 Hello there. This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another story from The Tumult and the Shouting. Hi, this is Jimmy Powers coming your way transcribed. I've covered many events when it comes to sports. However, I don't go back nearly as far as Grant Rice as he recalls some of the first of the early day Negro football players and fighters, too. So with a sharp salute to the evergreen spirit of Granny, I take up the Grant Rice story as he wrote it in his autobiography, The Tumult and the Shouting, and read from his narrative in First Person. It is seldom remembered today, but actually two Negroes played in the big leagues back in 1884 when I was but four years old. They were brothers and their names were Weldy Walker and Moses Fleetwood Walker, an outfielder and a catcher, respectively. Both signed with Toledo of the American Association, then a major league. As president of the Brooklyn Dodgers during World War II, Branch Ricky sent his scouts to survey the field of Negro baseball talent. The reports were good, in some cases glowing, and the glowiest reports of all centered about a next all-American rated half-back from UCLA named Jackie Robinson. Branch signed Robinson in 1946 to a Montreal contract where Robbie burned up the International League at bat, on the base paths, and around second base where he immediately was acclaimed a defensive star. Robbie's promotion to the majors was earned in one short season, and in 1947, rookie Robinson led the Dodgers to a pennant. Following Ricky's lead in Brooklyn, Cleveland was quick to follow in the American League. Outfielder Larry Dobie was the boy, and what a ball player he's been. Then in 1948, the Indians signed that ageless peer of the Negro leagues, Satchel Page, a pitching phenomenon. And Satchel played an important role in helping the Indians clinch a pennant and world championship in 1948. Boxing, of course, has long held its share of fine Negro fighters. Such early terrors as Joe Gans, Jack Johnson, the original Joe Walcott, the Barbados demon, George Dixon, and others stamped their trademark on the manly art of Mayhem. However, a modern youngster from the sprawling streets of Detroit did more to advance his people in a decade of ring fighting than any of the others. I mean Joe Lewis. In the first place, Lewis was a great heavyweight. He was completely honest, and a game where honesty is not the watchword. I value Lewis as a friend. What I admired most about him, however, was Joe himself, not his fighting equipment. Sportsmanship should be the very mortar of an athlete, but never an entity in itself or conscious display. Nobody better exemplified this quality than Joe. During the 1940s and for a time following the war, Lewis and I often sat together at ringside. We rarely talked fights. Golf was the subject. Who were the main leaders that paved the big advance? Joe Lewis, Jesse Owens, Ray and Jackie Robinson, Larry Dolby, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, Monty Irwin, Luke Easter, and many others scattered over the map. Certainly the leaders were Lewis, Owens, Jackie and Ray Robinson, and Campanella. And in his own ageless, effortless manner, who is to say that Satchel Page, had he been given access to the major leagues 20 years ago, wouldn't have stood all the record books on their heads, including the one that Methuselah cherishes. Who in my book is the all-time tops of the Negro athletes? For the sport he chose, and for the way he mastered it, Jesse Owens. Joe Lewis may have been a bit of a sucker for a right hand, but there was no visible chink in Owens' track armor. I've been looking at track and field stars since my days at Vanderbilt before 1900. I've covered AAU championships, pen relays, and various other championships, including three Olympic games in 1924 at Paris, at Los Angeles in 1932, and at Berlin in 1936. Of these select world athletes, no one made the impression on me that Jesse Owens did. During that first week of August 1936, the Berlin weather was cold and rainy, hardly the weather that Owens would have chosen, for Negroes generally functioned best in intense heat. The answer was inside Owens himself. In four straight days, he made 14 consecutive appearances, running four heats each in the 100 and 200 meters, and jumping six times. He broke Olympic records a total of nine times, and equaled them twice. In the 100 meters, he ran 10 and 3 tenths, 10 and 4 tenths, and 10 and 3 tenths against a world record mark of 10 and 3 tenths. In the 200 meter final, he returned 21 and 1 tenth twice, 21 three tenths, and 21 two tenths. He bettered Olympic records in all five of his measured leaps. The world, including Adolf Hitler, was willing to concede that he had never seen a sprinter jumper like Jesse Owens. In the qualifying trials, Owens, failing to get off properly, had twice fouled. With his third and final chance to qualify coming up, I watched Jesse from the press box with a pair of powerful glasses. I was searching for some telltale sign of emotion. Calmly, he walked the sprint path into the takeoff board, then retraced his steps. Studying the situation a moment, the American athlete, Antelope, down that runway and took off at least a foot behind the required mark, but qualified. In the final of the broad jump competition, a German jumper was leading the pack at a mark approaching 26 feet, a mark incidentally that no white man has yet surpassed. Owens or no Owens, the Reich was doing all right. Hitler, watching from the royal box, was preening his tail feathers. Poised for his next attempt, Owens shot down the runway. As he hurled himself through space, the Negro collegian seemed to be jumping clear out of Germany. The American cheering started while Jesse was airborne. Hitler must have had his answer right then, for he started leaving his box immediately and was not around for the presentation of the Laurel to the American, who had just jumped 26 feet, five and five sixteenth inches for another Olympic mark that still stands. When I encountered Owens after that jump back at his quarters, he was the same modest person he had always been. He seemed to consider it all in a day's work. He had no feeling whatever about what Hitler had or had not done. I hadn't even thought about it, he said. I suppose Mr. Hitler is much too busy a man to stay out there forever. After all, he's been there most of the day. Anyway, he did wave in my direction as he left the field, and I sort of felt he was waving at me. I didn't bother about it one way or another. The story of Owens isn't all told in his vivid Olympics showing. At Ferryfield and Harbor, Michigan, home of the Wolverines, on a warm spring day in 1935, Jesse Owens had proved his greatness. In a little more than an hour, he had demonstrated his speed as a footrunner and jumper and his uncanny stamina. The young buck eye opened that particular western conference meet by winning the 100-yard dash in 9 and 4 tenths, tying the world record set by Frank Wyckoff in 1930. Just three minutes later, he won the 220-yard dash in 20 and 3 tenths, 3 tenths of a second off Roland Locke's 1926 mark. He then ran the 220-yard low hurdles in 22 and 6 tenths, 4 tenths of a second off C.R. Brookings and Norman Paul's mark of 23 flat. Here, then, were three competitive trials with two world records smashed and a third equaled. Then Owens came to the broad jump, the first American to have beaten 26 feet on this afternoon. He raced the runway knowing his hot form would be vital in shooting for a new mark. Exploding from the takeoff board, he soared 26 feet eight and a quarter inches. All in all, he was rather a handy bloke to have around a year later at Berlin. Watching Jesse run and jump that day at Berlin, I began wondering if there was a set of limitations to any human speed. Charlie Paddock labeled the fastest human thought there was. We had a track meet coming up on the coast, he told me one day, and I determined to use this as a final test of my speed. I started working for this one sprint weeks ahead, and I concentrated all my thinking towards it. The day finally arrived and every detail was perfect for the test. I was in top shape, the track was very fast, and the day was warm and windless. At the starter's gun, I was away perfectly. By the time I had reached the 80-yard mark, I could see 9 seconds flat. I was running at that rate, I knew. Then the muscles in the calves of both legs began to strain and quiver, and I have big, strong calves. In a flash, I knew I was going to be crippled. I had to ease up, which I did. I still ran that 100 in 9 and 6 tenths after easing up the last 20 yards. I never tried to run 109 flat again. I knew my legs wouldn't stand the pace. Will anyone ever run 100 yards in 9 seconds? I doubt it, if Jesse Owens couldn't. He had great power in his legs, he had blinding speed, and his style was flawless with no sign of extra effort. Jesse was as smooth as the west wind, yet no one can tell me when some athlete who is also one of nature's freaks will come along to run the 4-minute mile, or the 100 yards in 9 seconds, or pole vault, 17 feet. I've yet to hear of a great Negro polevalder, but since 1930, the greatest sprinters and jumpers have been Negroes, all but invincible at distances from 60 to 300 yards, and in the high and broad jumping pits, such running gazelles as Johnny Woodruff have walloped all comers up to the half mile. Now, Mal Whitfield, a great Olympic middle distance star, has set his sights on the mile. Well, that's it for today. Now, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed saying, so long until next time.