- Home
- Our Stories
- 1966 BBWAA Career Excellence Award Winner Grantland Rice
1966 BBWAA Career Excellence Award Winner Grantland Rice
Born in Murfreesboro, Tenn., in 1880, Grantland Rice, the winner of the 1966 BBWAA Career Excellence Award, began his legendary career in journalism as sports editor of the Nashville Daily News. He later moved to the Atlanta Journal where, as sports editor, he received telegrams relating the exploits of a promising young ballplayer in Anniston, Ala. The player was Ty Cobb and, as the Hall of Famer later admitted, it was Cobb who was responsible for the telegrams.
Rice later joined the Cleveland News, in part to follow the exploits of the great Nap Lajoie. After returning for a few years to Tennessee, the call of New York lured him to the Evening Mail in 1911. There, Rice joined such notables as cartoonist Rube Goldberg and columnist Franklin P. Adams. Rice later covered the sporting scene with the Herald-Tribune and the New York Daily News.
On July 13, 1954, less than a month following the completion of his classic autobiography, "The Tumult and the Shouting", Rice passed away. Fred Lieb reminisced that "Rice was more than a great sportswriter; he was a national institution."
Fred Russell recalled that Rice was "the outstanding man in the history of his profession, and the most beloved; his gift for poetry and prose and his sense of honor and fairness contributed inestimably to the wholesome development of sports in America." And Red Smith called Rice "the greatest man I have known, the greatest talent, the greatest gentleman."
More BBWAA Career Excellence Winners
Hall of Fame Awards
Related Stories
Lou Brock and Hoyt Wilhelm elected to the Hall of Fame
Symposium brings together baseball, academia
GOLDEN ERA COMMITTEE ANNOUNCES RESULTS
1957 Hall of Fame Game
Nolan Ryan’s Hall of Fame Plaque to Make Historic Journey to Texas
1969 Hall of Fame Game
2017 Today's Game Era Ballot Announced
Experience History at the Museum During Hall of Fame Weekend 2016, July 22-25
July 22-25 Hall of Fame Weekend Brings Stars To Cooperstown
01.01.2023
BL-175.2003, Folder 2, Corr01d
01.01.2023
Robin Yount and Dave Winfield were picked No. 3 and No. 4 overall in the MLB Draft
01.01.2023
Ten Named to Today’s Game Era Ballot for National Baseball Hall of Fame Consideration
01.01.2023