THE JERRY HARRIMAN SCHOLARSHIP PRIZES
When Lowell University won the college baseball Championship in 1876
the victory was to a large extent due to the wonderful all-round work
of Jerry Harriman. As a pitcher he had never up to that time had an
equal, and he could play almost any other position on the team well. In
those days a club would have only one pitcher and he was expected to
pitch almost every game of the season, which often meant pitching every
day in the week but Sunday. When not pitching he played an outfield
position.
This is a whole lot different than the way the game is conducted in the
colleges to-day. In these days a nine will sometimes have half a dozen
pitchers and they don’t do anything but pitch and then only in their
regular turns. Besides being a great pitcher Jerry was also a great
batter. This was also unusual because very seldom do you find a good
pitcher who can bat, but Jerry could both pitch and bat and he made a
great name for himself as a college athlete.
After he had been graduated he went into business in a city in the
Middle West, and became very wealthy.
As a young lad he had been weak physically and his heart was said to be
affected. In fact, he was not expected to live to grow up. When he was
thirteen years old the doctors said he couldn’t live a year. There came
to his home town, however, about this time, a young man who opened a
school of Physical Culture. He had a wonderfully well developed body,
was a great enthusiast on athletics, and he made a great effort to get
the young boys around town who were weak physically to come to him.
He made his living by forming gymnasium classes among the business men
of the town and by his work with them got many a staid old business
man, who was constantly confined to his office, into the habit of
taking exercise regularly, and he made many a man who had become fat
and sick through lack of exercise strong again physically.
But he had a particular interest in the boys and he was especially fond
of getting up classes for poor young fellows who were, as said before,
undeveloped and weak. He taught these youngsters for nothing what he
knew about the fine results of taking exercise regularly, and many a
poor fellow who would have died young, he developed into a strong and
healthy young man who lived long and became prominent in business and
politics.
Among the young fellows who came to the attention of this Professor
Mitchell was young Harriman, who by this time, however, was so weak
that he couldn’t join any of the classes. In fact, Jerry couldn’t walk
across the room without holding on to a chair or something, and even
the Professor had some doubts as to his ability to do anything for him.
However, the case interested him and he came every day to the house for
some weeks and had Jerry do such exercises as he could. At first there
was no improvement that could be noticed, but after a couple of months
of the most careful and lightest exercise possible, a very decided
improvement began to be noticed. Very soon, by carefully doing exactly
as the Professor told him, Jerry began to get stronger, until by the
end of the first year all trace of his heart trouble had disappeared
and the Professor told him that if he would only make it his business
to take his exercises every day he would some day be as strong as any
boy.
It is not the idea of this chapter to go into all the details of how
Harriman became a strong young man. It is only fair to say, however,
that to him his regular and systematic exercise became as important
as his meals or washing his face, night and morning. When he saw how
exercise was improving him physically he became almost a crank on the
subject.
At any rate, he made a resolution that some day he would be just as
well developed physically as any athlete in the world, and he kept this
idea foremost in his thoughts, because he could see that if he had a
perfect physical development, his mental capacity would increase in
proportion. In the end he became a wonderfully well developed lad and
was a living example of what exercise will do for a boy, or man either,
for that matter.
During this time he went to school, and soon was able to join the games
of the other boys. In the High School and in the Preparatory College
he went in for athletics, and by the time he entered Lowell, even he
laughed when anybody recalled the fact that seven or eight years before
the doctors had given him up to an early death from heart trouble.
It has been necessary to give this much of the details of this part
of his life in order to show what it meant to Harriman to become the
greatest pitcher who had ever been in the box for any college in the
country, and also to give the boys who read this good reason for his
great interest in college athletics, after he had gone into business
and become wealthy, as shown by the scholarship prizes which he gave
each year to the best athletes in the various colleges of the country.
A Jerry Harriman Scholarship meant free tuition and Five Hundred
Dollars per year for living expenses at any college in the country
selected by the winner, for the complete college course. Mr. Harriman
was liberal in the number of scholarship prizes offered. Several young
fellows, generally poor boys, were presented each year with a complete
college education. There was a scholarship for the best all-round
football player, for basketball, for hockey and each of the track and
field events.
The scholarships were awarded by the Intercollegiate Athletic
Association, and were given without restriction to the one chosen by
the Association, except that a nominee’s college had to submit to
Mr. Harriman a record of the prize winner’s standing in his studies.
In this particular a good average standing was required. It was the
argument of Mr. Harriman that the pursuit of athletics in college need
not interfere with a fellow’s studies and that if you give a boy a
well developed body his brain will get the benefit of it, and with an
average record as a student, any boy might be expected to make his way
in the world.
Now baseball was the game which Jerry Harriman liked above all others.
He liked best to see it played and to play it himself, and so when he
came to make up his list of scholarship prizes he gave the baseball
fellows the best of it. He was then and still is a real “fan.” He loved
to see new stars developed on the diamond.
He thought it was the best and squarest game in the world and he wanted
his boys, as he called all college boys, to love and play the game.
Therefore he had always offered four scholarships in baseball, one for
the leading pitcher, one for the leading infielder, one for the leading
outfielder and batter, and one for the best all-round infielder and
batsman.
Naturally, having been the baseball champions for so long, the Lowell
nine generally got most of these scholarship prizes and it was very
pleasing to Mr. Harriman to see his old college secure so many of them.
The talk around the University wherever the students gathered often
came around to these scholarship prizes, especially as the time for
baseball approached.
Fellows like Jenkins, Larke, Everson and other of the older fellows,
some of whom had won them in years past, would bring up the subject
when they noticed any of the young freshmen around, just to get them to
thinking about it, and a good many youngsters had developed an ambition
to try for a scholarship and some of them to win one, just from hearing
these older fellows talk. And generally these talks would turn from
a discussion of the records of winners of the prizes to the most
thrilling performances of the individual stars.
The day of the first meeting in the cage called by Hughie, to give him
a chance to look over the candidates for the team, was the first time
that Case and Hagner had been present at one of these talks.
Hughie had given a general talk about the game and had talked with each
of the candidates, asking various questions, such as “what position do
you play?” “Can you bat? Can you pitch?” etc. After they had all thrown
the ball around for an hour, just playing catch so that Hughie could
notice the way the different fellows threw and swung, they sat around
gossiping with each other, nobody wanting to go home, when one of the
older fellows would say something about the Scholarship Prizes.
Generally there was some one present who didn’t know the details and
this offered a chance to tell all about the prizes.
In this case it was Hagner, who had been at school only a few weeks,
and all he knew about the prizes was what Case had been able to tell
him. After Everson had finished explaining the prizes fully the talk,
as usual, drifted on to the wonderful records of the prize winners
of the past. Not that sensational catches or such other stunts as
unassisted triple plays would in themselves secure one of the prizes,
for they would not.
Only the official scorer’s records showing the standing of the
candidates were considered, but it was generally the fellow who had the
best record for any given position who got the chance to pull off the
thrilling plays, because only the good players can do the wonderful
things.
When the talk turned to fielders who had been famous on some of the old
Lowell teams, it wasn’t long before they were telling stories about
great catches made by some of the fielders on championship teams of
years gone by.
On such occasions Fred Larke never forgot to tell about that great
catch made by Jimmy Ryan. How he in one game jumped clear over the
fence in right field which separated the bleachers from the playing
field, and caught a fly ball while falling into the crowd.
Johnny Everson then had to tell his story of Hughie Jenkins’ greatest
catch, when he was playing short in one of the Biltmore College games.
There was an enormous crowd out. The stands wouldn’t hold them all, so
they were let out on the field and there were so many that they crowded
close to the base lines. In the ninth inning the score was tied, one
out, and Bill Everett of Biltmore College on third. The batter hit a
high foul ball into the crowd back of third base. Some of them were
seated but most of them were standing. Jenkins hustled across from his
position at short, hurled himself through the air without paying any
attention to the crowd, caught the ball fair and square and then fell
in among the spectators. That made two out, but Hughie was after the
third one. Bill Everett touched third after the catch and started for
home. Hughie couldn’t see but he guessed that Everett had started. He
climbed up out of the crowd, stepped on the people he had knocked down,
and threw to the plate without looking. The ball went straight into the
catcher’s mitt and Everett was out easily. In the next inning Lowell
won the game.
[Illustration: “Jenkins hurled himself through the air.”]
Then, of course, Miner Black had to tell his remarkable catch story
about Jimmie Siegel in a twenty inning game with Eastern Pennsylvania.
How in the eighteenth inning with a runner on first base, the mightiest
hitter of the Pennsylvania nine drove a hard hit ball to left center.
Just at that moment, however, Siegel had put his hand in his hip pocket
to get out his handkerchief, as the day was hot and the game was a hard
one.
Jimmie, of course, started after the ball, and made an effort to pull
his hand out of his pocket while running. It wouldn’t come out. He
jerked and jerked and still it stuck. Meantime the ball had to be
caught on the run and Jimmie had to make a try for it some way. He
leaped in the air, twisted, stuck up his left hand and caught it with
his back to the diamond. Jimmie threw the ball into the diamond with
his left hand. Strange to say his right hand then came out of his
pocket easily. He wiped the perspiration off his face, grinned, and the
crowd went wild for they realized why he had gone after it with one
hand.
After such talks the “freshies,” who had made some pretty fine catches
on the back lots at home, always made a resolution to do something
equally startling when they got on the Varsity, and the candidates
at Lowell this year were a good deal like all the other freshmen
candidates who had gone before them in this respect. This really was
a good thing for the boys, although, of course, many of them never
realized their ambitions for such fame.