Archive for April, 2012

Artichoke Played for Carlisle

April 26, 2012

I thought I’d continue with the theme of Carlisle Indians who played football in WWI by looking through the 1919 Spalding Guide for references to the Carlisle team or its players. Before starting that, I checked to make sure that I hadn’t done it before as my memory isn’t as good as it once was.  In January of this year, I did a piece about the Carlisle students whose names I wasn’t familiar with who were playing on military teams. I recollect having mentioned that, although the 1918 Spalding Guide included Carlisle’s schedule for that year, none of these games were played because the school was closed shortly before the beginning of the football season in 1918. Fortunately, some names I do recognize can be found in the 1919 book, too.

Om page 22 is the photograph of the 1918 Georgia Tech “Golden Tornado.”  Joe Guyon is #8 and John Heisman is #12.  Charles Guyon (Wahoo) isn’t in the photo.  Perhaps, Heisman got rid of him by then.  Page 188 displays headshots of players and coaches for the 1918 Mare Island Marines team. Lone Star Dietz, #3, coached this team composed mainly of his former Washington State players. So may of them were on this team that this photo was published as part of the Washington State yearbook for that year. The New Year’s Day game in Pasadena on January 1, 1919 was the second one for those who had also been on the 1915 Washington State squad that had played in Pasadena in 1916.

Page 263 includes a write up for the Base Section No. 5 team from Brest, a major port of embarkation: “On January 19, 1919, a Base foot ball squad was organized under Lieut. W. C. Collyer, former Cornell half-back.  This squad was composed of the above mentioned engineers, together with several stars gathered together from different outfits. Of these, the most prominent was Artichoke, a former Haskell and Carlisle Indian star.” Not being aware of anyone named Artichoke, I am confident that the player in question was Chauncey Archiquette, Jim Thorpe’s early idol. Unfortunately, a team photo wasn’t included to see that Artichoke was indeed Archiquette.

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Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Charles Guyon, Chauncey Archiquette, Football, Haskell Institute, Joe Guyon, Lone Star Dietz, Washington State University | Leave a Comment »

Hawkeagle Also Played in 1917

April 23, 2012

Page 110 includes headshots of soldiers who played on the Camp Funston (Fort Riley, Kansas) football team in 1917.  Number 29 is Pvt. Thomas Hawkeagle (aka Pretty Boy and Hawk Eagle).  Nothing further could be found about him in the book but it is well known that he played on the 1914 Carlisle team and distinguished himself so much against Auburn that he figures prominently in the legends of the origin of the War Eagle cheer.  Hawkeagle was the last Carlisle player mentioned in the 1918 Spalding Guide for activity in the 1917 season.  There were likely others but they weren’t mention by Spalding or I just missed them.  John Flinchum was listed on page 224 as the captain of the 1918 team, playing at left tackle.  No coach was listed for 1918 because none had been hired at that point.

Non-players in the form of officials were listed in the back of the book on pages 233 through 249.  Officials were separated into various groups: collegiate, service and scholastic, as well as by region, state or conference.  Southern Officials were grouped by white and colored.  Even the officials that were set apart as being active-duty military had this separation even though the Service Officials did not.  Indians were not segregated from other officials as Indian players had been allowed to play on otherwise all-white teams for many years.  Oddly, only one former Carlisle player was listed as an official and that was Mike Balenti.

The advertisement for Warner’s 1912 book was still being run in the 1918 guide.  This time, it included an anonymous testimonial for “The coach of an unbeaten Western college” who was surely Lone Star Dietz whose Washington State team had gone unbeaten in 1917.  Dietz’s team was not invited to the Rose Bowl that year because military teams were drawing large crowds at that time.  Dietz and his players would be invited at the end of the 1918 season but that time they wore Mare Island Marine uniforms.

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Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, John B. Flinchum, Lone Star Dietz, Mike Balenti, Pop Warner, Washington State University | Leave a Comment »

Who Was Mannok?

April 19, 2012

The first person in the back row of the Baylor team photo on page 67, conveniently number 1, is Assistant Coach M. R. Balenti.  Mike Balenti, wearing his red Carlisle letter sweater, stands out from the Baylor players in their uniforms that appear to be light gray with dark gray stripes across the chest.  Perhaps they were gold with green stripes or Baylor used different colors in those days.

The next place Carlisle alums would be found was on the pages reserved for military teams.  Page 92 contains only the photograph of the First Regiment, U. S. Marine Corps, League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia team.  Players number 25 and 26 are the Garlow brothers, William and James.  William starred at line on some of Carlisle’s powerhouse teams and later coached at West Virginia Wesleyan.  Prior to this, I didn’t know that James had played competitive football.  The page 101 write-up of The U. S. A. Ambulance Service team reported on the game played against the Garlow brothers’ team which was better known as “Eddie Mahan’s All-Stars.”  In a rematch game, Mahan had strengthened his team with the addition of some players that included “Pete Garlow, the Carlisle Indian star tackle.”  The writer probably meant William Garlow as I hadn’t seen him referred to as Pete before.

Page 105 included a discussion of a game between two Army outfits, the 318th and 319th Infantry Units.  “By means of a varied attack and with the clever open field running of Mannok, the former Carlisle Indian star, and the stellar line bucking of Anderson, the 319th emerged victorious by the score of 3—0.”  Another mystery regarding Carlisle just emerged.  I had never heard of anyone by that name associated with Carlisle, football player of otherwise.  Perhaps he went by another name at Carlisle or he didn’t go to Carlisle at all.  It would be great if a reader could provide some information regarding Mannok.

<next time—More Carlisle Players in The Great War>

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Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Football, Mike Balenti, William Garlow | 1 Comment »

More About Carlisle Players in 1917 Season

April 17, 2012

The photo on page 30 of Carlisle Indian School’s starting eleven for 1917, the last team that would represent the school, includes one player who would be heard from later, Nick Lassau.  To learn more about Nick, aka Long Time Sleep, read up on the Oorang Indians of 1922 and 1923.  Note that Carlisle’s uniforms had changed to include stripes across the midriff and the stripes that had been below the elbow were moved up above the elbow to align with the midriff stripes.  Page 35 may contain the last thing written about a Carlisle team in a Spalding’s Guide: “Carlisle showed improvement over the previous year, but until they get a team of first rate caliber they will do well not to schedule so many matches with the big colleges.”

Page 41 begins the section on Foot Ball in West Virginia with the All-West Virginia Elevens selected by H. A. Stansbury, Athletic Director of West Virginia University.  It was no surprise that Pete Calac of West Virginia Wesleyan headed the list.  No other Carlisle Indians were on it, most likely due to not playing for a West Virginia school.

Page 50, immediately preceding the Foot Ball in the District of Columbia section, contains a photograph of the Georgetown University team on which the players are numbered but no legend is provided.  Number 2, front row center in a sweater, is Georgetown’s Head Coach, Al Exendine, star end on the great 1907 Carlisle team.  Georgetown was the class of DC college teams as had become the norm under one of Warner’s former assistants.

John Heisman, Head Coach of Georgia Tech, authored the Review of Far Southern Foot Ball.  So, it is no surprise that he named Joe Guyon to his All-Southern Team at half-back.  About his own team, Heisman wrote, “This team was considered by many as the best of the year anywhere.  Whether it was or not need not here be debated.  But certain is that in Strupper, Guyon and Hill it possessed three back-field men who were the equal of any other three that could be named the country over.”  He said nothing about Guyon’s brother.

<next time—More Carlisle Players in The Great War>

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Posted in Albert Exendine, Carlisle Indian School, Charles Guyon, Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs, Football, Joe Guyon, John B. Flinchum, Nick Lassa, Pete Calac, Pop Warner | Leave a Comment »

Was Wahoo Really Present?

April 15, 2012

Beginning on page 7, Camp discussed three unbeaten eastern teams, two of which had ties to Carlisle.  Carlisle’s former coach, Pop Warner, completed his third consecutive undefeated season at Pittsburgh since leaving Carlisle after the 1914 season.  More on Georgia Tech later.

When discussing the state of Pacific Coast football on page 9, Camp gives a Carlisle alum high marks: “Washington State, with seven veterans of the previous season’s team, was again coached by ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, and under his guiding hand established a clear title to the Pacific Coast Championship…She [Washington State] would give many eastern teams a hard battle.”

On page 11, in lieu of his annual All America Team, Camp lists Honorable Mention college players.  Ends selected included Pete Calac, formerly of Carlisle, then playing for West Virginia Wesleyan.  Backs included Joe Guyon, formerly of Carlisle, then playing on Georgia Tech’s undefeated “Golden Hurricane” team.

Page 13 listed All-America selections made by other pundits.  Dick Jemison of the Atlanta Constitution named Guyon to his All-America team as a half-back.  Lambert G. Sullivan of the Chicago Daily News placed William Gardner at end on his The Real “All-Western” Eleven on page 17.  The All-Southern Eleven picked by seven football writers in the South placed Joe Guyon at half-back. And Fred Digby of the New Orleans Item put Guyon at full-back on his All-Southern Eleven as did Zip Newman of the Birmingham News.  “Happy” Barnes of Tulane did the same.  Closing out the college all-star teams on page 23 was the All-West Virginia Eleven picked by Greasy Neale, coach of West Virginia Wesleyan.  He selected his own player, Pete Calac, as one of the ends.

A photo of the Georgia Tech team appears on page 8 of the 1918 Spalding’s Guide.  Figure number 1 is Head Coach John Heisman.  That is no surprise.  Neither is it that number 13 is Joe Guyon.  The last person listed, number 22, is C. Wahoo.  From previous research, I know that is Charlie Wahoo, Joe Guyon’s brother Charles Guyon, who also used the fabricated name of Wahoo.  That all the other figures in the photo are numbered in order and that Wahoo is positioned out of order is suspicious.  So is that his figure is smaller than the others.  It’s well known that Heisman didn’t think much of him and that he used recruiting his brother for the team to leverage an assistant coaching position for himself.  Could this picture have been “photoshopped” to include him using a primitive tool available at the time?

 

<next time—More Carlisle Players in The Great War>

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Posted in Carlisle Indian School, Charles Guyon, Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs, Football, Joe Guyon, Lone Star Dietz, Pete Calac, Pop Warner, William Gardner | 2 Comments »

Carlisle Indians Star in WWI

April 12, 2012

This might be considered a senior moment piece as I have no recollection of why I intended to write about errors in ads this time.  I suppose that I noticed an error or two in the ads in the back of the 1912 Spalding’s Guide so will start by looking there.  Wait a few minutes for me to do a little research….

Perusing the 1912 and 1910 Spalding Guides did not trigger my memory nor did I discover some new error I previously overlooked.  So, I will write about something that is fresh in my mind.

Due to problems in scanning the 1918 Spalding’s Guide, I have had to manually clean up many pages, many of which I could not resist reading while working on them.  Something that jumped out at me was that, although Carlisle Indian School had a very poor season in 1917, former players’ names and, in some cases, pictures dotted the pages of this volume.  And it wasn’t because the pro game was being covered heavily.  It was because so many of them played on military teams even though they were not eligible for the draft as being noncitizen Indians.

Page 4 of the 1918 Spalding’ Guide is the first page in that book to mention any player.  On that page are the photos of Walter Camp’s All-Service Eleven for 1917.  Warner elected to not list an All-America squad for 1917 because so many star players were serving in the military and that many schools discontinued inter-collegiate athletics, played abbreviated schedules, or used inexperienced players.  However, the military squads often included several former college stars in their line-ups.  The quality of the football played by the military teams was so good that the games often drew large crowds, so large that the annual New Year’s game in Pasadena was played between two military teams.

The photograph on page 4 for player #6 was that of William Gardner, a star end on the great Carlisle Indian School team of 1907.  It matters not that Camp misspelled his name as Gardiner because he had Carlisle and Camp Custer right.  It is well known that Army Capt. Gardner served at Camp Custer and played on its team.  Camp made no mention of Gardner’s play but, on page 5, listed him at end on his ALL-AMERICA SERVICE ELEVEN, First Eleven.  Camp also placed him on his ALL-SERVICE SECTIONAL ELEVENS, Middle West Eleven on page 11.  At about 34 years of age (ages are uncertain for people of that time), Gardner was long in the tooth for an athlete of that era, having last played at Carlisle in 1907.  But he did play some pro ball for Canton in the years leading up to America’s entry into WWI.  Perhaps, Walter Camp was making up for his snub of Gardner in 1907 when he left the Indian star off his All America Team.

<next time—More Carlisle Players in The Great War>

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Why Were Warner Ads in Spalding Guides?

April 5, 2012

Quickly flipping through one of Spalding’s Guides for football shows that these annual guides served two major functions: 1) providing the football community analysis of the previous and upcoming seasons and 2) serving as a catalog of Spalding’s football-related items.  Spalding didn’t sell advertising to competitors for placement in these widely read little books.  In fact, the only non-Spalding ads I have noticed are those for Walter Camp’s and Pop Warner’s books.  Why, one wonders, would ads for just these two outsiders be allowed?

For starters, Walter Camp wasn’t really and outsider as, for many years, wrote major pieces for the guides and served as editor of them.  As editor, he may have organized the layout of the book including determining what would be included and where it would go in the books.  Spalding surely dictated much about the advertising.  Ads for Camp’s books may have been partial payment for all the work he did for Spalding or his position with Spalding gave him a favored position that allowed him to buy ad space where others were not allowed.  A closer looks at Walter Camp’s book listings reveals that they were probably published by Spalding.  That means that Camp’s books were Spalding products that Camp was likely paid to author.  But Warner had no special relationship with Spalding as far as we know.

Or did he?

The unnumbered pages in the back of the 1908 Spalding’s Guide include a catalog page that has shin guards at the top. Just below the shin guard ad, in the right hand column, is an ad for “Spalding Improved Shoulder Pad.”  Comment about its improvements and over what will be reserved.  The first line of ad copy starts, “Designed by Glenn S. Warner of Cornell.”  So, Warner has some sort of relationship with Spalding with regard to product development.  That could explain why an ad for Warner’s correspondence course and book are included in Spalding Guides.

<next time—Errors in Ads>

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Differences Between Warner’s 1912 Book and Spalding’s Ad Copy

April 3, 2012

The title of Warner’s 1912 book varies from the title in the advertisement in the 1912 Spalding’s Guide.  The ad gives the title as Course in Foot Ball for Players and Coaches but the title on the cover of the actual book is Football for Players and Coaches and A Course in Football for Players and Coaches is on the book’s title page.  The latter title is surely the book’s complete title, especially because it is so similar to the title of the correspondence course.  The title on the cover was probably shortened for artistic purposes and to make it stand out to a shopper in a bookstore because the shortened title could be printed in larger type.  Another difference between the ad and the book is that foot ball is two words in the ad and one word in the book, both on the cover and on the title page.

That difference was surely Spalding’s choice because they controlled the typesetting of the Spalding’s guides.  Spalding apparently chose to use the two word convention both on the guides’ covers and in their interiors.  It appears that Pop Warner shifted to the modern convention years earlier than did Spalding because Spalding continued to use foot ball as late as 1919 and, possibly, later.  I haven’t bothered to look beyond 1930 yet, but Spalding hadn’t changed to the modern convention then.

It is my opinion that the cover art was done by Lone Star Dietz.  I say that because the figures look so similar to those in others drawn by Dietz and because Dietz’s symbolic four-pointed star signature can be seen on the grassy area between the runner’s legs.  It’s hard to tell who did the interior illustrations as Warner had some artistic talent of his own.  As in the 1927 book that Warner and Dietz co-illustrated, I can’t tell whose drawing it is without a signature.  The player in the drawing with the ball is wearing a  Carlisle jersey with the distinctive stripes below the elbow.

 <more on the book next time>

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