Football Days Part 28

Tom gave all credit for his athletic ability to Mike Sweeney of Hill and Mike Murphy of Yale. His last desire for Yale athletics was to bring Sweeney to Yale and have him installed, not as a direct coach or trainer of any team, but more as a general athletic director, connected with the faculty, to advise and help in all branches of college sport.

Tom Shevlin idolized Sweeney. Those who were at the banquet of the 1905 team at Cambridge will recall the tribute that Shevlin then paid to him.

He declared that he regarded Sweeney as "the world's greatest brain on all forms of athletics."

Whenever Mike Sweeney puts his heart into his work he is one of the most completely absorbed men I know.

Sweeney possesses an uncanny insight into the workings of the games and individuals. Oftentimes as he sits on the side lines he can foretell an accident coming to a player.

Mike was sitting on the Yale side lines one day, and remarked to Ed Wylie, a former Hill School player--a Yale subst.i.tute at that time:

"They ought to take Smith out of the game; he shows signs of weakening.

You'd better go tell the trainer to do it."

But before Wylie could get to the trainer, several plays had been run off and the man who had played too long received an injury, and was done for. Sweeney's predictions generally ring true.

It is rather remarkable, and especially fortunate that a prep. school should have such an efficient athletic director. For thirteen years Sweeney acted in that capacity and coached all the teams. He taught other men to teach football.

Jack Moakley

Had any one gone to Ithaca in the hope of obtaining the services of Jack Moakley, the Cornell trainer, he would have found this popular trainer's friends rising up and showing him the way to the station, because there never has been a human being who could sever the relations between Jack Moakley and Cornell.

The record he has made with his track teams alone ent.i.tles him to a high place, if not the highest place, on the trainer's roll of honor. To tell of his achievements would fill an entire chapter, but as we are confining ourselves to football, his work in this department of Cornell sports stands on a par with any football trainer.

Jack Moakley takes his work very seriously and no man works any harder on the Cornell squad than does their trainer. Costello, a Cornell captain of years ago, relates the following incident:

"Jack Moakley had a man on his squad who had a great habit of digging up unusual fads, generally in the matter of diet. At this particular time he had decided to live solely on grape nuts. As he was one of the best men on the team, Jack did not burden himself with trouble over this fad, although at several times Moakley told him that he might improve if he would eat some real food. However, when this man started a grape nut campaign among the younger members of the squad he aroused Jack's ire and upon his arrival at the field house he wiped the black board clean of all instructions and in letters a foot high wrote:

"They who eat beef are beefy."

"They who eat nuts are nutty."

The resultant kidding finally made the old beefsteak popular with our friend.

Johnny Mack

It would not seem natural if one failed to see Johnny Mack on the side lines where Yale is playing. In eleven years at New Haven Yale teams were never criticised on account of their condition. The physical condition of the Yale team has always been left entirely in Johnny Mack's hands, and the hard contests that they went through in the season of 1915 were enough to worry any trainer. Johnny Mack was always optimistic.

There is much humor in Johnny Mack. It is amusing to hear Johnny tell of the experience that he and Pooch Donovan had in a Paris restaurant, and I'm sure you can all imagine the rest. Johnny said they got along pretty well with their French until they ordered potatoes and the waiters brought in a peck of peas.

It is a difficult task for a trainer to tell whether a player is fully conscious of all that is going on in a game. Sometimes a hard tackle or a blow on the head will upset a man. Johnny Mack tells a story that ill.u.s.trates this fact:

"There was a quarterback working in the game one day. I thought he was going wrong. I said to the coach: 'I think something has happened to our quarterback.' He told me to go out and look him over. I went out and called the captain to one side after I had permission from the Referee.

I asked him if he thought the quarterback was going right. He replied that he thought he was, but called out some signals to him to see if he knew them. The quarter answered the captain's questions after a fas.h.i.+on and the captain was satisfied, but, just the same, he didn't look good to me. I asked the captain to let me give him a signal; one we never used, and one the captain did not even know.

"Said I, 'What's this one--48-16-32-12?'

"'That's me through the right end,' he said.

"'Not on your life, old man,' said I, 'that's you and me to the side lines!'

"I remember one fall," says Johnny, "when we were very shy on big material at Yale. The coaches told me to take a walk about the campus and hunt up some big fellows who might possibly come out for football.

While going along the Commons at noon, the first fellow I met was a big, fine looking man, a 210 pounder at least, with big, broad shoulders. I stopped him and asked if he had ever played football.

"'Yes,' he said, 'I played a little at school. I'll come out next week.'

I told him not to bother about next week, but to come out that afternoon--that I'd meet him at the gym' at one o'clock and have some clothes for him. He came at one o'clock and I told one of the rubbers to have some clothes ready. When I came back at 1:30 and looked around I couldn't recognize him. 'Where in the world is my big fellow?' I said to Jim the rubber.

"'Your big fellow? Why, he just pa.s.sed you,' said Jim.

"'No,' said I, 'that can't be the man; that must be some consumptive.'

"'Just the same, that's your big fellow in his football suit,' said Jim. 'The biggest part of him is hanging up in there on a nail.'

"_Some_ tailors, these fellows have nowadays."

Johnny Mack further tells of an amusing incident in Foster Sanford's coaching.

"At early practice in New Haven Sanford was working the linemen," says Johnny. "He picked a green, husky looking boy out of the line of candidates and was soon playing against him. He didn't know who Sandy was, and believe me, Sandy was handling him pretty rough to see what he was made of. The first thing you know the fellow was talking to himself and, when Sandy was careless, suddenly shot over a stiff one on Sandy's face and yelled:

"'I'm going to have you know that no man's going to push _me_ around this field.'

"Sandy was happy as could be. He patted the chap on the back and roared, 'Good stuff; you're all right. You're the kind of a man I want. We can use men like you!'

"But Foster Sanford was not the only old-timer who could take the young ones' hard knocks," says Johnny. "I've seen Heffelfinger come back to Yale Field after being out of college twenty years and play with the scrubs for fifty-five minutes without a layoff! I never saw a man with such endurance.

"Ted Coy was a big, good-natured fellow. He was never known to take time out in a game in the four years he played football. In his senior year he didn't play until the West Point game. While West Point was putting it all over us, Coy was on the side lines, frantically running up and down. But we had strict instructions from the doctor not to play him, no matter what happened.

"Suddenly Coy said: 'Johnny, let me in. I'm not going to have my team licked by this crowd.' And in he jumped.

"I saw him call Philbin up alongside of him and the first thing I knew I saw Philbin and Coy running up the field like a couple of deer. In just three plays they took the ball from our own 5-yard line to a touchdown.

After that there was a different spirit in the team. Coy was an inspiration to his players."

"One more story," says Johnny.

"There were two boys at New Haven. Their first names were Jack, and both were subst.i.tutes on the scrub. About the middle of the second half in the Harvard game, the coach told me to go and warm up Jack. One of the Jacks jumped up, while the other Jack sank back on the bench with surprise and sorrow on his face. Seeing that a mistake had been made, I said, 'Not you, but _you_, Jack,' and pointed to the other. As the right Jack jumped up, the cloudy face turned to suns.h.i.+ne, as only a football player can imagine, and the sunny smile of the first Jack turned to deepest gloom, an affecting sight I shall never forget."

"Huggins of Brown"

I know of no college trainer who seems to get more pleasure out of his work than Huggins of Brown. There are numerous incidents that are recorded in this book that have been the experiences of this good-natured trainer.

A trainer's life is not always a merry one. Many things occur that tend to worry him, but he gets a lot of fun out of it just the same. Huggins says:

"Some few years ago Brown had a big lineman on its team who had never been to New York, where we went that year to meet Carlisle. The players put in quite a bit of time jollying him and having all sorts of fun at his expense. We stopped at one of the big hotels, and the rooms were on the seventh and eighth floors. In the rooms were the rope fire escapes, common in those days, knotted every foot or so. The big lineman asked what it was for, and the other fellows told him, but added that this room was the only one so equipped and that he must look sharp that none of the others helped themselves to it for their protection against fire.

"That night, as usual, I was making my rounds after the fellows had gone to bed. Coming into this player's room I saw that he was asleep, but that there appeared to be some strange, unusual lump in the bed. I immediately woke him to find out what it was. Much to my amus.e.m.e.nt, I discovered that he had wound about fifteen feet of the rope around his body and I had an awful job trying to a.s.sure him that the boys had been fooling him. Nothing that I could say, however, would convince him, and I left him to resume his slumbers with the rope still wrapped tightly about his body."

Huggins not only believes that Brown University is a good place to train, but he thinks it is a good place to send his boy. He has a son who is a freshman at Brown as I write. Huggins went to Brown in the fall of 1896, as trainer. Here is another good Huggins story: