Football Days Part 29

"Sprackling, our All-American quarterback of a few years ago, always had his nerve with him and, however tight the place, generally managed to get out with a whole skin. But I recall one occasion when the wind was taken out of his sails; he was at a loss what to say or how to act. We were talking over prospects on the steps in front of the Brown Union one morning just before college opened, the fall that he was captain, when a young chap came up and said:

"'Are you Sprackling, Captain of the Team?'

"'That's me,' replied Sprack.

"'Well, I'm coming out for quarterback,' the young man declared, 'and I expect to make it. I can run the 100 in ten-one and the 220 in evens and I'm a good quarterback. I'm going to beat you out of your job.'

"Sprack, for once in his life, was fl.u.s.tered to death. When several of the boys who were nearby and had heard the conversation, began to laugh, he grew red in the face and quickly got up and walked away without a word. But before I could recover myself, the promising candidate had disappeared."

Harry Tuthill, specialist in knees and ankles, was the first trainer West Point ever had. When he turned up at the Academy he was none too sure that a football was made of leather and blown up.

He got his job at the Point through the bandaging of Ty Cobb's ankle. An Army coach saw him do it and said:

"Harry, if you can do that, the way you do it, come to West Point and do it for us."

Tuthill was none too welcome to the authorities other than the football men. In the eyes of the superintendent every cadet was fit to do anything that might be required of him.

"You've got to make good with the Supe," said the coaches.

So Harry went out and watched the dress parade and the ensuing double time review. After the battalion was dismissed, Tuthill was introduced to the Superintendent.

"Well, Mr. Tuthill," said the Superintendent, "I'm glad to meet you, but I really do not see what we need of a trainer."

Harry s.h.i.+fted his feet and gathering courage blurted out:

"Run those boys around again and then ask them to whistle."

There are many other trainers who deserve mention in this chapter, men who are earnestly and loyally giving up their lives to the training of the young men in our different colleges, but s.p.a.ce will not permit to take up any more of these interesting characters. Their tribute must be a silent one, not only from myself but from the undergraduates and graduates of the colleges to which they belong and upon whose shoulders are heaped year after year honors which are due them.

FIRST DOCTOR IN CHARGE OF ANY TEAM

Doctor W. M. Conant, Harvard '79, says:

"I believe I was the first doctor a.s.sociated with the Harvard team, and so far as I know, the first doctor who was in charge of any team at any college. At Harvard this custom has been kept up. I was requested by Arthur c.u.mnock, who had been beaten the previous year by Yale, to come out and help him win a game. This I consented to do provided I had absolute control of the medical end of the team, which consisted not only of taking care of the men who were injured, but also of their diet.

This has since been taken up by the trainer.

"The late George Stewart and the late George Adams were the coaches in charge that year, and my recollections of some of the difficulties that arose because of new methods are very enjoyable--even at this late day.

So far as I know this was the first season men were played in the same position opposite one another. In other words, there was an attempt to form a second eleven--which is now a well recognized condition.

"I had a house built under the grandstand where every man from our team was stripped, rubbed dry and put into a new suit of clothes, also given a certain amount of hot drink as seemed necessary. This was a thing which had never been done before, and in my opinion had a large influence in deciding the game in Harvard's favor; as the men went out upon the field in the second half almost as fresh as when they started the first half.

"I remember that I had not seen a victory over Yale since I was graduated from college in 1879. Some of the suggestions that I made about the time men should be played were laughed at. The standpoint I took was that a man should not be allowed by the coach to play until he was deemed fit. The physician in charge was also a matter of serious discussion. Many of these points are now so well established that to the present generation it is hardly possible to make them realize that from 1890 to 1895 it was necessary to make a fight to establish certain well-known methods.

"What would the present football man think of being played for one and one-half hours whether he was in shape or not? The present football man does not appreciate what some of the older college graduates went through in order to bring about the present reasonable methods adopted in handling the game."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW IT HURTS TO LOSE]

CHAPTER XVIII

NIGHTMARES

There are few players who never experienced defeat in football. At such a time sadness reigns. Men who are big in mind and body have broken down and cried bitterly. How often in our experience have we seen men taken out of the game leaving it as though their hearts would break, only to go to the side lines, and there through dimmed eyes view the inevitable defeat, realizing that they were no longer a factor in the struggle.

Such an experience came to Frank Morse in that savage Penn-Princeton game of years ago at Trenton. He had given of his best; he played a wonderful game, but through an injury he had to be removed to the side lines. Let this great hero of the past tell us something about the pangs of defeat as he summons them to mind in his San Francisco office after an interval of twenty-two years.

"The average American university football player takes his defeats too seriously--in the light of my retrospect--much too seriously," writes Morse. "As my memory harks back to the blubbering bunch of stalwart young manhood that rent the close air of the dressing-room with its dismal howls after each of the five defeats in which I partic.i.p.ated, I am convinced that this is not what the world expects of strong men in the hour of adversity.

"A stiff upper lip is what the world admires, and it will extend the hand of sympathy and help to the man who can wear it. This should be taught by football coaches to their men as a part of the lessons of life that football generally is credited with teaching.

"Alex Moffat, than whom no more loyal and enthusiastic Princetonian ever lived, to my mind, had the right idea. During one of those periods of abysmal depths of despondency into which a losing team is plunged, he rushed into the room, waving his arms over his head in his characteristic manner, and in his high-pitched voice yelled:

"'Here, boys, get down to work; cut out this crying and get to cussing.'

"Doubtless much of this was due to the strain and the high tension to which the men were subjected, but much of it was mere lack of effort at restraint.

"Johnny Poe, as stout-hearted a man as ever has, or ever will stand on a football field, once said to me:

"'This sob stuff gives me a pain in the neck but, like sea-sickness, when the rest of the crowd start business, it's hard to keep out of it.

Besides, I don't suppose there's any use getting the reputation of being exclusive and too stuck up to do what the rest of the gang do.'

"Of the defeats in which I partic.i.p.ated, probably none was more disheartening than the one suffered at the hands of the University of Pennsylvania in 1892 at the Manheim cricket grounds near Philadelphia. I shall always believe that the better Princeton team would have won with comparative ease had it not been for the wind. In no game in which I ever played was the wind so largely the deciding factor in the result.

The flags on the poles along the stands stood out stiffly as they snapped in the half gale.

"Pennsylvania won the toss and elected to have the wind at their backs.

For forty-five minutes every effort made against the Red and Blue was more than nullified by the bl.u.s.tering G.o.d aeolus. When Pennsylvania kicked, it was the rule and not the exception for the ball to go sailing for from one-half to three quarters the length of the field. On the other hand, I can see in my mind's eye to-day, as clearly as I did during the game, a punt by Sheppard Homans, the Princeton fullback, which started over the battling lines into Pennsylvania territory, slowed up, hung for an instant in the air and then was swept back to a point approximating the line from where it started.

"It was the most helpless and exasperating feeling that I ever experienced. The football player who can conceive of a game in which under no circ.u.mstances was it permissible to kick, but instead provided a penalty, can perhaps appreciate the circ.u.mstances.

"In the second half, when we changed goals, the flags hung limply against their staffs, but we had spent ourselves in the unequal contest during the first half."

Nightmares, even those of football, do not always beget sympathy. Upon occasion a deal of fun is poked at the victim, and this holds true even in the family circle.

Tom Shevlin was noted as the father of a great many good stories, but it was proverbial that he refrained from telling one upon himself. However, in at least one instance he deviated from habit to the extent of relating an incident concerning his father and the father of Charlie Rafferty, captain of the Yale 1903 eleven. Tom at the time was a soph.o.m.ore, and Shevlin, senior, who idolized his son, made it a practice of attending all important contests in which he partic.i.p.ated, came on from Minneapolis in his private car to witness the spectacle of Tom's single-handed defeat of "The Princetons." As it chanced the Shevlin car was put upon a siding adjoining that on which the car of Gill Rafferty lay. Rafferty, as a matter of fact, was making his laborious way down the steps as Mr. Shevlin emerged from his car. Mr. Rafferty looked up, blinked in the November sunlight and then nodded cheerfully. "Well, Shevlin," he said, "I suppose by to-night we'll be known simply as the fathers of two great Yale favorites." Shevlin nodded and said "he fancied such would be the case." A few hours later, in the gloom of the twilight, after Yale had been defeated, the elder Shevlin was finding his somber way to the steps of his car and met Rafferty face to face.

Shevlin nodded and was about to pa.s.s on without speaking, when Rafferty placed his hand upon his shoulder. "Well, Shevlin," he said solemnly, "I see we are still old man Shevlin and old man Rafferty."

W. C. Rhodes

One has only to hear Jim Rodgers tell the story of Billy Rhodes to realize how deeply the iron of football disaster sinks into the soul.

"Rhodes was captain of the losing team in the fall of '90, when Yale's Eleven was beaten by Harvard's," Rodgers tells us. "Arthur c.u.mnock was the Harvard captain, and the score was 12 to 6. Two remarkable runs for touchdowns made by Dudley Dean and Jim Lee decided the contest.

"For twenty years afterwards, back to Springfield, New Haven or Cambridge, wherever the Yale-Harvard games were played, came with the regularity of their occurrence, Billy Rhodes.