bottom. But in the lore of excellent writing of sporting subjects, I have long missed the talents of a Grantland Rice. Like his 1924 report on the Army - Notre Dame football game.

"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.
In dramatic lore, they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death.
These are only aliases.
Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.

Or his famous alliterative couplet;

"When Bobby Jones was the King of Golf
And Ty was the Georgia Peach."

If you too long for the return of superlative writing to the world of sports (or any world for that matter) and have an interest in knowing why the Georgia Peach was such a marvelous success at baseball but had such monumental difficulties as a human being, you ought to have Amazon.com Federal Express Patrick Creevy's novel "Tyrus" to your doorstep today.
You are in for a treat of superior proportions. Mr. Creevy will take you inside baseball, inside the Detroit Tigers locker room, and most intriguingly inside the head of "the meanest man is baseball". And when you've finished, you will know why Tryus Raymond Cobb was not a peach by any stretch of any measurement. But you will understand why he wasn't. And you will bless Mr. Creevy for sharing his talents with you to help you not only understand why, but you will cherish a marvelous talent with the creative use of language to express the rarely expressed. Buy it today!

Rating:
Summary: A Compassionate Portrait of Ty Cobb (for a change)
Review: Ty Cobb was a monster, a demon in spikes, a sadistic racist with no redeeming value as a human being except as the greatest ballplayer ever to grace the diamond. Well, this is the modern, if inaccurate, version of Ty Cobb's story, anyway. However, it will be a very pleasant surprise to all Cobb fans who know the true facts of his life to find that, as a historical novel, Patrick Creevy's, "Tyrus," portrays Cobb in a very positive manner.

If you are expecting a book chock full of action and a rapidly moving storyline, then you are reading the wrong novel. Tyrus is more of a psychological portrait of what Ty Cobb as an eighteen year old boy thought and felt the months after his beloved father's sudden and violent death, his first months in the major leagues, and the trial of his mother. Instead of the typical, albeit false, caricature of Cobb as a mad lunatic, Creevy depicts the sensitive and talented boy in such a way that, instead of revulsion, the reader will feel sympathy and even empathy for Tyrus. And while it is only the author's supposition, his narration of young Tyrus' thoughts and feelings are very plausible and, frankly, very moving.

This excellent novel will leave the reader with admiration for a boy who determines to use the grief and torment he experiences at this turning point in his life to become the greatest player in baseball. The Ty Cobb fan, as well as those who are curious to know the real Cobb, will find this well-researched novel a refreshing and compassionate portrait of a fascinating man.