My Greatest Missed Autograph Was The First One I Missed

“Life’s funny. To a kid, time always drags. Suddenly you’re fifty. All that’s left of your childhood… fits in a rusty little box.”
From the movie Amelie
Royston Home of Baseball's Immortal Ty Cobb
What is Royston Georgia? Well besides my younger brother and I being born in Ty Cobb Memorial Hospital in Royston, it was a magical place for two skinny Georgia boys. It was a fall out shelter ready during the cold war, it was chasing wild pigs with sticks, it was poking these sames sticks at a six ft. alligator that would escape his owners pit. It was 10 cent comic books, ice cream at Dixie Dale, William Sims poking fun at us and riding Fireball Roberts pedal cars down the driveway. It was catching lightning bugs in a Mason jar with holes punched in the lids. It was tying a string on a June bug's leg and flying him around. It was Grannie Pierce, Aunt Mazell and Aunt EllaDee. and any magical realm our unlimited imaginations took us.
But, Royston is the home of baseball's immortal Ty Cobb. Every trip to Grannie's, we would pass the sign and hear our mother tell us about Ty Cobb.

My mother's grade school teacher was Ty Cobb's sister. During the off season or when he returned home to Royston, he would visit his sister at the school and play ball with my mom and her school friends. She and everyone that I ever spoke to that knew Tyrus Raymond Cobb, tells a different story than the mainstream media or in the (ugh!) Tommy Lee Jones movie Cobb. All that spoke of him spoke of how good and generous he was.

One day my brother and I decided to walk over to Ty Cobb's house and get an autograph. Since he died in 1961, I was probably 7 or 8, my brother. two years younger. It was a simpler, safer time in a small town so, it wasn't unusual for two boys our ages to go exploring. We gather up all of our courage and started on our task. As we neared his home, we could see him sitting on his front porch. We slowed our approach the nearer we got and when he turned towards us, we turned, kicked our Poll Parrot shoes into high gear and scooted off. We never got the courage up to talk with him and we never got the autograph. that was the first great autograph that I missed. A baseball signed by Ty Cobb normally sells for $7,000- $8,000. A signed 3x5 index card will fetch $2,000-$3,000 today.

Billy and I went to his burial in the Rose Hill Cemetery. The courageous young men that we were, stood behind a tree and watched as he was carried into his mausoleum. If you ever see any video of his burial and see two boys peering around each side of a tree, that's us.