"'Mr. Donald, you hit me, one, two, three times, I hit you only one—we're square.'
"And you bet we were square," Donald always adds as he tells the story.
Tacks Hardwick, in common with most football players, thinks the world of Eddie Mahan.
"I have played football and baseball with Eddie," he says, "and am naturally an ardent admirer of his ability, his keen wit and his thorough sportsmanship. One of Eddie's greatest assets is his temperament. He seldom gets nervous. I have seen him with the bases full, and with three balls on the batter, turn about in the box with a smile on his face, wave the outfield back, and then groove the ball waist high. Nothing worried him. His ability to avoid tacklers in the broken field had always puzzled me. I had studied the usual methods quite carefully. Change of pace, reversing the field, spinning when tackled, etc.,—most of the tricks I had given thought to, but apparently Eddie relied little on these. He used them all instinctively, but favored none.
"Charlie Brickley had a favorite trick of allowing his arm to be tackled flat against his leg, then, at the very moment his opponent thought he had him, Charlie would wrench up his arm and break the grip.
"Percy Wendell used to bowl over the tackler by running very low. I relied almost exclusively on a straight arm, and 'riding a man.' This means that when a tackler comes with such force that a straight arm is not sufficient to hold him off, and you know he will break through, you put your hand on the top of his head, throw your hips sharply away, and vault as you would over a fence rail, using his head as a support. If he is coming hard, his head has sufficient power to give you quite a boost, and you can 'ride him' a considerable distance—often four or five yards. When his momentum dies, drop off and leave him. Well, Eddie didn't use any of these. Finally I asked him how he figured on getting by the tackler, and what the trick was he used so effectively.
"'It's a cinch,' Eddie replied. 'All I do is poke my foot out at him, give it to him; he goes to grab it, and I take it away!'
"Leo Leary had been giving the ends a talk on being 'cagey.' 'Cagey' play is foxy—such as never getting in the same position on every play, moving about, doing the unexpected. If you wish to put your tackle out, play outside him, and draw him out, and then at the last moment hop in close to your own tackle, and then charge your opponent. The reverse is true as well. The unexpected and unusual make up 'cagey' play. Much emphasis had been laid on this, and we were all thoroughly impressed, especially Weatherhead, that year a substitute.
"Weatherhead's appearance and actions on the field were well adapted to cagey play. Opponents could learn nothing by analyzing his expression. It seldom varied. His walk had a sort of tip-toe roll to it, much similar to the conventional stage villain, inspecting a room before robbing a safe. In the course of the afternoon game, Weatherhead put his coaching in practice.