The ep28 Sports Writers

This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another Grantlyn Rice story. There, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed. I don't know of another individual who had as many friends as did Granny Rice.

Everywhere he traveled, the Kentucky Derby, World Series, major golfing classics, championship fights, no matter what the occasion, people were always coming up to the ever-gracious Granny, introducing themselves as someone he met perhaps ten years ago at that sugar bowl football gathering in New Orleans.

he seldom recalled the occasion, but he was never abrupt with one of these well-wishers ever. In today's chapter from Granny Rice's life story, the Tumal and the Shouting, we are about to meet some men who traveled with Granny and shared in his coverage of these big events.

So with a quick salute to the evergreen spirit of Grantland Rice, I take up his narrative in first person. No newspaperman hits the road more often than the writer assigned to a major league baseball or the writer who enjoys syndication and roves at large in search of game for his grist mill, the column that hangs over his head that must be done daily including

Sundays. Believe me, at times that column looms more ominous than the albatross that hovered over the ancient mariner. Mostly however the daily column tends to become inseparable with the writer as much a part of him as his daily shave. Sports writers as a group tend to be nomads, gypsies. If they weren't of that basic cut, they wouldn't

be in that field for long. My earlier traveling mates inside the profession were Westbrook Pegler, Ring Lardner, and Bill McGian. They made any trip worthwhile, although it usually took some time to wipe out their initial annoyance with me. This trio had the habit of making a train by an hour. I had the habit of just making a train, several times after