 This is Jimmy Powers, and happy to be coming your way with another Grantland Rice story. There, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed. Today, Granny Rice tells about writers and pals, and exactly as he wrote it for the tumult and the shouting. I'll narrate it in first person. I believe that I came along in gayer, happier times for both newspaper readers and writers. Somewhere in the late 1920s, there was a sudden change. In those earlier days, columnists wrote verses and paragraphs. There was Franklin P. Adams of the Mail and Harold Tribune, whose two columns, always in good humor, and the Conning Tower, were magnificent. Burt Leston Taylor, BLT, who conducted the line a type or two in the Chicago Tribune, was equally wonderful. These were the two stars, but there were many others who were excellent. Frank L. Stanton, the serious poet in the Atlanta Constitution, was in front of them all. Others were Judd Mortimer Lewis in the Houston Post, John D. Wells in the Buffalo News, Don Marquis of the Old Son, whose Archie the Cockroach and other superb verse held high attention. Also, Eddie Guest and Henry Sidnor Harrison from Virginia. These and some others rule those days of column readers. They suddenly gave way to Westbrook Pegler, Haywood Bruin, Alexander Wilcott, Ralph McGill, Walter Lippmann, Frank Kent, Evie Dirling, John O'Donnell, Bob Considine, and many more. Certainly, Frank Adams, Burt Taylor, and Don Marquis had an appeal that could equal that of any columnist of the present era, with perhaps the exception of Westbrook Pegler. Pegler's fiery diatribes kept you wondering what he would say or whose scalp he would lift. Nevertheless, I got a far greater thrill in reading Adams, Taylor, or Marquis in other years than I have got since. Maybe it was because I was a graduate of the verse and paragraph school from the days of the Nashville, Tennesseean. Frank Adams was the best light verse writer I ever read in this country or Europe. It was Frank Adams who wrote one of baseball's few immortal lyrics. These are the saddest of possible words, tinker and evers and chants. Pricking forever our gonflin bubble, causing a giant to hit into a double. Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble, tinker to evers to chants. I was at the evening mail in 1912 when Mr. Miles, the managing editor, called me to his office. He showed me the verse Adams had just turned in. Frank may write a better piece of verse than this, Miles said, but this is one he will be remembered by. He was right. One of the finest columnists I ever read was Huey Keoh who conducted a sporting composium in verse and paragraphs. Keoh had but a short burst. He began his column in 1905 and died in 1911. A master, a fine verse writer, and a brilliant paragrapher, Huey had the most interesting sport column I ever read. Here are a few examples of his one-line masterpieces. The race is not to the swift, but that is where to look. The art of self-defense, 100 years in 10 seconds. Throw your bread upon the waters and a carp will beat you to it. The rules of sport are all founded upon fair play. I think one reason the papers switched from verse to prose is this. Good poets suddenly disappeared and readers for some reason lost the old poetic zest. I know that I started keeping a poetry scrapbook around 1905. I kept this up for 25 years. I have many rare things in it. Suddenly around 1930 I quit collecting. The reason? I found little worth while pasting in my treasured book. This is a much more serious age than the old days ever were. There was a light-heartedness that the world knew before the First World War that has never been worn since. I'm grateful for H.I. Phillips. There has been war or the shadow of war for the past 40 years, and the dark shadow hasn't ever been absent from the scene in that time. Most of the true singers have had little heart with which to sing. No newspaper man hits the road more often than the writer assigned to a Major League Baseball team or the one who enjoys syndication and can hunt at large in search of game. It was in Bill Corham's drawing room aboard the train returning to New York from Cincinnati following the Detroit Cincinnati World Series in 1940 that I heard a wise sum-up of a sportswriter's approach to his job. Joe Williams was there, and so were Tom Meaney, Gary Schumacher, and Tommy Laird, the sage of San Francisco. The talk over Juleps got around to jobs. Laird mentioned that Lefty O'Doole, as manager of the San Francisco Seals, was happier than he ever had been in the Majors. We were all sounding off on what we'd do if given another whirl at Fates' old wheel. As for me, said Corham, I don't want to be a millionaire, I just want to live like one. Toots Shore put it another way. Watching a group of baseball writers carving their initials in his bar at 3 a.m. after a baseball writer's party, Toots said, Grant, there's not a millionaire in that bunch. They just live like them. While stopping over for a brief stand, we, who are travelers for the night at this old wayside inn called Earth, we meet many people, few of them alike, and Toots Shore, a fellow who runs a great New York restaurant, is strictly himself. He is the only worldwide man I know. I was sitting with Toots at lunch when he lifted the phone and called Ben Hogan at Fort Worth to cheer Ben up after he'd been beaten by Sammy Snead in the 54 Masters. Ten minutes later he called up Ford Frick, the baseball commissioner, to discuss some naughty problem that had come up in baseball. Five minutes later he was on the line to two close friends, Ernest and Mrs. Hemingway in South Africa. He found that Hemingway had been much more severely injured in that plane wreck than he had let anyone know. Then Toots called Gene Fowler in Los Angeles to see how Gene felt. Heard he wasn't so good, Toots said. Jimmy Cannon told the true story from Louisville at the Derby. Before a certain race, Toots told his bunch, he would get the right tip from his old friend Horatio. Toots left, got the tip, and the horse was out of the money. Can you imagine an old friend double crossing you like that? Toots howled. How long have you known the guy, Cannon asked? I met him yesterday, replied Toots. Shore is a friend of the world at large, barring all communists and hypocrites. In turn, he is respected and loved by all those who know him. A close friend of the athlete, sports writer, columnist, Toots and baby his bride are tops in my little old book. And with us today is Granny Rice's big jovial friend, Toots Shore, who runs a big spacious restaurant here in New York. Toots, I suppose your place is peopled by more stars of the sports world than perhaps any restaurant in New York. How come? The only reason I can give is ever since I've been a kid I've been interested in all sports, every kind of sport. In fact, all the people are in sports, and the most important people have helped to make my place a hangout are sports writers like yourself, in which Granny Rice was the boss of all. Granny Rice, I know, used to meet a lot of his cronies there, and I suspect got the idea for plenty of his columns from his friends, the big name players. Oh actually, Jimmy, Granny was never a table hopper. He came in and sat down, all the great athletes. It seemed they made a beeline at Granny's table, not because he was looking for him, but Granny was a fellow that everybody wanted to be with. And his advice was so priceless that, well, I know that people are still doing things that Granny told him to do. For such a gregarious bunch that the sports writing fraternity is, and with Granny Rice as their dean, well, he certainly was a kindly someone to look up to. He was just the greatest man we'll ever know. He would come in and when he walked in the restaurant, it seemed that everybody in the place would lift their head from their table whatever they were doing, eating or drinking. He lit a room up. Not many men do that, but Granny Rice did. And that party that spread over two complete floors in your place the night before Granny's book, the tumult and the shouting was published. Why it almost seemed that on that particular night, Granny was back. In many ways, Jimmy, that was the most amazing, greatest party we fellas in sports and in theater will ever have. It was started in a strange way. We're sitting around the corner one day over a drink. I said to Granny, we'd like to give him a party on his birthday, which was November the 1st. It had been a 74th. It was also going to be the day this book was going to be published, which there's no doubt in my mind is the best book on sports ever printed. It tells everything by a man who knew more about the game and every game and we'll ever know. We gave him a party. And that night it seemed that Granny was with us. People from all over the world, and I say all over the world, came to the party every great sports figure, every great athlete, anybody you can think of in the show business was there at a Granny's party. It was joy all evening long. We ate and we drank and we told stories of Granny Rice. It was so many can be told of his humbleness, of his decency, and of his way of treating people who were coming up in the world. Fellows like you, Jimmy, who started when Granny was already the tops in sports writing. That night will go down in my lifetime. I know when everybody else who was there were over 300 men. It was one of the finest nights we have ever had because Granny Rice was with us. Thank you, Tooth Shore, for taking time out from your busy schedule to chat with us today. Now, this is Jimmy Powers transcribe saying, Hasta la vista.