 This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another Grantland Rice story. Hi there. This is Jimmy Powers transcribed. I don't know of another individual who had as many friends as did Granny Rice. Everywhere he traveled, the Kentucky Derby World Series, major golfing classics, championship fights, no matter what the occasion, people were always coming up to the ever-gracious Granny, introducing themselves as someone he met perhaps ten years ago at that sugar bowl football gathering in New Orleans. Granny seldom recalled the occasion, but he was never abrupt with one of these well-wishers ever. In today's chapter from Granny Rice's life story, the tumult and the shouting, we are about to meet some men who traveled with Granny and shared in his coverage of these big events. So with a quick salute to the evergreen spirit of Grantland Rice, I take up his narrative in First Person. No newspaper man hits the road more often than the writer assigned to a major league baseball team, or the writer who enjoys syndication and roves at large in search of game for his grist mill, the column that hangs over his head that must be done daily including Sundays. Believe me, at times that column looms more ominous than the albatross that hovered over the ancient mariner. Mostly, however, the daily column tends to become inseparable with the writer, as much a part of him as his daily shave. Sports writers as a group tend to be nomads, gypsies. If they weren't of that basic cut, they wouldn't be in that field for long. My earlier traveling mates inside the profession were Westbrook Pegler, Ring Lardner, and Bill McGeehan. They made any trip worthwhile, although it usually took some time to wipe out their initial annoyance with me. This trio had the habit of making a train by an hour. I had the habit of just making a train, several times after it had started moving. This habit, also shared by Babe Ruth, annoyed my traveling mates. I soon discovered, however, that Peg, Ring, and Bill were seldom covering the same event, so I sought other mates. I soon settled on three willing to leave home in Rome now and then. They were Clarence Buddington Kelland, the late Frank Craven, and Bruce Barton. In different fashions, all were ideal company. Top Man, perhaps, because he suffered more, was Bud Kelland, noted novelist, short story writer, elder statesman, after-dinner speaker, famous wit, wit at times the tongue of a cobra. Bud never seemed to care where we went or what sport we were covering. At least he never cared to be bothered with those unessential details. He always knew there was some adventure waiting. The reason Bud kept taking these trips for 25 or 30 years was his love for sport. Also, he loved meeting people. He became a friend of every coach we ever met. They all wanted him around, especially Jock Sutherland. Frank Craven, the superb actor who died in 1945, was another Grand Trooper, a keen fan. Frank knew all sports, especially baseball, football, and golf. He was one of the most entertaining men I ever knew. He also had a keen sense of humor and a ready Irish wit. Once on a visit to London, he was stopped by a butler while trying to visit an English friend. Step aside, Frank ordered. I have played a thousand of you. In addition to being a great actor, he was a fine playwright. The first year was one of his contributions. Frank and John Golden, one of the great men of the theater, worked together for many seasons. Bruce Barton showed better judgment than Kellend or Craven. He suddenly realized he didn't have to take such beatings like grabbing my typewriter and dashing for trains. However, during the few short years that Bruce accompanied me, he was a valuable blocking back. He swung a wicked portable through crowds, clearing the way like an icebreaker. A bristling conversationalist? Decisive in action, he was a remarkable companion for the road. The combinations of Kellend, Craven, Barton, Pegler, McGeehan, Lardner, Frank Graham and Red Smith have been vital factors in holding the road. Graham and Smith, both lovable guys, came along as a star team when most of the others had died or quit. Both are superb columnists for the New York Journal American and New York Herald Tribune respectively. Marvelous companions in every detail, they are also experts whose opinions have been useful on many occasions. I hope they will be around at the last march. There is another I always hope to see. His name is Gene Fowler, who writes movies for money and books for his soul. He's the only one I know who would greet me now and then with a special column. I know you're tired after the trip, he'd say. This might help. Sporting writers have their particular jobs, some whom they cherish from boyhood, others whom they helped create in the headlines. San Francisco's Tommy Laird, sage of the Coast Riding Fraternity for so many years, chronicled most of Stanley Ketchel's bouts when Ketchel ruled the middleweights in 1908 and 1909. In Tommy's world, Ketchel was the greatest, period. It was in 1939 that I decided to make my young confere, Henry Macklemore, aware of the facts of life at least concerning Laird. We were covering a golf tournament in San Francisco. Gene Fowler, who had hung the questionable halo of Dean on my snowflake brow, an appellation he still uses, had mentioned that we ought to be on the lookout for a junior Dean. Perhaps Macklemore, then writing for the United Press, might be our man. An indefatigable person, the Georgia-born Macklemore is a hard man to down, either with a refreshing drink or at charades. His mind has been known to fire as rapidly as a string of Chinese firecrackers. Fowler appraised Henry of our plans for him, but informed him that he would be judged for his role through a series of tests. Henry did not flinch. This particular night I was having dinner at the St. Francis Hotel with Laird and Macklemore. Things were unusually sedate. I quietly suggested to Henry that he tell Laird that Stanley Ketchel was no good. Grabbing the bait like a tiger shark, Henry leaned across my bowels and facing Laird crackled, Ketchel was a lousy bum. That did it. Turning a horrible crimson, Laird screamed, What? Grabbed the completely baffled Macklemore by the shirt collar and whacked him. As he was trying to escape from the ruckus with his life, Henry's head was bashed by a woman swinging a loaded handbag. I had to flunk Macklemore on this his opening test but gave him an A shortly thereafter. The San Francisco Press Club, which owns its own building just a few blocks from the St. Francis, is well known for its annual dinners at which all comments by the speakers are behind the cat or off the record. Arriving with Pat O'Brien, Guy Kibbe, Fowler and Macklemore, I was worried over their condition to render a fit talk on anything to a gathering of perhaps 500. I had to literally drag Henry from the washroom and sit him down. Following the introduction, Henry rose from his seat in stocking feet, stepped upon the table and strode through the asparagus to the microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, he intoned, I would like to give you my recipe for apple butter. He did too in one of the most lucid, most pristine, informative, and certainly the most humorous of speeches I ever heard. Macklemore was just about in as junior dean when we arrived at Detroit the following September to cover the Joe Lewis Bob Pastor fight. We were staying at the Detroit Athletic Club. Our suite became the crossroads. In our corner was Hunk Anderson, Rockney's all-time guard, and I repeat, pound for pound, the roughest human being when aroused I've ever known. At one time or another during the evening, prior to the fight, it seemed we had everybody, including Lewis and Pastor in our rooms, and Hunk was prepared to engage them singly or in pairs. This should be a good test for you, Henry, I said. Why not say a few words to Hunk? Game to the core, Henry mentioned something about Hunk's bark being worse than his bite. The next thing I knew, my little friend, was being bounced on the floor as if he were a tennis ball. That night, Henry resigned as junior dean. There's another night I won't forget, the eve of the World Series between the Tigers and the Cubs in 1945. Charlie Hughes, manager of the Detroit AC, decided to toss a quiet little party for me. Bring four or five, he said. I may have told a half a dozen, but between 40 and 50 showed up. It was a lovely dinner. Over the brandy, Harry Grayson asked Macklemore to say a few words. Still in uniform, following three solid years in service, including a long hitch in the Pacific, Henry was happy to oblige. He told us of his early Georgia upbringing, how he was the son of a Methodist minister who, when Henry went north to Wright, said, Henry, when you're up there, beware of the killer. In the course of time, Henry said he met the killer. He then ran through a list of writers who had died during the past 20 years. It was a very long list of people like Lardner, McGeehan, Macbeth, Brown, and so many others. The killer's intended victim before me, continued Henry, was Clarence Buddington Kelland. Kelland, thank God, succeeded in breaking away from him just in time. For nearly five years now, he's been in Arizona trying to regain a semblance of his health. It took a near-physical breakdown to save Kelland. It took a second world war to save me. Gentlemen, I give you Grantland Rice. Next to Brutus', that was, without a doubt, the most unkind cut. Now this Jimmy Powers transcribed, and the clock says it's time to go, which means so long for now.