Larry Cochell was one of the most successful coaches in college baseball history, winning 1,330 games in 39 seasons. He coached Oklahoma for 14 years and won the 1994 NCAA Championship. He resigned as the Sooners' coach three years ago, after ESPN reporters alleged he used a racially insensitive remark off-camera. Cochell had a 534-354-1 record at OU.
He is one of only three coaches to lead three different schools to the College World Series.
He had prostate cancer surgery in 1998 and has been treated for a heart condition since 2005.
I miss being around the kids, but the other side of the coin is I really enjoy my grandkids, and my wife and I have gotten a chance to do things we never got to do before. Like go to New England in the fall to see the leaves. And we follow the (OU) football team wherever they go. We go on the road. So it's been different.
To do something 40 years and just walk away from it, you're going to miss it. And mainly it's the relationship I built up with the coaches and the news media here and those things.
I'm a big football fan. We went to the Oregon game, and we'll go to Seattle this fall.
I think you need to take criticism from outsiders with a grain of salt. Some of it's going to be deserved and some of it's going to be undeserved, and either way, you're not going to like it. It's just like praise. People are going to praise you on occasion and some of it's deserved and some of it's undeserved. That's part of being in the public eye.
I think there's a lot of injustice in the world. Some of it's going to come your way if you're in the public eye long enough. If you're in the public eye you're going to get some injustice, so you shouldn't be surprised. People are always going to say bad things about you. I think the secret is you want to try to live your life so no one will believe what's said.
That's the reason I haven't really done anything with the newspapers. You can imagine how many calls I've gotten and with how many angles they've come at me. I was a public person for 40 years and had a great career and now I'm a private citizen and it's been great. I like to be private.
My health is good. I have it under control. I have some blockages, but with medications it's under control. I have tests every six months.
I was 65. My contract went until I was 70. How crazy is that? It made no sense. Like my son said, "You know, dad, the way you were going you would have died on the field.β And like my wife said, "There's a verse in the Bible, βMan meant it for bad and God meant it for good.' β So God took me out of it and let me spend more time with my family. That's how we kind of look at it. God controls everything.β
They (his two son's families) live a mile from us (Cochell and wife, Fran). After as many places as we've moved, it's a dream come true. We think it's ended great. Ask my wife. She said she waited 40 years for me to come home.
We're not bitter. We know God was in control then and He's in control now. He doesn't make any mistakes. We don't understand everything. Like my wife said, it turned out to be a blessing.
