Tag Archives: football

Third League Holds Meeting in Chicago to Fight Majors

Damon Runyon

Chicago Examiner/January 12, 1913

U. S. League Magnates Find Backing and Plan to Renew Outlaw Organization: Want Kling in Kansas City.

Kansas City, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore and Pittsburg May Join.

The United States League is not dead. The baseball world smiled a dry smile when it read, a short time ago, that the organization had been incorporated in the State of New Jersey, apparently believing that said incorporation would be about the last thing heard of the project. 

But there was a mysterious meeting of the league yesterday and it was held within our gates. It was impossible to spot the place where the promoters were gathered, but there was every reason to believe they were gathered somewhere, and that their session was a long and interesting one 

When the league was reorganized. Mr. Whitman of Richmond, Va., was elected president. He was the owner of the Richmond club in last year’s circuit, and it was said he dropped some money when things went wrong. Richmond is not in the new body and Mr. Whitman will probably be content with the executive position. 

Sams Gain Support

The articles of incorporation announced the capital stock as $125,000. While this sum would not go far toward building up a league designed to rival the two majors, it is more than could be produced for the launching of the scheme a year ago. 

Chicago is not to be included in the circuit, according to present plans. Still, an effort will be made to interest local capitalists and this city will have a club if someone is willing to pay for it. 

The league, as outlined, will be made up of Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburg and Baltimore. It was thought that certain wealthy residents of Kansas City would back a club there, but, after looking into the matter thoroughly, they passed it up, saying the circuit was unwieldy. 

Want Kling in Kansas City

It was pointed out that Baltimore was almost off the map so far as the other towns were concerned. There is a chance that Baltimore will be given up if a substitute can be found for it. 

After their temporary setback in Kansas City, the promoters decided to approach John Kling with their proposition. John is a careful person and not likely to put money into anything shaky. He will have to be convinced that the new league has come to stay before he will invest. However, Kling might be prevailed upon to take the management of the club in his home town. Last year, the backers of the league in Pittsburg put an entire season’s salary in the bank for Deacon Phillippi, their manager, before the season started. An act of this kind might swing Kling around in a hurry. 

Kling will not be without offers this year, anyway. Joe Tinker was billed to start for Kansas City last night to see about landing him for the Reds. Joe has been given permission by the Boston club to deal with John. 

Cubs to Play Indianapolis 

President Murphy of the Cubs announced that another date had been added to the list of practice games for the Cubs this Spring. They will play Mike Kelley’s team in Indianapolis on April 1. They already had been booked there for April 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

Manager Jim Callahan of the Sox is expected home from Davenport to-day. It has been decided that the Sox will go to the coast over the Northwestern lines. There will be the usual special train. It will leave Chicago the evening of February 20. 

President Johnson of the American League is preparing to entertain the other members of the National Commission, who will be in Chicago next Thursday for the postponed annual meeting.

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Big Hats and Cowboy Boots at Fordham

Damon Runyon

Leader-Tribune/October 27, 1937

We got tangled up with posse of West Texans last Saturday. It was at the football game between New York’s Fordham, and Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University, at the Polo Grounds.

We will not make too much here of the fact that this football game was one of the most popeyed gridiron propositions we have ever witnessed, and that Fordham was mighty lucky to sweat out a 7 to 6 victory in the last couple of minutes of play. That has already been gone into at length in the public prints. Our chief concern is with those West Texans.

They were headed by Carter, the hidalgo of West Texas, publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and a fabulous character. He wore a pure white sombrero, the size of a. pup-tent, a pure white polo coat, and a pair of fancy stitched cow-puncher boots.

There were about 250 of the West Texans under command of the hidalgo, and they brought a band of 52 pieces with them, the musicians being arrayed in nice white uniforms. Between the football halves, Mr. Carter, in person, led the band in a parade about the field, and upwards of 25,000 inmates of the Bronx, Harlem, and other sections of New York cheered the imposing figure of Mr. Carter to what we locally call the echo.

The field was muddy. Mr. Carter’s high heels sank to his fetlocks in the ooze at every step. By the time he got back to his box in the upper tier among his fellow West Texans, he was all tuckered out, but his football enthusiasm was unabated.

It is only fair to report that Mr. Carter does not always go about sartorially accoutered like a cinema hero of a horse opera. As a matter of fact, in his native habitat, he dresses like all the other rich clubmen of Fort Worth, which is in the manner of Mr. Menjou.

The white sombrero, and the boots of Saturday, we suspect, were merely by way of a touch of color and atmosphere for the edification of the New York yeomanry, who like to see reality come up to their imagination, and who imagine everybody down in Texas wears those big lids, and footgear, and shouts yip-yip-yippy with every other breath.

Mr. Carter being the most adroit salesman of West Texas in all his section of the Lone Star state, and as frequent a visitor to New York City as if he had an office here, understands this New York idea, and basely panders to it. He even went in for the yip-yip-yippy business during the football game, especially in the early stages when Texas Christians whipped a score over on Fordham faster than you could say wojciechowiez, the name of the Fordham center, which seemed to baffle the soft spoken West Texans.

In this yip-yipping, Mr. Carter was joined by his fellow West Texans, who included Dr. E.M. Waites, president. of TCU, which has a student co-ed membership of 1,500, and Dr. Webb Walker, famous sponsor TCU’s team. Stanley Thompson, president of the Fort Worth baseball club, winner of the Texas league pennant and of the Dixie championship, and F. J. Adams, of the Gulf Oil Company, were also present.

Then Mr. Carter. had impaneled quite a number of former West Texans to augment his cheering section. They included Mr. Silliman Evans, noted publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, who was with Mr. Carter in Fort Worth for twelve years, and Mr. Byron Foy, president of De Soto Motors, and Chrysler vice president, a quiet, good looking gentleman, who was more repressed vocally than the others, but who gave the Texas Christian plays plenty of what we call “body English.”

That is to say, Mr. Foy’s anatomy moved with the plays, this way and that, and while no sound came from him, it was obvious that his movements were directed by violent internal emotion. This betokens the football fan who is apt to wind up with his internal organs slightly strained. A football fan on the order of, say, Mr. Silliman Evans, who lets himself go, runs no greater risk than the fracture of the larynx.

Among these ladies and gentlemen of West Texas, come all that long distance to lend their support to their favorite football team, you sensed something of the spirit that has made the sundown side of the lone star state one of lustiest, liveliest sections of the land. They were well dressed, hearty, healthy and prosperous looking folks of great amiability.

You judged from their conversation that their interest in their football team is something personal, and intimate, and neighborly. They knew all about the individual players. They were a little blue over the outcome, but they did not forget their West Texas courtesy, and gave the Fordham boys a round of applause at the finish.

A New York lady approached Mr. Carter, sitting silent and disconsolate after the game, for his autograph, and asked:

“Well, how did you like it?”

“I didn’t like it, ma’am,” said Mr. Carter, courteously.

“Oh, don’t cry about it,” said the lady, encouragingly. “It was a wonderful game.”

“I’m not crying, ma’am,” said Mr. Carter. “And it was a wonderful game. But you asked me how I like it, and I tell you, I didn’t like it. I still don’t like it. In West Texas, ma’am, truth always comes first.”

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Expert Wants Old Methods Brought Back

Damon Runyon

Lancaster New Era/October 16, 1930

NEW YORK, Oct. 19.—I note in the public prints that today, Saturday, is to be given over to deception, and fraud, and cunning by many of our college footballers. For example, there’s Harvard and the Army.

It is related from Cambridge that the Harvard team, somewhat crippled in the vicinity of the backfield and the line, too, will depend upon divers and sundry forms of football legerdemain to lick the soldiers from up the Hudson.

From West Point comes stories that gridiron black magic, designed to keep the football hidden as much as possible, is to be employed against fair Harvard. And from other points of the compass we have tales to the same general effect that this and that team is going in strong today for mystery and sleight-o’-hand.

What I say is we ought to have more of that old fashioned public football, in which the pill is on view at all times except perhaps when the boys are piled on top of it. It seems to me that this skullduggery that is being planned for today on all sides is a bad example to the college youth. It may sow the seed of larceny in other forms. The first thing you know some of these footballers may turn out to be judges.

Ball in Full View

Personally, I like the old time football they used to have at Harvard, when no attempt was made to be surreptitious with the old leather pumpkin. In fact, they made a great public display of it in those times. They would bring it out on the field in full view of all hands, and lay it right down on the ground, where, in the haze of a pleasant fall afternoon, it would stand out like a tombstone in a wheatfield.

It was as if Harvard was saying to the enemy:

“Well, here she is, boys! Here’s the football!”

 And then all Harvard would do would be to wheel up some fellow like Charley Brickley, and scare the stuffin’ out of the boys the other side. But they didn’t hide the football–no, siree Bob! They wanted everybody to see when Charley was approaching, football in hand.

Indian Strategy

I imagine that Harvard got sick and tired of that hidden football business ‘way back yonder in the early football, football times when under his Carlisle Injun poked a football under his sweater and ran from here to Cape Cod for a touchdown in the cool o’ the evening when running was good.

In fact, as I recall hearing of the circumstances, Harvard let out an awful yip about the redskin biting the dust behind their goal posts with the football sight unseen. The Harvardian squawk became so loathsome to the football authorities that they hauled off and changed the rules, so that never again could an Injun, or anyone else, hide a football under his sweater, back of his bridgework, or in the slack of his trouserloons.

Possibly it was the Injun artfulness that nauseated Harvard with concealed football, and made open-board dealing more fashionable at Cambridge for a long spell. I am really surprised to hear that Harvard is going back to taking ’em off the bottom, and using a gimmick in its football play.

I hear talk of fake laterals, and other forms of the old phonus-ballonus around Cambridge that gives me quite a turn. ‘Tis sad to think that the shell game has reached the campus where once Eddie Mahan used to take the football, hold it aloft like Liberty’s upthrust torch, and scoodle about to touchdowns.

Mahan Was Supreme

Now, there’s a chap that always appealed to me—Eddie Mahan. I loved the publicity of his method. You didn’t have to beat about the bush with the football when Eddie was around, or sneak through the back way, or tiptoe up the alley. You just handed the football to Eddie, like a sheriff serving a subpoena, and away he went, advertising the fact that he had the football every jump. And what good did it do the opposition to know that Edward had the football, my little rah-ra’s? What good did it do ’em, I repeat?

Not a lick?

In fact, so far from doing them any good, it was more apt to do them harm. It was calculated to increase blood pressure.

Sometimes the quarterback wouldn’t even bother to call the numbers when he wanted Eddie to have the ball. He would merely announce, in the languid Harvard accent common to Harvard quarterbacks:

“Let Mr. Mahan have it.”

Football was public property in those days. You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know what the Harvard lads are going to do with the football. To tell you the truth, it was generally known in the Summer that Mahan would be in charge of the football for the Harvards most of the Autumn.

Game Very Mysterious

Now they’ve got fake laterals, bogus formations, undercover passes and one thing and another, all tending to make the game very mysterious, indeed. I wish we could get another Mahan at Harvard (chorus from Harvard “so do we!”) that we might try a little experiment to show up the foolishness of concealed football. We would put a red lantern on the football and a siren, too, and let Eddie run with it with the horn going full blast. The clients would see that markers wouldn’t make any difference.

It ought to be a mighty mysterious pastime one way and another at Cambridge this Saturday with both Harvard and the Army going in for the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don’t stuff. There is grave danger that they will both be hiding the football so much that they will lose it entirely. You can’t play a football. you know.

Still, come to think of it, I have seen some Harvard football teams do that, too. Of course they were not teams that included Eddie Mahan. They were teams before and after his time. I have seen these  Harvard teams play entire football games without a football.

The reason they did not have a football during these games was because the other team had it all the time.

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