“Any one who has played the game can recall some amusing situations.  I recall the first year at Harvard when we were playing against the Andover team that suddenly the whole Andover School gave the Yale cheer.  Dud Dean, who was behind me, fired up and said it was the freshest thing he had ever heard.  At Springfield I remember one Yale-Harvard game started with ten men of my own school, Exeter, in the game.  In another Yale game we were told to look ugly and defiant as we lined up to face Yale, but I was forced to laugh long and hard when I found myself facing Frankie Barbour, the little Yale quarter, who lived with me in the same dormitory at Exeter for three years.”

[Illustration:  Breakers ahead

Phil King in the Old Days.]

CHAPTER IX

THE NINETIES AND AFTER

Men of to-day who never had an opportunity of seeing Foster Sanford play will be interested in some anecdotes of his playing days and to read in another chapter of this book some of his coaching experiences.

“As a boy,” said Sandy, “I lived in New Haven.  I chalked the lines on the football field for the game in which Tilly Lamar made his famous run for Princeton.  I played on the college team two years before I entered Yale.  I learned a lot of football playing against Billy Rhodes, that great Yale tackle.

“I’ll tell you about the day I made the Yale team in my freshman year.  Pa Corbin took me in hand.  I think he wanted to see if I had lots of nerve.  He told me to report at nine o’clock for practice.  He put me through a hard, grueling work-out, showing me how to snap the ball; how to charge and body check.  All this took place in a driving rain, and he kept me out until one o’clock, when he said: 

“‘You can change your jersey now; that is, put on a dry one.’

“I went over to the training table then to see if I couldn’t get some dinner.  Believe me, I was hungry.  But every one had finished his meal and all I could pick up was the things that were left.  Here I ran into a fellow named Brennen, who said: 

“’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.