Football Days Part 20

"My injury proved a blessing," says Reiter, "as it gave me an extra year, for in those days a year did not count in football, unless you played against Yale, and when I made the touchdown against Yale the following season, it was a happy moment for me."

All is not clear sailing in football. The breaks must come some time.

They may come singly or in a bunch, but whenever they do come, it takes courage to buck the hard luck in the game. Just when things get nicely under way one of the star players is injured, which means the systematic team work is handicapped. It is not the team, as a whole that I am thinking of, but the pangs of sorrow which go down deep into a fellow's soul, when he finds that he is injured; that he is in the hands of the doctor. It is then he realizes that he is only a spoke in the big wheel; that the spirit of the game puts another man in his place. The game goes on. Nature is left to do her best for him.

Let us for a while consider the player who does not realize, until after the game is over, that he is hurt. It is after the contest, when the excitement has ceased, when reaction sets in, that a doctor and trainer can take stock of the number and extent of casualties.

When such injured men are discovered, at a time like that, we wonder how they ever played the game out. In fact the man never knew he was injured until the game was over. No more loyal supporter of football follows the big games than Reggi Wentworth, Williams, '91.

He is most loyal to Bill Hotchkiss, Williams '91.

"At Williamstown, one year," Wentworth says, "Hotchkiss, who was a wonderful all round guard, probably as great a football player as ever lived (at least I think so) played with the Williams team on a field covered with mud and snow three inches deep. The game was an unusually severe one, and Hotchkiss did yeoman's work that day.

"As we ran off the field, after the game, I happened to stop, turned, and discovered Hotchkiss standing on the side of the field, with his feet planted well apart, like an old bull at bay. I went back where he was and said:

"'Come on, Bill, what's the matter?'

"'I don't know,' said he. 'There's something the matter with my ankles.

I don't think I can walk.'

"He took one step and collapsed. I got a boy's sled, which was on the field, laid Hotchkiss on it and took him to his room, only to find that both ankles were sprained. He did not leave his room for two weeks and walked with crutches for two weeks more. It seemed almost unbelievable that a man handicapped as he was could play the game through. Splints and ankle braces were unknown in those days. He went on the field with two perfectly good ankles. How did he do it?"

Charles H. Huggins, of Brown University, better known perhaps, simply as "Huggins of Brown," recalls a curious case in a game on Andrews Field:

"Stewart Jarvis, one of the Brown ends, made a flying tackle. As he did so, he felt something snap in one of his legs. We carried him off to the field house, making a hasty investigation. We found nothing more apparent than a bruise. I bundled him off to college in a cab; gave him a pair of crutches; told him not to go out until our doctor could examine the injury at six o'clock that evening. When the doctor arrived at his room, Jarvis was not there. He had gone to the training table for dinner. The doctor hurried to the Union dining-room, only to find that Jarvis had discarded the crutches and with some of the boys had gone out to Rhodes, then, as now, a popular resort for the students. Later, we learned that he danced several times. The next morning an X-ray clearly showed a complete fracture of the tibia.

"How it was possible for a man, with a broken leg, to walk around and dance, as he did, is more than I can fathom."

What is there in a man's make-up that leads him to conceal from the trainer an injury that he receives in a game; that makes him stay in the field of play? Why is it that he disregards himself, and goes on in the game, suffering physical as well as mental tortures, plucky though handicapped? The playing of such men is extended far beyond the point of their usefulness. Yes, even into the danger zone. Such men give everything they have in them while it lasts. It is not intelligent football, however, and what might be called bravery is foolishness after all. It is an unwritten law in football that a fresh subst.i.tute is far superior to a crippled star. The keen desire to remain in the game is so firmly fixed in his mind that he is willing to sacrifice himself, and at the same time by concealing his injury from the trainer and coaches he, unconsciously, is sacrificing his team; his power is gone.

One of the greatest exhibitions of grit ever seen in a football game was given by Harry Watson of Williams in a game at Newton Center between Williams and Dartmouth. He was knocked out about eight times but absolutely refused to leave the field.

Another was furnished by W. H. Lewis, the Amherst captain and center rush, against Williams in his last game at Amherst--the score was 0-0 on a wet field. Williams was a big favorite but Lewis played a wonderful game, and was all over the field on the defense. When the game was over he was carried off, but refused to leave the field until the final whistle.

One of the most thrilling stories of a man who was game, though handicapped, is told by Morris Ely, quarterback for Yale, 1898.

"My most vivid recollection of the Harvard-Yale game of 1898 is that Harvard won by the largest score Yale had ever been beaten by up to that time, 17 to 0. Next, that the game seemed unusually long. I believe I proved a good exponent of the theory of being in good condition. I started the game at 135 pounds, in the best physical condition I have ever enjoyed, and while I managed to acc.u.mulate two broken ribs, a broken collar-bone and a sprained shoulder, I was discharged by the doctor in less than three weeks as good as ever.

"I received the broken ribs in the first half when Percy Jaffrey fell on me with a proper intention of having me drop a fumbled ball behind our goal line, which would have given Harvard an additional touchdown instead of a touchback. I did not know just what had gone wrong but tried to help it out by putting a s.h.i.+n guard under my jersey over the ribs during the intermission. No one knew I was hurt.

"In the second half I tried to stop one of Ben Dibblee's runs on a punt and got a broken collar-bone, but not Dibblee. About the end of the game we managed to work a successful double pa.s.s and I carried the ball to Harvard's ten-yard line when Charlie Daly, who was playing back on defense, stopped any chance we had of scoring by a hard tackle. There was no getting away from him that day, and as I had to carry the ball in the wrong arm with no free arm to use to ward him off, I presume, I got off pretty well with only a sprained shoulder. The next play ended the game, when Stub Chamberlin tried a quick place goal from the field and, on a poor pa.s.s and on my poor handling of the ball, hit the goal post and the ball bounded back. I admit that just about that time the whistle sounded pretty good as apparently the entire Harvard team landed on us in their attempt to block a kick."

Val Flood, once a trainer at Princeton, recalls a game at New Haven, when Princeton was playing Yale:

"Frank Bergen was quarterback," he says. "I saw he was not going right, and surprised the coaches by asking them to make a change. They asked me to wait. In a few minutes I went to them again, with the same result. I came back a third time, and insisted that he be taken out. A subst.i.tute was put in. I will never forget Bergen's face when he burst into tears and asked me who was responsible for his being taken out. I told him I was. It almost broke his heart, for he had always regarded me as a friend. I knew how much he wanted to play the game out. He lived in New Haven. When the doctor examined him, it was found that he had three broken ribs. There was great danger of one of them piercing his lungs had he continued in the game. Of course, there are lots of boys that are willing to do such things for their Alma Mater, but the gamest of all is the man who, with a broken neck to start with, went out and put in four years of college football. I refer to Eddie Hart, who was not only the gamest, but one of the strongest, quickest, cleanest men that ever played the game, and any one who knows Eddie Hart and those who have seen him play, know that he never saved himself but played the game for all it was worth. He was the life and spirit of every team he ever played on at Exeter or Princeton."

Ed Wylie, an enthusiastic Hill School Alumnus, football player at Hill and Yale, tells the following anecdote:

"The nerviest thing I ever saw in a football game was in the Hill-Hotchkiss 0 to 0 game in 1904. At the start of the second half, Arthur Cable, who was Hill's quarterback, broke his collar-bone. He concealed the fact and until the end of the game, no one knew how badly he was hurt. He was in every play, and never had time called but once.

He caught a couple of punts with his one good arm and every other punt he attempted to catch and m.u.f.fed he saved the ball from the other side by falling on it. In the same game, a peculiar thing happened to me. I tackled Ted Coy about fifteen minutes before the end of the game, and until I awoke hours later, lying in a drawing-room car, pulling into the Grand Central Station, my mind was a blank. Yet I am told the last fifteen minutes of the game I played well, especially when our line was going to pieces. I made several gains on the offensive, never missed a signal and punted two or three times when close to our goal line."

No less noteworthy is the spirit of a University of Pennsylvania player, who was handicapped during his gridiron career with Penn' by many severe injuries. This man had worked as hard as any one possibly could to make the varsity for three years. His last year was no different from previous seasons; injuries always worked against him. In his final year he had broken his leg early in the season. A short time before the Cornell game he appeared upon the field in football togs, full of spirit and determined to get in the game if they needed him. This was his last chance to play on the Penn' team.

I was an official in that game. Near its close I saw him warming up on the side line. His knee was done up in a plaster cast. He could do nothing better than hobble along the side lines, but in the closing moments when Penn' had the game well in hand, a mighty shout went up from the side lines, as that gallant fellow, who had been handicapped all during his football career, rushed out upon the field to take his place as the defensive halfback. Cornell had the ball, and they were making a tremendous effort to score. The Cornell captain, not knowing of this man's physical condition, sent a play in his direction. The interference of the big red team crashed successfully around the Penn'

end and there was left only this plucky, though handicapped player, between the Cornell runner and a touchdown.

Putting aside all personal thought, he rushed in and made a wonderful tackle. Then this hero was carried off the field, and with him the tradition of one who was willing to sacrifice himself for the sport he loved.

Andy Smith, a former University of Pennsylvania player, was a man who was game through and through. He seemed to play better in a severe game, when the odds were against him. Smith had formerly been at Pennsylvania State College. In a game between Penn' State and Dartmouth, Fred Crolius, of Dartmouth, says of Smith:

"Andy Smith was one of the gamest men I ever played against. This big, determined, husky offensive fullback and defensive end, when he wasn't b.u.t.ting his head into our impregnable line, was smas.h.i.+ng an interference that nearly killed him in every other play. Battered and bruised he kept coming on, and to every one's surprise he lasted the entire game. Years afterward he showed me the scars on his head, where the wounds had healed, with the nave remark: 'Some team you fellows had that year, Fred.' Some team was right. And we all remember Andy and his own individual greatness."

There is no finer, unselfish spirit brought out in football, than that evidenced in the following story, told by Shep Homans, an old time Princeton fullback:

"A young fellow named Hodge, who was quarterback on the Princeton scrub, was making a terrific effort to play the best he could on the last day of practice before the Yale game. He had hoped even at the last hour that the opportunity might be afforded him to be a subst.i.tute quarter in the game. However, his leg was broken in a scrimmage. As he lay on the ground in great pain, realizing what had happened and forgetting himself, he looked up and said:

"'I'm mighty glad it is not one of the regulars who is hurt, so that our chance against Yale will not be affected.'"

Crolius, one of the hardest men to stop that Dartmouth ever had, tells of Arthur Poe's gameness, when they played together on the Homestead Athletic Club team, after they left college. "Arthur Poe was about as game a man as the football world ever saw. He was handicapped in his playing by a knee which would easily slip out of place. We men who played with him on the Homestead team were often stopped after Arthur had made a magnificent tackle and had broken up heavy interference, with this quiet request:

"'Pull my b.u.m knee back into place.'

"After this was done, he would jump up and no one would ever know that it had been out. This man, who perhaps was the smallest man playing at that time, was absolutely unprotected. His suit consisted of a pair of shoes, stockings, unpadded pants, jersey and one elastic knee bandage."

Mike Donohue, a Yale man who had been coach at Auburn for many years, vouches for the following story:

When Mike went to Auburn and for several years thereafter he had no one to a.s.sist him, except a few of the old players, who would drop in for a day or so during the latter part of the season. One afternoon Mike happened to glance down at the lower end of the field where a squad of gra.s.s-cutters (the name given to the fourth and fifth teams) were booting the ball around, when he noticed a pretty good sized boy who was swinging his foot into the ball with a good stiff leg and was kicking high and getting fine distance. Mike made a mental note of this fact and decided to investigate later, as a good punter was very hard to find.

Later in the afternoon he again looked towards the lower end of the field and saw that the gra.s.s-cutters were lining up for a scrimmage among themselves, using that part of the field, which was behind the goal post, so he dismissed the squad with which he had been working and went down to see what the boy he had noticed early in the afternoon really looked like. When he arrived he soon found the boy he was looking for. He was playing left end and Mike immediately noticed that he had his right leg extended perfectly straight behind him. Stopping the play, Mike went over to the fellow and slapping him on the back said:

"Don't keep that right leg stiff behind you like that. Pull it up under you. Bend it at the knee so you can get a good start."

With a sad expression on his face, and tears almost in his eyes, the boy turned to Mike and said:

"Coach, that d.a.m.n thing won't bend. It's wood."

Vonalbalde Gammon, one of the few players who met his death in an intercollegiate game, lived at Rome, Georgia, and entered the University of Georgia in 1896. He made the team his first year, playing quarterback on the eleven which was coached by Pop Warner and which won the Southern champions.h.i.+p. He received the injury which caused his death in the Georgia-Virginia game, played in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 30th, 1897. He was a fine fellow personally and one of the most popular men at the University. As a football player, he was an excellent punter, a good plunger, and a strong defensive man. On account of his kicking and plunging ability he was moved to fullback in his second year.

In the Virginia game he backed up the line on the defense. All that afternoon he worked like a Trojan to hold in check the powerful ma.s.ses Virginia had been driving at the tackles. Early in the second half Von dove in and stopped a ma.s.s aimed at Georgia's right tackle, but when the ma.s.s was untangled, he was unable to get up. An examination showed that he was badly hurt. In a minute or two, however, he revived and was set on his feet and was being taken from the field by Coach McCarthy, when Captain Kent, thinking that he was not too badly hurt to continue in the game, said to him:

"Von, you are not going to give up, are you?"

"No, Bill," he replied, "I've got too much Georgia grit for that."

These were his last words, for upon reaching the side lines he lapsed into unconsciousness and died at two o'clock the next morning.

Gammon's death ended the football season that year at the University. It also came very near ending football in the State of Georgia, as the Legislature was in session, and immediately pa.s.sed a bill prohibiting the playing of the game in the State.

However, Mrs. Gammon--Von's mother--made a strong, earnest and personal appeal to Governor Atkinson to veto the bill, which he did.