MLB: Grantland Rice: A Treasure Worth Unearthing

Baseball’s season ended late last month, and in some ways I will experience a certain emptiness until pitchers and catchers report next February. The hot-stove league is engaging, to be sure, but I tend to tire upon publication of the thousandth opinion piece criticizing the players for being so darned greedy.

This is why a baseball fan hibernates during the off-season, feeding on old treasures packed away throughout the years. For instance, I plan to renew a tradition of treating myself to Jim Bouton’s classic expose, “Ball Four,” around Christmas-time. I will purchase several STATs, Inc. publications within the coming months. I also plan to reread David Halberstam’s “October 1964” and Bill James’ “The Politics of Glory”–all while awaiting the new edition of “Total Baseball,” which apparently will be released in March.

The book about the man who is perhaps American sports’ most vintaged treasure, however, I’ve already gotten to. The book I refer to is “Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice,” by Charles Fountain (Oxford University Press; 1993)–and it’s a wonderful biography of a man who greatly influenced the way we regard sports even today, even if he is all-but-forgotten today.

“For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks–not that you won or lost–but how you played the Game.” Who penned this famous verse? Grantland Rice.

“Outlined against a blue-gray October 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 Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.” Who wrote this, the most famous of sports leads? Grantland Rice.

Who compiled the definitive annual list of collegiate football All-Americans for the first half of the Twentieth Century? Grantland Rice. Which sportswriter discovered and conveyed to the nation the transcendent talents of legends such as Ty Cobb and Bobby Jones? Grantland Rice. Who conducted the first widespread radio broadcast of a sporting event? Grantland Rice.

Imagine your hometown sportswriter who pushes a metaphor too far, whose columns are awash in sentimentality, saccharine, cliche, and “wretched excess.”. This sportswriter, whether he knows it or not, strives to be a Grantland Rice. He fails, of course, where the authentic Rice–whether by the blessing of his talent or by the fortune of his era, or both, as Fountain argues–succeeded.

“Rice found nobility and gentility in sport and chronicled it in noble and gentle language,” Fountain writes, “and in doing so fashioned our perceptions of what sportswriting should be–and our perceptions of what sport should be.” It is for this reason that Fountain contends Rice “is the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of American sport.”

Today’s sportswriters generally come across as a jaded lot, men who might have enjoyed sport years ago but now mainly complain about its conventions, or the egos which pervade it, or the corruption. In stark contrast, there exists a reputation of a rather negligent Roaring Twenties sports press, an image best typified by the vignette concerning a naked Babe Ruth and a knife- wielding woman scampering through the train car of beat writers mutually sworn to secrecy over the whole incident.

Fountain’s research does not contradict the reputation; in fact, only Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Examiner pursued the root behind the White Sox’s lackluster performance in the 1919 World Series. Every other prominent writer, including former pitching star Christy Mathewson (who actually alerted Fullerton on every occasion he suspected the Black Sox had tanked a play) had sufficient foreknowledge of the gambling interest, yet sat on the story. Rice made allusions to lazy play, such as comparing pitcher Eddie Cicotte’s performance to the “leisure of a steel striker,” but didn’t suggest foul play for months–and then only obliquely and hypothetically. Ring Lardner, Rice’s confidant and chief New York rival, composed a press box tune called “I’m Forever Blowing Ballgames,” which ended with the lyrics: “Fortune’s coming my way/That’s why I don’t care/I’m forever blowing ball games/And the gamblers treat us fair.” You can guess how many people outside the press box every hummed this tune.

This does not mean Rice’s writing was not critical, incisive, or prescient. Today, the term “straight dope” no doubt assumes several meanings; in Rice’s day, it was a sportswriter’s livelihood. The only sportswriters who mattered were employed in New York or Chicago, and one of the litmus tests to determine whether a sportswriter mattered in New York or Chicago was his ability to formulate a juicy and accurate prediction. At this, Rice was the absolute best.

Fountain’s research uncovered mountains of Rice’s “dope.” He discovered Ty Cobb when Cobb was nothing but Georgia peach fuzz. (Actually, Cobb–by sending Rice dozens of anonymous letters raving about his abilities–duped Rice into this piece of dope.) He predicted a victory for the “Hitless Wonders” in the 1906 World Series, when no one else did. He advised Bobby Jones to control his famous temper. He foresaw the dominance of Notre Dame’s otherwise overcrowded offensive backfield. He advocated the abolition of baseball’s reverse clause a half century before Curt Flood. And on and on and on. Fountain may hyperbolize at times, but it’s hard to imagine a writer traveling so far or observing so studiously for his stories.

Rice’s other enduring legacy is his incomparable writing style. Throughout his career, whether in Nashville, Atlanta, Cleveland, or New York, Rice peppered his sports page with poetic verse and inventive prose. (Fountain even credits Rice as an early travel writer.) It’s difficult to equate Rice with any contemporary sportswriter; it’s easier to associate him with the best qualities of today’s writing: the intelligence of Thomas Boswell, the eloquence of Frank DeFord, the optimism of Dave Kindred, and so forth. Grantland Rice towers over today’s sportswriters by absurd proportions.

Yet, Rice’s influence waned as the new generation of sportswriters emerged–pushy, explosive, disrespectful, not only willing but desirous to insinuate themselves in a story. Fountain’s final chapters depict a somewhat pathetic old man, manipulated by but still in love with his life’s passion. Aware that while Rice’s journalistic style had become anachronistic, but his name remained marketable, publishers holding Rice’s rights would promote his column but not run it; they would ignore him but wouldn’t sell his name, knowing a rival would snatch it up immediately. Rice dabbled in newsreel, sold a few books, wrote his memoirs, and kept selecting his All-American team. He fell ill without much notice, died as a legend, then faded into relative anonymity.

Fountain, a professor of journalism, much to his credit does not spend three hundred pages mired in hero worship. Although he tends to over-rationalize Rice’s worldview as a product of the times, Fountain is honest concerning Rice’s character flaws. For example, Rice regarded war as something of a sport, an exercise defined by fitness and mental toughness but not necessarily the loss of human life. More damning, though, was his benighted (though admittedly contemporarily accepted) view of black athletes. Although he apparently held Jesse Owens (in particular) in esteem and accepted their growing influence in sport, Rice’s column was filled with opinions and terms out of step with reality, let alone graciousness. Grantland Rice was not a perfect man. Still, despite his encompassing love for sports and his decades of rigorous travel, there’s no reason to doubt that Rice was a loving husband, a caring father, and a loyal friend.

I suppose, as someone drawn to rational analysis over elegant sentiment, I’m not the type of sports fan who would be drawn to Grantland Rice. But I am. No one ever lived who wrote about sports with as much beauty, intellectual honesty, and respect for the game. Red Smith may live on as the dean of sportswriting, and Bob Ryan may be called the “quintessential American sportswriter,” but Grantland Rice was the soul--always true to his love, sport.

Fountain evaluates Rice this way: “Less celebrated than Ring Lardner or Damon Runyon [who later achieved fame with “Guys and Dolls”], Rice was nevertheless the first important American sportswriter. For, while Lardner and Runyon used sportswriter to shape their own talents and careers, leaving their legacies in other areas, Rice used his talent and career to shape American sportswriting.”

Henry Grantland Rice, like his favorite ballplayer, Nap Lajoie, was largely forgotten a generation after his death; yet, like Lajoie, he’ll be great forever.