1889 University of Pennsylvania Football “Reserves” / John Heisman

John Heisman transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to study law in 1889, the year of this photo. He had left Brown University where they had abandoned intercollegiate football the year he arrived and he ended up only being able to play football on town, club and pick-up teams.

 Arriving at Penn he went out for the scrubs, referred to at the time at Penn as the ”Reserves”.  Heisman became a member of the “Reserves” in 1889.  He recalled in a lengthy article that he authored in 1928 (Collier's, October 6th) ,"I reported for football valiantly equipped with moleskin pants and a canvas jacket of my own manufacture. If they had no other virtue, they fitted".  This explains the acknowledged odd and unique appearance of his vest, as seen in this photo. In 1890 he was a substitute on the varsity team and was varsity in 1891. He earned varsity letters for all three years.

In 1890 as a substitute Heisman made it into the game against State College (Penn won 20 to), when Holly, the center failed to show up for the game.

Of the two players identified in the photo that I am most familiar with, John Heisman and Archie Thompson, both were class of ’92, Heisman in Law, Thompson in Medicine, and both were substitutes on the 1890 varsity team. Heisman is standing, to the right of Captain F.B. Neilson (with the ball), Thompson is seated to the left of Neilson with a C on his jersey. Neilson, '90, was on the Reserves for three years, as captain his junior and senior years. He continued at Penn in their Law School, class of '93.

The Reserves played in two games outside of Penn that we are aware of, both in November of 1889, against Media (0 to 0 tie) and against Riverton (beat the Reserves 10 to 0). Eight of the eleven listed on the reserve rosters were the same for the two games, so there was some level of variability on the squad.

Photo measures 15 15/16” x 10 ½”, excluding the mat; Gilbert and Bacon of Philadelphia, photographer.

This is the earliest football photo with Heisman that we know of.

We wish to thank John Gennantonio  for  sharing with us numerous Heisman photos from his collection. John, in addition to his love of football and baseball research has one of the preeminent Heisman and early football collections.

                                                   Cabinet card of John Heisman c 1891

1891 Trinity College Varsity Football Team

We don’t tend to discuss Trinity College in Hartford (not to be confused with Trinity of North Carolina (became Duke) or Canada) as much as we do the schools she played against in the 1890s. In 1891, the year this photograph was taken, Trinity had games with Brown, Yale, Harvard, MIT, the Boston Athletic Association, Columbia, Penn and several others, and went on to a respectable 6 and 4 for the season. Trinity has an early football history, dating back to 1877. See related blog entry dated August 22, 2018.

There are three versions of this photo we have seen. We picture the larger team photo that is in our collection and a smaller cabinet card we know of for comparison. All three versions were done at the same sitting and as you can see, the differences between the two photos in this posting are minor, such as a turned head and a removed vest.

Albumin photo measures 10” x 13”.

1925 Pottsville Maroons Gold World Championship Pendant / Frankie Racis

Following the 1925 NFL season, one of the most controversial on record, a banquet was held for the “1925 World Champions”, the Pottsville Maroons, at the Hotel Allan in Pottsville.  Awards and keepsakes were distributed to all members of the team, the team that had won the Championship, which was only the beginning of a larger and more convoluted story.

This gold charm was awarded to Pottsville Maroons guard Frankie Racis at that event. The charm has the  following engraved on it:  “19P25”, “Frank Racis”,”Guard”, “Pottsville Maroons” and “Worlds Champions”. To our knowledge, at this time no other team member’s gold charm has surfaced.  A photograph of this exact charm appears in “Breaker Boys: The NFL’s Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship “, David Fleming, 2007 (11 pages into the photographic section). The awarding of the charms is discussed on page 233.

To better appreciate the Maroons story, rather than repeat what has been covered in past blog entries, I would ask that the reader go back and look at these postings ( please see the entries dated March 26, 2018 and March 23, 2017 in particular).

Unquestionably one of the rarest and most desirable of all Championship charms, and one of the more important pieces of Maroons history. 

1898 Cornell Telegram / Paul Dashiell

These guys really didn’t like Paul Dashiell.

This telegram was to Hiram Tuller, the manager of the 1898 Cornell varsity football team from E.W. (Ernest Wilson) Huffcut, law professor and president of the Cornell Athletic Association. The telegram mentions that “White”, Captain A.E.  Whiting, wants a final answer to whether Cornell will refuse to play their annual Thanksgiving day game against the University of Pennsylvania if Paul Dashiell is to be the Umpire.

They did end up playing the game, which was two days later, and Dashiell was the umpire (interesting note – William Henry Lewis was the timekeeper for the game).  The game was played under horrid conditions, during a storm with several inches of mud covering the field and freezing temperatures. Casper Whitney was quoted as saying that these conditions “combined to make it a day of utmost severity on the players, the hardest in my recollection”.  During intermission the Penn players changed from their wet uniforms into dry ones. Coach Woodruff of Penn said that he “attributes Pennsylvania’s victory more to this fact than to any other one particular thing” and that “if the men had not been able to change their suits they would have been unable to finish the game. Some of the men were so cold they were almost helpless”.

Pennsylvania won the game, played in Philadelphia, 12 to 6.

Dashiell was considered by most the premier umpire in the East (Everts Wrenn being "the West's greatest umpire")  and was sought after for the more important and larger football games of this period. He was known for coaching at Navy, first as an assistant for just over a decade (under Josh Hartwell in 1893) and then as head coach for several years after that. He was also known for his work on the Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee, serving with the likes of Bell, Moffat, Walter Camp and others, which made him uniquely qualified to umpire.

In 1902, controversies involving Dashiell arose and he was accused of biased decisions and the failure to make calls. This was of particular note in the press for the Yale - Princeton game of that year. As one midwestern  newspaper put it,  "umpire Dashiell seems to have become blind in some of those numerous eyes the eastern critics credited him with". Also this same year Cornell made it known that Paul Dashiell will not be allowed to umpire any more games in which the Ithicans take part. It appears Cornell had had its issues with Dashiell as far back as 1896.

The Harvard –Yale game of 1905 had its share of brutality. The difference now was that President Roosevelt was taking notice. Dashiell was umpiring that contest and refused to penalize James Quill of Yale for blatant unnecessary roughness and slugging.  Dashiell was called on the carpet by Roosevelt who said to coach Reid of Harvard that he was not sure Dashiell was the kind of man that should be teaching the cadets at 
Annapolis . Dashiell was never to officiate another Harvard – Yale game and Roosevelt now had a man under his thumb on the rules committee to help reform the game.