Lary Bloom photo
Epic work by Yale’s expert in Italian culture and gridiron exploits.
As I have come to learn over many decades, there are no coincidences in life or Yale football.
If you doubt the latter, I offer here evidence drawn from personal experience as we eagerly await (or not) the opening on Saturday of the Bulldogs’ 147th season.
First, I ask you to go back in time to another September, in 1957. That was when Sports Illustrated published its annual college football preview; and, not yet reaching the age of 14, I considered that issue as one of my bibles. (Mad magazine, too.)
And ever since that innocent time, the issue has been just a persistent autumn memory, and I tried to locate one element of the contents, a poem by the humorist Ogden Nash.
The Yale 11 (as it was often referred to in the era when college starters commonly played both offense and defense) was mentioned in the work, although not in the most flattering of ways.
The cover of the “bible.”
In “The Name is Legion,” Nash laments that even our most distinguished of universities lack imagination when it comes to naming their sports teams.
Nash laments the confusion that comes the way of the college football fan when he reads in headlines of Wildcats, Tigers, Vikings, Panthers and Bulldogs. A pertinent excerpt:
He further reads that the Bulldogs hope to twist the Tiger’s tail.
Well, which Bulldogs: Alabama A&M, Butler University, Citadel, Drake, Fresno State, University of Georgia, Louisiana Poly, South Carolina State College, or Yale?
I adored this poem, but nowhere could I find it. Over the years, I searched the web under Ogden Nash. There was always plenty of other Nashian wit available.
He was popular enough to appear on quiz shows, sell hefty numbers of books of poetry (a feat in itself), and also write the lyrics for the Broadway musical, “One Touch of Venus.”
He was also the author of this immortal line about the prospects of intimacy while dating: Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
The way the September 23, 1957 Sports Illustrated issue portrays the Ivy League.
The line from the football poem I have been reciting to all who would listen was the ending of Nash’s rant about the names of college elevens:
When I am told the Cohawks are tangling with the Zips,
my disposition becomes sweeter than saccharin;
I need no reference book to know that Coe College faces the University of Akron.
It wasn’t until August of this year that I finally discovered that eBay offered a copy of the Sept. 23, 1957 issue of S.I.: I sent my $11.95 plus $3.99 shipping. (Back in the day, 52 yearly issues delivered to the house set me back $7.50.)
As I awaited delivery, I recalled that by the time I first read the Nash poem, I had also bought a book with Bar Mitzvah gift money, “The History of American Football,” by Allison Danzig, my most treasured possession at the time.
I became enamored of the early history of the sport, from its first game, between Rutgers and the College of New Jersey (later known officially as Princeton) in 1869.
The immortal Pudge Heffelfiinger and his captain, “Bum” McClung.
My imagination, though, was aroused by the characters I saw in the photographs of the era, in particular of W.W. “Pudge” Heffelfinger, key figure in the Yale eleven’s perfect season in 1879. At 190 pounds, he was the biggest player on the squad, and one of the most eloquent.
After the 1889 tussle with Harvard, in which the sons of Eli squeaked by 6 – 0 thanks to a touchdown by its captain, “Bum” McClung, Pudge remarked on the brutal nature of a game as played before the era of helmets, shoulder pads, and other protective equipment.
His recollection was quoted in the book, “The Game: The Harvard-Yale Football Rivalry, 1875 – 1983,” by Thomas G. Bergin, Yale’s longtime professor of Italian studies.
It was a blood bath. We went out there and murdered one another for 60 minutes … The slaughter had been so fierce that it was a wonder any of us came out alive. One of the Harvards suffered a broken collarbone, and a Yale teammate had one eye nearly blinded…
Wasn’t I surprised and delighted that in college in Athens, Ohio, I drew a descendent of Pudge Heffelfinger when I enrolled in a physical education course called Team Sports. I thought that under the guidance of Cliff Heffelfinger, an assistant football coach, I would learn gridiron techniques. But his idea of team sports broke my heart and stung my legs – something called cross country running.
Roughly half a century later, though, I continued my Yale football connection when, as an outsider, I joined a reunion of the class of 1958. I had attended a reading at RJ Julia Booksellers by a friend who was one of its members, David Burke, author of “Writers in Paris.” And afterwards, many attendees repaired to a restaurant across the street.
John (Jack) Embersits, the September inevitability
I had the good fortune to sit next to Lucinda Embersits, who couldn’t be a member of the class of ’58 because women were still barred from enrolling. But, Lucinda, a graduate of Centenary College, that night was representing her husband, John Embersits, captain of the 1957 Yale eleven, who had died in 2009.
Jack, as he was known by all, had gone on to significant achievements afterwards as Yale’s business manager, and then founded his own lucrative consulting business.
The obit that appeared in the Hartford Courant said that he had “died suddenly,” which sometimes translates in newspaper lingo to suicide. But no, Jack Embersits died the way he lived.
Lucinda told me, “Jack was a dynamo, a huge personality, gorgeous to look at, a very quick wit, tough as nails.”
He had said to her that when he dies, “I’d like to go out brilliantly. I want to live life, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.”
He also spent a lot of time on the golf course, which is where he made his brilliant exit.
On the edge of the seventh fairway of the Madison Country Club, while searching for his errant tee shot, he suffered a massive heart attack. The EMTs could not revive him. I imagined what Jack Embersits had looked like in his prime, before he ever met Lucinda.
And I soon found out.
An impression of a female fan (circa 1887), by F. Earl Christy
The S.I. issue I had waited for in effect 64 years arrived in the mail the last week of August. There, on page 15, is the Ogden Nash long-missing poem.
But I also knew, if only by instinct, that if I spent some time with the issue, the Yale inevitability would make itself known.
I saw that beginning on page 32, in a piece by a football guru of the era, Herman Hickman, titled “The Eleven Best Elevens,” he also included predictions for in total 111 teams around the nation. Each recap of a team’s prospects was accompanied by one photo of a key player.
On page 39, there was Yale’s. Its captain. John “Jack” Embersits, number 63, described as “an extremely quick, agile guard.”
The team, however, was “as green as grass,” according to its head coach, Jordan Olivar, as quoted in the Yale yearbook. Jack was the only returning starter from its 1956 Ivy League champion team.
Nevertheless, it managed to come in third in the standings that year. (Princeton won the title.) And the “green as grass” squad gave Harvard its worst mauling ever in The Game, 54 – 0.
Of course, bragging rights last only until the next meeting. And so far, Yale leads in “The Game” rivalry with 68 wins, 60 losses and 8 ties. This season, I will be (perhaps) at our old Bowl on Nov. 20 to root for the locals.
Perhaps the fans for the opposition might sing the fight song parody by Tom Lehrer.
Fight fiercely Harvard, fight, fight, fight, demonstrate to them our skill.
Albeit they possess the might, nonetheless we possess the will…
I, however, will be screaming “boola boola” as if I actually know what that means. Some trace the meaning of it to Indonesia, others to Guinea.
I think this is its actual English translation: “Yale: Respect New Haven.”
Or, as Cole Porter wrote in the official Eli fight song, a reflection of the highest in scholastic achievement, “Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow wow wow.”