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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (Nov. 22, 1899)
86 YALMm ADUMNI wHEkiuy they had written it on a blackboard “We are here to play a Yale game. We have no idea of being beaten. This famous Harvard eleven has gained nothing from: us before the game opens, and it is as much our purpose to win from them as though we had heard much less about them.” The way the Yale captain kicked wrote this message more clearly than anything else. It was not more the length and drive of his punts than the calmness and assurance with which he did his punting. Then perhaps the quar- ter’s sure work added its emphasis to this message. Fincke had been out of sorts for ten days, playing poor football. Now he was safe, quick, self-reliant. The line had done what those who knew the individuals who made the line would do. They had driven at it with a fierce- ness that was up to the highest standards of Yale’s aggressive creed. It was a kind of football that Bacon used to play, and Hinkey, and Heffelfinger, and Rhodes. I had the good fortune, as we all went to Boston Friday afternoon, to sit near a man in whom the principles of football have always seemed instincts. “System is: all right,” he said, as we tried to forecast what would happen just twenty-four hours later on,” but I want first the right individuals. We have got them in that line. Almost every line has some lumber in it,—people who weigh up to about what is wanted, but who are the slow, waiting kind. rom the time the ball is snapped, that line is fighting.” A GOOD SYSTEM. One’s confidence in that principle of football selection and development, did not diminish at any time during Satur- day’s game. Indeed, it was confirmed at the very outset. It is a wonderfully promising thing to have your eleven together the middle of October, and to, mold it and trim it and fit it and drive it for a full month or more. There are things to be said in favor of that system that errs, if it errs, on the side of keep- ing the lists open to twenty-five hundred students until even a few days before a great contest, making a place and a “VY” a prize for every man of pluck and muscle and head. It may have been “THobson’s choice” at Yale this year, but I think something of this system would have been followed even had it been easy to do very differently. The proposition had been first of all to check Harvard, whose friends had. counted so very confidently on a’ score from ten to twenty greater than Yale, and, lo, this green eleven had driven those veterans back. Harvard was on the defensive. Every exchange of punts had netted Yale ten yards or more, but part of the time this was offset, and more than offset, by the way in which that ball was taken by Daly and his interferers, through half of the Yale team. And then after all this came that ter- rific Harvard charge beginning some- where around the forty-five yard line and going down relentlessly line after line. All the tremendous weight of the Harvard aggregation seemed in their charge at genter. The Yale line was overborne time and time again, and then, fairly in the air over that mass of heads and heels, the huge Ellis went hurdling, measuring at least his length in advance, often twice or three times that. Many a time he came up standing on the other side of the line. Some said the magnificent defense of the Yale Captain ... was... rough = football... Did it ever occur to them how they would . stop a man coming in the air about the height of their heads, throwing him- self head on? Would they dive under him and let him fall on them. The wav in which McBride welcomed Ellis was not only inevitable, from that style of play, but it was perfectly within the laws of the game. The all-seeing Dashiell observed it very minutely. He asked McBride once just how he nursed that head when it came over and the Yale captain’s hands went up palms open, which told the story. This lay criticism of a player, who has done as much as any captain ever did to keep the standards of the sport clean and fair, cannot stand fora minute. It was rough, killing work, taking the line on a hurdle, | second half. but the chances were more against those who formed the hurdle than against the hurdler. It was a trifle hypercritical to question the defense against such a play. Of course, Ellis wore out and had to leave the game before it was nearly over, but that was Harvard’s lookout. She played her prize card and lost, and oh the glory of that losing! It cannot be described. It was rather cruel, considering the nerves of the average American audi- ence, to have that stand followed a minute later by Burnett’s try for goal. Burnett would have made that goal if it had not been a Yale-Harvard game. He could probably go on to Soldiers Field to-day and make twenty- five like it in succession. He lost it before he kicked. That is on the authority of the great American expert of kicking. That fussing and fiddling and fake swing went one too far. The awful tension of the moment in thirty- five thousand nervous systems must have had some effect on the kicker, if there is anything in mental telepathy. | And then it went back and forth for the rest of the half—Yale, snappy, swift, fierce, out-kicking her opponent. THE SECOND HALF. With great joy Yale came on for the Faith in the fighting qual- ities of the Eleven and suddenly in- creased confidence in the positive and aggressive virtues of Mr. McBride’s men, restored that Yale confidence which some of her rivals have always called conceit. “We've done Fair Harvard up before, We'll do her up again.” The modest theme of the Yale war song was the hope and even expectation of the Yale four thousand. It must be admitted that the confident faith of the thirty thousand people who wore red ribbons and red chrysanthemums had changed to anxiety. The feelings of both were a bit overdone. But that is what makes football so painfully deli- ciOUs. It was in this second half that Yale showed her offensive, as well as her de- fensive power. But that magnificent Harvard Eleven showed also their pluck and great. science of defense. Yale drove along, one, two and three yards at a time, and gained her fifteen feet,—which Mr. Curtiss calls equal to a mile at such times and agonies—once, twice and three times. And then that incomparable quarter of Harvard, the field captain of the Crimson, called his men together and used his fist in gestures. And the Yale drive was blocked. McBride’s determination to keep up that drive and his’ faith that 1t might yet pieree the impregnable or bound into victory, was evidenced by his willingness to surren- der fifteen yards that he might attempt again the handicapped distance. The Yale heart leaped as Brown crashed and Chadwick and Keane dove and the splendid Crimson line shivered and now and again broke. But it was not enough. Yale’s of- fense had not reached the point of her defense in perfection. And the Harvard resistance proved invincible. Why weren't one or two trick plays intro- duced? No oonecan say. But who will criticise? It takes a colder pessimism than the writer of this article can sum- mon to say anything in derogation of the work of Yale’s fighters. They could not quite do it and they felt badly about it. But their thousands of friends said: “Well done for a green team! Well done for any team.” And then there were those last three minutes. (The chronicles hereinafter set down tell other details, and in them you will learn of the remarkably well executed double passes, back of punts by that quarter, Daly, of which the history of football can hardly show the equal.) But those last three minutes had brought the fight into Yale’s territory, because the Yale backs had muffed punts and the Harvard ends had recovered the fumbles. Why should the Yale Captain, who plays every other department of the game so superbly, be asked also to handle punts? It is a fair question. The man who made one of the great records of the gridiron in his kicking last Saturday, and without whose de- and running | fence the Harvard onslaught could not have been stopped, might reasonably be spared this detail. The play had worn down four of Har- vard’s men and with what fiendish flerceness the new men now jumped into the attack! Would Harvard yet do it? No Yale man’s heart was regu- lar in its action as the try for the goal from the field was made in the last few seconds! Again let the writer ask the reader to look below and see diagram. It is beyond this pen to tell the sus- pense of those one hundred and eighty seconds. A COMPARISON. The fact that they played out to a tie such an unusual contest as that of last Saturday without disclosing on either side any particular weakness, is in-itself a very high compliment to the members of both elevens. Much has been said in this rambling sketch of the Yale work, because so little of good work from Yale had been recognized before this season. The Harvard Eleven has for a month been before the eyes of the college world as a team conspic- uous for individual merit and perfect system. Its members have been quoted as examples of what football players ought to be in their positions, but if. place would permit, it would still be a delight to linger on the virtues of their players. When was the work of Campbell paralleled? Yale and Harvard together could not offer many candidates for an answer to this question. His play was not only hard, surely holding the runner, or the man who had hoped to run, but it was conspicuously clean. Not once but several.times did he have the opportunity for what might be called excusably rough work, in handling Yale’s light quarter outside the lines; he never yielded to the temptation. The hard play and his own tremendous activ- ity wore out this great end before the game was over; but he had made a record. Hallowell at the other end was not as often in evidence because he was sent back so frequently for the kicks. His kicks did not nearly equal those of McBride, but they were always safely slanted and it was practically impossible to block them. ee YALE ENDS DID GOOD WORK. The Yale men who played against these two finished ends had only a frac- tion of their training this season. Con- sidering the short time that Hubbell and Snitjer had been in the harness, their work was extraordinarily good. From any standpoint, it was highly creditable work. They did miss, now and then, the long double pass. That is a matter of greenness, more than anything else. It takes long and constant play to instinctively know where the play will go. When it came to. the close end plays, both ends were equal to the emergency and Hubbell again distin- guished himself for tackling back of the line, and taking the runner from behind. The Yale ends did not prevent Daly from running back the punts from five to perhaps twenty-five yards. But there is no such man in the country as Daly, for this work, and the interference that he was given was remarkably well exe- cuted. Besides all this, the Yale ends had to get down under very much longer kicks than those which the Harvard men were required to follow. They kept up with the ball surprisingly well. Think of the short time for the straight pass from center to fullback, and the short time that such driving punts as those of McBride were in the air, and then think of following them fifty and sixty and even seventy yards. The record on one hundred yard sprints will help you, and then remember that ends almost invari- | ably have to dodge and tussle a bit to clear for their run. It is not possible in this space to com- pare man for man the play between the ends. It is not uncomplimentary to Harvard and it is certainly not uncom- plimentary to Yale, to say that hardly a Football Pneumonia Don’t get it. You are going to the Princeton game on Saturday and no man can tell what stress of November weather you may meet, But you can be prepared for anything. The right under- clothing, the right sweater, a warm rug—these are good in- vestments just now. CHASE & CoO. New Haven House Block. Henry Heath Hats. Yale sympathizer who was at all familiar with football, would change the swift, aggressive, undismayed tackles, guards and center of the Blue for even the superb line of muscle and experience and headwork which they met. It would seem to a layman that the tackles made a record for the year. As for guards, Olcott was quite sufficient and more so, while Brown brought back the days of Heffelfinger. Time and again he broke up the Harvard play back of the line, once for a loss of over ten yards. The Harvard captain, good as he was, did not seem able to seriously trouble his play. HALE AGAINST SUPERIOR WEIGHT. At center there was Hale of Yale, with about 185 pounds against Burnett of Harvard with 227 pounds; Hale of Yale, who had played center in Fresh- man year sometimes on his class eleven, and had played the position three or four days on the University eleven this Fall; against Burnett of Harvard, who had the most extended and varied experience. If Hale had another year to play, Yale would guarantee to raise the standard of center play at football. This splendid athlete improved with every play. At first, weight somewhat overbore him, but less and less was the difference felt. At last, the difference was in Yale’s favor. Hale was not only playing a center game, but he was playing a tackle. He finished his principal business early in every play and then went roaming around the field looking for more to do. He was almost as frequent a tackler as anyone in broken field. This account has spoken of Daly at quarter, but his work needs no elabora- tion. On the other end, Fincke of Yale was sure, fumbling the ball only once and then under very trying circumstances, and showing a coolness which greatly helped Yale. Both of Yale’s pair of backs played excellent football; of the first two, Sharpe handled punts remarkable well, while Richards was fierce and sure in his defense. His wrestling of the ball at the two yard line from Ellis was a truly remarkable -thing. For _ this pair were substituted Keene and Chad- wick later in the play, only because they were required for the kind_of play that had been decided uron. For that particular effort, McBride could work better with them than with the other two men. There was certainly nothing to regret from the Yale standpoint in com- paring the halves of the two elevens. _ As to McBride, he was the pride oi Yale and her tower of strength. His play was the glorv of the afternoon. iS & KNOX Hats are “Fit” all the Season.
