Related Items
Tommy Lee Jones, "Cobb"
In contrast to John Goodman's Babe Ruth—a cuddly teddy bear who wants to impress—there's Jones' Ty Cobb—a notorious drunk who couldn’t care less what anyone thought of him. “Cobb” is painstaking, and at times ugly, in debunking the mythology of the superstar athlete, giving us Cobb as a dying man who seeks out a journalist to tell his life story. At first thrilled to get the assignment of writing up a baseball legend, the journalist quickly realizes that the iconic image exists only in the baseball stats. Off the field, he’s a womanizer, bigot and alcoholic—a miserable cad who seems determined to alienate anyone who would ever love him. “Cobb” resembles so many music industry biopics, presenting a troubled star who can only find catharsis in the act of performing. For Cobb, life off the baseball field was hell.
