On Not Knowing Very Much About Football:, Part 1: Granny, the Four Horsement, Sports Journalism -- Garbo

Recently, I almost skipped the "Sports" chapter in Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns. Not much of a sports fan. Back when the world had physical newspapers, I never really read the sports section. Usually I glanced over the main headlines on the first page quickly so I'd know what the basics were on wins/losses and controversial calls and come-from-behind victories. This was only in case I needed to make sportsy chit-chat at work. I didn't hate sports; I just didn't pay attention to them, or the people who wrote about sports.  

But this last week, when I got to the "Sports" section of Deadline Artists, I decided to keep reading steadily through the best-of anthology. I had a practical reason: I'm working on a history-based project and I figured the more cultural background I had, the more authentic I could make my project set in the 1940s. But once I'd made the decision to read the collected newspaper columns about boxing and horse races and baseball, I discovered something about myself, and not something good, I'm sorry to say. I found that I'd gotten mentally lazy. 

I've always prided myself on being an informed writer, but I can't say I've been devoted to making myself a more informed reader. I never had to be, or I didn't think I did. I was a bit arrogant. I went to public school in a factory town, and compared to the people around me, I was quite rigorous and scholarly. If I skimmed a book and came across references to people, places, or things with which I was unfamiliar, I had just enough of a vague sense of the reference to keep reading. And that seemed to be plenty.

 Ro be fair, in those early days, research was harder. Since I didn't own a set of encyclopedias, anything I needed to find out about was a bit of a hassle. I'd have to put on shoes and walk down to the town library and flip through the card catalog. Having scribbled some Dewey Decimal numbers with a golf pencil on a bit of scratch paper, I'd then do an aisle search before sitting down with source materials and scan contents pages. These often weren't specific enough and I' d have to look for information by page flip. 

So, when reading Deadline Artists, when I got to one of the most celebrated pieces of sports writing ever, Grantland Rice's The Four Horsemen," I found that my appreciation was limited by imperfect knowledge of geography, the structure of our nation's military, and the positions of football payers during a game. Also, the King James Bible, early 20th century literature, and modes of travel before 1930.

I remembered (faintly) once being a somewhat lazy but a slightly more-dedicated reader, one who enjoyed following up on questions raised while I was absorbing information. Frowning with concentration while I cast my mind back into the far past, I think I even have used the dictionary to look up words once in a while. And before I figured out that my parents were unreliable sources and also suspicious of worldly knowledge, I sometimes left books or magazines open on sofa cushions and went to ask my mother or father what words meant or where places were. 

Having pushed myself to read the "Sports" section of my current book, I took in a few pieces, each of which only interested me a bitt before I got to one of the most famous sports columns ever, Grantland Rice's "The Four Horsemen." Since I use Talking Books to read, I was listening to Deadline Artists on my digital book machine while I was putting up plastic storm sheeting in the attic. And I found myself, sheet plastic in one hand and staple gun in the other, truly seeming to experience moments from a 1924 football game, while also having my mind filled with questions and my memory switches toggled to ON. In fact, so much stuff came up that it will take me more than one post on the blog just to get through it all! So I'll begin:

1. The Four Horsemen  First of all, I immediately, though temporarily had them conflated with the Ghost Riders in the Sky, as sung about by Vaughn Monroe.

Once I got that sorted out, I knew the Four Horsement of the Apocalypse were in the Bible -- specifically The New Testament -- um, somewhere. And one of them was Pestilence. And a lot of writers had used the imagery for book titles or themes. For example:

Finding that I was scraping the bottom of the memory jar on this, I did some Googling. The four horsemen are in the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelations. They represent the stages of the first four of the seven seals opened before the end of the world.

                                          "Hellboy" (2004)

Mercifully, I found I'd blocked out a lot of this imagery from early religious training, but I did remember watching, on videotape, a 1958 Ingmar Bergman film (subtitled of course) called "The Seventh Seal."

2. The Seven Seals vs. The Four Horsemen  I determined, after a speed-search of the internet, that the last three seals broken in the series are the cries of martrys calling out for justice; earthqualkes and the sun being blotted out by darkness, and angels announcing he Judgement Day with trumpets. This leaves the first four seals, as represented by the Four Horsemen. There's disagreement about the exact meaning of each, but there's consensus generally that they stand for being conquered, bloodshed through war, famine (that must be the one I thought was Pestilence), and Death (or was HE Pestilence?). The four were featured in a famous woodcut by the German artist Albrecht Durer, who lived in the 1500s. 

3. Grantland Rice   The Four Horsemen, football version, were written about by sports columnist Grantland Rice, known to his friends as "Granny." Whenever I've encountered the journalist's name, I've  always had, against all reason, to filter out the mental image of food packaging from a rice mill in the Deep South. 

 

My brain:

Me, to my brain. "Oh, for heaven's sake, not the food product, the sportcaster!" *produces mental image*  Him!"

4. The Teams  I'll write more about Grantland Rice next week but for now, he's the person who wrote the famous column about the Four Horsemen. They're the fellows in the leather helmets in this post's top photo.  They were players for the Notre Dame football team, and it was the match-up of Notre Dame and Army in 1924 that became so famous.

If you are like me, each year there's mention of the Army-Navy football game, and it's familiar but you're also thinking, "Like the Army Army, and why do they even play football? But then something distracts you ("Squirrel!") and you don't think about it again for another year. 

The Army football team is actually a college team, specifically the official team of the United States Military Academy, which most people call "West Point." The Academy is located in West Point, New York, roughly fifty miles north of New York City. The Army team usually plays its home games at Michie Stadium, on the campus of the Academy. 

The Army team, now known as the Black Knights,   were called the Cadets back in 1924. Football as a sport was still relatively new, and the inexperienced Cadet team was formed originally to play against the established Navy team, the Midshipmen, from the Naval Academy in Annapolis. After a non-unexpected defeat, the Army team gained experience  over the years and went on to face a number of other rivals. 

In October of 1924, it was Notre Dame, and Army's turn to host the rivalry. Because the turnout was expected to be too large for Michie Stadium, the Army/Notre Dame matchup was set to take place at the Polo Grounds in New York City. 

So now we have players on horseback at the Polo Grounds. Okay, they didn't play the game from the saddle, just a photo opportunity. But the combination baseball/football stadium, built in a new location, had originally been in Central Park and it had been used for polo. The Polo Grounds were built in 1911, and Yankee Stadium was built in 1923. You can see both in this photo. The Polo Grounds, built in 1880, are at the lower left, and look more like a proper football horseshoe-shaped stadium. [murmuring] Horseshoe, horses, polo, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. . . wait, what was I saying? Oh, right the shape of the Polo Grounds. I remember! And Yankee Stadium, built the year before Notre Dame met Army at the Polo Grounds is up at the upper right, with walls in more of a V-shape. 

I know that NYC football fans got to the game via subway, but I have no idea how the teams got to the stadium. Even though it was only fifty-some miles from West Point to Manhattan, it was fifty-some miles on 1924 roads. I used to know a woman who'd taken her honeymoon trip in 1924, and the couple had spent an unscheduled two days in some small town while the husband recovered from the effects of dirt blown into his eyes from the unpaved road into the open touring car. When the young groom recovered enough to continue the trip, he and his wife wore protective goggles for the rest of the trip. 

And of course the Notre Dame team had to get themselves from Indiana into New York City. And since the interstates weren't built yet, I bet the route was more wavering than this modern trip map and it took a lot longer than it would take now. The players were no doubt jolting along in a vehicle without shock absorbers. I assume they had some time to rest up once they made the trip. 

I don't know about you, dear reader, but my brain is whirling from all this already and we haven't even gotten to Grantland Rice's account of the famous football game. I'll have to pick this up (and run with it!) next week.  

Next week: Continuing with Grantland Rice and sports journalism's effect on me, plus the mythology of Knute Rockne and who knows what else.

                                              *****

Noes: 

The image of the Polo Grounds came from this source. It's an interesting history of the "absurd" triple stadium. 

 If you'd like to know more about the book Deadline Artists, here is a link.

The cable channel ESPN used to have a blog called "Grantland."

The site's been gone for a while bu there's an archive of its posts.

                                                 Garbo