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
championship 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 championship 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 amusement 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 pass 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
championship 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
muffed 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 substitute) myself and even Harry Beecher from quarterback, had
run down the field to within a few yards of Toler before he muffed 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 championship should be awarded. It is
interesting to note, however, that all the gold footballs 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 stitches 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 membership 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.
[Illustration:
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
pass 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."