Passing the Buck

Another sports year is over at Harvard, but this one has been a little different. It wasn't that crowds were smaller, or that the football team wasn't so good, or that some sports had schedules which looked pretty queer to the oldtimers. It was the air of finality about it all. Athletes and coaches left for the forces before most well-wishers had time to say goodbye, and the year limped to a quiet conclusion. Looking back, the whole thing was pretty grim.

Dick Harlow had hardly any material in the fall, with a death of veterans and fewer coaches. He molded a team which people called a fighting team, but it didn't win many. The last-second, 19 to 14 victory over Princeton, strictly in pre-war tradition, compensated for a lot of things, but not for the heart-breaking, 7 to 3 loss to Yale on a rainy afternoon at New Haven. It's tough to lose the last one, somehow, especially the last one for a long while.

In the winter, things were a little better. Johnny Chase had a topflight hockey team which turned in the best Crimson season in many winters. The skaters even succeeded in tying highly-rated Dartmouth, after that college had won 32 straight games. Yale was beaten two out of three, so the old grads were very happy. Basketball season was a little weird, with a mediocre quintet doing all sorts of amazing things, such as beating Penn and Princeton, and losing to Yale. The boys proved very good guests wherever they went, simply refusing to win on an opponent's court. They split two games with Yale, so the old grads were pretty lukewarm about it all. Hal Ulen had a good swimming team until Bill Drucker and Bus Curwen were graduated, and even after that things weren't bad. The boys upset Dartmouth one March afternoon, and Yale, in winning its usual tremendous victory, didn't look quite as good as its advance notices.

By that time things had collapsed all over the place. Dick Harlow wore a lieutenant commander's uniform, and Lyal Clark was commissioned, and then Tom Bolles left. The athletes were trailing out, too, and Jaakko Mikkola watched the best prospective track team in Harvard history leave. College to enter the services. He didn't even wince.

Spring had come, and the University announced that athletics would be distinctly curtailed for the duration. Then the Crimson withdrew from the Eastern Baseball League, and later in the spring football was ruled off the books. It was a prepared death blow; most people expected it.

In spring sports, Crimson teams fared well against diverse opposition. The baseball team, mainly because of a few guys named Berg, Clark, Sorgi, and Fitzgibbons, had a good season, with Berg performing occasional miracles on the mound. Jaakko, although he had lost his aces, turned out a fair track team that won more often than it lost. And in Willo Fisher, Harvard produced its first IC4A winner in five years. Willo threw the hammer.

Bert Haines took over the crew where Tom Bolles left off, and it looked like other Harvard crews. Every race--all two--were won, except maybe that the victories came a little tougher.

And so it went, but it was the way it went that hurt most people. crowds grew smaller, the H. A. A. grew smaller, Bill Bingham donned a major's leaf and moved out of Quincy Street, and the handwriting was on the wall. Baseball, as usual, attracted an even dozen well wishers to most contests, while the track team cavorted in front of vast chasms of emptiness in Harvard Stadium. Crimson sports seemed to die of old age, and the mourners were few.

The last season is over for a while, and the ghosts of Crimson teams will be tearing up the sod at Soldiers Field next fall. There will be no Crimson around to report those games, but they should be lulus.