University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 21 text:

if' 55 , B al Chicago E29 Minnesota O. Q5 November 1899. New England winter, which he weathered without any underwear. l-le recalls how he gladly accepted the first job offered to him. It consisted of sweeping out the chapel at fifty cents a week. l.ater the German instructor, Professor faulhaber, gave him board for doing the chores at his home. Meanwhile, for three months of what he declares to be the bitterest winter he had ever experienced, his rations cost him but sixteen cents a day. l'le took the Yale entrance examination in glune, 7884, and his hard work was rewarded when he passed it with flying colors. During the remainder of that summer he worked for his father, putting up hay in the Newark meadows. The following September found a rather perplexed, anxious looking new student at Yale, with his entire wealth of eighteen dollars safely tucked away in his pocket. l-le immediately rented a small, dingy room in a garret, very similar to the one in which he had spent his days while at Exeter, and reverted to his old diet of crackers. feeling mildly prosperous on various occasions, he treated himself to a pound of round steak which he cooked on his garret stove. At the end of a few months he was successful in obtaining a job waiting on table, and in that way picked up enough money to make life reasonably comfortable during his period of adjustment. The athletic program at Yale opened with a huge student mass meeting at which addresses were made by the captains of the crew, the baseball team, and the football squad. Stagg attended the meeting with his fellow townsman George Gill who was disposed to the crew, and where Gill went Stagg was inclined to go. But on the way down Chapel Street to the boathouse on the first afternoon of practice the two novices were met by a friend of Gill's, a football enthusiast, who persuaded them to turn back to the new Yale field and to report for football practice. Stagg had seen only one football game, a contest played the year before between Yale and Princeton on the Polo Grounds in New York. football, therefore, was a relatively new experience to the aspiring athlete, and it was with some trepidation that he lined up with the scrubs against the powerful Yale varsity. No better picture can be painted of Staggfs first experience as a football player than his own descrip- tion of the activities of that afternoon. HAlex Coxe, Q90 pounds and big boned, was at left guard for the varsity. Not content with using his bulk in the line, Captain Richards was employing Alex to lug the ball. Tackling Alex waist-high or higher, as the rules enforced, was a auixotic enterprise, and he dragged us steadily toward our goal line. llhis was ata period before the old Rugby Union rules had been com- pletely abolished, and the so-called maul in goal still persistedl Another steam-roller sortie and he went over the line, with lillinghast of the scrubs still hanging on. Coxe landed on his back, and the ball was not down in that clay until it actually touched the ground. If Tillinghast could keep Coxe from turning over, or could wrest the ball from him, there would be no touchdown. This was the maul in goal, legislated out the following year, and the rules stipulated further that it was a strictly private Fight between the man with the ball and the man or men who had their hands on him when he crossed the goal . . . What lillinghast lacked in weight he made up in fight. While twenty of us looked on, the two fought it out for fifteen minutes- and l do not exaggerate. lt ended in a victory for the scrubs, -fillinghast getting the ball away from the winded Coxe. Thirty-five candidates reported for practice that season, and the team was coached by a staff of graduate students. Stagg won a place on the varsity but did not play in any important games. At rushing time in the Spring of 1885 the freshmen and the sophomores played their annual baseball game. lt was seldom that a first-year team managed to beat its older rivals, and the sophomores, determined 20

Page 20 text:

Chicago 21 lllinois 21. 6 November 19524 lt was his fathers great desire that young Stagg should have the best of educational advantages, but because of his meager Finances he Found it almost impossible to send him to school. l-le told his son that he would provide him with a home, but it would be necessary For him to raise his own tuition money. Accord- ingly he began his education in the small district school house of West Grange, paying his tuition by picl4ing up ditterent odd jobs. ln an interview some ten years ago, Stagg told a reporter of how he recalled in particular one job which consisted of beating Brussel carpets. l-le added good naturedly that he was prob- ably one of the best rug beaters in all oi West Grange. The majority of the boys in West Grange were satisfied with a grade school education, in fact many oi them stopped at the third or Fourth grades, but Amos Alonzo realizing the handicaps his Father had suttered from lacl4 oi learning, aspired to high school training. Accordingly, he diligently worked his way through Grange l-ligh School in three years, laboring at all types of jobs Familiar to poor but ambitious boys. It was while he was in preparatory school that he First played on an organized baseball team, and this initial par- ticipation in organized athletics is one ot his fondest boyhood memories. The very First year he became the school pitcher by virtue of his small stocl4 of curves, and the following year he helped to organize an amateur team. l'le pitched For this team when he could sandwich a game in between jobs, and gradually he began to earn something of a local reputation. ' During his last year in high school, Stagg sought the advice of the high school principal as to how he should go about rounding out his educational pursuits. The principal, who was always a sympathetic Friend to the ambitious boy, urged him to matriculate at Yale and study For the ministry. Stagg was much in Favor of this proposal, but when he came to investigate the situation, he Found that he could not pass the Yale entrance examinations. l-le, therefore, decided to go to Rhilips Exeter Academy to mal4e up his scholastic deficiencies. F-le spent the next six months in concentrated study at the Academy, his poverty forcing him to live under extremely trying conditions. l-le was so engrossed in his worl4, however, that he didnyt seem to mind the dingy garret room, where he was forced to live on two meals a day consisting of a hall pound of soda crackers, divided between the noon and evening repasts. Neither did he seem to mind the shivering Tl-lE LAST CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS-1924 Top Row-N. B. johnson, C. C. Jackson, A. A. Stagg, N, l-l. Norgren, Dr. C. O. Mo- lander. Fourth Row-T. G. Drain, .....,.....,.. , F. M. Henderson, F. E. Law, R. C. Emrich S. A. Rouse. Third Row-P. B. Barto, G. A. Kernwein, F. G. Clark, D. Cameron, F. j. l-lobscheid l-l. E. Neff, J. Pondelik, l-l. G. Frieda. Second Row-C. M. McKinney, F. F. Caruso, M. A. Polcrass, W. E. Marlcs, F. K. Gowdy Captain, S. E. l-libben, l-l. L. Thomas, G. W. Scott. Front Row-J. P. Long, R. N. Rolleston, A. L. Goodman, l-l. E. Barnes, R. E. Curley Clark, E. A. Francis. s,,.. I , ..-3-lg., ,,3i:,z,,,,.,z,,-:lui-'11--QE-e M V V -- I

Page 22 text:

Chicago 18 Princeton 21. 28 October 1922. slohn Thomas Flashes Through the Tiger Line. to uphold tradition, turned out to a man to transform the playing field into a bedlam in their efforts to unnerve the green frosh team. The sophs, however, did not reckon with Amos Alonzo Stagg who had that year joined the ranks ofthe Yale youngsters. l-le was too old a hand at pitching to be rattled by any type of ragging. l-lis attitude instilled confidence in the entire freshman team, and in spite of the frantic rooting of their classmates, the sophomores were forced to bow their heads in defeat. l'lis spectacular performance in this game definitely marked Stagg as baseball material and the following year found him a candidate for the varsity team. 8tagg's chief rival was another freshman, jesse Dann of Buffalo. Dann's major asset was a smoking fast ball which he rifled at the plate with such speed that no catcher could be found who could hold it. For this reason Dann was shifted to the position of catcher and Stagg became the first-string pitcher, to form the battery of Stagg and Dann which became famous in the annals of college baseball. The first game of the 1886 season was played at Philadelphia against the Athletics. Both teams played ragged ball and Yale took a tremendous beating. But Stagg continued to do the pitching and the team steadily improved behind him until the end of the season found Yale and l-larvard tied for the championship. The playoff was at l-lartford, Connecticut, on an extremely hot day with a great crowd of enthusiastic alumni and students from both schools lining the field. l-larvard had a veteran battery consisting of Nichols and Allen, who had been responsible for the winning of the pennant in 1885, nevertheless, the great combination of Stagg and Dann forged to the front and led the Yale team to a decisive 8 to 3 triumph. Stagg pitched four more seasons for Yale and in each year his team won the championship and the annual series from both l-larvard and Princeton. lmmediately after he had won his first championship for Yale, Stagg was offered his first opportunity to enter professional baseball, but he wisely refused this and the subsequent larger and more generous offers which continued to flow in upon him during the next four years. Stagg had two excellent reasons for main- taining his amateur status, . . the first was loyalty to Yale, inasmuch as l should be lost to the team if l played professionally. The second was the character of professional baseball. Despite lVlr. Q'l2ourke's literate eloquence, the professionals of his day were a hard-bitten lot, about whom grouped hangers-on, men and women, who were worse. There was a bar in every ball park, and the whole tone of the game was smelly. ln the three year period covering the years 1886, 1887, and 1888, Stagg pitched in every championship game, establishing a record never equalled by any other college pitcher up to the present time. The most spectacular game of his career at Yale was an exhibition match played 26 May 1888 at Princeton, when he set a record of twenty strike outs, and held the Tigers to two hits. The game was to have decided the 1888 championship, but it rained steadily until four o'clock, by which time the field was so muddy that the two teams refused to play. lVlrs. Grover Cleveland, however, happened to be visiting Princeton and was to attend, and the boys not wishing to disappoint her decided to play an exhibition game. Amos Alonzo took little interest in football after his freshman year until in the fall of 1888 Pa Corbin, captain of the squad, asked him to turn out for right end to fill a vacancy left by the graduation of F. C. Pratt. By that time the game had gone through a number of very radical changes, but the rush lines remained intact, while sparring with the flats of the players hands with the idea of having the opposition off balance as the ball was snapped was still a common practice. The ball also continued to be passed with the foot, in fact Stagg tells us how, . . every fall morning between classes, the center, Captain Corbin, and the quarter, Wurtemburg, used to practice this foot passingff During this year Walter Camp acted as a sort of an advisory coach, winding up every practice with a race 21