The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport E-Book

Grantland Rice

• Herausgeber: Caramna Corporation
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Folded into THE TUMULT AND THE SHOUTING are some of Granny’s verses. About sports and war and loved ones. About all the things that were dear to his great heart. Buy it for yourself. Buy it for your friends. Buy it for your enemies, the bums, who on reading it will learn, maybe for the first time, what it means to be a right guy.’—Frank Graham, N.Y. Journal American

Leseprobe

THE TUMULT AND THE SHOUTING

MY LIFE IN SPORT

BY

GRANTLAND RICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS4

DEDICATION5

ACKNOWLEDGMENT6

GRANTLAND RICE7

PROLOGUE9

I—YESTERDAY IS GONE11

CHAPTER ONE—Beginning at the Beginning11

CHAPTER TWO—My First Big Story, Ty Cobb20

CHAPTER THREE—The Big Step30

II—THE FLAMING HEART...COLD BRAIN AND FIRM COMMAND36

CHAPTER FOUR—The Four Masters—and Some Others36

CHAPTER FIVE—Golf’s Advance Guard42

CHAPTER SIX—Walter Hagen, the Incredible Man46

CHAPTER SEVEN—Bobby Jones the Incomparable Youth55

CHAPTER EIGHT—War Clouds79

III—DAME FORTUNE IS A COCKEYED WENCH86

CHAPTER NINE—The Big Fellow, Babe Ruth86

CHAPTER TEN—Jack Dempsey, the Man from Maumee Bay95

CHAPTER ELEVEN—Gene Tunney, a Study in Concentration110

CHAPTER TWELVE—Big Bill Tilden121

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—The Two Horsemen, Hitchcock and Milburn129

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen133

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—Colorful Coaches152

CHAPTER SIXTEEN—Football’s All-Timers160

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—This Game of Football, an Appraisal169

IV—WHO STAND AND FIGHT AMID A BITTER BROOD...173

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—Jim Thorpe, the American Indian173

CHAPTER NINETEEN—The Other Babe and Women in Sports179

CHAPTER TWENTY—The Negro Race185

V—I HEAR THEM TRAMPING TO OBLIVION190

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—Sportlight Films, Television and Sport190

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO—Horses, Trainers and Jockeys or I Don’t Care if My Horse Loses IF the Price Is Right195

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE—Iron Men221

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—McGraw, Mack, McCarthy and Others227

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE—Bantam Ben Hogan230

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—The Arthritis and Neuritis Set237

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN—Writers and Pals241

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—Icing on the Cake255

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE—Through the Mists263

DEDICATION

To Katherine Hollis Rice, who has been of incredible help in every way along the long highway.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I want to extend deepest thanks and appreciation to Dave Camerer, former Dartmouth football tackle, and sportswriter, for the fine work he contributed in routing out old and sometimes fading memories from over fifty years ago. His assistance was invaluable.

I also wish to thank “the many” who helped in the preparation of this book by rekindling with me so many experiences along the way...and to those who so graciously made available many of the pictures chosen—my sincere appreciation.

Grantland Rice

East Hampton, L.I.

July 1, 1954

GRANTLAND RICE

Grant came into the world at a fortunate time for us all. The country was changing. The conquest of the frontier had been concluded. The harsh rule of the Puritan tradition had begun to be relaxed. Yet some vestige of that rigid, fun-denying code of our ancestors remained. Life still meant, to the great majority of Americans, only work—hard work, long hours—the harder and longer the more commendable. Play was for boys and for fools. It was the function and duty of men to work.

This austere tradition Grant helped mightily to break down. He was the evangelist of fun, the bringer of good news about games. He was forever seeking out young men of athletic talent, lending them a hand and building them up, and sharing them with the rest of us as our heroes. He made the playing fields respectable. Never by preaching or propaganda, but by the sheer contagion of his joy in living, he made us want to play. And in so doing he made us a people of better health and happiness in peace: of greater strength in adversity. This was his gift to his country; few men have made a greater.

In his life among men he might well have been named America’s foremost gentleman. It was not merely that he was courtly, gracious, well-mannered. He was all these, of course, but also something much deeper, far rarer—the something from which all these spring if they are genuine. He had pure courtesy. He was the most courteous man I ever knew.

Courtesy is no easy virtue. It means, first of all, being instinctively and sincerely aware of the other person, with spontaneous respect and consideration for his feelings, and the instinct to react always appropriately.

Grant was most sensitively aware, most quick to respond and respect, most unerringly appropriate. Once aware of the feeling of fear or timidity in another, he became instantly the staunch encourager and ally. Aware of worry in another, he beamed sympathy and solace and hope. Aware of financial need, he would, if necessary, lend his last dollar.

Finally—and this is in a way the greatest test of courtesy—aware of merit in another, he gave prompt and unstinted praise. Aware of good fortune, he was the first to rejoice, the last celebrant to leave.

People felt better in his presence. He made us all feel better—made us feel that somehow we could do more, be more. This was his gift to his friends.

In the first poem in his last book, he wrote:

Only the brave know what the hunted are—

The battered—and the shattered—and the lost—

Who know the meaning of each deep, red scar,

For which they paid the heartache and the cost.

Who’ve left the depths against unmeasured odds

To ask no quarter from the ruling gods.

Born—live—and die—cradle along to the grave.

The march is on—by bugle and by drum—

Where only those who beat life are the brave—

Who laugh at fate and face what is to come,

Knowing how swiftly all the years go by,

Where dawn and sunset blend in one brief sky.

This was a familiar theme of his; he returned to it again and again—that courage is the major virtue; that all things work together for good to him who is unafraid.

And the God of the courageous heard him, and gave him the last great reward that life can bestow—a sudden and painless and unexpected death.

To believe that such a life is ended is to say that human life itself is meaningless and the universe a ghastly joke. No one of us believes that. Grant is not lost to us.

Gainsborough, the artist, cried exultantly: “We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyke is of the company.”

We are all going to Heaven, and Grant is there already—telling his stories, talking his wisdom, cracking his jokes, and, we may be sure, encouraging play. Already they have learned to love him. And he is waiting for us—still with his joy in living and his eternal courtesy.

Grantland Rice passed away on July 13, 1954, while working at his typewriter. He would have reached his 74thbirthday on the following November 1st. These words were expressed by Bruce Barton, long-time friend of Mr. Rice, at the funeral on July 16that the Brick Presbyterian ChurchinNew York City.

PROLOGUE

Why This Book?

It seems to me that I have already written too many words. I know, better than anyone else, that I should have ceased firing years ago. Well, work, above everything else, is habit-forming. From 1901 through the better part of 1954, I have written over 67,000,000 words, including more than 22,000 columns, 7,000 sets of verse, over 1,000—plus radio outbursts for 32 seasons, starting with the Giants-Yankee World Series in 1922, when earphones were the rage. And I’m still turning out a column six days a week for some 80 newspapers throughout the country.

However, this book is no rehash of my columns. In a sense, it is a “summing up”—the story of my life and of the great men of sport who helped to make it an exciting and rich history.

I owe sport a great deal. Not only has it enabled me to earn a comfortable living; it helped me to grow up. I wasn’t privileged to be an athlete. Sure, I played football and baseball when I was a kid, and was keen about track and field. But I was raised in a neighborhood where most of the kids were better than I.

From the start, however, I learned a lot more from defeat than I ever learned from winning—something that has held true for the best part of 75 years. I remember very little about the games I won or lost, but I always had a deep feeling of enthusiasm for the contest itself.

I have always been a great believer in keeping fit. When I graduated from Vanderbilt University, I hadn’t broken training in four years—hadn’t smoked a cigarette or taken a glass of beer. I simply figured I had too little to give, physically, not to give my limited equipment a fair chance.

From sport and chores on the family farm I got used to hard work and long hours—a 12-hour day was practically a holiday. I came up that way. I was lucky enough to love work. I don’t mean always—many and many a time I’ve circled a typewriter as though it were a king cobra on the desk. But force of early habit somehow overcame the lethargy.

You’ll learn most about Grantland Rice by the memories that I will fetch back about the champions I have known. Since I describe one champion at a time, unlike most autobiographies, this book doesn’t follow strict chronology. Almost every one of these heroes of sport taught me something, gave me some insight into how to live and added to my philosophy of life. And, I think these champions and the way that they lived have something to say to all of us, especially in these uncertain times, which the editorial writers call “The Age of Anxiety.” To reach the top in any sport—or in life—you need confidence and belief in yourself. Can you imagine Babe Ruth ever considering the possibility of failure? Many years ago, Babe told me, “Once my swing starts, I can’t change it or pull up. It’s all or nothing at all.”

The qualities of self-confidence and belief in oneself seem to me to be relatively rare today. They are sometimes even openly ridiculed as naive or worse.

But enough of the preaching. Let’s get on with it.…

I—YESTERDAY IS GONE

THE START

The dawn is breaking, crimson white,

The sun is up in flaming spread.

The road is dim, beyond all sight,

Where none can see the way ahead.

Through blackest night, or dawn’s red glow,

Where will it end? I do not know.

Through mist and fog—through storm and sun,

Through pain and sorrow—love and care,

Through cheering millions—lost or won,

How will the new born marcher fare?

Who knows? Amid world beating hearts

The Tumult and the Shouting starts.

CHAPTER ONE—Beginning at the Beginning

The beginning of life really dates back to your first memories. However, for the record, I was born at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 30 miles from Nashville on November 1, 1880. Christened Henry Grantland, I was the eldest of three sons, my brothers John and Bolling following me by several years. My father and mother were Mr. and Mrs. Bolling Hendon Rice, two very gentle people from a state that gave the nation Andrew Jackson, Davey Crockett, Nathan Bedford Forrest, John B. Morgan and “Little Giffen”—a flaming banner of youthful courage.

Smitten with grapeshot and gangrene,

Eighteenth battle and he fourteen...

Immortalized in Ticknor’s verse, Little Giffen’s uniform happened to be Confederate gray.

The first evidence of life that I remember was a big Newfoundland dog that I loved as any kid loves his dog. I was only four years old at the time. Even now I find that three of my favorite “people” are Czar, Chiota and Gay, Siberian huskies that belong to my daughter Florence and her husband Fred Butler of Venice, California.

The central figure in our family was my grandfather, Major Henry Grantland, for whom I was named. He died, grudgingly, in 1915 when he was 95, following a bad fall. When I was four, the Rices moved from Murfreesboro to Nashville—into a large, high ceiling’d house on Woodland Street that belonged to grandfather. A cotton farmer, Grandfather Grantland, 100-proof individualist, originally came over from England in 1835. He settled in Fairfax County, Virginia, and later worked south through Alabama and up into Tennessee. Quite a roamer, when the wanderlust seized my grandfather he would take off for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, “to buy tools for the farm.” The trip consumed between five and six weeks, being made by boat, train and horse and wagon.

I recall vividly his stories about the Civil War. In 1861 he was working his plantation at Triana, Alabama, on the banks of the Tennessee River by the Big Bend. Invaded by a Federal gunboat at the war’s outbreak, my grandfather assembled his help, and armed with rakes, spades and one new shotgun, they headed for the river. The gunboat won that one.

En route to his rendezvous with war, my grandfather carted off six bales of cotton—500 pound bales—and hid them in a cave. I always got a kick out of his recitation of what became of those bales...after the war. I’d make a point to ask him about them.

“Well,” he’d say, “when the war was over, I threw down my musket, grabbed my horse and galloped back to the farm. I didn’t forget those bales. There they’d been—for almost four years—in a damp, dripping cave...known only to God and me. The selling price in 1864 was one dollar a pound, but all the water had swollen those rotting old bales till they weighed about a half ton—one thousand pounds apiece! When the Yankee carpetbagger, Butler the Buyer, came through, he paid me a thousand dollars for each waterlogged bale.”

With that fresh start Grandfather Grantland proceeded to run up a fortune in a world starving for cotton. As a soldier, incidentally, he was a Major under General Braxton Bragg, whom he never respected. His hero was Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the great cavalry men. Forrest, individually, killed 30 men in the war and had 15 horses shot from under him. He enlisted as a private and, a few months later, was a lieutenant general. He never lost a battle. General Lee called him “my finest general.”

When I was seven or eight we moved from my grandfather’s place to a home on Vaughan Pike, out in the country. With my two younger brothers, John and Bolling, I had trees to climb and room to roam. It was my first Christmas on Vaughan Pike when a football, a baseball and a bat landed under the tree—for me. No glove. My hands have been calloused ever since.

Those three presents were the sounding instruments that directed my life. I can still hear the echoes from far away and long ago. They were the Pied Piper in my march through life.

During those summers on Vaughan Pike, my father put me “in charge” of several acres of good farming soil with the general idea that I was supposed to make the land yield a profit. With the help of Horace, our gentle Negro hired man, plus my two brothers, we grew tomatoes, potatoes, beans, asparagus, onions, beets, peas, cabbage, lettuce and practically everything else that grows including all kissin’ kin of the worm and grub family.

Once the crops started coming in, my day began at 3:00 in the morning, when, with a wagon loaded with greens, I’d drive in to market. Disposing of my wares around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, I’d then drive back home and work. I recall the thrill I got at selling the first crates of tomatoes at four dollars a crate...a price that later fell off to 10 and 20 cents a crate. I usually worked until 7:00 in the evening, which made a working day of nearly 16 hours.

Yes, I knew work, hard work, at 12. After this type of training, no amount of toil seemed hard or long. But I must admit that I liked plowing better than any other form of farm work, probably because the horse was pulling the bulk of the load.

I was 13 when the Crash of 1893, a worldwide affair, hit. That crash took more than a million dollars from my grandfather. England could no longer handle her cotton assignments; the break followed. The Grantland Cotton Company was stocked with cotton but the selling price tumbled to five cents a pound. I still wonder how my grandmother and mother were able to serve meals that I couldn’t buy today for 20 dollars. There were hog brains—the most magnificent of dishes—hominy grits, ham and ham gravy, waffles, fried sliced apples, corn pone, fried and scrambled eggs—food I’ve dreamed of but have seldom seen for half a century, at least in such profusion.

While living on the Vaughan Pike, I attended two military schools, Tennessee Military Institute and the Nashville Military Institute. I was then around 14 or 15 and weighed about 120 pounds. I was nearly six feet tall, so you can figure out the string-bean aspect.

It was at these two schools that I learned a lot of football and eventually got my biggest thrill out of a game for which I was totally unfitted, physically. Our fullback, named Percy Tabler, was 6 feet 1 and weighed 195. I was one halfback but our real halfback was my old friend, Charlie Moran, of Horse Cave, Kentucky. Charlie weighed about 185. You can see I had protection. Tabler later starred in the flickers as one of the famous “Tarzans.” Moran went from our school to Tennessee and from there to the Massillon Tigers, where he ran one of the first professional football clubs from quarterback. Later he coached the famed Centre College Praying Colonels of the Bo McMillan era around 1920. Moran was also one of the top umpires of the National League for more than 20 years.

The Rices finally moved back to Nashville where I was enrolled at the Wallace University School. After one year there, I entered Vanderbilt University in the fall of 1897 and pledged Phi Delta Theta. I managed to do well in my studies, majoring in Greek and Latin. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA degree with the Class of ‘01. As a football star, although lettering my junior year, I would not have scared “Doc” Blanchard, Army’s dreadnaught fullback during World War II. In my freshman year, I broke a big bone in my foot trying to throw a 16-pound hammer. My top weight through four years at Vanderbilt was 134 pounds.

Reflecting on those four years, I am eternally grateful to my old prep-school master, Dr. C. B. Wallace, and the Latin and Greek background he pumped into my head. I enjoyed my induction into both tongues and so it was natural that these two subjects became the foundation stones for my college majors. As for English, I honestly can’t recall having studied it.

With a real affection for football, I tried for three years but only succeeded in accumulating a broken arm, four ribs torn from my spinal column, a broken collar bone and a broken shoulder blade. The latter injury kept me from trying professional baseball at shortstop, as I had to throw underhanded my last year. However, in four years as an undergraduate I never missed a practice baseball session and after the first year never missed a game.

The best game I ever played was against Tennessee in Knoxville. I had 15 assists, no errors, plus a home run and a double. Vanderbilt won 4–3. Baseball was much more fun for me to play since it lacked the body contact which too often left me crippled or headed for a hospital visit.

In the summer of 1901, I barnstormed for several weeks through Tennessee with a semi-pro team. We were playing the Memphis Chickasaws when I received a wire from my dad suggesting that I “come home to Nashville.” Vanderbilt had won the Southern Conference baseball title that spring, and, with several of my teammates, I was riding pretty high—both at bat and in the field—when the summons arrived. I didn’t question the order and, taking a long last glance over my shoulder, packed my glove and spikes and returned to Nashville.

Wandering into the J. S. Reeves store, a wholesale drygoods concern, I landed a job as stock boy in the notions department at five dollars a week. I didn’t pick up my first paycheck.

It was July, 1901, and the Nashville Daily News had just got going. My dad figured that inasmuch as I hadn’t gone in for engineering, law or medicine at college—but had done creditably well in the arts—I might-try my hand at journalism. I went down to the News and applied for the job as sports editor—and lo and behold—got it! However, reflecting on that baptism of fire, I think Edward Martin, the managing editor, figured that writing sports was akin to playing in the back-yard sand pile. Martin gave me the “added” jobs of covering Capitol Hill, the produce market and the customs house—for five dollars a week.

There were no Grantland Rice bylines in those first few issues. Then one day Martin commented on an unsigned story he had stuck on the front page.

“You write rhythmic heads for your leads,” Martin said. “Keep it up. Perhaps one day you’ll make a good inside man on the desk.”

Heaven forbid! I tore out that column...still have it, on faded newsprint that crumbles like an ancient tobacco leaf. From that August 13, 1901 paper:

Baker Was An Easy Mark

Pounded Hard Over Park

Selma’s Infield Is a Peach

But Nashville Now Is Out of Reach

All of the Boys Go Out to Dine

And Some of Them Get Full of Wine

After their long, successful trip the locals opened up against Selma yesterday afternoon at Athletic Park, and when the shades of night had settled on the land the difference that separated the two teams had been increased by some dozen points.

Throughout the whole morning a dark, lead-colored sky overhung the city, and a steady rain dripped and drizzled, only stopping in time to play the game, but leaving the field soft and slow...

—I wonder what the score was!

How or why I ever fell into the habit of breaking up my columns with verse I don’t know, but rhythm and rhyme seemed to come naturally, perhaps as a reflection of the meter I had enjoyed scanning in Latin poets.

One afternoon, editor Martin called me in and assigned me to cover a big society ball that night.

“But I can’t write society news,” I protested. “I know nothing about names and fashions. That’s a woman’s beat.”

“We’re all out of society writers,” replied Martin. “Tonight you’re it!”

I went back to the morgue, found an old copy of the Sunday New York Tribune and turned to the society section. I found a description of a big event at the old Waldorf and copied out practically everything but the names. The next day’s paper ran a solid column. Armed with the patron’s list and the cream of the guest list, I had attributed all the current New York styles and descriptions of the fashionable gowns worn at that New York dance to the madames and belles of Nashville’s upper crust. All seemed happy with that column because Martin received nary a kick and congratulated me on a job well covered. I never have divulged how I covered that soiree until right now.

During that same year, 1901, Herman Suter, Sewanee’s coach from 1899 through 1901, edited a publication called Forester Magazine. I didn’t know a Christmas tree from a Northern Blue Horned Spruce; I don’t today. But when the call came from Suter, I joined him.

Financed by one of the Pinchot boys, Suter’s magazine was being turned out in Washington, D.C., pretty far north for a Rebel, but I was all eyes to see the sights. However, I had no sooner planted my pigeon-toed feet before the Capitol when I was stricken with appendicitis. I spent five weeks in the hospital and was a pretty sick pup when my mother arrived and carted me home to Nashville.

I had tried my journalistic wings up North, only to be flattened with a blow to the lower solar plexus. (This was a term that came into vogue when Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out Jim Corbett on March 17, 1897, in the 14th round of their championship fight with a terrible left hook to the stomach.) So I set my sights to the South—Atlanta, Georgia. From 1902 through the World Series of 1905 between the Giants and Philadelphia, I wrote for the Atlanta Journal. Starting under its erstwhile editor, John S. Cohen, at $12.50 a week, my job was to write the entire sports page.

I well recall a cityside assignment I drew—to cover the funeral of Lieutenant-General John B. Gordon, the great Confederate General. How the multitude wept, including reporter Henry Grantland Rice, grandson of Henry Grantland, a true soldier of the old Confederacy. During those days, the great from New York’s Broadway would make one-night stands throughout the cities of the South, with such marquee’d names as John Drew, Richard Mansfield, the Barrymores et al., all putting in their licks for the culture of the Confederacy. The theatre beat was handed to me. I can’t tell you how many nights a young writer from Indiana—a squat, heavy-set ex-athlete from DePauw University named Don Marquis—and I had two-on-the-aisle as theatre critics for the old Journal. This was the same Don Marquis who later went to New York to make his fame with the Sun and the Tribune, writing a breed of prose, verse and philosophical humor that, in my opinion, has never been equalled. He was a firebrand and a genius. In those days we shared a room and once tried living on ten cents a day—the cost of a huge mince pie for breakfast, guaranteed to induce acute 24-hour indigestion for two. I bequeath this gem to Gayelord Hauser as my contribution towards the American diet.

This was the same Don Marquis who later would tickle the world with such stories as “The Old Soak”...“Captain Peter Fitzruse”...“Mehitabel” and “Archie the Cockroach.” Born in 1878 at Walnut, Illinois, Don had gone to work on a small weekly paper, where he broke pens, typewriters and presses in his journalistic efforts to carve a place for himself in midwestern journalism. His break came when a state senator, running for re-election, was stumping a campaign loaded with generalities. He was a shoo-in—until Don, tracking down his record, asked in print just how this particular Senator worthied himself for re-election with a record in Washington that apparently equalled that of the little man who wasn’t there. Don did such a job of rock throwing that the senator contacted him and asked if he’d like to go to Washington. Answering “yes,” Marquis landed on the Washington Times. Don attended art school, worked in the Census Bureau and then hopped to the editorial page of the Atlanta Journal—which is where our paths crossed. The senator, incidentally, was re-elected.

As two demon reporters, we shared a flat for three dollars a week. It was Christmas Eve of 1902 that I wandered in about midnight and found Don high as two kites and lathered with red ink and oil from a battered old hand letter press.

““Grant,” he roared, “I’m putting out Page One of my Christmas issue—the way Hearst would do it!” Screaming across the top half of his front page, in red, 40-point letters was “CHRIST IS BORN!” By the time I’d added my four cents, we were both loaded on Georgia corn likker. We finally crawled into bed, smug in the feeling that we had indeed saluted the Lord.

I How Marquis could write! An unaffected genius, at times he was a black brooder, but his physical and mental courage were magnificent.

...There I stood at the gate of God,

Drunk but unafraid.

That closing line of one of his verses mirrored Don’s scorn for any human soul lacking the courage of its convictions.

Don and I used to spend a few afternoons each fall helping with the coaching at Georgia Military Academy, some 20 miles from Atlanta. I recall one afternoon I was particularly impressed with one youngster. A back, he moved well. After practice I remarked to the coach, “That kid I was working with this afternoon...he’s a good boy with that ball...but he needs more scrap...ought to be more aggressive.”

The boy was Stonewall Jackson Christian, grandson of probably the youngest lieutenant general in the Civil War. It was around 1920 that I renewed my acquaintance with Christian, then an instructor in mathematics at West Point.

One evening, in 1903, while putting the sports pages to bed, I happened across a story from Shreveport, Louisiana, about a pitching freak who had made a bet that he could drink two bottles of bourbon, bolt down a whole turkey and win a double header. His name was “Bugs” Raymond. As an unofficial scout for the Atlanta club, I told Abner Powell, the owner, about Raymond and persuaded Ab to buy him.

He reported next spring. I happened, by rare chance, to be standing at a bar having a free lunch before starting for the ball park. Someone slapped me on the back and said, “What about a drink, pal?”

I recognized Raymond, then 22 years old. I bought him a drink. He asked for another. “I thought you were going to pitch today,” I suggested. “I am,” retorted Raymond. “What of it?”

“Do you know what team you are pitching against?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “and I don’t care.”

“It’s only the Red Sox...from Boston,” I said. “Champions of the world. You recall, perhaps, they beat Pittsburgh last fall. It’s an important exhibition game—for Atlanta.”

Bugs wasn’t interested but wanted to know how to get to the park. “I’m walking,” I said. “It’s only two miles.”

Raymond didn’t have a nickel, either, for fare. All the way out to the park he threw stones at pigeons, stray dogs and telegraph poles. He must have pitched a complete game before we got there.

Then, given a uniform, Bugs appeared and started insulting and kidding Boston’s star third baseman and manager, Jimmy Collins. He would walk from the box and bawl out the World Champs. By the third inning, he had them all raving. As a net result, using that famous spitter with what John McGraw later called, “the finest pitching motion in baseball,” Raymond struck out 12 men and won 3–0, with three scattered hits.

Another Atlanta friend was Joel Chandler Harris, renowned for his Uncle Remus (Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox) series—books that had tremendous appeal in the early 1900’s and are still selling because, thank God, kids will always be kids. Perhaps the un-stuffiest man I ever knew, Chandler often picked up his mail by asking, “Anything for Uncle Remus?” I recall that after Stanley “discovered” Doctor Livingston in darkest Africa, he toured the country for many years and one of his stops was Atlanta. He wanted to meet Chandler who refused to meet him because, “He wears a beard...and I don’t like beards...whiskers...or goatees. They’re counterfeit. Besides, Stanley’s older than I am. I like youngsters. They’re more my kind.”

Marquis and I also revered one of America’s great poets and song writers, Frank L. Stanton, who for many years wrote a column in the Atlanta Constitution. Perhaps you never heard of Stanton; but if your mother has ever serenaded you, her baby, with “Mighty Lak a Rose,” she was singing Stanton. “Just a Wearying for You” is another of many. He fought many a losing fight with liquor but the inbred sweetness of the man never deserted him. After a rough night, Stanton might wander into the old Aragon Hotel and offer to “write a poem for thee” in exchange for three fingers. He turned out more classic lines for bartenders than most mortals have composed for publishers. A sheet of wrapping paper, butcher’s paper...anything that could hold a line served his mood.

Years later, in New York, Don and I were having dinner at The Players at 16 Gramercy Park, something of a convivial eating and drinking shrine to Edwin Booth, its founder back in ‘88. We were reflecting on the old days...and Frank Stanton.

“We loved him, Grant,” said Don. He drew a sheet of typewritten paper from his inside pocket.

“Here’s a piece of verse I just wrote. I think Stanton would have liked it. I want you to have it.”

Here it is, in print for the first time.

Haunted!

The Ghost Speaks

Do ye whiten with fear at the whine of the wind?

Was it fancy that mingled a moan therein?

Did ye dream?...did ye wake?...when ye saw my face?

Are ye feared of a dead man’s face, Barr Wynee?

Barr Wynee, are ye there?...are ye there, Barr Wynee?

Brooding and thinking of me and your sin,

Are ye there...do ye hear, Barr Wynee, Barr Wynee?

A ghost is the whim of a sick man’s brain?

Then why do ye start and shiver so?

That’s the sob and drip of a leaky drain?

But it sounds like another noise we know!

We know, Barr Wynee...and so did Cain!

How the heavy drops drummed red and slow...

We know, we know, we know, Barr Wynee!

Souls there be that have passed in peace,

But I went forth in a whorl of hate;

There’s a whisper would draw me hence did I heed;

But heaven must wait, and Hell must wait,

Till I get my grip on your naked soul

And drag you along, Barr Wynee, to the gate!

Bar Wynee, do ye hear?...it is I, Barr Wynee.

That’s naught but a trick of the light on the fog?

Then why should ye see my face therein?

There’s naught to fear from a dead man’s hand?

Then why do ye shrink from my touch, Barr Wynee?

The hour that I meet ye ghost to ghost,

Stripped of the flesh that ye skulk within,

Ye shall learn whether dead men hate, Barr Wynee!”

—Don Marquis ’16

CHAPTER TWO—My First Big Story, Ty Cobb

Those two writers, Ty Cobb and Ted Williams, recently have been waging a public vendetta. You may recall that Cobb said that the old timers were much better ball players. Ted countered by saying the moderns outranked the former stars and that he could name many men better than the players of Cobb’s day. “All except Cobb and Ruth,” wrote Williams. “They stand alone.”

I have no particular argument about all this except that John McGraw and Ed Barrow, with the angels after devoting their entire lives to baseball, picked Honus Wagner as the greatest “all around” player. From that “all around” stand, they could be right. Wagner could play more positions better than either Cobb or Ruth.

It was in 1895 that I saw my first professional ball game at Nashville. George Stallings brought his black-uniformed Augusta team to town. That was 60 years ago. Since then I’ve seen the entire parade go by.

I’ve occasionally compared the youngsters with the oldsters—for what it’s worth, which isn’t much. Any more than Cobb’s and Williams’ appraisals are worth much—except as a bit of synthetic excitement.

Connie Mack, years ago, told me, “Grantland, you can’t judge or measure the ball players of one era by those of another. From 1900 to 1920, baseball was an entirely different game from the game we now know. Until 1920, it was Ty Cobb’s type of game—belonging more to speed, skill and agility than to power. They played with a dead ball, so it was a day of base running. Came the Golden Twenties and we had Ruth, the livelier ball and we watched speed give way to power. You simply can’t match two entirely different games which call for dissimilar skills. An outfield composed of Cobb, Speaker and Ruth, even with Ruth, lacks the combined power of DiMaggio, Musial and Williams.”

So it is quite possible that Williams’ modern outfield is more useful in today’s game than the old trio, as great as they were. Incidentally, I agree with Ted that Cobb was wrong in his estimate of the moderns. Any era that gives us DiMaggio, Williams, Musial, Slaughter, Rosen, Kell, Campanella, Robinson, Rizzuto, Berra, Roberts, Reynolds, Lopat, Gordon, Doerr, Schoendienst, Feller, Kiner, Mantle, Greenberg, Dickey, Cochrane, Gehringer, Raschi, Rolfe, Reese, Hodges—we can go on and on—is right up there with the all-time best. Defensively, Musial and DiMaggio were better outfielders than Cobb or Ruth; neither was the defensive equal of Tris Speaker. Williams doesn’t rank too high on the defensive side. You might call him adequate, but he is no Jim Piersall, Willie Mays or Duke Snider, currently climbing fences for the Red Sox, Giants and Dodgers. Few are or have been.

—Which brings me to Cobb, a man apart. The shrewdest athlete, and perhaps the shrewdest man, I ever knew, Ty played a trick on me that stood up for more than 40 years.

It was a late afternoon in February, 1904. The paper had just been sent to press and, as a “veteran” reporter of 24, I was involved in a poker game in the Atlanta Journal office.

A messenger boy came in with a telegram from a news tipster. I took the message and read the following, fresh from Royston, a town in Georgia—

“Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the dashing young star from Royston, has just started spring-training with Anniston. He is a terrific hitter and faster than a deer. At the age of 18 he is undoubtedly a phenom.”

I tore up the wire, returned to the poker game and later sent the following to Royston—

“After this, the mails are fast enough for Cobb.”

It was a sad mistake. I should have asked the Journal to get out an extra. For this same Tyrus Raymond Cobb was on his way...on his way to make more than 4,100 big league base hits...to steal nearly 900 bases...to break almost every record in the books except the home-run mark.

It might be recalled that today good ball players are justly proud of the fact they have made 2,000 base hits...like such great hitters as Enos (Country) Slaughter and Johnny Mize. Think what it took to run up more than twice that number and move into the 4,000-hit territory!

In addition to being the greatest competitor I’ve ever known, Cobb was the most ambitious kid that ever entered sport. And he appeared to have a lot of fans who believed in him. During that 1904 season Cobb played with both Anniston (Alabama) and Augusta (Georgia) in the Southeastern and South Atlantic Leagues. That spring I was deluged with letters and postcards from wherever Cobb was playing. The messages were meaty.

“Keep your eye on Ty Cobb. He is one of the finest hitters I have ever seen.”...“Watch Cobb of Anniston. He is sure to be a sensation.”...“Have you seen Ty Cobb play ball yet? He is the fastest mover I’ve seen in baseball...” These and dozens like them were signed Brown, Smith, Jackson, Holmes...and they showered in from all points of both circuits.

Under pressure I finally wrote a column that a new wonder had arrived, “the darling of the fans”—my first big story but I didn’t realize it at the time. A few days later I journeyed to Augusta’s ball park to see my discovery. At 18, Cobb was something to look at. He was around 5 feet 11, weighed 155 and had the legs of a deer—legs destined to carry him for 24 years of hard campaigning.

I went down to the dugout and talked to the lad, six years younger than I, before the game.

“I’ve been hearing about you,” I said. “My name is Rice. I write baseball for the Journal.”

“Is that so?” he replied. “I’ve heard of you too.”

During those early years, I found Cobb to be an extremely peculiar soul—brooding and bubbling with violence, combative all the way, a streak, incidentally, he never lost. Although our greatest American essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, may not have known it, he was writing to a vision of Cobb when he penned his immortal challenge on Self-Reliance. Always the non-conformist, except when it involved team play on the diamond, Cobbs frequent and violent explosions with his teammates as well as the enemy were the rule. From the first, Cobb’s life was a constant war, and Ty lived in a hostile camp.

Cobb moved to Detroit in 1905. A year or so later, when pitcher Bob Willett moved in with him, his Detroit teammates ordered Willett to move out.

“Having to live alone,” Cobb told me, “I spent all my time thinking baseball—of plays I could make...of tricks I could try. Baseball was one hundred per cent of my life.”

From the start, Cobb never lost an opportunity to study his craft. I recall that in 1904, working on a tip, I got Ab Powell, Atlanta’s manager, to sign a long, loose-jointed fireballer known as Happy Harry Hale, from Happy Hollow, Tennessee.

Cobb was then with Augusta. I made considerable copy of Happy Harry’s debut. On the day he was to pitch, Cobb got permission to come to Atlanta to study the unveiling of the young phenom.

Built like a tuning fork, Harry Hale was 6 feet 6—and all up. He couldn’t have weighed more than 140, soaking wet. For four innings that day, with his long, lean arm and his tall, lean body, Hale’s fast ball moved ‘em down. At the end of the fourth he was breezing along with a potential no-hitter.

Then in the fifth some dastard in human form bunted. Happy Harry had never seen a bunt. By the time he’d unraveled his frame, the runner was on first. Another safe bunt! When the third man bunted, Hale crashed in, arms and legs akimbo, tried to scoop up the ball and spiked his own hand. That was the finish of Happy Harry Hale and sportswriter Rice’s discovery.

Three years later, in 1907, in Washington, a country pitcher from Weiser, Idaho, was mowing down Detroit—along with Cobb. For three innings they couldn’t dent him. Cobb remembered the episode of Harry Hale. He told his manager, Hughie Jennings. The Tigers started bunting on the young smokeballer named Walter Johnson, who, like Hale, couldn’t field bunts at the time. That was also Johnson’s end—that day. But it never worked again.

“I’d sometimes figure out a play—or a weakness—and then have to wait a month or a year before the chance came to use it,” reflected Cobb.

Incidentally, while returning on the train next morning to Augusta following Harry Hale’s losing battle to the bunt, young Cobb fell into conversation with a large fat boy from Milledgeville, Georgia. His name was Babe Hardy, later famous as a member of the comedy team, Laurel and Hardy. Cobb told Hardy he was with the Augusta team.

“Are you the bat boy?” Hardy asked.

“Bat boy?” blurted Cobb. “You come to the game today; I’ll show you.”

Babe took in the game. “It was something at that,” reflected Hardy one day 40 years later on the Hal Roach lot. “Cobb hammered a single, two doubles, a triple and a home run—and stole two bases.”

“You’re not the only one he fooled,” I replied, mentioning the telegram from Royston, Georgia, I’d snubbed back in 1904. It had hardly occurred to me then that in addition to his 4,191 hits and 892 stolen bases—including 96 during the 1915 season—Cobb would also lead the American League for 12 out of 13 consecutive years and average a .367 mark for 24 seasons. During those years Cobb outshone the likes of Joe Jackson, Napoleon Lajoie, Sam Crawford, Tris Speaker, Elmer Flick, Eddie Collins—fellows who lived to hit. There was also a young fellow named George Sisler, who hit .420 in 1922. In those days they threw the .350 hitters back.

Almost from the start, Cobb figured out every baseball record that he might break. During those evenings alone he studied the record book. Home runs were fated to be Ruth’s domain, but Cobb trampled most of the others. He scored 2,244 runs. Lord, how he concentrated on runs! He scored more than once from first on a single.

Durability? In 1922, 18 years after he broke in at the age of 19, Cobb batted .401. That, to me, is the most incredible mark of the list—surpassing even the .323 he hit in his 24th and final year. He batted over .300 for 23 consecutive years, his first year, 1905, being the lone season he failed.

I doubt that many minutes passed during Cobb’s entire major-league span when he wasn’t ready to take full advantage of any chance that might develop...including the psychological.

An example of Cobb, the psychological tail-twister, involved Shoeless Joe Jackson of the old Chicago Black Sox. Jackson got the Shoeless Joe tag when he played with some little, dinky league in East Tennessee before joining Connie Mack’s Athletics in 1908. A farm boy from South Carolina with no spikes of his own when he first joined the club, Jackson played the outfield barefooted. The field, a former dump, was cluttered with sharp stones and broken glass. After the fourth inning of a particular game, Jackson came in shaking his head, slammed down his glove and blurted, “I quit.”

“What’s the matter, Joe?” asked his manager. “That outfield too tough on your feet?”

“It ain’t the feet,” complained Jackson. “It’s just that all that busted glass is fuzzin’ up the ball so’s I can’t peg it good.”

The rhythmed beauty of Jackson’s black bat was hitting over .400 down the home stretch of the 1911 season. Joe was leading Cobb by several fat percentage points. Detroit was playing Chicago. During batting practice the always amiable Jackson greeted Cobb.

“Hello, Ty,” said Jackson.

“Get away from me!” blurted Cobb.

“Why, what’s eatin’ on you?...” replied Jackson, hurt and wide-eyed.

“Stay away from me,” hissed Cobb.

A brooding Jackson went hitless during those first three games while Cobb fattened his average. On the last of the four-day series, Cobb, seeing Jackson in batting drill, was peaches and cream.

“Why, hello Joe...and how’s everything?” beamed Ty.

Jackson never did know quite how or why Cobb pulled the rug from under him. Cobb did. He would have given his own grandmother the “treatment” if she had been leading him. Cobb finished the season with a .420 BA; Jackson with a .408.

On August 16, 1920, when Yankee pitcher Carl Mays killed Cleveland’s brilliant infielder, Ray Chapman, with a pitched ball, Cobb was drawn into the headlines. The accident occurred in the fifth inning, with bases empty, when Mays let a fast ball get away from him. The ball struck the plate—crowding Chapman so squarely over the left temple that it dribbled down the third base line where Aaron Ward, thinking it a bunt, pounced on it and rifled to first baseman Wally Pipp. Standing motionless an instant, Chapman then collapsed. He regained consciousness in the clubhouse long enough to say, “Tell Mays not to worry,” then died during the night.

Detroit, meanwhile, was playing in Boston. The morning papers featured Cobb’s “statement” that Mays had beaned Chapman on purpose. The Detroit team arrived in New York on Friday, an off day, prior to a week end series with the Yanks. That morning Ty called me at home and asked me to come down to the Commodore Hotel.

I found Cobb in bed with a temperature of 102. Both thighs were a mass of adhesive and torn flesh, testimony to some rough base stealing. He was up to his chin in morning papers—all blasting him for that interview back in Boston.

“The first thing you need is a doctor,” I said.

“Never mind the doctor,” Ty replied. “I’ve got to be at that game tomorrow and face the wolves. Your New York papers are sure steaming things up. But this, Grant, I want you to know! I never gave out any interview! I knew nothing of what happened until long after that game.”

On Saturday, 33,000 stormed the Polo Grounds—the Stadium wasn’t completed until 1923. Cobb didn’t take batting practice, in fact didn’t appear on the field until ten minutes before the game. When he did show, the crowd stood up and booed. Making the long walk from the center-field clubhouse, Cobb stopped near home plate, stared at the crowd and bowed towards the press box, then situated himself behind home plate in the lower grandstand. In effect, he was saying, “There’s your story, gentlemen. They are responsible for it.”

Detroit won that game, Cobb getting one single, stealing one base and scoring one run—the difference. My interview with Cobb stating he had not blamed Mays was put on the wires. Sunday’s fans gave Ty a warm ovation. He replied by getting five hits in six times at bat—including four singles and a double as the Tigers cakewalked.

With nearly a quarter of a million balls being pitched during a big league season alone, helmets or no, the miracle remains that there are not more killings, especially with night baseball in such vogue.

One day in 1928 I sat in Philadelphia’s dugout at the Yankee Stadium talking with Cobb. He had come to Connie Mack from Detroit after putting in 22 years with the Tigers. Now, in his last year, at the age of 42, Ty was in a reflective mood. Vain of his skills to the very end, Cobb was slowing up...and he knew it.

“Speed is a great asset; but it’s greater when it’s combined with quickness—and there’s a big difference,” he said. “I’m about as fast as ever—once I get in motion. But my ‘flexes are fading. I’m starting much slower. I don’t get the jump any more. I can see the ball as good as ever, but I don’t get that quick start from the plate like I used to. If I could, I’d be a .350 hitter right to the end!”

Cobb played in 95 games that year. He hit .323.

One night—it must have been in 1935, a half dozen years after Cobb had quit baseball—we were together in the Detroit Athletic Club. “Nig” Clarke, the old Cleveland catcher, came by. We were jabbering about the old days when I happened to mention Clarke’s rapid tag and immediate throwing of his glove aside, signifying the third out.

Clarke laughed. “I missed many a runner who was called out,” he said. “I missed you at least ten times at the plate, Ty—times when you were called out...”

Cobb was on Nig with one wild charge. “You cost me ten runs...Runs I earned!” roared Ty. It was all I could do to pull him off and calm him down. Clarke left. Ty was still burning a half hour later.

The first player I can recall who sensed the great change that hit baseball in 1920 was Cobb and he was blunt about it.

“Well, the old game is gone,” he said one day in 1924 as we watched Babe Ruth rocket batting-practice pitches into the new Yankee Stadium bleachers. “We have another game, a newer game now. In this game, power has replaced speed and skill. Base running is about dead. They’ve all just about quit stealing...now they wait for somebody to drive ‘em home.”

Cobb pointed to Ruth, who was being watched by the players from both clubs.

“Babe Ruth has changed baseball,” he continued. “I guess more people would rather see Babe hit one over the fence than see me steal second. I feel bad about it for it isn’t the game I like to see or play. The old game was one of skill—skill and speed. And quick thinking. This game is all power. But there’ll never be another powerman like this fellow.

“The Babe was a really fine pitcher...with control, speed, a hook and the guts up there,” continued Cobb. “But he can blast that ball harder than anyone who ever lived. Just watch the ball next year...they’ll start juicing it up like a tennis ball because Ruth has made the home run fashionable.

“‘But they’ll ruin more sluggers than they’ll make. A lot of these kids, in place of learning the true science of hitting or baserunning, are trying to knock every pitch over the fence.”

Ty reflected for a moment. “There’ll be a few of these youngsters who’ll make good with the big blast. But most of ‘em won’t.”

Cobb was right. Just as Connie Mack was right! Ty might have considered the change when he authored that magazine blast against the modern players.

Cobb always resented the idea that he was a rough, or spiking, base runner. I won’t forget the day that Hal Sims, the bridge expert—and a sharper mind never cogged—tried to nettle Cobb about his base running.

It was in 1939—during the winter. I was taking my annual sojourn in California which, for years, has been an excuse for a wonderful reunion for Kit and me with our daughter Florence. Cobb was living out there and I arranged a friendly foursome at Pebble Beach with Cobb, Sims, Mysterious Montague, the fellow who shoots par with a rake and a shovel, and me. It was a four-ball match, with Cobb and me playing Sims and Montague, perhaps the strongest fellow I ever knew.

Sims was in good form...and when he was in good form, there was no better, or worse, needler. At breakfast, before teeing off that foggy morning, Sims settled his bulk over a third cup of black coffee, looked at Cobb and said, “Ty, I’ve always admired you. As a ball player you were in a world apart. But tell me this if you will. Why did you have to spike so many men?”

Cobb colored up like an old gobbler, the cords jumping up the back of his neck. He was furious, but managed to contain himself.

We teed off. Normally a pretty fair player, Cobb, still writhing, lunged at the ball as if to kill it. We lost the first seven holes.

Sims, as happy as he was tremendous, was playing lovely golf. Montague, of course, could spot us all ten strokes each and murder us; but awaiting the explosion, his mind wasn’t on the game. I, meanwhile, was trying to soothe Cobb. It was like throwing water on burning oil.

On the eighth tee, Cobb pushed his drive almost out of bounds and hit a provisional. However, both balls had landed in a bunker, so naturally Ty played his first ball. He came out all right and managed a bogie 5. Sims was keeping the card.

“What did you have, Ty?” asked Hal, as we headed for the ninth.

“A five,” said Cobb.

“A five?” questioned Hal.

Cobb exploded. Grabbing Sims’ arm in his vice-like grip, he snarled, “Listen, no one questions my word or score!”

Montague shot between the two over-age destroyers. Holding each at arm’s length, Monty advised both to act their age or he’d bash their heads together.

Hal was visibly upset by Cobb’s charge. Cobb, however, settled down and from that moment shot fine golf coming in. Sims couldn’t hit a shot.

That evening, Cobb returned to Sims’ insinuation that he, Cobb, had been a dirty base runner.

“I only recall intentionally spiking one man in twenty-four years,” he told me during dinner. “He was Frank Baker, who was squarely in the path in a Philadelphia game—in 1913 it was. There was no other way to reach the base. From the start, I concentrated on a new form of sliding. This was to send my toe for the bag. I only gave them my toe to tag! It was exactly the opposite of crashing in, hurling spikes or body at the baseman. I don’t know how many hours I worked on my type of sliding—a slide that avoided the tagger. Why, I couldn’t have been a rough base runner under my system even if I’d wanted to.

“I’ll admit I used to run wild, but I did it for a purpose,” he continued. “I wanted the other team to think I was a crazy base runner...to establish mental hazards...one way to keep up the tension. But I actually didn’t do much crazy, more particularly, dirty base running!”

As great as any of Cobb’s features was his stamina. He had that at 18—he still had it at 58. As a youngster and as a veteran ball player, Cobb hunted all winter and played ball all spring, summer and fall. He actually lived on his legs practically 12 months a year. As a result, he was able to play 3,033 big-league games and appear at bat 11,429 times.

I recall one spring, I’m sure it was 1911, the year after I’d left Nashville to come to New York, that Cobb was a holdout. He’d been with Detroit five years—a veteran. The stories drifting back from spring camp questioned Cobb’s fitness, when and if he decided to report. I didn’t hold much stock in them. Cobb never had to work into condition...he was always in condition. Knowing he was ready, he merely didn’t care to report so soon. He got his raise and reported one week before the season opened. That was the year Cobb rapped out 248 base hits for an average of .420 while stealing 83 bases. His legs must have been the most remarkable pair ever known to man—even Paavo Nurmi.

The annals of sport don’t record Cobb the polo player, but he did take a crack at that sport too. It was during the early 1930’s; he was out of baseball but the old competitive fires were still burning.

One day, at Aiken, South Carolina, Cobb watched a polo game. Something about the speed and fury of men on horseback galloping down each other’s throats appealed to him. In short order he was riding, and pretty well, but after he’d got in a few licks of polo he wanted to change the rules. Instead of three men to a side he wanted to play it one against one! Nobody wanted any part of him—including the ponies.

“That Mistah Cobb’s a madman on a horse,” an old colored groom told me one day. “He don’t ride over you!...He rides through you!”

That short interim with the horses marked Cobb’s entrance and exit from polo.

Cobb never played football. At 17 he was in baseball to stay. But many times I sat with Zuppke, Warner, Jock Sutherland or Rockne and watched them marvel at Cobb. To a man they thought he would have made a great end...with his speed, size, hands and overpowering will to win, he would have been a tartar.

Those who claim to know Cobb insist he’s one of the coldest men ever. Flint hard, perhaps, but not so cold—at least in my book. One spring day in 1947, Ty and I were motoring north from Augusta where we’d taken in the Masters Golf tournament. As we drove into Greenville, South Carolina, Ty said, “Grant, I’ve got an old friend in this town. Let’s find him,”

Driving up to the next cop he asked where he might find Joe Jackson. Informed he worked in a small liquor store on such and such street, we found it and went in. Behind the counter was Jackson. Waiting his turn, Ty stepped up, looked the old boy in the eye and said, “How’s business?”

“Just fine, sir,” replied Jackson, turning his back to rearrange a shelf.

“Don’t you know me, you old buzzard?” said Cobb.

Jackson wheeled around. “Christ, yes I know you!” grinned Joe. “I just didn’t think you knew me after all these years. I didn’t want to embarrass you or nothin’.”

It was a nice reunion—with three old gaffers fanning about the days that used to be. Jackson died four years later, in December 1951. Cobb’s paying Jackson a visit must have been the high point in the waning limbo years of one of baseball’s natural “greats”...a “fall guy” in that 1919 Black Sox scandal.