A Guide to Good Golf.
London: John Lane the Bodley Head Limited, 1925. 137p, dec. cloth. Foreword by Grantland Rice. 1921 U.S. Open winner tells how to play golf. D&J B5950. More
Grantland Rice was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a cotton dealer,[1] and his wife, Mary Beulah (Grantland) Rice.[2] His grandfather Major H. W. Rice was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War.[3]
Rice attended Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he was a member of the football team for three years, a shortstop on the baseball team, a brother in the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and graduated with a BA degree in 1901 in classics.[4] On the football team, he lettered in the year of 1899 as an end and averaged two injuries a year. On the baseball team, he was captain in 1901.[4][5]
In 1907 Rice saw what he would call the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports during the Sewanee–Vanderbilt football game: the catch by Vanderbilt center Stein Stone, on a double-pass play then thrown near the end zone by Bob Blake to set up the touchdown run by Honus Craig that beat Sewanee at the very end for the SIAA championship.[6] Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin in Spalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote, "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a mighty good second;" and that Aubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts."[7] Rice coached the 1908 Vanderbilt baseball team.
After taking early jobs with the Atlanta Journal and the Cleveland News, he later became a sportswriter for the Nashville Tennessean. The job at the Tennessean was given to him by former Sewanee Tigers coach Billy Suter, who coached baseball teams against which Rice played while at Vanderbilt. Afterwards he obtained a series of prestigious jobs with major newspapers in the Northeastern United States. In 1914 he began his Sportlight column in the New York Tribune. He also provided monthly Grantland Rice Sportlights as part of Paramount newsreels from 1925–1954.[8] He is best known for being the successor to Walter Camp in the selection of College Football All-America Teams beginning in 1925, and for being the writer who dubbed the great backfield of the 1924 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team the "Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame. A Biblical reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, this famous account was published in the New York Herald Tribune on October 18, describing the Notre Dame vs. Army game played at the Polo Grounds:
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 this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.
The passage added great import to the event described and elevated it to a level far beyond that of a mere football game. This passage, although famous, is far from atypical, as Rice's writing tended to be of an "inspirational" or "heroic" style, raising games to the level of ancient combat and their heroes to the status of demigods. He became even better known after his columns were nationally syndicated beginning in 1930, and became known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers". He and his writing are among the reasons that the 1920s in the United States are sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Sports". Rice's all-time All-America backfield was Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Ken Strong, and Ernie Nevers.[9]
His sense of honor can be seen in his own actions. Before leaving for service in World War I, he entrusted his entire fortune, about $75,000, to a friend. On his return from the war, Rice discovered that his friend had lost all the money in bad investments, and then had committed suicide. Rice accepted the blame for putting “that much temptation” in his friend's way. Rice then made monthly contributions to the man’s widow for the next 30 years.[citation needed]
According to author Mark Inabinett in his 1994 work, Grantland Rice and His Heroes: The Sportswriter as Mythmaker in the 1920s, Rice very consciously set out to make heroes of sports figures who impressed him, most notably Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, Red Grange, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Knute Rockne. Unlike many writers of his era, Rice defended the right of football players such as Grange, and tennis players such as Tilden, to make a living as professionals, but he also decried the warping influence of big money in sports, once writing in his column:
Rice authored a book of poetry, Songs of the Stalwart, which was published in 1917 by D. Appleton and Company of New York.
Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11, 1906; they had one child, the actress Florence Rice. Rice died at the age 73 on July 13, 1954, following a stroke.[2] He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
In 1951, in recognition of Rice's 50 years in journalism, an anonymous donor contributed $50,000 to establish the Grantland Rice Fellowship in Journalism with the New York Community Trust.[2][10] In 1954, the Football Writers Association established the Grantland Rice Memorial Award, given annually to an outstanding college player selected by the group.[11] The Grantland Rice Bowl, an annual college football bowl game held from 1964 to 1977, was named in his honor, as was the Grantland Rice Award given to the winner. Rice was posthumously awarded the 1966 J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The award, presented the following year at the annual induction ceremony at the Baseball Hall of Fame, is given for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing".[12]
At Vanderbilt, a four-year scholarship named for Rice and former colleague and fellow Vanderbilt alumnus Fred Russell is awarded each year to an incoming first-year student who intends to pursue a career in sportswriting. Recipients of the Fred Russell–Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship include author and humorist Roy Blount, Jr.; Skip Bayless of ESPN; Dave Sheinin of The Washington Post; and Tyler Kepner of The New York Times.[13] The press box in Vanderbilt Stadium at Vanderbilt University is dedicated to Rice and named after Rice's protégé, Fred Russell. For many years, a portion of one floor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism was designated the "Grantland Rice Suite". Grantland Avenue in his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee was named in his honor.
Rice was mentioned in an I Love Lucy episode entitled "The Camping Trip", and was portrayed by actor Lane Smith, also a native of Tennessee, in The Legend of Bagger Vance. On June 8, 2011, ESPN's Bill Simmons launched a sports and popular culture website titled Grantland, a name intended to honor Rice's legacy.[14] It operated for a little more than four years until being shuttered by ESPN on October 30, 2015, several months after Simmons's departure.[15]
London: John Lane the Bodley Head Limited, 1925. 137p, dec. cloth. Foreword by Grantland Rice. 1921 U.S. Open winner tells how to play golf. D&J B5950. More
New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1929. 302p, cloth. Introduction by Grantland Rice. Illustrated with "McDuffer" cartoons. cloth, D&J E8800;. More
New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1929. 302 pp. Introduction by Grantland Rice. Illustrated with "McDuffer" cartoons. (8vo) cloth, dust jacket. First Edition. "I'd 'a' broke ninety, but-" explaining the title on the front jacket flap. Rare Jacket upper spine chipped about 2 inches, bookplates of Robert John Smith..... More
New York: Minton, 1927. 239p. cloth. Foreword by Grantland Rice. Illustrated with plates from photographs. tan and green cloth lettered in gilt. Second Trade Edition. A classic golf biography, one of the best ever written on one of the best ever to play the game. 2nd printed a month after..... More
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931. 308p. cloth. Signed by Jones and Keeler and dedicated in 1941 Inscribed by Bobby Jones on front free endpaper: "Best Wishes for Theodore P. Le Vino"; Copy also signed by author and sports journalist O. B. Keeler, who closely followed Jones' career and watched..... More
New York: Dodd. Mead & Company, 1936. xvii, 423 pp. Foreword by Grantland Rice. Illustrated with numerous plates from photos and facsimiles, a few maps, frontispiece facsimile of David R. Forgan's tribute to golf. (Large 8vo) original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed, original..... More
Who's Who, 1928. Who's Who Insert Supplement Poster #679 Murfreesboro TN Beautiful supplement poster. The back is in excellent condition and is blank white!! Very rare item insert from a sports publication Measures roughly 7.5 X 10.75 in size. More
New York: Macmillian Publishing, 1926. 163p. Green cloth with crisp, bright gilt lettering on spine. Black design on front cover. stated. Illus. in b&w by Clare Briggs. Nice! D&J R7750. More
New York: Macmillian Publishing, 1926. 163p. Tartan cloth. ltd. ed. 244/500 stated. Illus. in b&w by Clare Briggs. Included is a A.L.S. by Briggs on New York Tribune headed paper. Nice! D&J R7720. More
London: W. Foulsham and Co. Ltd., 1953. 304p cloth Nice Jacket. Special Foreword by Bernard Darwin. D&J R7600. More
London: W. Foulsham and Co. Ltd., 1953. 304p cloth Jacket. Special Foreward by Bernard Darwin. D&J R7600. More
London: W. Foulsham and Co. Ltd., 1990. 320p cloth. Special Foreword by Bernard Darwin. Introduction by Michael McDonnell. D&J R7660. More
New York: American Sports Publishing, 1923. Covers present, bound in hard boards. More
New York: A.S. Barnes and Co. Inc., 1954. Illustrated edition, nice Jacket. More
United States of America: U.S.G.A., 1934. 48 pp. Illustrated from photographs, drawings, course maps (one for each hole and a full-page of the entire course) and ads, including a double page "Former National Open Champions" with photos of Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Francis Ouimet, Walter Hagen, etc. 28x21.7 cm. (11x8½")..... More