A three-time World Series winner and an early inductee into the Hall of Fame, lauded by Babe Ruth as the finest defensive outfielder he ever saw and dubbed by the great Grantland Rice, 'Perfection on the field', Texan Tris Speaker enjoys the peculiar distinction of being one of the least-known legends of baseball history. "Tris Speaker" 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 Deadball Era. Playing for the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians in the early part of the twentieth 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 readers to a complex and contradictory man whose cowboy mentality never left him as he brawled his way through two decades in the big leagues.As Speaker's career puts him into the company of Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner, Timothy 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. His four years of research on Speaker unearthed a document that suggests gambling-induced cheating was far more widespread in early baseball than officials have acknowledged. Gay's book captures the bygone spirit of the big leagues' rough-and-tumble early years and restores one of baseball's true greats - and a truly larger-than-life personality - to his rightful place in the American sports pantheon. Timothy Gay is a writer based in northern Virginia. His essays and articles on the Civil War, politics, baseball, college basketball, and golf have appeared in the Washington Post and other publications.