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 participated, 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 participated, 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 blustering god Æolus. 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 circumstances was it permissible to kick, but instead provided
a penalty, can perhaps appreciate the circumstances.
"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
sophomore, and Shevlin, senior, who idolized his son, made it a practice
of attending all important contests in which he participated, 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 pass 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 Cumnock 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.
"He was to be seen the night before, and the morning of the game. He
always had his tickets for the side line and wore the badge as an
ex-Yale captain. But the game itself Billy Rhodes never saw.
"If at Springfield, he was to be found in the Massasoit House, walking
the floor until the result of the game was known. If at New Haven, he
was not at the Yale Field. He walked around the field and out into the
woods. If the game was at Cambridge, he was not at Holmes Field, or
later, at Soldiers' Field.
"When the game was over he would join in the celebration of victory, or
sink into the misery of defeat, as the case might be. But he never could
witness a game. The sting of defeat had left its permanent wound."
A YALE NIGHTMARE
Those who saw the Army defeat Yale at West Point in 1904 must realize
what a blow it was to the Blue. The first score came as a result of a
blocked kick by West Point, which was recovered by Erwin, who picked up
the ball and dashed across the line for a touchdown. The Army scored the
second time when Torney cut loose and ran 105 yards for a touchdown.
Sam Morse, captain of the Yale 1906 team, who played right halfback in
this game, tells how the nightmare of defeat may come upon us at any
time, even in the early season, and incidentally how it may have its
compensations.
"An instance of the psychology of football is to be found in the fall
of 1904, when Jim Hogan was captain of the Yale team," says Morse. "I
had the pleasure of playing back of him on the defensive in almost every
game of that year, and I got to depend so much on those bull-like
charges of his that I fear that if I had been obliged to play back of
some one else my playing would have been of inferior quality.
"Yale had a fine team that year, defeating both Harvard and Princeton
with something to spare. The only eleven that scored on us was West
Point, and they beat us. It is a strange thing that the Cadets always
seem to give Yale a close game, as in that year even though beaten by
both Harvard and Princeton by safe scores, and even though Yale beat
Harvard and Princeton handily, the Army played us to a standstill.
"After the game, as is so often the case when men have played themselves
out, there was a good deal of sobbing and a good many real tears were
shed. Every man who has played football will appreciate that there are
times when it is a very common matter for even a big husky man to weep.
We were all in the West Point dressing-room when Jim Hogan arose. He
felt what we all took to be a disgrace more keenly than any of us. There
was no shake in his voice, however, or any tears in his eyes when he
bellowed at us to stop blubbering.
"'Don't feel sorry for yourselves. I hope this thing will hurt us all
enough so that we will profit by it. It isn't a matter to cry over--it's
a matter to analyze closely and to take into yourself and to digest, and
finally to prevent its happening again.'
"He drove it home as only Jim Hogan could. At the close Ralph Bloomer
jumped to his feet and cried:
"'Jim, old man, we are with you, and you are right about it, and we will
wipe this thing out in a way which will satisfy you and all the rest of
the college.'
"The whole team followed him. Right then and there that aggregation
became a Yale football team in the proper sense, and one of the greatest
Yale football teams that ever played. It was the game followed by Jim's
speech that made the eleven men a unit for victory.
"If Jim had been allowed to live a few more years the quality of
leadership that he possessed would have made of him a very prominent and
powerful man. His memory is one of the dearest things to all of us who
were team mates or friends of his, but I hardly ever think of him
without picturing him that particular day in the dressing-room at West
Point, when in five minutes he made of eleven men a really great
football team."
Even Eddie Mahan is not immune to the haunting memory of defeat, and
perhaps because of the very fact that disaster came into his
brilliant gridiron career only once, and then in his senior year, it
hit him hard. The manner of its telling by this great player is
sufficient proof of that. Here is Eddie's story:
[Illustration:
Hunkin Tilley Bailey Snyder Jewett Gillies Miller Lalley
Shiverick Anderson Menler Barrett Cool Shelton Collins
Eckley Schock Schlicter Zander
CORNELL'S GREAT TEAM--1915]
"I enjoyed my football days at Harvard so well that I would like to go
back each fall and play football for the rest of my life. I wish to
goodness I could go back and play just one game over--that is the
Cornell game of 1915. My freshman team won all its games, and during the
three years that I played for the Harvard Varsity I never figured in a
losing game except that one. Cornell beat Harvard 10 to 0. The score of
that game will haunt me all my life long. This game has been a nightmare
to me ever since. Every time I think of football that game is one of the
first things that comes to mind. I fumbled a lot. I don't know why, but
I couldn't seem to hold onto the ball.
"We blocked four kicks, but Cornell recovered every one. We sort of felt
that there was more than the Cornell team playing against us--a goal
from the field and a touchdown. Shiverick, of Cornell, stands out in my
recollection of that game. He was a good kicker. Once he had to kick out
from behind the goal post down in his own territory. Watson and I were
both laying for a line buck; playing up close. Shiverick kicked one over
my head, out of bounds at his own 45-yard line.
"I felt like a burglar after this game, because I felt that I had lost
it. I was feeling pretty blue until the Monday after the game, when the
coaches picked eleven men as the Varsity team, and just as soon as they
sent these eleven men to a section of the field to get acquainted with
each other--that was the beginning of team work. From the way those
fellows went at it that day, and from the spirit they showed, we felt
that no team could ever lick us again, neither Princeton nor Yale. The
Cornell game acted like a tonic on the whole crowd. Instead of
disheartening the team it instilled in us determination. We said:
"'We know what it is to be licked, and we'll be damned if we'll be
licked again.'"
Jack de Saulles' football ambitions were realized when he made the Yale
team at quarterback, the position which his brother Charlie, before him,
had occupied. His spectacular runs, his able generalship, his ability to
handle punts, coupled with that characteristic de Saulles' grit, made
him a famous player.
Let this game little quarterback tell his own story:
"Billy Bull and I have often discussed the fact that when an attempt for
a goal from the field failed, one of the players of the opposing side
always touched the ball back of the goal line (thereby making it dead),
and brought it out to the 25-yard line to kick. Of course, the ball is
never dead until it is touched down. It was in the fall of 1902 when we
were playing West Point. In the latter part of the second half of that
game, with the score 6 to 6, Charlie Daly attempted a field goal, which
was unsuccessful. What Billy Bull and I had discussed many times came
into my mind like a flash. I picked the ball up and walked out with it
as if it had been touched back of the goal. When I passed the 25-yard
line, walking along casually, Bucky Vail, who was the referee, yelled to
me to stop. I walked over to him unconcerned and said: 'Bucky, old boy!
this ball is not dead, because I did not touch it down. And I am going
down the field with it.' By that time the West Point men had taken their
positions in order to receive the kick from the 25-yard line. While I
was still walking down the field, in order to pass all the West Point
men, before making my dash for a certain touchdown, it struck Bucky Vail
that I was right, and he yelled out at the top of his voice. 'The ball
is not dead. It is free.' Whereupon the West Point men started after me.
An Army man tackled me on their 25-yard line, after I had taken the ball
down the field for nearly a touchdown. I have often turned over in my
bed at night since that time, cursing the action of Referee Vail. If he
had not interfered with my play I would have walked down the field for a
touchdown and victory for Yale. The final score remained 6 to 6.
"I have often thought of the painful hours I would have suffered had I
missed the two open field chances in the disastrous game at Cambridge in
the fall of 1902, when Yale was beaten 23 to 0. On two different
occasions in that game a Harvard runner with interference had passed the
whole Yale team. I was the only Yale man between the Harvard man and a
touchdown. The supreme satisfaction I had in nailing both of those
runners is one of the most pleasant recollections of my football career.
"When I was a little shaver, back in 1889, I lived at South Bethlehem,
Pa. Paul Dashiell and Mathew McClung, who were then playing football at
Lehigh University, took an interest in me. Paul Dashiell took me to the
first football game I ever saw. Dibby McClung gave me one of the old
practice balls of the Lehigh team. This was the first football I ever
had in my hands. For weeks afterwards that football was my nightly
companion in bed. These two Lehigh stars have always been my football
heroes, and it was a happy day for me when I played quarterback on the
Yale team and these two men acted as officials that day."
[Illustration: ONE SCENE NEVER PHOTOGRAPHED IN FOOTBALL]