 It's time for yours truly Jimmy Powers with another Grantland rice story Hi there, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from the Grantland rice story the tumult and the shouting and so with a sharp salute To the every young spirit of Grantland rice. I take up the narrative in first person While I've spent much of my life Keeping laurels on the winner. I have a strong feeling for the loser particularly the unbreakables These are the worth of the world the pride of the race These who have taken their blastings blown from the track These who have faltered and fallen wrecked by the pace These who have come to their feet and dared to storm back Yes, as I've said before I'll always feel at home in the valleys I'd rather look up to some peak than be on the peak looking down on those who need help and For these special friends of mine these uncrowned champions I respected them blown and battered attempting to scale those peaks and knocked into the depths They didn't know in fact never knew how to quit these then are some of my uncrowned champions Some were famous and some weren't so well known, but they fit in this category Let's look at these athletes a little closer in many respects Lou Gehrig the iron horse of the great Yankee teams was an uncrowned champ Had he been claimed by any other team Gehrig would have ridden a solid gold pedestal However, the Yankee first baseman. Yes, he's my all-time best in this position Played the majority of his years in the shadow of Babe Ruth when Babe went into decline Lou who had been around for so long. He was taken for granted like the wonderful one-horse shea The Yankees were seeking fresh idol material when they came up with a young Italian a fisherman's boy from San Francisco Joe DiMaggio Gehrig spanned from the greatest years of Ruth into the early spotlight years of DiMaggio playing out his string of 2130 consecutive games. What was Lou's lifetime batting average? Only three hundred and forty, but there will always be something about the panther like grace of a DiMaggio That will thrill me to the marrow and in keeping with that. Here's my pen sketch of Joe No greater effort than a breeze that blows across the field when some fly ball is struck a Drifting phantom where the long smash goes that has no helping teammate known as luck No desperate stab no wild one-handed catch few ringing cheers that churn the summer air a shift a turn a Movement none can match the ball drifts down DiMaggio is there a Swing a slash the ball is on the whipping ash still keeps the foe at bay a blur against the blue and then the ball is gone Ty Cobb has ruled and Ruth has sung his tune Triss speaker was a melody in rhyme DiMaggio. You won't forget him soon. Here is the master artist of our time One day around 1930 I was beside babe in the Yankee dugout watching Gary take batting practice He was line driving that ball deep into the right field bleachers Babe I said how does Lou shape up to you babe reflected a moment Grant he said if I had to pitch against that big Dutch sandow I'd wear a suit of armor. You know pitchers don't especially relish throwing against me I bang that ball pretty good, but the majority of times I lift the ball Lou line drives it This boy has an overdrive of everything You know, I think he kind of worships me rumble babe. I'm considered colorful This boy Gary wouldn't know color if he fell in it. He thinks and lives team Grant if I ever become manager of this or any club, I'd have to go for the team guy That's what I think of Gary a Whisper comes from the palms and pines where the lazy south wind blows where the pelican dives for his meal again Wherever the golf tide flows and this is the message I seem to get from years that belong to youth where our Gary and Dickie now what has become of Ruth Where is the crash? We remember still over the outfield wall Where is the smash and cannonade as the bat lashed into the ball? Where is the noise that we used to hear slip me the chilling truth where our Gary and Dickie now What has become of Ruth? Gary brings to mind another uncrowned champ Of course, Columbia Lou is enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame Practically one of its keystones, but this next fellow hasn't made it and I doubt he ever will his name Jake Daubert one of the slickest chips down first baseman ever to wear a glove Over in Brooklyn old-timers can recite facts and figures to prove just how good Daubert was but not too many other fans Remember him as more than just another name Yet a fellow named Casey Stangle played with Daubert better than a green hand at sizing up the wheat from the chaff Casey rubbed his chin and meditated long when I asked him how he rated Jake I've seen some good ones since I broke into the big time about the time Grover Cleveland was shot Said Casey this particular night over a julep at the Sorino Hotel in St. Petersburg But Jake Daubert was perhaps the brainiest niftiest fielding first baseman I ever knew from 1910 through 1918 Daubert was the fielding and clutch hitting Marvel for the Brooks including their first penedier 1916 He clouded over 300 for seven of nine years then played out his span through 1924 With Cincinnati where he died suddenly at the age of 39 He may never get it, but Jake belongs in Cooper's town Golf has its share of champions But I can't think of any golfer who wears the mantle of uncrowned champ with more grace than Sam Snead Sam has picked up enough gold in pressure shooting to start a nanax for Fort Knox where they store the stuff But Snead has yet to win the big one the national open a large measure of luck rides with any putt Over 10 feet on undulating greens. I don't care how true the putting surface happens to be That's why lady luck still owes something to Sam and the biggest pot hunt of all the open At this late stage of his competitive career. I'm not at all sure she ever will it's like this always will be Dame fortune is a cock-eyed winch as someone said before and yet the old dame plays her part in any winning score Take all the credit you deserve heads up in winning pride But don't forget that lady luck was riding at your side The sweetest natural swinger of them all Snead has collected the sourest apples in this particular tournament And then there's a wonderful girl named Helen Jacobs, which brings up the question. Can the gals take it when the going is roughest? usually However undefeated in six years Helen wills had always walloped Helen Jacobs when the chips were down came the 1933 tennis championships at Forest Hills when Queen Helen again faced miss Jacobs in the final Surprisingly miss wills dropped the first set But when she won the second the tennis riders were about to drag out the same old adjectives for the same old story Then suddenly and dramatically miss wills's game fell apart with the score three love against her Helen wills suddenly turned to the umpire announced She could continue no longer and march to the showers on that particular afternoon on the center court turf of the stadium It was champion by default Helen Jacobs in her hour of triumph Achieved only after years of the most grueling uphill going Helen Jacobs earned my little laurel of uncrowned champ The boxing ring has its share of uncrowned champs Middleweight Harry Grebb pound for pound perhaps the greatest ever has been a headliner for more than 10 years Was well along the downgrade when he finally got a shot at the crown Grebb who fought 42 bouts in one year 1919 finally met Johnny Wilson for the middleweight crown in 1923 yes, Grebb wanted in between he fought anything and anybody from heavyweights on down Acknowledged a vicious spoiler even Dempsey wanted no part of Grebb Then there was Jeff Smith another middleweight who never did get a crack at the crown Some 200 of Jeff's fights are in the record book But he fought nearly 600 bouts all over the world accepting any and all fights and decisions Jeff Smith's only shot at champions were when they had become X champs. I Also recall a natural featherweight named Johnny Dundee who fought from 1910 through 1929 19 years Dundee battled Johnny Kilbane to a draw in 1913 but Kilbane never gave Dundee another shot at the title in fact it wasn't until the Frenchman Eugene creaky KO'd Kilbane in 1923 that Dundee was given his chance less than two months later Dundee a 10-year man in a five-year business defeated creaky in 15 rounds Paki McFarland Sam Langford and Mike Gibbons were other headbusters that few top-notchers would fight They made the rounds for years fighting anyone they could get but none of these was given his rightful day in court Until he was all but washed up Keep coming back although the world may romp across your spine Let every game's end find you still upon the battling line for when the one great scorer comes to mark against your name He writes not that you won or lost but how you played the game Now this is Jimmy Powers transcribe saying so long until next time