The tumult and the shouting : my life in sport.

by Grantland Rice

This autobiography is about one of America’s greatest sport writers, Grantland Rice, who at the time he published this book, had written more than 22,000 columns, 7,000 sets of verse, over 1,000 magazine articles – plus radio outbursts for 32 seasons. He was still turning out a column six days a week for some 80 newspapers throughout the country. He wrote about the greats, Ty Cobb, Bobby Jones, Babe Ruth, Gene Tunney, Bill Tilden, Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen, Helen Wills, Tommy Hitchcock, Jim Thorpe, Ben Hogan, and many others. Here are profiles, insights, comments, and straightforward reporting. Historical, vintage.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Baseball, Biography, Memoir, History

426 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Dan]

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine. But those are aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller 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 this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

Grantland Rice, who wrote this memoir, was America’s pre-eminent national sportswriter of the early 20th century. His elegant prose and his statesman like persona were legendary. He was one of the few sportswriters who incorporated poetry in his writings, some of which is included in this book and is actually quite good.

In a fifty year career there is a lot that stands out. He is perhaps most known today for an article he wrote in 1924 about a Notre Dame vs Army football game. Rice wrote the famous lead about the famous Knute Rockne backfield and coined the famous term, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

Rice seemed to know all the major sports stars of the 20’s and 30’s personally. As a result of his access and generally positive writing he helped elevate to hero status, stars like Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne, Bobby Jones and Jack Dempsey. To be fair, the Babe would have been a hero without Rice but the others would not have received the same national attention.

Rice does a lot of name dropping in this book — which is understandable and generally entertaining. He spends the most time in the book discussing college football, baseball, boxing and golf. To a lesser degree horse racing and polo. My favorite stories were those of Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne and the Gipper. One recurrent story about the Babe was that he drove his cars too fast and drank too much. Like this one.

“Babe was known by more motorcycle cops than any athlete who ever lived. They enjoyed giving Ruth an escort to the Stadium or helping him to get away after a game. They were usually there, like the Travellers’ Aid, whenever the Babe needed a lift home to Riverside Drive after a late party.
One morning Babe asked me to pick him up for our golf game at Leewood, in Tuckahoe. “Sure,” I replied, “but what happened to your car?”
“I lost it,” said Babe.
“Lost it?” I said. “You had it last night.”
“That was last night,” replied Babe. “I wrecked it somewhere in Westchester and left it.”
So he had. The cops had driven him home.”

This book was Rice’s swan song and published in 1954, months before he died at the age of 74 from a stroke. It is a remarkable book and it came to my attention because it was listed in Sports Illustrated 100 Best Sports books of all time. I generally read non-fiction books either when I feel I have a knowledge gap about the subject or era, or I am eager for some nostalgia. This book delivers on both accounts.

4.5 stars. Highly recommended for sports fans. Rice seemed to know everyone. I deducted a half star because there was too much golf coverage.

[Greg Enloe]

Being a history buff and sports fan, I had never considered reading a book about sports history, but here it is. Rice died in 1954, three weeks after this book was published. Cobb, Ruth, Dempsey, Hogan, Jones, Tilden. Grant knew them all personally. In this book I got to know them better as well.
Rice found writing prose to be valuable to him as well. He populates the stories with vibrant pictures painted by simple rhymes that further demonstrate the breadth and scope of this man. His columns might have been the blogs of yesterday.
Really educational biography. Recommended if you enjoy history, and want to know more about who are still some of the greatest athletes who ever lived.

[Frank]

This guy, sports writer Grantland Rice, died the year I was born. We were both born in Tennessee. His newspaper columns were quite popular about 100 years ago.

I found this volume in a Little Library in my neighborhood. It was the author's final book, a summation of his career and life when he realized the end was near.

"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 1000 magazine articles -- plus radio outbursts for 32 seasons, starting with the Giants-Yankee World Series in 1922 when earphones were the rage." -- Prologue "Why This Book?"

I enjoyed reading about sports heros of yesteryear, including those I'd heard of (Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne, Jim Thorpe, Ben Hogan) and many I hadn't (Walter Hagen, The Four Horsemen, Babe Didrikson, Bill Tilden...). I was less interested in the chapters dealing with hunting.

Granny (as he was known to his friends) also hobnobbed with many fellow journalists of the day, including Don Marquis, Frank Stanton, Ring Lardner, Frank Adams... Rice spent his career on the road, covering sporting events for his newspaper employers. He was an enthusiastic amateur golfer and enjoyed socializing with sportsmen and writers for other publications.

Back in his day sportswriters wrote verse as well as narrative. This was the norm. He cites many in this book; he was good at making his points using rhyme and meter.

In the end he understood values of life vs sports. He was a good guy, a good writer, and did a good job participating in the milieu of his time and place.

[Jeff Bracken]

This autobiographical work is by one of the most renowned sports writers of the first half of the 20th century. The book is creditable for its history of the explosion of amateur and professional sports in popularity in this country, told by somebody recognized as a top sportswriters of that era. Rice, as was the norm of the time, added verse to the prose of his stories. Among the poems which remain today are (1) "For when The Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes-not whether you won or lost-but how you played the game" and (2) "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again...". Yet most of this book highlights Rice's relationship with some of the greatest athletes, his friendship (golfing and drinking) with other sportwriters and athletes. playing golf, drinking, hobnobbing, etc. And, there is a dark underside here which include his acknowledged idolization of his father's commanding officer during the Civil War (Nathan Bedford Forrest), his use of the word "colored" to refer to a black athlete, that Negroes generally function best in the extreme heat, his statements like "[t]he Indian is a great natural athlete...given the same chance he has the white man lashed to the post", and references to top female athletes as "worth looking at", "both looked awfully pretty on or off a pair of skiis", etc.

[Jeff]

I found this in a used book store, a 1954 copy by one of the top sportswriters of the early 20th century. I thought it would be a collection of his columns but it was actually more of a memoir. The most interesting part was his chapters on the 1920s, the golden age of American sport, and characters such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Bill Tilden. Less interesting, at least to me, were his chapters on horse racing and college football, two sports he wrote a lot about. Lots of names mentioned I had never heard of. Also rather interesting is the inclusion of a number of poems Rice wrote. He was one of a breed of sportswriters of former years who were also literary talents, and he often included original poems in his sports columns. Some interesting historical morsels here, but a lot that someone my age couldn't really connect with.

[Jwt Jan50]

This was a fun read. I grew up on the sports pages of the Washington Star, the Washington Post and the Montgomery County Record which was a weekly. The editor was my baseball coach for two years and we collaborated on his coverage of the county high school wrestling tournament my senior year. Oh, and of course, reading Sports Illustrated from cover to cover for so many years. Babe Ruth's biography with Bob Considine was my first 'adult' biography. This was a nice stroll down the sports figures circa 1900 to 1954. If you've seen 'Bagger Vance,' then you've seen a pretty nice portrayal of Grantland Rice as the sports writer who stays at 'our hero's' boarding house. It was a different age. Tempted to go back and find some of his columns. For much of the 20's through early 50's - his was a household name across the country. Sliding toward oblivion now.

[David K]

A series of Grantland Rice writing about his memories in sports. These are not his articles from the newspapers, but him remembering his 50 years of covering athletes and sporting events. If you are a fan of this time (1890's - 1950's) of sports and athletes, this is an interesting read as you get first hand coverage of Jim Thorpe, Bobby Jones, Ty Cobb, etc.

[Joe Spoto]

A great book for older sports fans or those who are into sports history. It is a memoir about his life in sports writing which spans from around 1900 to the 1950's. Baseball, football, golf, track & field, basketball, tennis, etc. He knew all of the superstars & many on a personal level.

[Dan Bonk]

Published in 1954 reading this book is like walking into a Time Machine. It’s 1st person remembrances of guys like Bobby Jones, Knute Rockne, Jack Dempsey, Ty Cain and Babe Ruth. Fascinating but lots of things I’ve read in other places as this book has been used by many as a source.

[SP Meyer]

Enjoyed reading again after 65 years.

[Diane]

I mprtant

Let's you know about a time that will never come again.you come to know a little about people that were important and made a difference.