They Shaped the Game: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson

by William Jay Jacobs

Book Overview

A fascinating look at the immortal boys of summer from baseball's golden era. Chock full of baseball anecdotes and personal accounts, this book features the men who helped make baseball America's favorite pastime. This inspiring account will appeal not only to the most ardent baseball fans but to all middle-grade readers. Includes bibliography and index. Black-and-white photos.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684197340
• ISBN13: 9780684197340
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 85 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 9 to 11 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 6

Customer Reviews

Basic biographies of Cobb, Ruth and Robinson for young fans

For my money there are two figures in baseball history who tower above everybody else, namely Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. In terms of changing the game you cannot find another player or owner who had an impact as great as the man who made the home run what it is today and the man who broke the color barrier. The only other thing that comes as close to impacting the game would be the introduction of night baseball at which point we are closer to requiring clean baseballs to be used and lowering the mound than we are to what Ruth and Robinson accomplished. However, in "They Shaped the Game," William Jay Jacobs looks at not only Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson but starts off with Ty Cobb. Certainly Cobb personifies the way baseball was played before Ruth changed the emphasis from speed to power, but I would not make the case that he shaped the game in terms of changing how it was played. Willie Keeler was hitting them "where they ain't" and John McGraw had made using your head when playing baseball a key part of the game before Cobb's time. So I buy the idea of Cobb defining the game, but not shaping it into something new. Besides, the argument that Cobb, Ruth and Robinson shaped the game is rather implicit in this book, which essentially provides short biographies of the three players. To demonstrate the impact Jacobs would have to focus more on those who followed in their footsteps. However, that gets reduced to Lou Gehrig and Roy Campanella respectively when it comes to Ruth and Robinson. What I was expecting was a more specific look at how Jimmy Foxx, Hack Wilson and Hank Greenberg were following closely on Ruth's heels and how Jackie Robinson opened the door for Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. As short biographies of these three players what you will find in "They Shaped the Game" certainly covers the highlights of their careers and will serve as introductory looks at each. I appreciate that Jacobs does not sanitize their lives, touching on Cobb's racism, Ruth's drinking, and the hate hurled at Robinson but leaves it to later biographies to fill in the details (a list of such books is provided in the back). The book is illustrated with black & white photographs of the players and if "The Shaped the Game" does not really prove its thesis, it domes demonstrate that Cobb, Ruth and Robinson all had the key common trait of being fiercely dedicated to what they were doing.