jody murray
double play
They stand upright and
pressed together like oversized
blades of grass Decades of
Emeralds bound in green cover
one wall of the paper’s library.
I’m one of those people who,
given a week, could spend a
month inhaling these chronicles
of time. But I have dirty laundry
and a psych project due, so a
couple hours have to suffice.
Wow. Back in 1910 those
sports writers really knew how
to turn a phrase. It was back in
the days when sports events
and speech tournaments
dominated the front page every
day. And a fledgling sports
journalist wrote:
Six or more Oregon athletes
will go south to enter the all
coast track meet in Berkeley
under the auspices of the
University of California on May
14th if the wishes of the Athletic
Council are followed
Captain Williams urges ever
yone on to come out on the
track and try for places on this
team. It will take a star man,
however, for only sure place
winners will be accepted.
Those applicants to the team
were more than likely screened
by Bill Hayward, who coached
Oregon track for 44 years and is
now immortalized by the track
facility that bears his name.
Later that same year,
something happened that
shows how much college athle
tics has changed:
On account of the premier
attraction for tomorrow night at
“WHEN YOU SHOOT AI0TTA POOL
IN BARS, THE ONLY THING YOU WANT
FILLED UP ARE YOUR POCKETS!’
Steve Mizerak- Famous Pool Player
the Eugene theatre Manager
Terry has changed the time for
the Oregon-Washington bas
ketball game to four o'clock in
the afternoon. The members of
the Merry Widow company have
been invited and will attend, and
in the evening the teams will
occupy a box in the theatre.
Try to imagine the same thing
happening now Oregon moves
its hoop contest to 3 p.m. so as
not to conflict with the 8 p.m.
performance of “Much Ado
About Nothing’’ at Robinson
Theater. Titter, titter. Jim Haney,
being a cultured man, might be
coerced into going along with it.
But Dick Harter would have had
a seizure.
The most fascinating thing
about the oldest volume in the
library is that the "sporting edi
tor” in 1910 was a woman —
Helen Higbee.
Let’s skip a few decades,
stopping in 1941. The sports
editor that year, ironically, was a
Hawaiian — Johnnie Kahanan
ui. In his Dec. 11 "Duck Tracks”
column (a name loads of Emer
ald sports editors used), he set
aside football for some thought
on what had happened four
days earlier:
The University of Oregon
crawled into bed Saturday night
under waves of comment. . . a
weary Oregon grid team had
suffered a ludicrous 71 to 7
rout. . When cuffed out from
under the covers Sunday morn
ing by the clap of thunder which
rumbled furiously more than
2,500 miles distant. . . the 71 to
7 nightmare was erased, so was
Oregon's 35 to 33 hoop up
set. . . in Portland Saturday
morning.
But perhaps the most sig
nificant sports story in those
volumes of paper and ink is the
one that was never written. On
Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, a full
week of homecoming activities
was to be culminated by the
Civil War football game.
That game, along with almost
everything that weekend, was
stopped cold Friday by a bullet
in the president’s head.
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