Football Days Part 27

"Ned Mahan," said Pooch, "was the best all-around football man I have ever handled. He was easy to handle, eager to do as he was told, and he never caused the trainer any worry. Up to the very last moment he played, he was eager to learn everything he could that would improve his game. He had lots of football ability.

"You know Mahan was a great star at Andover. He kicked wonderfully there and was good in all departments of the game, and he improved a hundred per cent. after he came to Harvard."

Pooch Donovan told me about the first day that Eddie Mahan came out upon the Harvard field. At Cambridge, little is known by the head coach about a freshman's ability. One day Haughton said to Pooch Donovan:

"Where is that Natick friend of yours? Bring him over to the Stadium and let's see him kick."

Donovan got Mahan and Haughton said to Mahan:

"Let's see you kick."

Mahan boosted the ball seventy yards, and Haughton said:

"What kind of a kick is that?"

Mahan thought it was a great kick.

"How do you think any ends can cover that?" said Haughton.

Mahan thereupon kicked a couple more, low ones, but they went about as far.

"Who told you _you_ could kick?" quoth Haughton. "You must kick high enough for your ends to cover the distance."

"Take it easy and don't get excited," Donovan was whispering to Mahan on the side. "Take your time, Ned."

But Mahan continued kicking from bad to worse. Haughton was getting disgusted, and finally remarked:

"Your ends never can cover those punts."

Mahan then kicked one straight up over his head, and the first word ever uttered by him on the Harvard field, was his reply to Haughton:

"I guess almost any end can cover _that_ punt," he said.

Donovan tells me that he used to carry in his pocket a few blank cartridges for starting sprinters. Sitting on a bench with some friends, on Soldiers' Field, one day he reached into his hip pocket for some loose tobacco. Unconsciously he stuffed into the heel of his pipe a blank cartridge that had become mixed with the tobacco. The gun club was practicing within hearing distance of the field. As Donovan lighted his pipe the cartridge went off. He thought he was shot. Leaping to his feet he ran down the field, his friends after him.

"I was surprised at my own physical condition--at my being able to stand so well the shock of being shot," says Donovan in telling the story. "My friends thought also that I was shot. But when I slowed up, still bewildered, and they caught up with me, they were puzzled to see my face covered with powder marks and a broken pipe stem sticking out of my mouth.

"Not until then did any of us realize what had really happened. The cartridge had grazed my nose slightly, but outside of that I was all right. Since then I am very careful what I put in my tobacco."

Eddie is known as "Pooch Donovan's pet." Probably the bluest time that Donovan ever had--in fact, he says it was the bluest--was when Eddie Mahan had an off-day in the Stadium. That was the day when Cornell beat Harvard. Mahan himself says it was the worst day he ever had in his life, and he blames himself.

"It was just as things will come sometimes," Pooch said to me. "n.o.body knows why they will come, but come they will once in a while."

"Burr, the great Harvard captain," said Pooch, "was a natural born leader of men. He knew a lot of football and Haughton thought the world of him. Burr went along finely until the last week of the season. Then, in falling on the ball, he bruised his shoulder, and would not allow himself to go into the Yale game. It was really this display of good judgment on his part that enabled Harvard to win.

"Too often a team has been handicapped by the playing of a crippled veteran. As a matter of fact, the worst kind of a subst.i.tute is often better than a crippled player. The fact that the great captain, Burr, stood on the side lines while his team was playing, urged his team mates on to greater efforts.

"In this same game the opposite side of this question was demonstrated.

Bobbie Burch, the Yale captain, who had been injured the week before the game, was put in the game. His injury handicapped the Yale team considerably."

Pooch Donovan has been eight years at Harvard. He has five gold footb.a.l.l.s, which he prizes and wears on his watch chain. During the eight years there have been five victories over Yale, two ties and one defeat. Pooch has been a football player himself and the experience has made him a better trainer.

In 1895 he played on Temple's team of the Duquesne Athletic Club. He was trainer and halfback, and was very fond of the game. Later on he played in Cleveland against the Chicago Athletic Club, on whose team played Heffelfinger, Sport Donnelly, and other famous knights of the gridiron.

"In the morning we did everything we could to make the stay of the visiting team pleasant," says Donovan, regarding those days, "but in the afternoon it was different, and in the midst of the game a fellow couldn't help wondering how men could be so nice to each other in the morning and so rough in the afternoon."

Pooch Donovan cannot say enough in favor of Doctor E. H. Nichols, the doctor for the Harvard team. Pooch's judgment is endorsed by many a Harvard man that I have talked to.

Keene Fitzpatrick

When Biffy Lea was coaching at the University of Michigan in 1901, it was my opportunity and privilege to see something of Western football. I was at Ann Arbor a.s.sisting Lea the last week before Michigan played Chicago. Michigan was defeated. That night at a banquet given to the Michigan team, there arose a man to respond to a toast.

His words were cheering to the men and roused them out of the gloom of despair and defeat to a strong hope for the coming year. That man was Keene Fitzpatrick. I had heard much about him, but now that I really had come to meet him I realized what a magnetic man he was.

He knew men and how to get the best out of them. Fitzpatrick went from Michigan to Yale, from Yale back to Michigan, and then to Princeton, where Princeton men hope he will always stay.

Michigan admirers were loath to lose Fitzpatrick and their tribute to him on leaving was as follows:

"The University of Michigan combination was broken yesterday when Keene Fitzpatrick announced that he had accepted Princeton's offer, to take effect in the fall of 1910. He was trainer for Michigan for 15 years.

For five years Fitz' has been sought by every large university in the East.

"What was Michigan's loss, was Princeton's gain. He made men better, not alone physically, but morally. His work has been uplifting along all lines of university activities. In character and example he is as great and untiring as in his teaching and precept. The final and definite knowledge of his determination to leave Michigan is a severe blow to the students all of whom know and appreciate his work. Next to President Angell, no man of the University of Michigan, in the last ten years, has exerted a more wholesome influence upon the students than has Keene Fitzpatrick. His work brought him in close touch with the students and his influence over them for good has been wonderful. He is a man of ideals and clean life."

"To 'Fitz,' as the boys called him, as much as to the great coach Yost is due Michigan's fine record in football. His place will be hard to fill. Fitz has aided morally in placing athletics on a high plane and in cultivating a fine spirit of sportsmans.h.i.+p. He was elected an honorary member of the cla.s.s of 1913 at Princeton. The Secretary of the cla.s.s wrote him a letter in which he said: 'The senior cla.s.s deeply appreciates your successful efforts, and in behalf of the University takes this opportunity of expressing its indebtedness to you for the valuable results which you have accomplished.'"

Yost had a high opinion of Fitzpatrick.

"Fitz and I worked together for nine years," writes Yost. "We were like brothers during that a.s.sociation at Michigan. There is no one person who contributed so much to the University of Michigan as this great trainer. His wonderful personality, his expert a.s.sistance and that great optimism of his stood out as his leading qualifications. My a.s.sociation with him is one of the pleasantest recollections of my life. He put the men in shape, trained them and developed them. They were 'usable' all the time. He is a trainer who has his men in the finest mental condition possible. I don't think there was ever a trainer who kept men more fit, physically and mentally, than Keene Fitzpatrick."

There were in Michigan two players, brothers, who were far apart in skill. Keene says one was of varsity calibre, but wanted his brother, too, to make the Eleven. "Once," says Keene, "when we were going on a trip, John, who was a better player, said, 'I will not go if Joe cannot go,' so in order to get John, we had to take Joe."

Fitzpatrick tells of an odd experience in football. "In 1901 Michigan went out to Southern California and played Leland Stanford University at Pasadena, January 1. When the Michigan team left Ann Arbor for California in December, it was 12 below zero and when they played on New Year's it was 80 at 3 P. M."

Stanford was supposed to have a big advantage due to the climate.

Michigan won by a score of 49 to 0. Michigan used but eleven men in the game, and it was their first scrimmage since Thanksgiving Day. A funny thing happened en route to Pasadena.

"Every time the train stopped," said Keene, "we hustled the men out to give them practice running through signals and pa.s.sing the ball.

Everything went well until we arrived in Ogden, Utah. We hustled the men out as usual for a work-out, and in less than two minutes the men were all in, lying down on the ground, gasping for breath. We could not understand what was wrong, until some one came along and reminded us that we were in a very high alt.i.tude and that it affected people who were not accustomed to it. We all felt better when we received that information."

Michael J. Sweeney

There are few trainers in our prep. schools who can match the record of Mike Sweeney. He has been an important part of the Hill School's athletics for years. Many of the traditions of this school are grouped, in fact, about his personality. Hill School boys are loud in their praises of Sweeney's achievements. He always had a strong hold on the students there. He has given many a boy words of encouragement that have helped him on in the school, and this same boy has come back to him in after life to get words of advice.

Many colleges tried to sever his connection with Hill School. I know that at one time Princeton was very anxious to get Sweeney's services.

He was happy at Hill School, however, and decided to stay. It was there at Hill School that Sweeney turned out some star athletes. Perhaps one of the most prominent was Tom Shevlin. Sweeney saw great possibilities in Shevlin. He taught him the fundamentals that made Shevlin one of the greatest ends that ever played at Yale. He typified Sweeney's ideal football player. Shevlin never lost an opportunity to express appreciation of what Sweeney had done for him.