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Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend
- Narrated by: Dale J Hubbard
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend is the first book to tell the full story of Speaker’s turbulent life and to document in sharp detail the grit and glory of his pivotal role in baseball’s dead-ball era.
Playing for the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians in the early part of the 20th century, Tris “Spoke” Speaker put up numbers that amaze us even today: his record for career doubles - 792 - may never be approached, let alone broken. Tris Speaker explores the colorful life behind the statistics, introducing listeners to a complex and contradictory Texan whose cowboy mentality never left him as he brawled his way through two decades in the big leagues.
Speaker’s career put him in the company of Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Honus Wagner, and in describing it Timothy M. Gay gives a rousing account of some of the best baseball ever played - and some of the darkest moments that ever tainted a game and hastened the end of a career.
The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook will be published by University Press Audiobooks.
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Critic reviews
“This should be required reading for any serious baseball fan.” (Sport Literature Association)
"A richly detailed biography, the first on Speaker to succeed in situating him within an epoch of great promise and of great shame." (Library Journal)
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Story
Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-'70s.
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If you followed MLB in the 70's or 80's !!!!
- By Eric on 03-09-16
By: Mike Shropshire
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Babe
- The Legend Comes to Life
- By: Robert W. Creamer
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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He was the biggest man baseball has ever produced. Babe Ruth transcended the sport that brought him fame, money, and adulation, moving beyond the limits of baselines and outfield fences into the mainstream of American life. In this extraordinary biography, Creamer uncovers the complex and captivating man behind the legend.
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The definitive biography of Babe Ruth
- By DKT on 05-30-16
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Ty Cobb
- A Terrible Beauty
- By: Charles Leerhsen
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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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 tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote.
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Two Cobb Books, One Review of a Maligned Legacy
- By Jonathan Love on 05-17-16
By: Charles Leerhsen
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A Nice Little Place on the North Side
- Wrigley Field at One Hundred
- By: George Will
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history?
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It's EEE-lia, not Ah-LEE-ah
- By Shawcago on 04-25-16
By: George Will
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Summer of '68
- The Season That Changed Baseball - and America - Forever
- By: Tim Wendel
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".
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Detroit Upsets St. Louis in 1968 World Series.
- By Matthew Tsien on 05-01-18
By: Tim Wendel
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The Last Innocents
- The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers
- By: Michael Leahy
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players - friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies - and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.
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Reliving my youth
- By PJ on 05-24-17
By: Michael Leahy
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Baseball
- A History of America's Game
- By: Benjamin G. Rader
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A succinct history of baseball, newly revised and updated. In this third edition of his lively history of America's game, widely recognized as the best of its kind, Benjamin G. Rader expands his scope, covering record crowds and record income, construction of new ballparks, a change in the strike zone, a surge in recruiting Japanese players, and an emerging cadre of explosive long-ball hitters. The book is published by The University of Illinois Press.
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Good book!
- By Judy Ellis on 04-15-18
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The Grandest Stage
- A History of the World Series
- By: Tyler Kepner
- Narrated by: Tyler Kepner
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.
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Excellent!
- By DavidF on 09-09-24
By: Tyler Kepner
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The Best Team Money Can Buy
- The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse
- By: Molly Knight
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.
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BOTH BOOK AND TEAM NEED TO BE BETTER
- By Ray on 09-06-15
By: Molly Knight
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Pete Rose
- An American Dilemma
- By: Kostya Kennedy
- Narrated by: Ben Bartolone
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.
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Good book, not so good production.
- By david d. on 05-01-14
By: Kostya Kennedy
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The Chicago Cubs
- Story of a Curse
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the Chicago Cubs have always been more than a team: they've been the protagonists of a King Arthur epic, in search of the Holy Grail that is winning the World Series. A chronicle of the last few miraculous seasons as experienced through the prism of Cubs history, The Chicago Cubs tracks the famous curse, which was placed on the team in 1945 by the infamous owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, who was ejected from Wrigley Field when he tried to bring his goat into the grandstand for the fifth game of the World Series.
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just listen and it all happens again
- By Z. Kuhn on 10-28-17
By: Rich Cohen
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Opening Day
- The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.
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Great book, not so great reading
- By Joe Baseball on 08-30-07
By: Jonathan Eig
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The Big Bam
- The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
- By: Leigh Montville
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Babe Ruth was more than baseball's original superstar. For 85 years, he has remained the sport's reigning titan. He has been named Athlete of the Century...more than once. But who was this large, loud, enigmatic man? In The Big Bam, Leigh Montville brings his trademark touch to this groundbreaking, revelatory portrait of the Babe.
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The Big Bam
- By Alan on 06-13-06
By: Leigh Montville
What listeners say about Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mallard
- 08-24-19
This book is sort of about Tris Speaker
If you were to cull from the book the pages devoted to Tris Speaker, the book would be about half as long. The story would more accurately be titled, "The Dead Ball Era in Baseball, featuring Tris Speaker." The author spends a lot of time writing bios about a number of other players from the era. That would be fine if the synopsis of the story was more accurate in describing the focus of the book. I was continually frustrated by the amount of time the story was not about Speaker. Maybe there isn't enough source material to fill out a full book.
The book was published in 2005. Consequently, the author repeats several myths about Ty Cobb and his so-called racist and violent incidents that have been debunked by more recent bios of The Peach. "Ty Cobb, A Terrible Beauty," published in 2015, should be read if you want a more accurate telling of Cobb's story.
The presentation of the book was adequate. The reader mispronounces several words. The most egregious is referring to Nap Lajoie as "la-JOY." Ugh.
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- Karen or Jason
- 08-21-24
Book Solid. Narration Bad
This book is solid but had some inconsistencies around team names and players. Also there was a lot of deviation away from Tris Speaker though Deadball Era fans won’t mind. The editing of the narration was bad as there were several times parts of the book was replayed and others were the narrator messed up and it wasn’t caught. Lastly, the narration was bad. Really bad. Mispronounced names, bad timing around annunciation and sounding like he was chuckling throughout the narration. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through the book.
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- Steven Gerweck
- 10-03-23
A great biography of a dead ball era legend
Tris Speaker might be the best player never mentioned among the listed baseball greats. If not for Willie Mays, he may have been the greatest center fielder to play the game. Speaker, or “Spoke” as many called him, was a defensive wizard (recording a record 449 career outfield assists), but was also deadly with the bat. He still holds the major league record with 792 career doubles. He finished his career with a remarkable .345 batting average.
However, off the field, “The Grey Eagle” was openly racist, and was allegedly a member of the Klu Klux Klan. He was a 32nd Degree Mason, and had strong religious convictions. As a baseball player, and later as a manger, Speaker often turned blue in heated arguments with the umpires. Author Timothy M. Gay chronicles his path from Texas, shortly removed from the “war of northern aggression, to becoming a World Series champion.
Speaker was a baseball natural, and wouldn’t allow an injury to break his stride. Following a horse related accident, “Spoke” taught himself to play baseball left handed. While in Boston, Speaker formed the golden outfield with Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper. Speaker and Lewis didn’t get along. Speaker, being a staunch Protestant, resented Catholic players such as Lewis and catcher Bill Carrigan.
In 1913, Speaker went on a promotional world tour, with such stars of Sam Crawford and Jim Thorpe. They traveled 30,000 miles, visited 13 nations over a 4 month period, playing and promoting the game of baseball around the globe. Due to the emergence of a rival Federal baseball league, Speaker became the highest paid major league ballplayer. It would be the lucrative contract that made Boston management attempt to cut his salary, and when he refused, trade “Spoke” to Cleveland.
In Cleveland, Speaker helped to turn around the Indians, and lead them to the 1920 World Series championship. However, during the season, good friend Ray Chapman was struck in the head by a pitch, and would die from the damage to his brain. Chapman was only 29 years old.
It would be pitcher Dutch Leonard that presented game fixing charges against Speaker and Ty Cobb. The commissioner cleared both Speaker and Cobb of any wrongdoing. but both would step down as managers, and never manage again in the major leagues. Speaker was inducted into the baseball hall of fame, and despite his previous prejudices, mentored the talented Larry Doby, who became the first black in the American league.
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