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 naive 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
|