THE DAY COLUMBIA BEAT YALE
Columbia men enthusiastically recall the day Columbia beat Yale. A Columbia man who is always on hand for the big games of the year is Charles Halstead Mapes, the ever reliable, loyal rooter for the game. He has told the tale of this victory so wonderfully well that football enthusiasts cannot but enjoy this enthusiastic Columbia version.
"Fifteen years ago Yale was supreme in football," runs Mapes' story. "Occasionally, but only very occasionally, one of their great rivals, Princeton or Harvard, would win a game from them, but for any outsider, anybody except one of the 'Eternal Triangle,' to beat Yale was out of the question—an utter impossibility. And, by the way, that Triangle at times got almost as much on the nerves of the outside public as the Frenchmen's celebrated three—wife, husband, lover—the foundation of their plays.
"The psychological effect of Yale's past prestige was all-powerful in every game. The blue-jerseyed figures with the white Y would tumble through the gate and spread out on the field; the stands would rise to them with a roar of joyous welcome that would raise the very skies—Y-a-l-e! Y-a-l-e! Y—A—L—E!
"'Small wonder that each man was right on his toes, felt as though he were made of steel springs. All other Yale teams had won, 'We will win, of course.'
"But the poor other side—they might just as well throw their canvas jackets and mole-skin trousers in the old suit-case at once and go home. 'Beat Yale! boys, we're crazy, but every man must try his damnedest to keep the score low,' and so the game was won and lost before the referee even blew his starting whistle.
"This was the general rule, but every rule needs an exception to prove it, and on a certain November afternoon in 1899 we gave them their belly-full of exception. We had a very strong team that year, with some truly great players, Harold Weekes and Bill Morley (there never were two better men behind the line), and Jack Wright, old Jack Wright, playing equally well guard or center, as fine a linesman as I have ever seen. Weekes, Morley, and Wright were on the All-American team of that year, and Walter Camp in selecting his All-American team for All Time several years ago picked Harold Weekes as his first halfback.
"I can see the game now; there was no scoring in the first half. To the outsider the teams seemed evenly matched, but we, who knew our men, thought we saw that the power was there; and if they could but realize their strength and that they had it in them to lay low at last that armor-plated old rhinoceros, the terror of the college jungle—Yale,—with an even break of luck, the game must be ours.
"In the second half our opportunity came. By one of the shifting chances of the game we got the ball on about their 25-yard line; one yard, three yards, two yards, four yards, we went through them; there was no stopping us, and at last—over, well over, for a touchdown.