“I liked to play football,” says Mathewson.  “I was a better football player than a baseball player in those days.  I was considered a good punter.  I was not much as a line bucker.  The captain of the team always gave me a football to take with me in the summer.  I occasionally had an opportunity to practice kicking after I was through with my baseball work.

“At Taunton, Mass., my first summer, I ran across a fellow who was playing third base on the team for which I was pitching.  MacAndrews was his name.  He was a Dartmouth man.  He showed me how to kick.  He showed me how to drop a spiral.  I liked to drop-kick and used to practice it quite a little.”

[Illustration: 

Means Langford Hollenback Douglass Gaston Marks Allerdice
Miller Manier Schultz Draper

Bill Hollenback coming at you]

“I remember how tough it was for me when Bucknell played Annapolis the year before when the Navy team had a man who could kick such wonderful spirals.  They were terribly hard to handle, and I was determined to profit by his example.  So I just hung on for dear life, punting spirals all summer.  Later I used to watch George Brooke punt a good deal when he was coaching.”

“At that time drop kickers were not so numerous.  I had some recollection of a fellow named O’Day, who had a great reputation as a drop-kicker, as did Hudson of Carlisle.  In 1898 we were to play Pennsylvania.  Our team served as a preliminary game for Pennsylvania.  They often beat us by large scores.  Since then we have had teams which made a 6 to 5 score.  But they had good teams in my time.  We never scored on Penn, as I recall.

“Our coach said one day, at the training table, ’I’ll give a raincoat to the fellow who scores on Penn to-day.’  The manager walked in and overheard his remark and added, ’Yes, and I’ll give a pair of shoes to the man who makes the second score against Penn.’  That put some ‘pep’ into us.  Anyway, we were on Penn’s 35-yard line and I kicked a field goal.  After this we rushed the ball and got up to Penn’s 40-yard line, and from there I scored again, thereby winning the shoes and the raincoat.

“I went up to Columbia one day to see them practice.  It was in the days when Foster Sanford was their coach.  He saw me standing on the side lines; came over to where I was; looked me over once or twice and finally said: 

“’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.