Robert Wuhl: Al Stump

Cobb

Al Stump

Al Stump: All right, listen, you son of a bitch. If you die before the book is finished, I'll write the story I want.
Ty Cobb: I ain't gonna die before the story's finished.
Al Stump: I'll write slow.
Ty Cobb: I'll die slow.
[pause, and then]
Ty Cobb: Now get your clothes on, we're gonna go get some pussy.

Al Stump: I didn't know what I was getting into with this job.
Ty Cobb: Shit! Will you stop explaining yourself, and stand by your damn convictions? You beat the great Ty Cobb - I respect that, but if you're gonna print it, print it all. My second son weighed 300 pounds. Died in the arms of a whore in Paso Robles, California. My other son, lost all track of him. My two ex-wives won't speak to me, and my daughter, you know goddamn well won't speak to me, and Ty Cobb
[pointing down to his crotch]
Ty Cobb: can't get it up anymore. Print it all!
Jameson: Is there anything you'd like today, sir?
Ty Cobb: I want everything back I took out of Bethlehem Steel, and I want it all now.
Jameson: Right away, sir.
Al Stump: This is all confusing.
Ty Cobb: It is not confusing. It's simple - you won. You go ahead and tell the whole wide world that the greatest ballplayer who ever lived is also the greatest bastard. Eureka! Who fucking cares?

Al Stump: I gave a few bucks to a local kid to repaint the sign, and disappear for awhile to finish the manuscripts, and wait for Cobb to die. While I waited: Ernest Hemingway blew his brains out, Getty bought Honolulu Oil, Coke came out in cans, and the brunette in the courtyard ran away with a handsome young lawyer, and on July 17, 1961, Ty Cobb died quietly in his sleep. I don't believe it was quiet. Nothing he ever did was quiet, but that's what the newspaper writer said who wrote the lead, and we all know, writers never lie.

Al Stump: I gotta put your family in my book.
Ty Cobb: Your book? MY book! And nothing about my ex-wives or my children is going to be in it. My book is about baseball!
Al Stump: My book is about Cobb.
Ty Cobb: Cobb is Baseball!

Al Stump: I put up with your bullshit. I give words, I interpret, I give *life* to your bullshit. And you give me nothing. *Nothing!* But grief.
Ty Cobb: You have never been this close to greatness in your short life son. And you love it.

[Stump is in a bar with his friends]
Al Stump: We call ourselves writers! All we do is sit around talking about baseball and getting drunk a lot. You call that writing?
[All his friends: Yeah!]