HARD LUCK IN THE GAME
It is as true in football, as it is in life, that we have no use for a
quitter. The man who shirks in time of need--indeed there is no part in
this chapter or in this book for such a man. Football was never made for
him. He is soon discovered and relegated to the side line. He is hounded
throughout his college career, and afterwards he is known as a man who
was yellow. As Garry Cochran used to say:
"If I find any man on my football squad showing a white feather, I'll
have him hounded out of college."
Football is a game for the man who has nerve, and when put to the test,
under severe handicap, proves his sterling worth.
A man has to be game in spirit. A man has to give every inch there is in
him. Optimism should surround him. There is much to be gained by hearty
co-operation of spirit. There is much in the thought that you believe
your team is going to win; that the opposing team cannot beat you; that
if your opponent wins, it is going to be over your dead body. This sort
of spirit is contagious, and generally passes from one to the other,
until you have a wonderful team spirit, and eleven men are found
fighting like demons for victory. Such a spirit generally means a
victory, and so gets its reward. There must be no dissenting spirit. If
there is such a spirit discernible, it should be weeded out immediately.
Some years ago the Princeton players were going to the field house to
dress for the Harvard game. The captain and two of the players were
walking ahead of the rest of the members of the team. The game was under
discussion, when the captain overheard one of the players behind him
remark:
"I believe Harvard will win to-day."
Shocked by this remark, the captain, who was one of those thoroughbreds
who never saw anything but victory ahead, full of hope and confidence in
his team, turned and discovered that the remark came from one of his
regular players. Addressing him, he said:
"Well! If you feel that way about it, you need not even put on your
suit. I have a substitute, who is game to the core. He will take your
place."
It is true that teams have been ruined where the men lack the great
quality of optimism in football. When a man gets in a tight place, when
the odds are all against him, there comes to him an amazing superhuman
strength, which enables him to work out wonders. At such a time men have
been known to do what seemed almost impossible.
I recall being out in the country in my younger days and seeing a man,
who had become irrational, near the roadside, where some heavy logs were
piled. This man, who ordinarily was only a man of medium strength, was
picking up one end of a log and tossing it around--a log, which,
ordinarily, would have taken three men to lift. In the bewildering and
exciting problems of football, there are instances similar to this,
where a small man on one team, lined up against a giant in the opposing
rush line, and game though handicapped in weight there comes to him at
such a time a certain added strength, by which he was able to handle
successfully the duty which presented itself to him.
I have found it to be the rule rather than the exception, that the big
man in football did not give me the most trouble; it was the man much
smaller than myself. Other big linemen have found it to be true. Many a
small man has made a big man look ridiculous.
Bill Caldwell, who used to weigh over 200 pounds when he played guard on
the Cornell team some years ago, has this to say:
"I want to pay a tribute to a young man who gave me my worst seventy
minutes on the football field. His name was Payne. He played left guard
for Lehigh. He weighed about 145 pounds; was of slight build and seemed
to have a sort of sickly pallor. I have never seen him since, but I take
this occasion to say this was the greatest little guard I ever met. At
least he was great that day. Payne had been playing back of the line
during part of the season, but was put in at guard against me. I had a
hunch that he was going to bite me in the ankle, when he lined up the
first time, for he bristled up and tore into me like a wild cat. I have
met a goodish few guards in my day, and was accustomed to almost any
form of warfare, but this Payne went around me, like a cooper around a
barrel, and broke through the line and downed the runners in their
tracks. On plunges straight at him, he went to the mat and grabbed every
leg in sight and hung on for dear life. He darted through between my
legs; would vault over me; what he did to me was a shame. He was not
rough, but was just the opposite. I never laid a hand on him all the
afternoon. He would make a world beater in the game as it is played
to-day."
Whenever Brown University men get together and speak of their wonderful
quarterbacks, the names of Sprackling and Crowther are always mentioned.
Both of these men were All-American quarterbacks. Crowther filled the
position after Sprackling graduated. He weighed only 134 pounds, but he
gave everything he had in him--game, though handicapped in weight. In
the Harvard game of that year, about the middle of the second half,
Haughton sent word over to Robinson, the Brown coach, that he ought to
take the little fellow out; that he was too small to play football, and
was in danger of being seriously injured. Crowther, however, was like an
India-rubber ball and not once during the season had he received any
sort of injury. Robby told Crowther what Haughton had suggested, and
smiling, the latter said:
"Tell him not to worry about me; better look out for himself."
On the next play Crowther took the ball and went around Harvard's end
for forty yards, scoring a touchdown. After he had kicked the goal, the
little fellow came over to the side line, and said to Robby:
"Send word over to Haughton and ask him how he likes that. Ask him if he
thinks I'm all in? Perhaps he would like to have me quit now."
In the Yale game that year Crowther was tackled by Pendleton, one of the
big Yale guards. It so happened that Pendleton was injured several times
when he tackled Crowther and time had to be taken out. Finally the big
fellow was obliged to quit, and as he was led off the field, Crowther
hurried over to him, reaching up, placed his hands on his shoulder and
said:
"Sorry, old man! I didn't mean to hurt you." Pendleton, who weighed well
over 200 pounds, looked down upon the little fellow, but said never a
word.
It is most unpleasant to play in a game where a man is injured. Yet
still more distressing when you realize that you yourself injured
another player, especially one of your own team mates.
In the Brown game of 1898, at Providence, Bosey Reiter, Princeton's star
halfback, made a flying tackle of a Brown runner. The latter was
struggling hard, trying his best to get away from Reiter. At this moment
I was coming along and threw myself upon the Brown man to prevent his
advancing further. In the mixup my weight struck Bosey and fractured his
collar-bone. It was a severe loss to the team, and only one who has had
a similar experience can appreciate my feelings, as well as the team's,
on the journey back to Princeton.
We were to play Yale the following Saturday at Princeton. I knew
Reiter's injury was so serious that he could not possibly play in that
game.
The following Saturday, as that great football warrior lay in his bed at
the infirmary, the whistle blew for the start of the Yale game. We all
realized Reiter was not there: not even on the side lines, and Arthur
Poe said, at the start of the game:
"Play for Bosey Reiter. He can't play for himself to-day."
This spurred us on to better team work and to victory. The attendants at
the hospital told us later that they never had had such a lively
patient. He kept things stirring from start to finish of the gridiron
battle. As the reports of the game were brought to him, he joined in
the thrill of the play.
"My injury proved a blessing," says Reiter, "as it gave me an extra
year, for in those days a year did not count in football, unless you
played against Yale, and when I made the touchdown against Yale the
following season, it was a happy moment for me."
All is not clear sailing in football. The breaks must come some time.
They may come singly or in a bunch, but whenever they do come, it takes
courage to buck the hard luck in the game. Just when things get nicely
under way one of the star players is injured, which means the systematic
team work is handicapped. It is not the team, as a whole that I am
thinking of, but the pangs of sorrow which go down deep into a fellow's
soul, when he finds that he is injured; that he is in the hands of the
doctor. It is then he realizes that he is only a spoke in the big wheel;
that the spirit of the game puts another man in his place. The game goes
on. Nature is left to do her best for him.
Let us for a while consider the player who does not realize, until after
the game is over, that he is hurt. It is after the contest, when the
excitement has ceased, when reaction sets in, that a doctor and trainer
can take stock of the number and extent of casualties.
When such injured men are discovered, at a time like that, we wonder how
they ever played the game out. In fact the man never knew he was
injured until the game was over. No more loyal supporter of football
follows the big games than Reggi Wentworth, Williams, '91.
He is most loyal to Bill Hotchkiss, Williams '91.
"At Williamstown, one year," Wentworth says, "Hotchkiss, who was a
wonderful all round guard, probably as great a football player as ever
lived (at least I think so) played with the Williams team on a field
covered with mud and snow three inches deep. The game was an unusually
severe one, and Hotchkiss did yeoman's work that day.
"As we ran off the field, after the game, I happened to stop, turned,
and discovered Hotchkiss standing on the side of the field, with his
feet planted well apart, like an old bull at bay. I went back where he
was and said:
"'Come on, Bill, what's the matter?'
"'I don't know,' said he. 'There's something the matter with my ankles.
I don't think I can walk.'
"He took one step and collapsed. I got a boy's sled, which was on the
field, laid Hotchkiss on it and took him to his room, only to find that
both ankles were sprained. He did not leave his room for two weeks and
walked with crutches for two weeks more. It seemed almost unbelievable
that a man handicapped as he was could play the game through. Splints
and ankle braces were unknown in those days. He went on the field with
two perfectly good ankles. How did he do it?"
Charles H. Huggins, of Brown University, better known perhaps, simply as
"Huggins of Brown," recalls a curious case in a game on Andrews Field:
"Stewart Jarvis, one of the Brown ends, made a flying tackle. As he did
so, he felt something snap in one of his legs. We carried him off to the
field house, making a hasty investigation. We found nothing more
apparent than a bruise. I bundled him off to college in a cab; gave him
a pair of crutches; told him not to go out until our doctor could
examine the injury at six o'clock that evening. When the doctor arrived
at his room, Jarvis was not there. He had gone to the training table for
dinner. The doctor hurried to the Union dining-room, only to find that
Jarvis had discarded the crutches and with some of the boys had gone out
to Rhodes, then, as now, a popular resort for the students. Later, we
learned that he danced several times. The next morning an X-ray clearly
showed a complete fracture of the tibia.
"How it was possible for a man, with a broken leg, to walk around and
dance, as he did, is more than I can fathom."
What is there in a man's make-up that leads him to conceal from the
trainer an injury that he receives in a game; that makes him stay in the
field of play? Why is it that he disregards himself, and goes on in the
game, suffering physical as well as mental tortures, plucky though
handicapped? The playing of such men is extended far beyond the point of
their usefulness. Yes, even into the danger zone. Such men give
everything they have in them while it lasts. It is not intelligent
football, however, and what might be called bravery is foolishness after
all. It is an unwritten law in football that a fresh substitute is far
superior to a crippled star. The keen desire to remain in the game is so
firmly fixed in his mind that he is willing to sacrifice himself, and at
the same time by concealing his injury from the trainer and coaches he,
unconsciously, is sacrificing his team; his power is gone.
One of the greatest exhibitions of grit ever seen in a football game was
given by Harry Watson of Williams in a game at Newton Center between
Williams and Dartmouth. He was knocked out about eight times but
absolutely refused to leave the field.
Another was furnished by W. H. Lewis, the Amherst captain and center
rush, against Williams in his last game at Amherst--the score was 0-0 on
a wet field. Williams was a big favorite but Lewis played a wonderful
game, and was all over the field on the defense. When the game was over
he was carried off, but refused to leave the field until the final
whistle.
One of the most thrilling stories of a man who was game, though
handicapped, is told by Morris Ely, quarterback for Yale, 1898.
"My most vivid recollection of the Harvard-Yale game of 1898 is that
Harvard won by the largest score Yale had ever been beaten by up to that
time, 17 to 0. Next, that the game seemed unusually long. I believe I
proved a good exponent of the theory of being in good condition. I
started the game at 135 pounds, in the best physical condition I have
ever enjoyed, and while I managed to accumulate two broken ribs, a
broken collar-bone and a sprained shoulder, I was discharged by the
doctor in less than three weeks as good as ever.
"I received the broken ribs in the first half when Percy Jaffrey fell on
me with a proper intention of having me drop a fumbled ball behind our
goal line, which would have given Harvard an additional touchdown
instead of a touchback. I did not know just what had gone wrong but
tried to help it out by putting a shin guard under my jersey over the
ribs during the intermission. No one knew I was hurt.
"In the second half I tried to stop one of Ben Dibblee's runs on a punt
and got a broken collar-bone, but not Dibblee. About the end of the game
we managed to work a successful double pass and I carried the ball to
Harvard's ten-yard line when Charlie Daly, who was playing back on
defense, stopped any chance we had of scoring by a hard tackle. There
was no getting away from him that day, and as I had to carry the ball
in the wrong arm with no free arm to use to ward him off, I presume, I
got off pretty well with only a sprained shoulder. The next play ended
the game, when Stub Chamberlin tried a quick place goal from the field
and, on a poor pass and on my poor handling of the ball, hit the goal
post and the ball bounded back. I admit that just about that time the
whistle sounded pretty good as apparently the entire Harvard team landed
on us in their attempt to block a kick."
Val Flood, once a trainer at Princeton, recalls a game at New Haven,
when Princeton was playing Yale:
"Frank Bergen was quarterback," he says. "I saw he was not going right,
and surprised the coaches by asking them to make a change. They asked me
to wait. In a few minutes I went to them again, with the same result. I
came back a third time, and insisted that he be taken out. A substitute
was put in. I will never forget Bergen's face when he burst into tears
and asked me who was responsible for his being taken out. I told him I
was. It almost broke his heart, for he had always regarded me as a
friend. I knew how much he wanted to play the game out. He lived in New
Haven. When the doctor examined him, it was found that he had three
broken ribs. There was great danger of one of them piercing his lungs
had he continued in the game. Of course, there are lots of boys that
are willing to do such things for their Alma Mater, but the gamest of
all is the man who, with a broken neck to start with, went out and put
in four years of college football. I refer to Eddie Hart, who was not
only the gamest, but one of the strongest, quickest, cleanest men that
ever played the game, and any one who knows Eddie Hart and those who
have seen him play, know that he never saved himself but played the game
for all it was worth. He was the life and spirit of every team he ever
played on at Exeter or Princeton."
Ed Wylie, an enthusiastic Hill School Alumnus, football player at Hill
and Yale, tells the following anecdote:
"The nerviest thing I ever saw in a football game was in the
Hill-Hotchkiss 0 to 0 game in 1904. At the start of the second half,
Arthur Cable, who was Hill's quarterback, broke his collar-bone. He
concealed the fact and until the end of the game, no one knew how badly
he was hurt. He was in every play, and never had time called but once.
He caught a couple of punts with his one good arm and every other punt
he attempted to catch and muffed he saved the ball from the other side
by falling on it. In the same game, a peculiar thing happened to me. I
tackled Ted Coy about fifteen minutes before the end of the game, and
until I awoke hours later, lying in a drawing-room car, pulling into
the Grand Central Station, my mind was a blank. Yet I am told the last
fifteen minutes of the game I played well, especially when our line was
going to pieces. I made several gains on the offensive, never missed a
signal and punted two or three times when close to our goal line."
No less noteworthy is the spirit of a University of Pennsylvania player,
who was handicapped during his gridiron career with Penn' by many severe
injuries. This man had worked as hard as any one possibly could to make
the varsity for three years. His last year was no different from
previous seasons; injuries always worked against him. In his final year
he had broken his leg early in the season. A short time before the
Cornell game he appeared upon the field in football togs, full of spirit
and determined to get in the game if they needed him. This was his last
chance to play on the Penn' team.
I was an official in that game. Near its close I saw him warming up on
the side line. His knee was done up in a plaster cast. He could do
nothing better than hobble along the side lines, but in the closing
moments when Penn' had the game well in hand, a mighty shout went up
from the side lines, as that gallant fellow, who had been handicapped
all during his football career, rushed out upon the field to take his
place as the defensive halfback. Cornell had the ball, and they were
making a tremendous effort to score. The Cornell captain, not knowing
of this man's physical condition, sent a play in his direction. The
interference of the big red team crashed successfully around the Penn'
end and there was left only this plucky, though handicapped player,
between the Cornell runner and a touchdown.
Putting aside all personal thought, he rushed in and made a wonderful
tackle. Then this hero was carried off the field, and with him the
tradition of one who was willing to sacrifice himself for the sport he
loved.
Andy Smith, a former University of Pennsylvania player, was a man who
was game through and through. He seemed to play better in a severe game,
when the odds were against him. Smith had formerly been at Pennsylvania
State College. In a game between Penn' State and Dartmouth, Fred
Crolius, of Dartmouth, says of Smith:
"Andy Smith was one of the gamest men I ever played against. This big,
determined, husky offensive fullback and defensive end, when he wasn't
butting his head into our impregnable line, was smashing an interference
that nearly killed him in every other play. Battered and bruised he kept
coming on, and to every one's surprise he lasted the entire game. Years
afterward he showed me the scars on his head, where the wounds had
healed, with the naïve remark: 'Some team you fellows had that year,
Fred.' Some team was right. And we all remember Andy and his own
individual greatness."
There is no finer, unselfish spirit brought out in football, than that
evidenced in the following story, told by Shep Homans, an old time
Princeton fullback:
"A young fellow named Hodge, who was quarterback on the Princeton scrub,
was making a terrific effort to play the best he could on the last day
of practice before the Yale game. He had hoped even at the last hour
that the opportunity might be afforded him to be a substitute quarter in
the game. However, his leg was broken in a scrimmage. As he lay on the
ground in great pain, realizing what had happened and forgetting
himself, he looked up and said:
"'I'm mighty glad it is not one of the regulars who is hurt, so that our
chance against Yale will not be affected.'"
Crolius, one of the hardest men to stop that Dartmouth ever had, tells
of Arthur Poe's gameness, when they played together on the Homestead
Athletic Club team, after they left college. "Arthur Poe was about as
game a man as the football world ever saw. He was handicapped in his
playing by a knee which would easily slip out of place. We men who
played with him on the Homestead team were often stopped after Arthur
had made a magnificent tackle and had broken up heavy interference, with
this quiet request:
"'Pull my bum knee back into place.'
"After this was done, he would jump up and no one would ever know that
it had been out. This man, who perhaps was the smallest man playing at
that time, was absolutely unprotected. His suit consisted of a pair of
shoes, stockings, unpadded pants, jersey and one elastic knee bandage."
Mike Donohue, a Yale man who had been coach at Auburn for many years,
vouches for the following story:
When Mike went to Auburn and for several years thereafter he had no one
to assist him, except a few of the old players, who would drop in for a
day or so during the latter part of the season. One afternoon Mike
happened to glance down at the lower end of the field where a squad of
grass-cutters (the name given to the fourth and fifth teams) were
booting the ball around, when he noticed a pretty good sized boy who was
swinging his foot into the ball with a good stiff leg and was kicking
high and getting fine distance. Mike made a mental note of this fact and
decided to investigate later, as a good punter was very hard to find.
Later in the afternoon he again looked towards the lower end of the
field and saw that the grass-cutters were lining up for a scrimmage
among themselves, using that part of the field, which was behind the
goal post, so he dismissed the squad with which he had been working and
went down to see what the boy he had noticed early in the afternoon
really looked like. When he arrived he soon found the boy he was looking
for. He was playing left end and Mike immediately noticed that he had
his right leg extended perfectly straight behind him. Stopping the play,
Mike went over to the fellow and slapping him on the back said:
"Don't keep that right leg stiff behind you like that. Pull it up under
you. Bend it at the knee so you can get a good start."
With a sad expression on his face, and tears almost in his eyes, the boy
turned to Mike and said:
"Coach, that damn thing won't bend. It's wood."
Vonalbalde Gammon, one of the few players who met his death in an
intercollegiate game, lived at Rome, Georgia, and entered the University
of Georgia in 1896. He made the team his first year, playing quarterback
on the eleven which was coached by Pop Warner and which won the Southern
championship. He received the injury which caused his death in the
Georgia-Virginia game, played in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 30th,
1897. He was a fine fellow personally and one of the most popular men at
the University. As a football player, he was an excellent punter, a
good plunger, and a strong defensive man. On account of his kicking and
plunging ability he was moved to fullback in his second year.
In the Virginia game he backed up the line on the defense. All that
afternoon he worked like a Trojan to hold in check the powerful masses
Virginia had been driving at the tackles. Early in the second half Von
dove in and stopped a mass aimed at Georgia's right tackle, but when the
mass was untangled, he was unable to get up. An examination showed that
he was badly hurt. In a minute or two, however, he revived and was set
on his feet and was being taken from the field by Coach McCarthy, when
Captain Kent, thinking that he was not too badly hurt to continue in the
game, said to him:
"Von, you are not going to give up, are you?"
"No, Bill," he replied, "I've got too much Georgia grit for that."
These were his last words, for upon reaching the side lines he lapsed
into unconsciousness and died at two o'clock the next morning.
Gammon's death ended the football season that year at the University. It
also came very near ending football in the State of Georgia, as the
Legislature was in session, and immediately passed a bill prohibiting
the playing of the game in the State.
However, Mrs. Gammon--Von's mother--made a strong, earnest and personal
appeal to Governor Atkinson to veto the bill, which he did.
Had it not been for Mrs. Gammon, football would certainly have been
abolished in the State of Georgia by an act of the Legislature of 1897.
I knew a great guard whose whole heart was set on making the Princeton
team, and on playing against Yale. This man made the team. In a
Princeton-Columbia game he was trying his best to stop that wonderful
Columbia player, Harold Weekes, who with his great hurdling play was
that season's sensation. In his hurdling he seemed to take his life in
his hands, going over the line of the opposing team feet first. When the
great guard of the Princeton team to whom I refer tried to stop Weekes,
his head collided with Weekes' feet and was badly cut.
The trainer rushed upon the field, sponged and dressed the wound and the
guard continued to play. But that night it was discovered that blood
poisoning had set in. There was gloom on the team when this became
known. But John Dana, lying there injured in the hospital, and knowing
how badly his services were needed in the coming game with Yale, with
his ambition unsatisfied, used his wits to appear better than he really
was in order to get discharged from the hospital and back on the team.
The physician who attended him has told me since that Dana would keep
his mouth open slyly when the nurse was taking his temperature so that
it would not be too high and the chart would make it appear that he was
all right.
At any rate, he seemed to improve steadily, and finally reported to the
trainer, Jim Robinson, two days before the Yale game. He was full of
hope and the coaches decided to have Robinson give him a try-out, so
that they could decide whether he was as fit as he was making it appear
he was.
I shall never forget watching that heroic effort, as Robinson took him
out behind the training house, to make the final test. With a head-gear,
especially made for him, Dana settled down in his regular position,
ready for the charge, anticipating the oncoming Yale halfback and
throbbing with eagerness to tackle the man with the ball.
Then he plunged forward, both arms extended, but handicapped by his
terrible injury, he toppled over upon his face, heart-broken. The spirit
was there, but he was physically unfit for the task.
The Yale game started without Dana, and as he sat there on the side
lines and saw Princeton go down to defeat, he was overcome with the
thought of his helplessness. He was needed, but he didn't have a chance.