Granny

If sportswriting had a renaissance man it was Grantland Rice. His prose bowed to none; his poetry was so superb he'd have been revered for it alone. Granny was Joe Dimaggio with press pass, and - by every estimation accessable today- nicest guy around.

He had the widest pockets in town and hardly hurt a fly. Granny never even harmed a deer. Not that he wouldn't; they just never violated his rule - never shoot a buck unless he pulls a knife.

Henry Grantland Rice was born in Tennessee in 1880. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt in '01, and was good enough at short to have the Nashville Vols panting for him at two-fifty a month. A broken collarbone ended Grant's playing days, and after a quick fling as dry goods clerk, he talked his way onto the Nashville Daily News as sports editor, where he crafted such fledgling heads as :

In truth the job had more title than pay, requiring the constitution of a horse and a newlywed's passion. For 5 bucks a week Rice baked every sportspage from scratch, composed several pieces of verse, and authored a daily general column. At times his duties also included reporting on the capitol, the customs office, and society writer. All the hats added up to 14 to 18 hour workdays, but flowered his craft quickly. Moreover, it spawned an estimated career output of over 7000 poems, 22,000 columns, 1000 magazine articles and 67 million words - records more unapproachable than Aaron's.

This grinding work ethic would've saddled lesser men with a manic outlook on life, but Granny was a rare individual who never failed to admire life's roses. Entering his rented room one Christmas eve, he found his roomie, Don Marquis, generously smeared in red and black ink while operating a homemade press and bottle of corn likker. "I'm putting out the Christmas Story, Granny - just like Hearst would do it!" When Marquis showed him a 40 point headline, 'CHRIST IS BORN!', Grant rolled up his sleeves, spelled Marquis on press and jug, and as Rice would later put into his autobiography,"We finally crawled off to bed, smug in the feeling that we had saluted the Lord".

Grant loved his cups, wit, golf, and horses, and after joining New York's Evening Mail in 1910 built leads others would kill to write. Most famous was his start of a Notre Dame - Army story in '24: "Outlined against a blue-grey sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden."

Rice wasn't infallible, though. His first major story was on a class D minor leaguer named Ty Cobb which, years after the fact, Cobb admitted he himself had manipulated Granny into having written. If only all writers were used so cruelly!

Since not including some of Rice's poetry here would be a crime against nature, this exerpt is addressed to Charon, mythical boatkeeper of the dead on the river Styx. It's from 'The Tumult and The Shouting' -required reading for sportlovers- and would've made a worthy tribute when Granny passed in 1954:

Here's to you, Charon - as man against man-

I wish I could pick 'em the way you can.

Dan Grey Taylor Jr.