Football Days Part 21

Had it not been for Mrs. Gammon, football would certainly have been abolished in the State of Georgia by an act of the Legislature of 1897.

I knew a great guard whose whole heart was set on making the Princeton team, and on playing against Yale. This man made the team. In a Princeton-Columbia game he was trying his best to stop that wonderful Columbia player, Harold Weekes, who with his great hurdling play was that season's sensation. In his hurdling he seemed to take his life in his hands, going over the line of the opposing team feet first. When the great guard of the Princeton team to whom I refer tried to stop Weekes, his head collided with Weekes' feet and was badly cut.

The trainer rushed upon the field, sponged and dressed the wound and the guard continued to play. But that night it was discovered that blood poisoning had set in. There was gloom on the team when this became known. But John Dana, lying there injured in the hospital, and knowing how badly his services were needed in the coming game with Yale, with his ambition unsatisfied, used his wits to appear better than he really was in order to get discharged from the hospital and back on the team.

The physician who attended him has told me since that Dana would keep his mouth open slyly when the nurse was taking his temperature so that it would not be too high and the chart would make it appear that he was all right.

At any rate, he seemed to improve steadily, and finally reported to the trainer, Jim Robinson, two days before the Yale game. He was full of hope and the coaches decided to have Robinson give him a try-out, so that they could decide whether he was as fit as he was making it appear he was.

I shall never forget watching that heroic effort, as Robinson took him out behind the training house, to make the final test. With a head-gear, especially made for him, Dana settled down in his regular position, ready for the charge, antic.i.p.ating the oncoming Yale halfback and throbbing with eagerness to tackle the man with the ball.

Then he plunged forward, both arms extended, but handicapped by his terrible injury, he toppled over upon his face, heart-broken. The spirit was there, but he was physically unfit for the task.

The Yale game started without Dana, and as he sat there on the side lines and saw Princeton go down to defeat, he was overcome with the thought of his helplessness. He was needed, but he didn't have a chance.

CHAPTER XIV

BRINGING HOME THE BACON

Happy is the thought of victory, and while we realize that there should always be eleven men in every play, each man doing his duty, there frequently comes a time in a game, when some one man earns the credit for winning the game, and brings home the bacon. Maybe he has been the captain of the team, with a wonderful power of leaders.h.i.+p which had held the Eleven together all season and made his team a winning one. From the recollections of some of the victories, from the experiences of the men who partic.i.p.ated in them and made victory possible, let us play some of those games over with some of the heroes of past years.

Billy Bull

One of the truly great bacon-getters of the past is Yale's Billy Bull.

Football history is full of his exploits when he played on the Yale team in '85, '86, '87 and '88. Old-time players can sit up all night telling stories of the games in which he scored for Yale. His kicking proved a winning card and in happy recollection the old-timers tell of Bull, the hero of many a game, being carried off the field on the shoulders of an admiring crowd of Yale men after a big victory.

"In the course of my years at Yale, six big games were played," says Bull, "four with Princeton and two with Harvard. I was fortunate in being able to go through all of them, sustaining no injury whatsoever, except in the last game with Princeton. In this game, Channing came through to me in the fullback position and in tackling him I received a scalp wound which did not, however, necessitate my removal from the game.

"Of the six games played, only one was lost, and that was the Lamar game in the fall of '85. In the five games won I was the regular kicker in the last three, and, in two of these, kicking proved to be the deciding factor. Thus in '87--Yale 17, Harvard 8--two place kicks and one drop kick were scored in the three attempts, totaling nine points.

Considering the punting I did that day, and the fact that both place-kicks were scored from close to the side lines, I feel that that game represents my best work.

"The third year of my play was undoubtedly my best year; in fact the only year in which I might lay claim to being anything of a kicker. Thus in the Rutgers game of '87 I kicked twelve straight goals from placement. Counting the two goals from touchdowns against Princeton I had a batting average of 1000 in three games.

"Through the last year I was handicapped with a lame kicking leg and was out of form, for in the final game with Princeton that year, '88, I tried at least four times before scoring the first field goal of the game. In the second half I had but one chance and that was successful.

This was the 10-0 game, in which all the points were scored by kicking, although the ground was wet and slippery.

"It is of interest to note, in connection with drop-kicking in the old days, that the proposition was not the simple matter it is to-day. Then, the ball had to go through the quarter's hands, and the kicker in consequence had so little time in which to get the ball away that he was really forced to kick in his tracks and immediately on receipt of the ball. Fortunately I was able to do both, and I never had a try for a drop blocked, and only one punt, the latter due to the fact that the ball was down by the side line, and I could not run to the left (which would have taken me out of bounds) before kicking.

"Perhaps one of the greatest sources of satisfaction to me, speaking of punting in particular, was the fact that I was never blocked by Princeton. And yet it was extremely fortunate for me that I was a left-footed kicker and thus could run away from Cowan, who played a left tackle before kicking. If I had had to use my right foot I doubt if I could have got away with anything, for Cowan was certainly a wonderful player and could get through the Yale line as though it were paper. He always brought me down, but always after the ball had left my foot. I know that it has been thought at Princeton that I stood twelve yards back from the line when kicking. This was not so. Ten yards was the regular distance, always. But, I either kicked in my tracks or directly after running to the left."

THE DAY COLUMBIA BEAT YALE

Columbia men enthusiastically recall the day Columbia beat Yale. A Columbia man who is always on hand for the big games of the year is Charles Halstead Mapes, the ever reliable, loyal rooter for the game. He has told the tale of this victory so wonderfully well that football enthusiasts cannot but enjoy this enthusiastic Columbia version.

"Fifteen years ago Yale was supreme in football," runs Mapes' story.

"Occasionally, but only very occasionally, one of their great rivals, Princeton or Harvard, would win a game from them, but for any outsider, anybody except one of the 'Eternal Triangle,' to beat Yale was out of the question--an utter impossibility. And, by the way, that Triangle at times got almost as much on the nerves of the outside public as the Frenchmen's celebrated three--wife, husband, lover--the foundation of their plays.

"The psychological effect of Yale's past prestige was all-powerful in every game. The blue-jerseyed figures with the white Y would tumble through the gate and spread out on the field; the stands would rise to them with a roar of joyous welcome that would raise the very skies--Y-a-l-e! Y-a-l-e! Y--A--L--E!

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO ACES--BILL MORLEY AND HAROLD WEEKS]

"'Small wonder that each man was right on his toes, felt as though he were made of steel springs. All other Yale teams had won, 'We will win, of course.'

"But the poor other side--they might just as well throw their canvas jackets and mole-skin trousers in the old suit-case at once and go home.

'Beat Yale! boys, we're crazy, but every man must try his d.a.m.nedest to keep the score low,' and so the game was won and lost before the referee even blew his starting whistle.

"This was the general rule, but every rule needs an exception to prove it, and on a certain November afternoon in 1899 we gave them their belly-full of exception. We had a very strong team that year, with some truly great players, Harold Weekes and Bill Morley (there never were two better men behind the line), and Jack Wright, old Jack Wright, playing equally well guard or center, as fine a linesman as I have ever seen.

Weekes, Morley, and Wright were on the All-American team of that year, and Walter Camp in selecting his All-American team for All Time several years ago picked Harold Weekes as his first halfback.

"I can see the game now; there was no scoring in the first half. To the outsider the teams seemed evenly matched, but we, who knew our men, thought we saw that the power was there; and if they could but realize their strength and that they had it in them to lay low at last that armor-plated old rhinoceros, the terror of the college jungle--Yale,--with an even break of luck, the game must be ours.

"In the second half our opportunity came. By one of the s.h.i.+fting chances of the game we got the ball on about their 25-yard line; one yard, three yards, two yards, four yards, we went through them; there was no stopping us, and at last--over, well over, for a touchdown.

"Through some technicality in the last rush the officials, instead of allowing the touchdown, took the ball away from us and gave it to Yale.

They were right, probably quite right, but how could we think so? Yale at once kicked the ball to the middle of the field well out of danger.

The teams lined up.

"On the very next play, with every man of that splendidly trained Eleven doing his allotted work, Harold Weekes swept around the end, aided by the magnificent interference of Jack Wright, which gave him his start.

He ran half the length of the field, through the entire Yale team, and planted the ball squarely behind the goal posts for the touchdown which won the game. If we had ever had any doubt that cruel wrong is righted, that truth and justice must prevail, it was swept away that moment in a great wave of thanksgiving.

"I shall never forget it--Columbia had beaten Yale! Tears running down my cheeks, shaken by emotion, I couldn't speak, let alone cheer. My best girl was with me. She gave one quick half-frightened glance and I believe almost realized all I felt. She was all gold. I feel now the timid little pressure on my arm as she tried to help me regain control of myself. G.o.d! why has life so few such moments!"

BEHIND THE SCENES

Let us go into the dressing room of a victorious team, which defeated Yale at Manhattan Field a good many years ago and let us read with that great lover of football, the late Richard Harding Davis, as he describes so wonderfully well some of the unique things that happened in the celebration of victory.

"People who live far away from New York and who cannot understand from the faint echoes they receive how great is the enthusiasm that this contest arouses, may possibly get some idea of what it means to the contestants themselves through the story of a remarkable incident, that occurred after the game in the Princeton dressing room. The team were being rubbed down for the last time and after their three months of self-denial and anxiety and the hardest and roughest sort of work that young men are called upon to do, and outside in the semi-darkness thousands of Princeton followers were jumping up and down and hugging each other and shrieking themselves hoa.r.s.e. One of the Princeton coaches came into the room out of this mob, and holding up his arm for silence said,

"'Boys, I want you to sing the doxology.'"

"Standing as they were, naked and covered with mud, blood and perspiration, the eleven men that had won the champions.h.i.+p sang the Doxology from the beginning to the end as solemnly and as seriously, and I am sure, as sincerely, as they ever did in their lives, while outside the no less thankful fellow-students yelled and cheered and beat at the doors and windows and howled for them to come out and show themselves.

This may strike some people as a very sacrilegious performance and as a most improper one, but the spirit in which it was done has a great deal to do with the question, and any one who has seen a defeated team lying on the benches of their dressing room, sobbing like hysterical school girls, can understand how great and how serious is the joy of victory to the men that conquer."

Introducing Vic Kennard, opportunist extraordinary. Where is the Harvard man, Yale man, or indeed any football man who will not be stirred by the recollection of his remarkable goal from the field at New Haven that provided the winning points for the eleven Percy Haughton turned out in the first year of his regime. To Kennard himself the memory is still vivid, and there are side lights on that performance and indeed on all his football days at Cambridge, of which he alone can tell. I'll not make a conversation of this, but simply say as one does over the 'phone, "Kennard talking":--

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIC KENNARD'S KICK]

"Many of us are under the impression that the only real football fan is molded from the male s.e.x and that the female of the species attends the game for decorative purposes only. I protest. Listen. In 1908 I had the good fortune to be selected to enter the Harvard-Yale Game at New Haven, for the purpose of scoring on Yale in a most undignified way, through the medium of a drop-kick, Haughton realizing that while a touchdown was distinctly preferable, he was not afraid to fight it out in the next best way.

"My prayers were answered, for the ball somehow or other made its way over the crossbar and between the uprights, making the score, Harvard 4, Yale 0. My mother, who had made her way to New Haven by a forced march, was sitting in the middle of the stand on the Yale (no, I'm wrong, it was, on second thought, on the Harvard side) accompanied by my two brothers, one of whom forgot himself far enough to go to Yale, and will not even to this day acknowledge his hideous mistake.