For reasons beyond me, “The Tumult and the Shouting” caught my eye as I pondered the year in sports. A well-worn copy has been wedged into an unopened tomb on my bookshelf for maybe 25 years. Its author, Grantland Rice, died at his typewriter soon after finishing this memoir in 1954.
In my childhood the bow-tied, snap-brimmed Rice was to sportswriting what Babe Ruth was to sports. Rice became famous by helping turn Ruth, Ty Cobb, Bobby Jones, Knute Rockne, Joe Louis and Jim Thorpe into American gods. He considered them all close friends and made reading about their exploits in prose and poetry even better than watching them.
His opening paragraph on Notre Dame’s 13-7 victory over Army in 1924 remains the most famous “lead” in sportswriting lore: “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds as 55,000 peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.”
Today you probably wouldn’t read such hyperbole in a big-city sports section unless Don King was being quoted before a pay-per-view fight. But Rice romanticized athletes for an audience that couldn’t order every game ever played on their living-room TVs, that couldn’t see 24-hour highlights on cable networks, that couldn’t debate off-field behavior on talk shows or in chat rooms–that basically knew only what a few prominent speak-no-evil sportswriters told them.
If only Rice could see us now. If only I could see his face when I told him about Tiger and A-Rod and Rocker and Dick Vitale and the Galleryfurniture.com Bowl. If only I could exchange views with him on sports journalism 2000. If only I could thank him. A scholarship he endowed at his alma mater, Vanderbilt, allowed me to attend a school I couldn’t afford.
In “Tumult’s” final paragraph Rice marvels at what an athlete the “Jim Thorpe of 2000” should be. Rice might guess this athlete would not be white. He welcomed the potential rise of the “Negro” in team sports, a door that had just been opened by Jackie Robinson. Yet Rice, who helped turn a quiet little invitational into the Masters, referred to Augusta National’s “darky waiters, shining and popeyed.”
If only I could see Rice’s eyes pop when I told him today’s Thorpe has American Indian, African-American and Asian blood and that he does not play a team sport or box or run track. His straight-from-Runyon name, Mr. Rice, is Tiger Woods and he dominated golf 2000 the way no star has ever dominated his game for a year.
Golf, Mr. Rice, the game that so haunted Bobby Jones that he dropped 15 pounds during big tournaments. Woods would have won the first Grand Slam since Jones if a notoriously poor putter named Vijay Singh hadn’t putted Augusta National as if he had made a deal with the devil.
And look, Mr. Rice, at the changing face of your favorite sport. Baseball is on its way to becoming 50 percent Latin American. The best pitcher is Pedro Martinez. The best position player is a power-hitting shortstop named Alex Rodriguez who just signed for $252 million. No, Mr. Rice, million.
The Yankees remain a dynasty. But in an age of sluggers injecting themselves with steroids, these “Bronx Bombers” win mostly with pitching and defense. Mr. Rickey would smile, huh?
Look, Mr. Rice, at the one game that didn’t interest you. Pro basketball’s MVP is a giant named Shaquille O’Neal who can’t make free throws. Last year’s All-Star team had just one white player, John Stockton, but next year’s could have three more. Zydrunas Ilgauskus, Dirk Nowitzki and Predrag Stojakovic are from Europe. Only in America.
And your beloved football, Mr. Rice–look what you wrought. So starved are we for Famine and Pestilence vs. Destruction and Death that pro football is even bigger than college, which remains huge. But your pure-as-Chip-Hilton Heisman was won by a 28-year-old quarterback who played pro baseball. The NFL’s most unblockable defensive lineman, Warren Sapp, is fatter than Babe Ruth.
Now, Mr. Rice, I return you to the bookshelf, where you can rest safely with your uncomplicated memories.
