VOLUME Vi ONG a4.
NEW HAVEN, CONN., THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1897.
A SENSATIONAL VICTORY. —
The Finish of the Princeton Game
Will Make it Famous.
When the Yale alumni of 1917 are
gathered in the spacious Alumni Hall
of that period for. Commencement
Dinner, (all under cover, and each sup-
plied with a small portion of ozone)
some prosperous member. of the Class
of Ninety seven, returned for his twen-
tieth reunion, or some remnant of an
earlier age, who was so favored of the
gods as to have been at the Yale Field
on the afternoon of June 5, 1897, will
very likely be called upon for his views
of men and things and memories of the
great hours in the history of Yale.
And, if by that time statutory regu-
lation does not prevent it, and he be in
any way of a sport-loving nature, it
is all of Yale University to a Franklin
primer that he will tell those incredu-
lous children of the Twentieth Century
how the Blue “won it out,” ten to nine,
in the great battle with old Nassau in
1897. ;
He can draw on his imagination,
if he wishes; but he will not, if his
memory is good. Imagination even at
that distance will hardly equal history,
and any element of uncertainty or ex-
citement which he may evolve, will be
overshadowed by the most prosaic
recital of the order of events in the
last half of the ninth, and the.-story
of the score-card in Yale’s tenth, —
It has been the writer’s good fortune
to see most of the great athletic battles
of the last ten years. There is one
which will live as long in his memory
as that of last Saturday afternoon. It
is the last twenty minutes of the strug-
gle on Hampden Park in the Fall of
1890, where Yale’s amazing recovery
and all but successful fight against
an extraordinary eleven, flushed with
the first victory of fourteen years, gave
her a clearer title to the virtues of ccl-
legiate athletics than any other inci-
dent in her not uneventful history.
Saturday afternoon’s contest was like
it in that there was present the same
spirit of fight clean out to the end and
dying in the last ditch. In the former
it all but prevailed. In the latter it
quite prevailed, and therein is the
greater joy of it, although not any
greater credit.
It would be well to say here that Yale
won the game. To all appearances, by
the rule of ninety-nine precedents out
of a hundred, she lost it before she
won. The roar and rumble which ver-
acious residents of West Haven affirm
that they heard, and were even startled
by, a few minutes before 6 o’clock, was
the explosion of the spirit of 5,000 lively
mortals. For nine innings their nerves
had made their existence miserable.
In that short moment in the ninth,
all that repressed feeling worked up
into extraordinarily high explosive, was
ignited by a single spark. It was the
sharp ring of the bat which caught a
swift ball at just the right angle and on
just the right grain. Then there was
a vision of a piece of leather cutting
the air over the shortstop’s head, ris-
ing still higher as it passed the line
between the left and center, begin-
ning its downward curve far beyond
any sprinting point. The man who
swung the bat was a Freshman named
Camp.
WHEN CAMP CAME TO THE BAT.
Two veterans before him had been
executed with woeful promptness
through the offices of Hillebrand, one
whom Yale has met hefore, and Kel-
ley, another whom Yale has met be-
fore (and. in both cases remembers.)
A third Fincke had _ succeeded in
reaching first only by skillful wait-
ing for the fourth ball, or by the
‘“sood eye” of which the man who
talks from the sidelines says much.
Price Tren CEnrTs.
©. G. Bartlett, ec.
H. L. DeForest, c. M.L. Fearey, p. S. B. Camp,s.s. C. M. Reed, 2b.
C. M. Fincke, 3b. ‘EB. F. Hamlin, p.,2b. G.C. Greenway, p. .H. M. Keator, c. (Capt.) H. W. Letton,1b. J.J. Hazen, 2b.
H. B. Wallace, r.f. *
A. 3, Goodwin, C. ‘ys W. Wear, r. f.
G. EH. Hecker, Pp.
YALE UNIVERSITY NINE, 1897.
Norr.—Farnham and Murphy not present in group.
(Photograph by Pach).
Furthermore the young shortstop had
one strike, and there are many credi-
ble witnesses who take oath that his
strikes were two. Indeed, a canvass
of authority by Mr: Carter, not un-
know in Yale athletic annals, has re-
sulted in a startling array of author-
ity for the two-strike theory. Camp,
himself, who was quite the most watch-
ful person of the 6,000 at the time, and
who surely has a “good eye,’ admits
that he doesn’t know. Really no one
knows. There was too overwhelming
a rush of sensations to the extended
sensoria of those present, immdeiately
following that incident, to leave room
for any lasting impression as to the
detail. The umpire might know, but
no one knows where he is. He may
be still arguing with dissatisfied peo-
ple as to the proper place from which
to view curves and call the halls and
strikes, or still be throwing back
clean, white balls to recalcitrant
pitchers, in some distant damond “just
to be contrary,” as the Princeton men
say.
The Faculty in a meeting from
eight to twelve at the Graduates’ Club
that evening, which was given up to
an examination of the bolder features
of the match, handed down a clear de-
cision in. favor of this view of the
case. Mr. Fox supports this view
elsewhere in this paper.
So two strikes we will call it.
Here is another thing to remember.
The fate-daring young player had al-
ready sent a twisting foul fly to Hille-
brand which the J«tter had dropped—
hard ball. This statement is on the
authority of a man named Keator,
Yale ’97, who, as to the proceedings
of the afternoon, saw all and was a
large part. The Weekly reporters
present, including the writer, don’t re-
member anything about those details
—at least with any accuracy.
Then—oh! then—came that sound,
spoken of above, and then went that
ball, safe beyond all peradventure, even
from Bradley and from Easton. It
‘it was. -
is very trying to tell more details just
now. Of course, Fincke flew around
the three bases between him and a
run like a greyhound, and Camp’s mo-
tion was as though, someone swung
him on the end of a rope from the cen-
ter of the diamond.
IT WAS A HOME RUN.
You knew it was the greatest thing
you ever saw in baseball as soon as the
ball began to sail; but you didn’t dare
to believe that it was quite as good as
It was a three-bagger, but
could it be a home run with that swift
Bradley after it? Yes. As the fleet
shortstop bounds down from second,
the coach at third waves toward home,
and home he goes, fairly flying, and th
score is tied, 9 to 9. Peek ate
It is just impossible to describe the
situation after that. The whole 6,000
(Princeton’s few hundred excepted)
were on their feet and such a shout
went up as shook the towers of Rome
on the occasicn of another famous
home-coming after two men had been
retired. Reputable citzens of the sub-
urbs who say how many miles they
heard that shout are ecailed liars.
The sudden delirious joy of half ten
thousand people has never’ been
equalled, in college battles, according
to the writer’s best knowledge and
belief. There was no sanity anywhere
on the Field. Pop Smith may or may
not have had a fit, just then. About
fifty hundred other people had fits.
The men of the time will continue
to recall, Brigham’s feat at Hampden
Park, where he leaned backwards over
the ropes around the course as far as
Mr. Cooke teaches the men to swing
on the finish, then, with an arm over
a horse’s back, gathered in, with one
hand, the terrific hit which had ap-
parently Saved the game for the
Crimson and won the championship.
There will be still in very lively mem-
ory a similar performance by Mr.
Clark several years before. It is not
in detraction from these achievements
to say, in comparing them with
Freshman Camnp’s hit and the subse-
quent proceedings, that. these other
phenomenal feats preserved the vic-
tory already won while last Satur-
day’s game, by all rules already lost,
was first saved and then won.
THE LAST OF THE TENTH.
The other half of the story is simply
this. The tenth inning opened with
Princeton still confident. The shock
of Camp’s home run had been with-
stood and when Kelly, who was first
at the bat lined out a single ,it seemed
as if the lead would now go back and
that magnificent recovery all count for
nothing. But the next play was a hot
ball to Fincke, passed quickly to Haz-
en and so cutting off Kelly, and then
like lightning sent on to Letton, mak-
ing a double. Fincke’s capture of the
foul -|.y from Altman closed _ that
chapter of the game.
Hazen was the first at the bat for
Yale and he completed his magnific-
cent record of the afternoon by a
clean base hit. Murphy went out on
strikes and Keator reached first, af-
ter his usual custom, this time hy a
grounder too hot for Kelly to handle.
It was very comfortable to see Let-
ton come to the bat. Letton is the
surest hitter of the nine. There was
the preliminary of a strike and a ball
or two, but then he caught it. There
was considerable hope that he would
make a safe single and allow a score—
much more hope than there was in
the inning before that Camp would
save the game. But there was no ex-
pectation of the treat again in store
for the Yale thousands. Letton
caught the ball just where he wanted
it. Where it went, it is impossible to
say. The Weekly has it on the au-
