Posnanski and the Paterno book

Zeke12 · Jul 17, 2012

Azrael said:

Zeke12 said:

SI passing just cannot be a good sign, here.
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Granted, but we have no idea how acrimonious his separation from the magazine was, either.
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True.

Van Lingle Mungo said:

Zeke12 said:

SI passing just cannot be a good sign, here.
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Couldn't it mean that they're working on their own Penn State story?
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Absolutely.

I still don't think it's a good sign.

buckweaver · Jul 17, 2012

Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!! said:

You mean the Cobb book by Al Stump? Yeah, he made a lot of that up.
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Correct. Pretty damning account of Stump's fabrications here:

http://sabr.org/research/georgia-peach-stumped-storyteller

It is evident that the Ty Cobb fantasies and forgeries created by Al Stump have infected the very heart of baseball myth and history—the hallowed Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. The legitimacy of the Stump-forged items had seemed reasonable enough when they first began to appear in the 1980s, based on Stump’s well-known collaboration with Cobb on the 1961 autobiography. Stump had a believable reason to possess writings by Ty Cobb and other pieces of Cobb memorabilia. The apparent legitimacy of many of these items was further enhanced by the inclusion of the Stump fakeries in the famous and highly publicized Barry Halper collection and by their prominent display in the prestigious Hall of Fame Museum. Nevertheless, we now know that Al Stump forged the Ty Cobb diaries, letters, and other autographed items that made up his memorabilia “collection.”

<snip>

This investigation dispels perhaps the most distasteful element of the Ty Cobb myth with definitive proof. A pistol, not a shotgun, was used in the shooting of W. H. Cobb, and therefore there was no crime scene in which W. H. Cobb’s head was practically blown off at the neck, nor did his abdomen pour forth its contents onto the porch roof of the Cobb home in Royston.

<snip>

Another of the more outrageous stories written by Stump was the “Cobb killed a man” story, which also first appeared in Stump’s 1961 True Magazine article and then was enhanced in his 1994 Cobb biography.

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Practically all of Stump’s sensationalized story of the last ten months of Ty Cobb’s life is outrageously false. Stump would have us believe that these months were the alcohol-and-drug-crazed nightmare of a raging lunatic with whom Stump lived in a state of constant fear. Actually, Stump spent only a few days on and off with Ty Cobb, collectively no more than a few weeks during the 11 months between June 1960 and May 1961—three months before Cobb’s death.76 Cobb’s constant companion for the last two months of his life told a much different story in a 1982 Sports Illustrated interview.77

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So what other outrageous Stump stories about Cobb are either completely false or overblown and exaggerated? That Cobb’s close friendship with Ted Williams ended completely after an argument over which players should be on the all-time All-Star team—refuted by Williams himself, who said Stump invented the story and bluntly generalized about Stump: “He’s full of it.”81 That Cobb refused to sign autographs for fans and was unfriendly to kids— refuted by Jean Eilers affidavit described above and further disproved by the hundreds of genuine Cobbsigned baseballs, postcards, photos, and other items, many personalized to children, which survive and now sell for thousands of dollars each in the memorabilia market. That he carried a loaded Luger with him to his last hospital stay in the same brown bag that contained a stack of negotiable securities—refuted by Jimmy Lanier, Cobb’s personal batboy in 1925 and 1926, who with his son, Jim, visited Cobb in his last days at Emory Hospital, listened as Cobb showed and described the Coca-Cola stock and other securities in the brown bag, and saw no evidence of a gun, either in the bag or elsewhere in the room.82 That Ty Cobb’s funeral was shunned by all but a few baseball players and dignitaries—refuted by The Sporting News, which reported shortly after Ty’s death that the family had notified Cobb’s friends and baseball dignitaries that the funeral service, held only 48 hours after Cobb passed, was going to be private and asked them not to attend.83

A more appropriate question would surely be: What Stump stories about Ty Cobb are not either outright fantasy or gross exaggerations based loosely on questionable fact?
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Alma · Jul 17, 2012

Jim_Carty said:

93Devil said:

When was the last time an author was given almost total access to a major sports figure and the following book was not exactly what the hosting figure had intended? In other words, was not a "happy grandpa" book?
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John Bacon's book on Michigan and Rich Rodriguez, Three and Out. Rodriguez gave him total access and ended up not really speaking to him after reading the book.
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And that book was pretty sympathetic to Rich Rod. It ripped the Free Press stories to boot.

21 · Jul 17, 2012

Re the SI aspect of this, why is anyone surprised they didn't want to promote a book by a guy who just quit? They saw the material in June, he had just resigned at the end of March. Why would they want his book??

Ben_Hecht · Jul 18, 2012

Alma said:

Jim_Carty said:

93Devil said:

When was the last time an author was given almost total access to a major sports figure and the following book was not exactly what the hosting figure had intended? In other words, was not a "happy grandpa" book?
Click to expand...

John Bacon's book on Michigan and Rich Rodriguez, Three and Out. Rodriguez gave him total access and ended up not really speaking to him after reading the book.
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And that book was pretty sympathetic to Rich Rod. It ripped the Free Press stories to boot.
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There was a TON of Rich Rod asskissing in that book. Of course, as we've seen, most major-program coaches expect/demand total/utter feality.

playthrough · Jul 18, 2012

21 said:

Re the SI aspect of this, why is anyone surprised they didn't want to promote a book by a guy who just quit? They saw the material in June, he had just resigned at the end of March. Why would they want his book??
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Just what I was thinking. In SI's eyes, Pos leaving that gig (which, IIRC he described before and after as his "dream job") for something under the MLB media umbrella was perhaps a slap in the face. So no free advertisement, which a book excerpt is.

swenk · Jul 22, 2012

Some answers from the publisher:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/business/media/in-posnanskis-paterno-a-biography-with-bad-timing.html?ref=business

YGBFKM · Jul 22, 2012

"A balanced biography" is an interesting choice of words.

Alma · Jul 22, 2012

Ben_Hecht said:

Alma said:

Jim_Carty said:

93Devil said:

When was the last time an author was given almost total access to a major sports figure and the following book was not exactly what the hosting figure had intended? In other words, was not a "happy grandpa" book?
Click to expand...

John Bacon's book on Michigan and Rich Rodriguez, Three and Out. Rodriguez gave him total access and ended up not really speaking to him after reading the book.
Click to expand...

And that book was pretty sympathetic to Rich Rod. It ripped the Free Press stories to boot.
Click to expand...

There was a TON of Rich Rod asskissing in that book. Of course, as we've seen, most major-program coaches expect/demand total/utter feality.
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Oh, I don't think it was RichRod necessarily demanding it. I think Bacon genuinely thought the guy got railroaded by the weirdo fan base up there and the AD/prez.

imjustagirl · Jul 22, 2012

swenk said:

Some answers from the publisher:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/business/media/in-posnanskis-paterno-a-biography-with-bad-timing.html?ref=business
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Well that sure doesn't make me feel any better than S&S knows what they're doing with it.

LongTimeListener · Jul 23, 2012

Is there something about PR that makes people incapable of acknowledging even the most obvious truths? Library guy says the appearance was canceled because of Posnanski's "work obligations."

Van Lingle Mungo · Dec 15, 2014

The latest SI cover:

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