Al Stump | |
---|---|
Born |
Alvin John Stump October 20, 1916 Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. |
Died | December 14, 1995 Newport Beach, California, U.S. |
(aged 79)
Cause of death | Congestive heart failure |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin |
Occupation | Sports writer, author |
Spouse(s) | Jo Mosher (m.?-1995) |
Children | 4 |
Alvin John "Al" Stump (October 20, 1916 – December 14, 1995), was an American author and sports writer. Stump spent time with Detroit Tigers' Hall Of Fame baseball player Ty Cobb in 1960 and 1961 collaborating on Cobb's autobiography. My Life In Baseball: A True Record was released shortly after Cobb's death. From this research, Stump later went on to write at least two books and at least one magazine article on Cobb.
Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball and Cobb: A Biography were follow-up pieces written over thirty years after Cobb died. Both books, represented by Stump as a reflection on his time with Cobb, have now been discredited as sensationalized and, in large part, fictional.
Stump was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He began his sports writing career while attending the University of Wisconsin. Stump became a war correspondent during World War II, after which he wrote about sports for True and Esquire magazines and worked as reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and The Los Angeles Times.
Stump spent approximately three weeks with Ty Cobb over eleven months researching the ball player's life. Cobb's autobiography that Stump co-authored, My Life in Baseball, came out a few months after Cobb's July 17, 1961 death and painted the former Tiger in a sympathetic light. Stump said afterward that he found Cobb rather difficult to work with most of the time. Long after the publication of Cobb's autobiography, he claimed that Cobb's editorial control over the autobiography resulted in the book not telling the truth about Cobb as Stump saw it. During a visit to the Cobb family mausoleum in December 1960, Stump alleged that Cobb told him about the murder of his father, and pointed the finger at his mother.