Football Days Part 9

HEROES OF THE PAST--GEORGE WOODRUFF'S STORY

Enthusiastic George Woodruff tells of his football experiences in the following words:

"I went to Yale a green farmer boy who had never heard of the college game of football until I arrived at New Haven to take my examinations in the fall of '85. Incidentally I made the team permanently the second day I was on the field, having scored against the varsity from the middle of the field in three successive runs; whereas the varsity was not able to score against the scrub. I was used perhaps more times than any other man in running with the ball up to a very severe injury to my knee in the fall of '87, just a week and a day before the Princeton game, from which time, until I left college (although I played in all of the champions.h.i.+p games) I was not able to run with the ball, actually being on the field only two days after my injury in '87 until the end of the '88 season, outside of the days on which I played the games. I tried not to play in the fall of '88 because of the condition of my knee and because I was Captain of the Crew, but Pa Corbin insisted that I must play in the champions.h.i.+p games or he would not row: and of course I acceded to his wishes thereby secretly gratifying my own.

"And now about the men with whom I played: Kid Wallace played end the entire four years. Wallace was a great amus.e.m.e.nt and comfort to his fellow-players on account of his general desire to put on the appearance of a 'tough' of the worst description; whereas he was at heart a very fine and gallant gentleman.

"Pudge Heffelfinger played the other guard from me in my last year and when he first appeared on the Yale field he was a ridiculous example of a raw-boned Westerner, being 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighing only about 178 pounds. During the season, however, the exercise and good food at the training table caused Heffelfinger to gain 25 pounds of solid bone, sinew and muscle. The green days of his first year in 1888 were remembered against him in an affectionate way by the use of Yale for several years of 'Pa' Corbin's oft reiterated expression brought forth by Pudge's greenness, which would cause 'Pa' to exclaim: 'Darn you, Heffelfinger!' with great emphasis on the 'Darn.'

"Billy Graves played on the team during most of these years, he being the most graceful football runner I have ever seen, unless it were Stevenson of Pennsylvania.

"Lee McClung was a harder worker in his running than most of the men named above, but tremendously effective. He is accredited with being the first man who intentionally started as though to make an end run and then turned diagonally back through the line, in order to open up the field through which he then ran with incredible speed and determination.

This was one of the first premeditated plays of a trick nature which ultimately led to my invention of the delayed pa.s.s which works upon the same principle only with incalculably greater ease and effect.

"The game with Princeton in the Fall of 1885 clings to my memory beyond any other game I ever played in, because it was the first real champions.h.i.+p game of my career, and I had not as yet fully developed into an actual player. The loss of this game to Princeton in the last six minutes of playing because of the Lamar run--Yale had Princeton 5 to 0--has been a nightmare to most of the Yale players ever since. I attribute the fact that Yale only had five points to two hard-luck facts.

"Through my own intensity at the beginning of the game I over-ran Harry Beecher on my first signal, causing the signal giver to think that I was rattled so that, although I afterward ran with the ball some 25 or 30 times with consistent gains of from 2 to 5 yards under the almost impossible conditions known as the 'punt rush,' the signal for my regular play was not given again in spite of the fact that my ground gaining had been one of the steadiest features of the Yale play throughout the year, and because Watkinson was allowed to try five times in succession for goals from the field, close up, only one of which he made; whereas Billy Bull could probably have made at least three out of the five; but of course Bull's ability was not so well-known then. The direct cause of the Lamar run was due to the fact that all the fast runners and good tacklers of the Yale line were down the field under a kick, so close to Toler, the other halfback from Lamar, that when Toler m.u.f.fed the ball so egregiously that it bounded over our heads some 15 yards, Lamar who had not come across the field to back Toler up, had been able to get the ball on the bound and on the dead run, thus having in front of him all the Princeton team except Toler; whereas the Yale team was depleted by the fact that Wallace, Corwin, Gill (who had come on as a subst.i.tute) myself and even Harry Beecher from quarterback, had run down the field to within a few yards of Toler before he m.u.f.fed the ball. We all turned and watched Lamar run, being so petrified that not one of us took a step, and, although the scene is photographed on my memory, I cannot see one of all the Yale players making a tackle at Lamar. Hodge, the Princeton quarterback, kicked the goal, thus making the score 6 to 5 and winning the game. The outburst from the Princeton contingent at the end of the game was one of the most heartfelt and spontaneous I have ever heard or seen. I understand that practically all of Lamar's uniform was torn into pieces and handed out to the various Princeton girls and their escorts who had come to New Haven to see the game.

"The Yale-Princeton game in the fall of 1886 was a remarkable as well as a disagreeable one. We played at Princeton when the field at that time combined the elements of stickiness and slipperiness to an unbelievable extent. It rained heavily throughout the game and the proverbial 'hog on ice' could not have slipped and slathered around worse than all the players on both sides. There was a long controversy about who should act as referee (in those days we had only one official) and after a delay of about an hour from the time the game should have begun, Harris, a Princeton man, was allowed to do the officiating. Bob Corwin, who was end-rush, only second to Wallace in his ability, was captain of the team.

"Yale made one touchdown which seemed to be perfectly fair but which was disallowed; and later, in the second half, Watkinson for Yale kicked the ball so that it rolled across the goal line, whereupon a crowd, which was standing around the ropes (in those days there was practically no grandstand) crowded onto the field where Savage, the Princeton fullback had fallen on the ball. The general report is that Kid Wallace held Savage while Corwin pulled the slippery ball away from him, and that when Harris, the referee, was able to dig his way through the crowd he found Corwin on the ball, and in view of the great fuss that had been made about his previous decision, was not able to credit Savage's statement that he (Savage) had said 'down' long before the Yale ends had been able to pull the ball away from him. The result was that the touchdown was allowed. Thereupon the crowd all came onto the field and we were not able to clear it for some 10 or 15 minutes, so that there was not time enough to finish the full 45 minutes of the second-half of the game before dark. This led to some bitter discussion between Yale and Princeton as to whether the game had been played. This discussion was settled by the intercollegiate committee in declaring that Yale had won the game, 4 to 0, but that no champions.h.i.+p should be awarded. It is interesting to note, however, that all the gold footb.a.l.l.s worn by the Yale players of this game are marked 'Champions, 1886.'

"A word about the Princeton men who were playing during my four years at college.

"Irvine was a fine steady player and his success at Mercersburg is in keeping with the promise shown in his football days.

"Hector Cowan played against me three years at guard and he fully deserved the great reputation he had at that time in every particular of the game, including running with the ball.

"George was one of the very best center rushes I have ever seen and probably would have made a great player elsewhere along the line if he had been relieved from the obscuring effect of playing center at the time a center had no particular opportunity to show his ability.

"Snake Ames for some reason was never able to do anything against the Yale team during the time I was playing, but his work in some later games that I saw and in which I officiated, convinced me that he was worthy of his nickname, because there are only a few men who are able to wind their way through an entire field of opponents with as much celerity and effect as Ames would display time after time.

"In the fall of '86 Yale beat Harvard 29 to 4, with great ease, and if it had not been for injuries to Yale players, could probably have made it 50 or 60 to 0. Most of the Yale players came out of the game with very disgraceful marks of the roughness of the Harvard men. I had a badly broken nose from an intentional blow. George Carter had a cut requiring eight st.i.tches above his eye. The tackle next to me had a face which was pounded black and blue all over. To the credit of the Harvard men I will say that they came to the box at the theater that night occupied by the Yale team and apologized for what they had done, stating that they had been coached to play in that way and that they would never again allow anybody to coach who would try to have the Harvard players use intentionally unfair roughness.

"When I entered Pennsylvania I found a more or less happy-go-lucky brilliant man, Arthur Knipe, who was not considered fully worthy of being on even the Pennsylvania teams of those days, namely: teams that were being beaten 60 or 70 to 0 by Yale, Harvard and Princeton. I succeeded in arousing the interest of Knipe, and although in my mind he never, during his active members.h.i.+p of the Pennsylvania team, came up to 75 per cent. of his true playing value, he was, even so, undoubtedly the peer of any man that ever played football. Knipe was brilliant but careless, and was at once the joy and despair of any coach who took an interest in his men. He captained the 1894 Pennsylvania team with which I sprung the 'guards back' and 'short end defense.'

"Jack Minds I remember seeing, in 1893, standing around on the field as a member of the second or third scrub teams. I suppose he would not have been invited to preliminary training except for his own courage and pertinacity which caused him to demand to be taken. With no thought that he could possibly make the team I gradually found myself using him in 1894, until he was a fixture at tackle, although he dodged the scales throughout the entire fall in order that I might not know that he only weighed 162 pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Wharton Bull Woodruff Rosengarten Osgood Brooke Knipe Gelbert Minds Williams Wagonhurst

OLD PENN HEROES]

"I will not enlarge upon the ability of men like George Brooke, Wylie Woodruff, Buck Wharton, Joe McCracken, John Outland and others, but anybody speaking of Pennsylvania players during the late '90's cannot pa.s.s by Truxton Hare, who stands forth as a Chevalier Bayard among the ranks of college football players. Hare entered Pennsylvania in '97 from St. Paul without any thought that he was likely to be even a mediocre player. He weighed only about 178 pounds at the time and was immature.

Although his wonderfully symmetrical build, in which he looked like a magnified Billy Graves, kept him from looking as large as Heffelfinger at his greatest development at Yale, Hare was certainly ten pounds heavier in fine condition than Heffelfinger was before the latter left Yale."

CHAPTER VIII

ANECDOTES AND RECOLLECTIONS

In the latter eighties the signal from the quarterback to the center for putting the ball in play was a pressure of the fingers and thumb on the hips of the center. In the '89 champions.h.i.+p game between Yale and Princeton, Yale had been steadily advancing the ball and it looked as if they had started out for a march up the field for a touchdown. In those days signals were not rattled off with the speed that they are given now, and the quarterback often took some time to consider his next play, during which time he might stand in any position back of the line.

Playing right guard on the Princeton team was J. R. Thomas, more familiarly known as Long Tommy. He was six feet six or seven inches tall and built more longitudinally than otherwise. It occurred to Janeway, who was playing left guard, that Long Tommy's great length and reach might be used to great advantage when occasion offered.

He, therefore, took occasion to say to Thomas during a lull in the game, "If you get a chance, reach over when Wurtenburg--the Yale quarter--isn't looking, and pinch the Yale center so that he will put the ball in play when the backs are not expecting it." The Yale center, by the way, was Bert Hanson. Yale continued to advance the ball on two or three successive plays and finally had a third down with two yards to gain. At this critical moment the looked-for opportunity arrived.

Wurtenburg called a consultation of the other backs to decide on the next play. While the consultation was going on Long Tommy reached over and gently nipped Hanson where he was expecting the signal. Hanson immediately put the ball in play and as a result Janeway broke through and fell on the ball for a ten yards gain and first down for Princeton.

To say that the Yale team were frantic with surprise and rage would be putting it mildly. Poor Hanson came in for some pretty rough flagging.

He swore by all that was good and holy that he had received the signal to put the ball in play, which was true. But Wurtenburg insisted that he had not given the signal. There was no time for wrangling at that moment as the referee ordered the game to proceed.

Yale did not learn how that ball came to be put in play until some time after the game, which was the last of the season, when Long Tommy happening to meet up with Hanson and several other Yale players in a New York restaurant, told with great glee how he gave the signal that stopped Yale's triumphant advance.

Numerals and combinations of numbers were not used as signals until 1889. Prior to that, phrases, catch-words and gestures were the only modes of indicating the plays to be used. For instance, the signal for Hector Cowan of Princeton to run with the ball was an entreaty by the captain, who in those days usually gave the signals, addressed to the team, to gain an uneven number of yards. Therefore the expression, "Let's gain three, five or seven yards," would indicate to the team that Cowan was to take the ball, and an effort was made to open up the line for him at the point at which he usually bucked it.

Irvine, the other tackle, ran with the ball when an even number of yards was called for.

For a kick the signal was any phrase which asked a question, as for instance, "How many yards to gain?"

One of the signals used by Corbin, captain of Yale, to indicate a certain play, was the removal of his cap. They wore caps in those days.

A variation of this play was indicated if in addition to removing his cap he expectorated emphatically.

Hodge, the Princeton quarterback, noticing the cap signals, determined that he would handicap the captain's strategy by stealing his cap. He called the team back and very earnestly impressed upon them the advantage that would accrue if any of them could surrept.i.tiously get possession of Captain Corbin's head-covering. Corbin, however, kept such good watch on his property that no one was able to purloin it.

Sport Donnelly, who played left end on Princeton's '89 team, was perhaps one of the roughest players that ever went into a game, and at the same time one of the best ends that ever went down the field under a kick.

Donnelly was one of the few men that could play his game up to the top notch and at the same time keep his opponent hara.s.sed to the point of frenzy by a continual line of conversation in a sarcastic vein which invariably got the opposing player rattled.

He would say or do something to the man opposite him which would goad that individual to fury and then when retaliation was about to come in the shape of a blow, he would yell "Mr. Umpire," and in many instances the player would be ruled off the field.

Donnelly's line of conversation in a Yale game, addressed to Billy Rhodes who played opposite him, would be somewhat as follows:

"Ah, Mr. Rhodes, I see Mr. Gill is about to run with the ball."

Just then Gill would come tearing around from his position at tackle and Donnelly would remark:

"Well, excuse me, Mr. Rhodes, for a moment, I've got to tackle Mr.

Gill."

He would then sidestep in such a manner as to elude Rhodes's manoeuvres to prevent him breaking through, and stop Gill for a loss.