 This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another Grantland Rice story. There, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from Grantland Rice's autobiography, The Tumult and the Shouting. Today's story has to do with the man who hates to lose, and once again, I'll narrate it in first person. In my travels, I've perhaps covered more miles than those herds of nomadic roamers, the American Buffalo. And I've been asked the same question a thousand times in a hundred different places. Who is the most versatile player of all types of games you've ever known? Right off the cuff, there are four standouts. I've already covered Jim Thorpe and Babe Zaharius, who could play most any physical game unbelievably well. Then there was a tall, dark and handsome collegian named Harry Fisher, who played all sports in season with Williams College back in the middle 1920s. Blessed with uncanny coordination plus the competitive fire and body to back it up, Fisher was from football to fly fishing unquestionably a stick out. And finally we come to my old pal and racetrack companion, that bloodhound of the Daily Double, Arthur Earl Neal, known to the world as Greasy. The raw bone leathery hillbilly from Parkersburg, West Virginia, today a Park Avenue cliff-dweller in New York City, gets my vote for the mostest at the most games. Greasy is equally at home coaching a professional football team or at a bridge table. He's the only man I know who was actively associated with World Championship baseball and football teams. He played left field for the 1919 Cincinnati Reds and he coached the Philadelphia Eagles to the national pro football title in 1948 and 1949. For good measure, he put Little Washington and Jefferson into the Rose Bowl in 1922. In his younger days, Neal regularly shot golf in the middle 70s and once reached the West Virginia State Amateur Semi-Finals. As a bridge player, he rates with the Colbertsons, Jacobi's and Leitner's. A few years ago, a national magazine ran an article on Greasy calling him The Man Who Hates to Lose. That was hitting the nail on the head. He has no patience with dubs and even after being around sports for more than 45 years, he can't take defeat lightly. Greasy tried to instill that smoldering spirit in his athletes. He should have been a professor of applied psychology. He once told me, you got to get tough with some of these kids. I once said to one of my players between halves, you haven't got to gut in your body as soon as you see a giant or a bare uniform you curl right up. He began to cry. Don't say that, coach. He begged. And what happened? Greasy grinned. He was so mad that he went out and scored 17 points. Greasy's major league baseball career suffered from poor eyesight, yet he led the Reds' batters with a .357 average in the 19 World Series. His big league career was shortened when he crashed into the wall at the polo grounds, going after a long smash. When he was picked up unconscious, they had to pry the ball loose from his clenched fist. While Greasy was coaching the University of Virginia football team one year, the baseball coach became sick. The president of the university, Becken Greasy, could you help out? The gentleman wanted to know, is it true that you know something about the game? Who do you think the blankety-blank was that played left field with Cincinnati for 11 years? Bluntly retarded Greasy. He got the job. About the only sport I ever heard Greasy not caring for was track. Asked why, he said, I don't give a darn about seeing a kid run unless he has a ball under his arm. A typical Neil reaction. Neil's football light was more or less hidden under a bushel at Little West Virginia Wesleyan College, but he sparked the first Wesleyan team ever to upset the giant state university at Morgantown. In Neil's first varsity game that fall, a team whipped Glenville State Normal with only four plays, an off tackle plunge, an end run, a lateral pass, and a forward pass. Greasy naturally expected the Wesleyan coach to try something extra special in the way of strategy for the West Virginia game. But the team drilled on nothing but the same four plays they had used the previous week. Don't you think coach we should try some new plays? Neil finally was asked on a Thursday. Bright boy, the coach sneered. You got anything in mind? Greasy did. He dug up an old high school play in which the end tackle and guard pulled out of the line to run interference ahead of the ball. On the spur of the moment, he devised a variation in which a reverse was run from the same play. It caught West Virginia so flat-footed that Wesleyan defeated the State Powerhouse 1914 for the first time in history. Greasy incidentally was a genuine pro by the time he entered college, largely as a result of having played baseball with Al Tuna in the Old Tri-State League at $125 a month. But the fact that he was a professional when he entered West Virginia Wesleyan was blandly overlooked in those free and easy days. Anyone who mentioned eligibility rules was under grave suspicion of being crazy or a revenue agent. Any good-sized boy who came down the road asking for a game could get one and remain as long as he pleased. John Kellison, for instance, was playing his fifth of eight varsity football seasons when Neil turned up on the campus in 1912. Neil's heroics at Wesleyan still are legendary in the West Virginia Hills. By 1915 he had so many offers to coach and play that he passed up his senior year at Wesleyan. Time marched on, and in 1921 he took an ordinary bunch of Washington and Jefferson kids, whipped them together, and produced ten straight wins upsetting such giants as Pitt, Syracuse, Carnegie Tech, and Detroit. When the little school was invited to meet mighty California in the Rose Bowl, W&J authorities hesitated to accept. They couldn't see their team having a ghost of a chance. We'd be humiliated, they said. Listen, said Neil, we may not win, but no team in the world will disgrace us. West Coast sportswriters pour down the razz. All we know about Washington and Jefferson is that they both are dead, they wrote. This drove Neil and his team wild, and when the W&J kids received $80 for pocket money from an alumnus, they went out and bet it on themselves. Then they held the golden bears to a scoreless tie with one of the slickest exhibitions ever seen. California made two first downs, and its heralded passing attack, built around Brick Muller, did not complete a single pitch. To this day, Neil swears the officials gypped W&J when early in the game a 38-yard touchdown run was called back. At first they said the ball carrier stepped out of bounds. When they could not find a telltale cleat mark, they decided that Russ Stein, the all-American tackle, had been offside on the play. Despite his disdain for defense, Neil was responsible for originating the five-man line. He pulled the stunt while coaching at Yale in 1937. The weird formation helped to beat a superior army team 15-7. Neil arrived at New Haven in 1934. Ducky Pond, an old blue, was officially appointed head coach with the understanding that Neil was to be vice president in charge of strategy and the backfield. One day Neil was telling the Yale squad that guys who wanted to act tough on the field had to look the part. I want to see you wear sweatshirts and Levi's on the campus, he was saying. Above all, I don't want to see any of you guys tricked out in raccoon coats. At that precise moment, Coach Pond walked in, wearing a raccoon coat. Neil had a way with young men. Even the hardened pros played with an almost collegiate fervor for him. He was a great hand at talking a kid into signing a pro contract, but I doubt if he'll ever forget one mission that flopped. Banks McFadden, a whopping good half-back from the South, had taken an assistant coaching job at Clemson after starring in the National Football League. Neil wanted to bring the boy out of retirement. His telegrams went unanswered. He hopped a train for the land of Dixie. On the campus, they told Neil that McFadden liked to spend his off hours lollying under a magnolia tree at a nearby park. That's where Neil found him. Son, Neil said in an offhand manner, how'd you like to play for the Eagles? The boy yawned. Coach, he drawled, I reckon I'm mighty well fixed here. But this job's for the birds, Neil pointed out. It doesn't pay peanuts. And fishing a contract out of his pocket added, we're ready to give you $8,000. I'll be honest with you all, McFadden said, I ain't worth no such fancy money. I can't block and shucks, I'm lousy at tackling. You ain't got much ambition, son, Neil said. No sir, coach, agreed the boy. All our crave is peace of mind, and I got it right here. When Neil took a last backward glance, Banks McFadden was still lying contentedly under the magnolia tree. During his college coaching career, Neil made it a habit to get close to the professors. You'd be surprised how many teachers love football, he observed. I remember Billy Phelps. He was the famous Yale lecturer on the poet Robert Browning. Anyway, Billy was a hot football fan and treated our players kindly when marks were passed out. Which gives you the greater kick, a perfect recitation in the classroom or a 50-yard run for a touchdown, he was once asked by a friend. Well, Billy said, I can't get too excited over a perfect recitation. And with that closing line from one of Eli's most glamorous sons, Billy Phelps, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed, closing the tumult and the shouting, the Grantland rice story, until our next session.