All serious baseball fans know the name of Tris Speaker. A Hall of Fame hitter, Speaker compiled a career batting average of .345-career--5th all-time best and tallied more doubles than anyone in history. But Speaker was so much more than just a Hall of Fame hitter. As baseball historian Richard Johnson says, "Speaker was Willie Mays before there was Willie Mays." Regarded by his peers as the greatest center fielder of all time, Speaker's range was so great that his outfield area was known as the place "where triples went to die." He still holds the all-time records for assists, double plays, and "unassisted" double plays by an outfielder. A World Series winner as both a player and a player-manager, Speaker devised the modern-day platoon system and also the infield rotation play. The Texas native and descendant of Confederate soldiers would also go on to tutor Larry Doby, the first black man to play in the American League.
The author offers an honest look at Speaker's larger-than-life, roughshod, frontier-forged personality. Simply stated, Tris Speaker is the long-overdue biography of one of the best players of all time.
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