"'Why aren't you trying for the team? I think you'd make a football player if you came out.'
"I said I guessed I would not be eligible.
"'Why?' asked Sandy.
"'Well," I said, 'because I'm a professional.' Then some fellows around me grinned and told Sanford who I was.
"I love to think of the good old football days and some of the spirit that entered collegiate contests. Once in a while, in baseball, I feel the thrill of that spirit. It was only recently that I experienced that get-together spirit, where a team full of life with everybody working together wrought great results. That same old thrill came to me during one of the Giants' trips in the West in which they won seventeen straight victories.
"There is much good fellowship in football. I played against teams whose cheer leaders would give you a rousing cheer as you made a good play; then again you would meet the fellow who, when you were down in the scrimmage, or after you had kicked the ball, would try to put you down and out.
"One of the pleasantest recollections I have of playing was my experience against the two great academy teams, West Point and Annapolis.
"Never shall I forget one year when Bucknell played West Point. At an exciting moment in the game, Bucknell players made it possible for me to be in a position to kick the goal from the field from a difficult angle. After the score had been made the West Point team stood there stupefied, and when the crowd got the idea that a goal had been kicked from a peculiar angle, they gave us a rousing cheer. Such is the proper spirit of American football; to see some sunshine in your opponent's play.
"Cheering helps so much to build up one's enthusiasm."
Al Sharpe was one of the greatest all-around athletes that ever wore the blue of Yale. He, too, recalls the Yale-Princeton game of 1899 at New Haven, but the memory comes to him as a nightmare.