"'They're trying to do you up. This is the day they are deciding whether you will be center rush or not.'
"I then went out to Yale Field and joined the rest of the players, and the stunts they put me through that afternoon I will never forget. But I remembered what Brennen had told me, and it made me play all the harder. To tell the truth, after practice, I realized that I was so sore I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. To make matters worse, the coaches told me to run in to town, a distance of two miles, while they drove off in a bus. I didn't catch the bus until they were on Park Street, but I pegged along just the same and beat them in to the gate. Billy Rhodes and Pa Corbin took care of me and rubbed me down. It seems as though they rubbed every bit of skin off of me. I was like fire.
"That's the day I made the Yale team.
"I was twenty years old, six feet tall, and weighed about 200 pounds."
When I asked Sandy who gave him the hardest game of his life, he replied promptly:
"Wharton, of Pennsylvania. He got through me."
Parke Davis' enthusiasm for football is known the country over. From his experience as a player, as a coach and writer, he has become an authority. Let us read some of his recollections.
"Years ago there was a high spirited young player at Princeton serving his novitiate upon the scrub. One day an emergency transferred him for the first time in his career to the Varsity. The game was against a small college. This sudden promotion was possible through his fortunate knowledge of the varsity signals. Upon the first play a fumble occurred. Our hero seized the ball. A long service upon the scrub had ingrained him to regard the Princeton Varsity men always as opponents. In the excitement of the play he became confused, when lo! he leaped into flight toward the wrong goal. Dashing around Princeton's left end he reversed his field and crossed over to the right. Phil King, Princeton's quarterback, was so amazed at the performance that he was too spellbound to tackle his comrade. Down the backfield the player sped towards his own goal. Shep Homans, his fullback, took in the impending catastrophe at a glance and dashed forward, laid the halfback low with a sharp tackle, thereby preventing a safety. The game was unimportant, the Princeton's score was large, so the unfortunate player, although the butt of many a jest, soon survived all jokes and jibes and became in time a famous player."
"The first Princeton-Yale game in 1873 being played under the old Association rules was waged with a round ball. In the first scrimmage a terrific report sounded across the field. When the contending players had been separated the poor football was found upon the field a flattened sheet of rubber. Two toes had struck it simultaneously or some one's huge chest had crushed it and the ball had exploded.