Cobb (1994)

Robert Wuhl: Al Stump

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Cobb narrates a lengthy lambasting of Babe Ruth into a tape recorder] 

  Al Stump : Come on, Ty, aren't you going to give Ruth credit for anything?

  Ty Cobb : (pauses) He could run okay for a fat man.

• 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!]