Jack Coombs: A Life in Baseball

But then in 1913 Coombs contracted typhoid fever, a disease that cost the right-hander two seasons at the peak of his career. And while he battled his way back to baseball, pitching well in his comeback season of 1915 and then leading the Brooklyn Robins to the World Series in 1916, Coombs was never again the dominant pitcher he had been. Coombs went on to a long and successful career as a college coach for Duke University, and he would write one of the most highly regarded instructional books on baseball ever published.