 This is Jimmy Powers, ready to bring you another story from the tumult and the shouting. Hello, folks and fans. This is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from the Grantland Rice story, the tumult and the shouting. Reading this wonderful book, you come to know Granny Rice as few of us were privileged to know him, even those of us who batted the typewriter keys in the press boxes of the nation with Granny through so many wonderful years. You see, Granny had countless friends and friends that weren't headliners in sports alone, but men in all walks of life, Irvin S. Cobb, for instance. The great humorist was born four years before Granny in 1876. No man lived a more fuller life of letters than all that went with pen and ink, including radio, the stage, and movies. So let's look at Cobb, the sports enthusiast, through the eyes of his friend Granny Rice. And with a sharp salute to the every young spirit of Granny Rice, the dean of sportswriters, I take up his narrative in first person. An old-time sportsman, one of the greatest writers, speakers, wits, and certainly one of the Earth's greatest fellows, landed in New York for the last time during the Christmas season of 1943. The name was Irvin S. Cobb of Paducah, Kentucky, New York, and California. And you can include almost any state where Irv has spent either a night or a day or even 30 minutes. We went back to the older and earlier days of such remembered entries as Bowes Bulger, Bunk Macbeth, Damon Runyon, Gene Fowler, Ring Lardner, Haywood Bruin, and a few others who once decorated the sporting scene. Irv was telling me of the time when Colonel Matt Wynne of Kentucky Derby fame was the finest tailor and clothes salesman the South ever knew before the call of the thoroughbred lured him away of the earlier days of Colonel Ed Bradley, Phil Chin, and other Kentuckians who have contributed so much to turf history. Irvin Cobb with Oliver Herford and Wilson Meisner is one of the greatest single-line pullers I ever knew. I recall an argument one night over the weights in some coming fight. Cobb suddenly turned to James Preston, the famous artist, and asked, How much do you weigh, Jimmy? Just 100 pounds replied the slender painter. 100 pounds, Cobb said. Why, I have an ant with a goiter that weighs more than that. We were talking about the set ways of certain critics who refused to change their views. I recall the time when Paul Berlenbach came along. Paul was clumsy and awkward, but he could punch and fight. To many fight experts at that time, he was a bum. When he finally came off the floor to beat Jack Delaney for the light heavyweight title of the world and smother young Stribbling, he was still a bum to those who had never liked his style. Irv laughed. They remind me of Oliver Herford, the wit of the Players Club in all New York. I once asked Herford what he thought of Arnold Bennett's latest smashed hit, at that time a sensation. I'll tell you, my dear Cobb, Herford said, I wrote a criticism about his first book, which so prejudiced me against the fellow I have never been able to read anything he has written since. But the greatest angle on critics, Irv continued, came from Robert Louis Stevenson when he was dying. A friend told Stevenson that Matthew Arnold, who had panned Stevenson and almost every other writer of that day, had just died. Stevenson frowned and shook his head. That's too bad, he said. He won't like God. Cobb's greatest two favorites from the old days were John McGraw of the Giants and Frank Chance of the Cubs. They were fighters and winners, he said. They never fought for yards. They fought for inches. They fought everybody, umpires, crowds, opposing players, and their own players. I'll never forget the time before the famous playoff game in 1908, after the Merkel incident, when Frank Chance wanted to fight all the Giants and 30,000 hostile New York fans. What a baseball parade has gone by since those days, Cobb continued, when George Cohan and DeWolf Hopper were among the hot rooters. I mean Christie Matheson and Roger Bresnahan, Three-Fingered Brown and Johnny Kling, Waller Johnson, Rube Waddell, Eddie Collins, Ty Cobb, Nap Lashaway, Shulis Joe Jackson, Grover Alexander, Honus Wagner, Ed Walsh, Cy Young, Mike Donlan, Ross Young, Eddie Plank, Chief Bender, Frankie Frisch, Roger Hornsby, and on and on and on. They tell me I'm a pretty sick man. Maybe I am. I wouldn't know or care too much. But when I get tired now and then staring at the ceiling, where they no longer let me practice quick starts to the food table, I like to close my eyes and watch that old parade go by. Great hitters, the greatest. Great pitchers, the greatest. Don't forget Ed Walsh won either 40 or 41 games one season and saved 12 others. If you only won 20 games, they threw you back. Base runners, Cobb stole 96 bases one year. If you couldn't steal 50 bases, you needed a crutch or a motorcycle. It was a different game, Grant, and to me a better game, for it was a game fought on the field and not over the fences with a rabbit ball. It was at least my game and the game of millions who still remember those old-time thrills when almost everything happened in the park and not outside the park. It might be noticed that Cobb, Irvin S that is, was a one shortstop man. His nominee, of course, was Honus Wagner, the sprout-legged Dutchman with the scoop-shovel hands. It's a strange thing, but at any convocation of grey beards when the talk turns to baseball and its greatest players, there is seldom any argument about who's at short. It's always the Dutchman. And thinking of the indestructible Wagner, who was wrought from pig iron, I like to compare him with another shortstop genius, one of the very few modern-day shortfielders who rates comparison with Wagner's 18-year span with Pittsburgh. I mean Phil Rizzuto. Compared to the brawny Dutchman, little Phil is a strativarius, which brings me to baseball's most dangerous play. Many's the time I've watched Rizzuto take a toss from his second baseman, get off the double-play throw to first, just as he was knocked down by the rival baserunner. Luckily, Phil was never irreparably injured. The player handling the ball is quite often at the complete mercy of the baserunner. He hasn't a chance to protect himself under many conditions. In my book, this is the most cowardly play in the game, the baserunner assaulting an unprotected man who can't strike back. I talked over this play with Dr. George Bennett of Johns Hopkins, the noted expert who has worked with Joe DiMaggio and so many other stars, largely from love of the game. This is a play that should be barred at once, he said. I can't tell you how many players I have treated for injuries from this frontal assault. It is a cruel, dangerous play and cowardly. The pivot man in a double-play must concentrate on taking the throw from his fellow player, retire the first runner, and then get the hitter at first base. He rarely has the chance to protect himself against the baserunner charging in. On any number of occasions, I have seen baserunners bowl over the pivot after he was clearly out or after the ball was thrown. His intent under these conditions must have been to wreck the rival player. Short stops and second basemen are hard to get, at least good ones. Yet major league owners and managers permit this almost daily assault in the belief that it adds life to the game. The managers are facing no danger. They are 100 yards away on the bench. Someday, a risotto, a Reese, a dark, or a carousel will be crippled for life. Then, as usual, everyone will suddenly wake up and abolish this play. Just remember that the player taking out his unprotected opponent is committing not an act of courage, but an act of cowardice. In the wake of Honest Wagner, the hotspot at Shortstop hasn't had the talent in past years that other positions have known. There have been good ones, but no great ones. No second Wagner's. In the American League, we have risotto of the Yankees and carousel of the White Sox. In the National League, we have Reese of the Dodgers, Hamner of the Phillies, and Dark of the Giants. This is about as useful a collection of short stops as you'll find looking back for many seasons. They are high-class fielders, and most of them are hitting over 300. Certainly, the New York District has the strongest trio it has ever known in risotto, Reese, and dark. Always fine infielders, the three are now having their best years at bat. Granny Hamner is also hitting up with the elect. Outside of Wagner, it is still impossible to get any number of experts to agree on the second best. You'll find them speaking of Beauty Bancroft, Travis Jackson, Lou Budrow, Marty Marion, Reese, risotto, and a few others who have played well. But few from this group have been consistent 300 hitters. Wagner was not only the best shortstop, but also a great baserunner and batting star. There have been more great second basemen than great short stops in the past. Lashaway, Collins, Hornsby, Frisch and Garinger for five examples. My friend Irvin S. Cobb, the Kentucky Bullfrog, bless him, passed to his reward the following March at 68. But right to the end, his spirit remained young, vigorous, and indestructible. Just as Wagner's spirit these many years has remained jaunty and wonderful to behold. Well, this is Jimmy Powers again. Irvin S. Cobb died in 1944. Granny Rice joined Cobb 10 years later in July of 1954. And Honest Wagner joined them both in December 1955. And I imagine that both Granny and Irvin S. Cobb were right at those pearly gates to welcome the Dutchman. Now until next time, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed, saying, Hasta la vista.