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Transcript from "Ty Cobb"

Tyrus Raymond Cobb I've got some stories on him. I had him down in 1957 for Dr. Aderhold to give him a lifetime pass. Ty Cobb, called the "Georgia Peach.” I had four interviews with him and he is the greatest guy. He wasn't a mean guy.

He wasn't a mean fellow?

Well, I can tell why he had a chip on his shoulder. It was because his father was killed. He worshipped his daddy, who was superintendent of schools. I can't exactly tell this story. But his daddy had gone out of town and he came back to town unexpectedly one night. He couldn't get in the house. So he went in the window and he was shot dead.

Oh, my.

It was either by his wife or her lover.

Oh my.

That ruined the young Cobb. He left town as a boy. He had a chip on his shoulder and when he was playing baseball at 18 or 19 years old for Detroit, he'd go into the towns and they would say, "Hey Cobb, who killed your daddy? Was it your mother or her lover?"And he would go up into the stands and just beat the hell out of the guys. And he had a chip on his shoulder all his life. It was due to that. And you can see why. Now I asked him one time. I had four interviews with him, two in ‘46, one in ‘50, and one in ‘57 just before he died. I asked him, I can't talk about Cobb, though. I asked him, I said, "What's that story about you sharpening your spikes?"

Yeah. Going in with them filed.

He said "That's the biggest lie ever told on me. There have been a lot of them" he said. He said, "I would clean my spikes. All baseball players clean the mud off their spikes, and that story started. We were playing somebody and one of my teammates was up there on the dugout on the top cleaning his spikes, just cleaning the mud off, and they had a story, and there's Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes so he can cut them when he runs the bases.” But Ty Cobb was something. God, he was great. He was so nice to me. I could tell some stories on him. In 1950 we were playing … well, I'll tell it later.

Go ahead. Tell your Ty Cobb…

Well, in 1950, we were playing St. Mary's in San Francisco, Kezar Stadium, and Georgia's first famous coach was, well the most famous coach they ever had was Coach Charles Herty, because he invented the process by which you make paper out of pine pulp, but he was not a football coach, he just read from the rule book, but he was most famous for that job he did inventing paper out of pine pulp, the process developed. But anyway, Pop Warner had been our coach, and later a famous coach of the Carlisle Indians, and Jim Thorpe, and famous coach at Pittsburgh, and he retired after coaching Stanford. He was living in San Francisco. And I asked Coach Butts, could we invite old Pop Warner to sit on the Georgia bench during the game? He said "Good idea." So I did invite him, and he accepted. When I saw him, he was old, and I said "Coach Warner, how've you been doing?"He said, "I'm et up with arthritis." So then I asked Coach Butts, you know, I said, "Can we invite Ty Cobb?" who was living in Palo Alto then. Can we invite him to sit on the bench? He didn't go to Georgia, but in one of my interviews, he told me his daddy wanted him to go Georgia, to study medicine, but he went into baseball. Anyway, Ty said, "You can tell Coach Butts that I appreciate the invitation, but I don't want to sit on the bench. Can't see a damn thing from there." (laughter)I said, "Well, how about sitting in the press box with me?" He said, "I'll take you up on that, and how about coming out and having supper with me tonight?"And I did, in Palo Alto. He was very nice to me.

That's a great opportunity. Let's go back then and talk a little bit about your family. Tell us what…