Football Days Part 13

In 1904, Fred Murphy coached at Exeter. Fred says:

"This was probably the best team that Exeter had had up to that time.

The team was captained by Tommy Thompson, who afterwards played at Cornell. Eddie Hart at that time stripped at about 195 pounds. This was the famous team on which Donald MacKenzie MacFadyen played and later made the Princeton varsity. Tad Jones was quarterback the first year he came to school. In those days they took to football intuitively without much coaching. You never had to tell Tad Jones a thing more than once.

He would think things out for himself. He showed great powers of leaders.h.i.+p and good football sense. Howard Jones and Harry Vaughn played on this team."

"Charlie McCarthy of Brown will long be remembered for his great punting ability," says Fred Murphy. "He had a great many pet theories. McCarthy is one of the best football men in the Brown list." In a letter which I have received from Charlie McCarthy, as a result of a wonderful victory over Minnesota one year, McCarthy writes:

"The students of the University gave me a beautiful gold watch engraved on the inside--'To our Friend Mac from the students of the University of Wisconsin.'" This shows how highly McCarthy is held at this University.

McCarthy continues, "I go out every fall and kick around with the boys still and I hope to do so the rest of my life if I get a chance. I think the greatest football player I ever saw was Frank Hinkey. Speaking of my own ability as a player, I haven't much to say. I was not much of a football player but I got by some way. I neither had the physique, nor the ability, but tried to do my best. I am glad to say no one ever called me a quitter. I am proud to say that Brown University gave me a beautiful silver cup at the end of my four years for the best work in football, although the said cup belongs by rights to ten other men on the team."

As one visits the dressing room of the New York Giants and sees the attendant work upon the wonderful physique of Christy Mathewson, one cannot help but realize what a potent factor he must have been on Bucknell's team. When Christy played he was 6 feet tall and weighed 168 pounds stripped. He prepared at Keystone Academy, playing in the line.

In 1898, when he went to Bucknell, he was immediately put at fullback and played there three years.

Fred Crolius says of him: "Of all the long distance punters with hard kicks to handle, Percy Haughton and Christy Mathewson stand out in his memory. Mathewson had the leg power to turn his spiral over. That is, instead of dropping where ordinary spirals always drop, an additional turn seemed to carry the ball over the head of the back who was waiting for the ball, often carrying some fifteen or twenty yards beyond."

Football has no more ardent admirer than Christy Mathewson. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say of his experience in the game of football.

"I liked to play football," says Mathewson. "I was a better football player than a baseball player in those days. I was considered a good punter. I was not much as a line bucker. The captain of the team always gave me a football to take with me in the summer. I occasionally had an opportunity to practice kicking after I was through with my baseball work.

"At Taunton, Ma.s.s., my first summer, I ran across a fellow who was playing third base on the team for which I was pitching. MacAndrews was his name. He was a Dartmouth man. He showed me how to kick. He showed me how to drop a spiral. I liked to drop-kick and used to practice it quite a little."

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"I remember how tough it was for me when Bucknell played Annapolis the year before when the Navy team had a man who could kick such wonderful spirals. They were terribly hard to handle, and I was determined to profit by his example. So I just hung on for dear life, punting spirals all summer. Later I used to watch George Brooke punt a good deal when he was coaching."

"At that time drop kickers were not so numerous. I had some recollection of a fellow named O'Day, who had a great reputation as a drop-kicker, as did Hudson of Carlisle. In 1898 we were to play Pennsylvania. Our team served as a preliminary game for Pennsylvania. They often beat us by large scores. Since then we have had teams which made a 6 to 5 score.

But they had good teams in my time. We never scored on Penn, as I recall.

"Our coach said one day, at the training table, 'I'll give a raincoat to the fellow who scores on Penn to-day.' The manager walked in and overheard his remark and added, 'Yes, and I'll give a pair of shoes to the man who makes the second score against Penn.' That put some 'pep'

into us. Anyway, we were on Penn's 35-yard line and I kicked a field goal. After this we rushed the ball and got up to Penn's 40-yard line, and from there I scored again, thereby winning the shoes and the raincoat.

"I went up to Columbia one day to see them practice. It was in the days when Foster Sanford was their coach. He saw me standing on the side lines; came over to where I was; looked me over once or twice and finally said:

"'Why aren't you trying for the team? I think you'd make a football player if you came out.'

"I said I guessed I would not be eligible.

"'Why?' asked Sandy.

"'Well," I said, 'because I'm a professional.' Then some fellows around me grinned and told Sanford who I was.

"I love to think of the good old football days and some of the spirit that entered collegiate contests. Once in a while, in baseball, I feel the thrill of that spirit. It was only recently that I experienced that get-together spirit, where a team full of life with everybody working together wrought great results. That same old thrill came to me during one of the Giants' trips in the West in which they won seventeen straight victories.

"There is much good fellows.h.i.+p in football. I played against teams whose cheer leaders would give you a rousing cheer as you made a good play; then again you would meet the fellow who, when you were down in the scrimmage, or after you had kicked the ball, would try to put you down and out.

"One of the pleasantest recollections I have of playing was my experience against the two great academy teams, West Point and Annapolis.

"Never shall I forget one year when Bucknell played West Point. At an exciting moment in the game, Bucknell players made it possible for me to be in a position to kick the goal from the field from a difficult angle.

After the score had been made the West Point team stood there stupefied, and when the crowd got the idea that a goal had been kicked from a peculiar angle, they gave us a rousing cheer. Such is the proper spirit of American football; to see some suns.h.i.+ne in your opponent's play.

"Cheering helps so much to build up one's enthusiasm."

Al Sharpe was one of the greatest all-around athletes that ever wore the blue of Yale. He, too, recalls the Yale-Princeton game of 1899 at New Haven, but the memory comes to him as a nightmare.

"When I think about the 11 to 10 game at New Haven, which Princeton won," said Sharpe the last time I saw him, "I remember that after I had kicked a goal from the field and the score was 10 to 6, Skim Brown rushed up to me, and nearly took me off my feet with one of his friendly slaps across my back. Well do I remember the joy of that great Yale player at this stage of the game. Later, when Poe made his kick and I saw that the ball was going over the bar, I remember that the thing I wished most was that I could have been up in the line where I might have had a chance to block the kick.

"My recollections of making the Yale team centered chiefly around three facts, none of which I was allowed to forget. First, that I was not any good, second that I couldn't tackle, and third that I ran like an ice-wagon. Since then I have seen so many really good players upon my different squads that I must admit the truth of the above statement, although at the time I am frank to say I took exception to it. Such is the optimism of youth."

Jack Munn, a former Princeton halfback, tells the following story:

"My brother, Edward Munn, was the manager of the Princeton team in 1893.

In the spring of that year there was a conference with Yale representatives to decide where the game was to be played the following fall. Berkeley Oval, Brooklyn, Manhattan Field, and the respective fields of the two colleges all came under discussion, and I believe that some of the newspapers must have taken it up. One afternoon in the Murray Hill Hotel, when representatives of Yale and Princeton were discussing the various possibilities, a bellboy knocked at the door and handed my brother an elaborately engraved card on which, among various decorations, the name of Colonel Cody was to be distinguished. Buffalo Bill was invited to come up, and it seems that, reading or hearing of the discussion about the field for the game, he came to make a formal offer of the use of his tent. After setting forth the desirability of staging the game under the auspices of his Wild West Show, he brought his offer to a close with his trump card.

"'For, gentlemen,' said he, 'besides all the other advantages which I have mentioned, there is this further attraction--my tent is well and sufficiently lighted so that you can not only hold a matinee, but you can give an evening performance as well.'

"And those were the days of the flying wedge and two forty-five minute halves with only ten minutes intermission!"

Walter C. Booth

Walter C. Booth, a former Princeton center rush, was one of the select coterie of Eastern football men that wended its way westward to carry the eastern system into inst.i.tutions that had had no opportunity to build up the game, yet were hungry for real football. Booth's trip was a successful one.

"In the autumn of 1900, after graduating from college, I arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dual role of law student and football coach of the State University," says Booth. "This was my first trip west of Pittsburgh and I viewed my new duties with some apprehension. All doubts and fears were soon put at rest by the hearty encouragement and support that I received and retained in my Nebraska football relations.

"Most of the Faculty were behind football, and H. Benjamin Andrews, at that time head of the University, was a staunch supporter of the game.

Doctor Roscoe Pound, later dean of Harvard Law School, was the father of Nebraska football. He had as intimate an acquaintance with the rule book as any official I have ever known. His advice on knotty problems was always valuable. James I. Wyer, afterward State Librarian of New York, was our first financial director, and it was largely by reason of his unflagging zeal that football survived.

"Football spirit ran high in the Missouri Valley and there were many hard fought contests among the teams of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. Those who saw these games or played in them will never forget them.

"Many amusing things happened in that section as well as in the East.

The Haskell Indians were a picturesque team. They represented the Government School at Lawrence, Kansas--an inst.i.tution similar to that of Carlisle. In fact, many of the same players played on both teams at different times. We always found them a hard nut to crack, and Redwater, Archiquette, Hauser and other Indian stars made their names well known on our field.

"John Outland, the noted Pennsylvania player, had charge of the Indians when I knew them. He was a great player and a fine type of man, who succeeded in imparting some of his own personality to his pupils. He once showed me a dark faced Indian in Lawrence who must have been at least six feet four inches tall and of superb physique. He was a full blooded Cheyenne and went by the name of Bob Tail Billy. Outland tried hard to break him in at guard, but as no one understood Bob Tail's dialect, and he understood no one else, he never learned the signals, and proved unavailable.

"We traveled far to play in those days; west to Boulder, Colorado, handicapped by an alt.i.tude of 5000 feet, south to Kansas City and north as far as St. Paul and Minneapolis. We were generally about 500 miles from our base. We were not able to take many deadheads."

Harry Kersburg is one of the most enthusiastic Harvard football players I have ever met. He played guard on Harvard in 1904, '05 and '06 and is often asked back to Cambridge to coach the center men. From his playing days let us read what he prizes in his recollections:

"My college career began at Lehigh, with the idea of eventually going to Harvard. As a football enthusiast, I came under the observation of Doctor Newton, who was coaching Lehigh at that time. Doc taught me the first football I ever knew. In one of the games against Union College Doc asked me before the game whether if he put me in I would deliver the goods. I said I would try and do my best. He said, 'That won't do. I don't want any man on my team who says, "I'll try." A man has got to say "I'll do it." From that time on I never said, 'I'll try,' but always said 'I'll do it.'

"I shall never forget the day I played against John DeWitt. I did not know much about the finer points of football then. I weighed about 165 pounds with my football clothes on, was five feet nine inches tall and sixteen years old. I shall always remember seeing that great big hawk of a man opposite me. I did not have cold feet. I knew I had to go in and give the best account of myself I could. It was like going up against a stone wall. John DeWitt certainly could use his hands, with the result that I resembled paper pulp when I came out of that game. DeWitt did everything to me but kill me. After I got my growth, weight and strength, plus my experience, I always had a desire to play against DeWitt to see if he could the same thing again.

"In a Harvard-Yale game one year I remember an incident that took place between Carr, Shevlin and myself," says Harry.