On Oct. 14, 1899, the first touchdown was scored on Garcelon Field — without fanfare or recognition.

The diminutive ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ athlete who plunged one yard for the historic score never scored another, yet propelled himself onward to Harvard Law School, the presidency of the 30,000-member American Bar Association, and from there to help defeat President Franklin Roosevelt’s controversial “court packingâ€� scheme.

The eldest of Amaziah and Rosella’s three children, Frederick Harold Stinchfield was born on May 8, 1881, in the Washington County town of Danforth in far eastern Maine. The Stinchfield family was prominent in the town; his father ran a country store and the local post office and served in the Maine Legislature. 

“Fitted” at Lewiston High School, Stinchfield and his classmates entered ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in fall 1896. The class had 75 members, “two-thirds…young men — certainly all will agree, a right proportion,â€� declared The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student. “Already they have given evidence of physical prowess, and we believe many of them will shine on the athletic field.â€�

Plunging into campus life, Stinchfield teamed with classmate Ferris Summerbell to win the doubles championship in the College Tennis Tournament in October; Stinchfield fell to his more-skilled partner in the singles finals “in a hotly contested deuce match.�

In fine ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ form, he soon entered debate. In the year ahead, Stinchfield would argue the negative to the question “Is the English government superior in form and operation to the government of the U.S.?â€� 

In June, he competed in the third Annual Maine Interscholastic Athletic Association track meet at Bowdoin’s new field. The 15-man ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ squad included football stars Thomas Seth Bruce, Class of 1898, of Virginia, and William Allen Saunders, Class of 1899, of West Virginia.

Sophomore year, Stinchfield and Summerbell defended their college doubles championship. But the big story on campus was football.

The 1897 team went undefeated (4-0-1) and won the Maine State Championship under captain Nathan Pulsifer at halfback, versatile linemen Bruce (six-foot-one, 178 pounds) and Saunders (five-foot-10, 173 pounds), and quarterback Royce Davis Purinton. There was apparently no room on the team for Stinchfield — who seems to be on the short side in all photos — but at the Class Field Day in May, Stinchfield displayed his speed, placing second in the 220-yard hurdles. 

1898 was ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ greatest football season ever. The team went 6-0, won the Maine Championship, shut out Bowdoin, and didn’t allow a score in college play. Stinchfield, now a junior, played on the second team, seeing the field only once, in a 35–0 route of New Hampshire. Leading 30–0 at the half, “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ put in seven of her second teamâ€� including right halfback Stinchfield. 

Home games back then were played at Lee Park, a city commons at the intersection of Sabbatus Street and East Avenue, known for hosting traveling circuses. But Garcelon Field was already in the works. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had solicited contractor bids in July 1898, and work continued through the summer and fall, and by spring 1899, was baseball-ready, sort of.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Report of 1899 lauded the new field’s pleasing aesthetics and frugal economics: “One of the most satisfactory changes has been the grading of the former ugly pasture field east of Roger Williams Hall and its conversion into Garcelon Field with its ample grounds and tasteful grandstand.â€� The cost was $8,000 but “would have required nearer $10,000 but for the enthusiastic help of students in removing stumps and in grading.â€�   

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student, in contrast, emphasized the pains of the student labor in its account in June 1899. “We all had a hand in transforming the rough uncouth pasture into this fine level park. Even the cedar posts surrounding it stand as monuments to the blistered hands, aching limbs, and weary bodies, which we carried home after the day’s work.â€�

On May 30, 1899, Nathan Pulsifer, captain of football and baseball, added his name to Garcelon folklore by smashing the first home run, against Bowdoin.

It was a “drive to centre field, which proved to be a home run, because of the fielder’s inability to field the ball, which had gone into a ditch in the rear of the yet-unfinished field,â€� reported the Lewiston Sun, adding that “Pulsifer’s home run isn’t done every day — neither is there so convenient a place to lose the ball.â€�

Late innings of the game saw “choking, blinding, suffocating clouds of dust (that) rolled up from the new clay field.” But the new field was overall impressive: “When the dust lay quiet, the scene was one to inspire both artist and poet.â€�

In March, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ held its eighth Annual Athletic Exhibition at City Hall. Stinchfield again flashed his speed, winning the low and high hurdles. He also played guard in a 27–25 basketball win over the Portland YMCA. At the Class Field Day in May, he won the college 100-yard dash (10.4 seconds) and 220-yard dash (25.4 seconds). Capping off an energetic third year, he claimed the Junior Essay Prize.

By fall, it was time to see who might score the first touchdown on the new Garcelon Field.

The 1899 schedule was unprecedented in difficulty, featuring games against Boston College at home, and Yale and Harvard on the road. Coming off two undefeated Maine Championship seasons, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had scheduled boldly — but, alas, the team had graduated its two-year captain, Pulsifer, and the battering ram Saunders. Trusty kicker Frank Halliday transferred to Dartmouth. 

Still there were hopeful glimmers. “Of the new men, Stinchfield ’00, while very light, is, with the possible exception of Garlough, the fastest man on the team,� the Student reported.

A senior, Garlough had transferred to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from another Freewill Baptist school, Hillsdale College, which had won the State of Michigan title in 1898. In three years at Hillsdale, he had played football and won the Simpson Medal for “All-Around Athlete.â€�  

The first game at Garcelon was Sept. 30, 1899, at 3 p.m. against Boston College. “This afternoon the champions of Maine carry the pigskin onto the new gridiron in Garcelon Field,� the Lewiston Evening Journal wrote. “There was an unusually good crowd for an opening game and in the grandstand, the fair co-eds sat in solid garnet phalanges, waiving streamers, singing, cheering, shouting as only the college girl knows how to do.�

But the entire first-year class almost missed it. On a class outing — likely the famed “Stanton Rideâ€� enjoyed by each entering class for decades — they had taken a trolley to Lake Auburn with Professor “Uncle Johnnyâ€� Stanton where, report says, “they spent a very pleasant afternoon…The class returned in time for the football game.â€�

Newspaper reports noted that “Boston College is said to have a heavy team with fast backs.â€� Notwithstanding, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ held BC to a scoreless tie, with Purinton at quarterback and Garlough at right halfback. The untested Stinchfield did not play. 

Next week, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ lost 28–0 to Yale in New Haven. Stinchfield, however, started the game at right half. That same month, he and Summerbell again won the College Doubles Championship, the third time in four years.

On Oct. 14, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ hosted Colby in the opener of the Maine Championship Series. The Garcelon turf was still unscored upon. The backfield was the same: Purinton at quarterback, and newcomers Garlough and Stinchfield at halfbacks The forward pass was not yet legal. A touchdown counted for five points; the extra kick one.

In the first half, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ received a punt on the 40 and rushed steadily to the Colby 10-yard line. Two plays later, “the pigskin is but a yard from the line.â€� Then history was made as Stinchfield plowed in for the score, reported with spare prose: “Stinchfield made the TD.â€� But the extra point kick was gushed over in suspenseful terms: “Baldwin tried the kick for goal. The wind was against him. But he did the trick prettily.â€� ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ led 6–0 at the half.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ scored again, this time by Garlough, to make the final score 12–0. Key to the win was a quick-huddle offense: “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had Colby on the move most of the time Saturday and at two or three times, by their quickness in line-up and action forced the Waterville men to give way repeatedly for good gains,” reported the Lewiston Evening Journal.

The Student recognized Stinchfield’s rushing efforts, noting he “played particularly well on the home team.� That was it. Nothing more. The historic first touchdown in Garcelon history was celebrated not with a bang, but with just a few syllables.

Four days later, on a Wednesday, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ lost 29–0 to Harvard in Cambridge. In defeat, “a double pass, Stinchfield to Robinson, was used very effectively.â€� 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 1899 with a 3-3-1 record, defeating Maine twice but falling to rival Bowdoin. Winning three of four in the Maine Series, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was crowned state champion a third straight time. In those three years, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had lost only thrice, and only once to a Maine team. A golden era of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ football had come to an end. 

That December, 18 seniors, including Stinchfield and Garlough, accepted teaching positions over the holiday months, which was customary in those days. Stinchfield was also chosen as a substitute in the Colby debate. 

In May, at the Class Field Day, Garlough took first in the 100-yard dash (10.2), dethroning Stinchfield, who ran third. Summerbell, a recent winner of the New England College Doubles Tennis Championship (but with a new partner), took second in the pole vault. At graduation in June, Stinchfield delivered the “Address to Halles and Campus.â€� 

Ivy Day poet Blanche Burdin Sears delivered the final words to the graduates:

O’er life’s threshold to the future,
With the thought of what has been
Goes the Class of Nineteen Hundred
To the laurels she may win

And with those stirring sentiments, and the Hathorn Bell ringing, “the four years of pleasure and study were over,â€� the Mirror reported. “Farewells were said, old associations severed, and 1900 scattered through the world, a class no more except in love for the dear old ties and the memories of bygone days.â€�  

Stinchfield returned to work at the country store in Danforth for his father but soon left to teach in the Philippines. That too did not satisfy: as a biographer would write, “a dislike of teaching and of a country store sent Mr. Stinchfield into law.â€� 

The Harvard Crimson framed it this way: “In 1900, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, thankful for his work on the football team, recommended him to the mercies of the world. He went instead to Harvard for a law degree.â€�

He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law in 1905, burnishing his athletic portfolio with a letter in basketball; he also played baseball and handball.

Reviewing a workout before the Penn game, the Crimson appraised the basketball team harshly. “Almost the entire practice was discouraging…fumbling and rough playing were also frequent.� After the inevitable 22–16 defeat, the Crimson blamed the loss on the “inability of the University players to throw easy baskets.� Stinchfield endured the outrageous slings and arrows of the Harvard press — and played two seasons.

He also played club baseball at Harvard, helping Maine to defeat the Missouri Club, 14–8, for the 1903 State Club Championship. The fault-finding Crimson noted that Maine “took advantage of a large number of errors by their opponents.â€� 

Stinchfield was joined on the Maine Club by third-year law student Oliver Cutts, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Class of 1896. After football at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where Cutts competed in the first intercollegiate debate tournament, he starred for the undefeated 1901 Harvard national champion football team. He was awarded All-America honors, with The New York Times later calling him “one of the greatest linemen to ever play the game.â€�  

After graduation, Stinchfield was admitted to the New York Bar, and cut his legal teeth in the city. But, “the call to the west sounded strong,â€� and in 1909 he headed to Minneapolis. 

His ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ teammates and classmates were also taking steps in their careers, and, by 1915, the General Catalogue reported that the 1900-era grads had become lawyers, physicians, surgeons, professors, athletics directors, major league ballplayers, principals, trustees at historical black institutes, traveling salesmen, and biologists. They had trotted the globe: Turkey, the Philippines, all across the U.S. By now, they were in their mid-30s, leaning in on careers and raising families.   

Practicing at Wilson, Mercer and Swan, Stinchfield defended white collar crimes, such as grand larceny in the case of D.R. Morrow, of Sterling Securities, accused of raising $43,000 to start a “Farmer’sâ€� Bank, then stealing it. 

He argued before the Minnesota Supreme Court that an attorney convicted of espionage should not be allowed on a U.S. Senate primary ballot. He championed streamlining court proceedings by eliminating grand jury indictments except in major criminal cases.

When he made partner, the firm became Mercer, Swan and Stinchfield. In World War I, he served as counsel for the Minneapolis Draft Board and Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army.

He had a great zeal for the bar organization, receiving credit for building membership in the Minnesota State Bar Association as its president.

“Prior to his presidency of the state association, the membership of that group was small, its activities few, and its influence slight,â€� said the American Bar Association Journal. “This was because many members of district associations were not members of the state body. When he became president, Mr. Stinchfield succeeded in reorganizing the Bar so that all district members were given membership in the state association.â€� 

In 1928, he married Elizabeth Shrader and had step children, John and Liz. By now, he was the senior member of Stinchfield, Mackall, Crounse, and Moore, “representing many of the outstanding interests of the Northwest.�

His civic boosterism included membership in the Minneapolis Club, the Minneapolis Athletic Club, and several hunt clubs. Along the way, he picked up golf, becoming a top amateur in the state, playing out of the toney Minikahda Club, host of the U.S. Open in 1918. He was director for the Twin City Federal Savings and Loan.

In Stinchfield’s rise to civic prominence, perhaps there are faint echoes of Sinclair Lewis’ satirical Babbit. But Stinchfield would step outside conformity in 1936, when he was named president of the 30,000 member American Bar Association. “A native of Maine, with the accent which that state endows its son still part of his speech,â€� noted the ABA Journal. 

Stinchfield entered national affairs with a forceful voice. He declared the ABA is “the guardian of liberties and privileges under the constitution which are in danger of encroachment.�

Almost immediately, that guardianship was put to the test. The ABA organized a national response to Franklin Roosevelt’s Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, infamously known as the “court packing plan� that would give FDR the power to add Supreme Court judges to help push through his New Deal agenda.

Stinchfield said the president had “assumed and is exercising the powers of an autocrat.” In February 1937, Stinchfield galvanized opposition with an address, “Would You Destroy Our Supreme Court?â€� He surveyed ABA members and found that 86 percent opposed FDR’s plan.

Stinchfield went head to head with FDR in the media. When the president said that the Constitution was more like a “layman’s document, not a lawyer’s contract,� Stinchfield laid into FDR, accusing him of an “apparent determination to destroy the Supreme Court.� Noting that 32 of the 55 framers were lawyers, Stinchfield said that lawyers have “made America whatever America is.� Opposed by Congress, too, .

When Hugo Black, an appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1937, admitted to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, Stinchfield was there with his lawyerly observations. Noting that Black had said his own record as a U.S. senator “refutes every implication of racial or religious intolerance,� Stinchfield asked, in the press, “whether Mr. Justice Black was of the same opinion as to religious and racial freedom when he was a member of the klan as when he resigned.�

That June, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ awarded Stinchfield an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In his address, he admitted that times were tough due to the Depression, but told the graduates they must “take the world as it comes to you.â€�

Bowdoin, too, honored Stinchfield. The citation said, in part, “like so many other native sons of this State [he] has gone to the Middle West and shown there the tenacious, bulldog characteristics so many associate with the State of Maine.â€�

In his visit back to Maine, perhaps he visited Garcelon Field, and remembered the long-ago touchdown, or walked onto one of the tennis courts that dotted the campus in those days. 

Stinchfield died on Jan. 16, 1950, at age 68 following a heart attack in California. The Minneapolis Star said, “As civic leader, sportsman, counsel, and friend he will be sadly missed.â€� 

Time had long forgotten that fabled touchdown of Oct. 14, 1899, the first ever on Garcelon Field, by the determined athlete, the loyal tennis partner, the undersized back in football. 

After his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement address in 1937, Stinchfield spoke to the honor seniors at the University of Minnesota that year. He challenged them to “follow the path of truth and sincerity, avoid the roads of deception and popularity, and abhor pleasant words uttered for the momentary reward of the pleased feelings of those who listen.â€� 

The callow youth from Danforth had, in the end, stepped out from the shadow of anonymity, found his voice, and made himself known to the world.

µþ´Ç²ú&²Ô²ú²õ±è;²Ñ³Ü±ô»å´Ç´Ç²Ô&²Ô²ú²õ±è;’81 lives in Boston. The author of the novel , he has written a variety of historical sports features for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News and essays about New England life.

At some point in Friday’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament game between ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Roger Williams University, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ player will haul down a rebound and fire a pass downcourt to an open teammate for an easy layup. 

When you see that, think of Frank Keaney, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Class of 1911, the University of Rhode Island coach who shocked the basketball world with a revolutionary, run-and-gun “fire-houseâ€� style of play — including his own invention, the fast break — that transformed basketball “as much as the forward pass changed football,â€� wrote Sports Illustrated in 1978. 

A quirky, erudite, tinkering polymath who taught chemistry, too, Keaney deployed pithy aphorisms in Latin and English; invented URI’s school color (“Keaney Blue�) in his lab; and used ideas from Demosthenes and American philosopher William James to create a potent approach to coaching, one that instilled a sense of wonder and romance in his athletes: the “love of the seeking, the zest, the joy of the road to winning.�

Frank William Keaney was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1886 to Irish immigrants. His mother died in a flu epidemic in 1900. By then, his father had abandoned the family of five children. Frank and brother Allan were raised by an older sister.

Attending Cambridge Latin School, he studied Latin and Greek and played football, baseball, and track. He picked up basketball, invented in 1891, at the local YMCA. Without parental supervision, he got in early trouble. “In the district court this morning, Frank Keaney was fined $3 for throwing snowballs,â€� noted the Boston Globe. 

Graduating in 1907, he played semi-pro baseball in the Maine League for Lewiston. At season’s end, as Keaney prepared to head home, teammate Willard Boothby, already enrolled at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in the Class of 1909, introduced him to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President George Colby Chase, who asked Keaney about his goals.

“Teach and coach,� replied the 5-foot-8, 145-pound shortstop. Chase asked, “Did you study Greek and Latin?�

After Keaney quoted the opening verse of Virgil’s Aeneid and translated it, Chase admitted him on the spot. Joining a class of 138 from eight states (including South Dakota), he was one of few Catholics. Jumping into campus life, he played in the annual freshman-sophomore baseball game that fall, won by the frosh, 3–2, in a “rattling good game,â€� reported The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student. 

Then it was on to football, which was enjoying heady times. The year before, in 1906, the forward pass had been legalized, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, under coach Royce Davis Purinton, Class of 1900, joined the vanguard. “The forward pass was attempted by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ team and was well handled,â€� the Student reported. “The play promises when perfected, to be especially pleasing to the spectators besides an effective ground gainer.â€� 

In Keaney’s first game, against the soldiers of Fort McKinley, a bygone Army base on Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ won 34–0. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ backfield included two freshmen, Keaney and Eugene Vernon Lovely of Gardiner, Maine. It was an auspicious pairing: Both would one day have athletic stadiums named for them. (Note: They weren’t the first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ backfield to achieve rare distinction after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½: the 1904 tandem of Harry Lord and later played together for the Chicago White Sox.)

In October, Harvard pummeled ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 33–4, at Soldier’s Field in Keaney’s hometown. Harvard, one of the nation’s best teams, employed assistant coach , ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Class of 1896, a Harvard-trained lawyer and All-American, who later returned to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as football coach and athletic director.

In November, at Orono, heavy rain made Alumni Field “resemble a clam flat,â€� the Student said. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tied Maine, 6–6. Keaney scored the touchdown on a 20-yard run, “dodging and evading several tackles.â€�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 3-4-1, with Keaney awarded a varsity B, Lovely a freshman numeral, and Boothby, who had introduced Keaney to President Chase, promoted to manager next year. 

That winter, “the first season in the history of intercollegiate basket-ballâ€� was played at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Twenty tried out, including Keaney, “experienced in the game.â€� The first game, on Jan. 17, 1908, was a 52–18 loss vs. the Rockport YMCA. The first college game, a 21–7 loss to Colby, was at Lewiston City Hall. The finale, a 22–15 loss to Maine, was at the old wooden ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ gymnasium.

After a disappointing 3–5 record, the Student declared the inaugural season “handicapped by inexperience, incomplete organization, absence, and loss and change of captains.â€� A high-minded editorial went further, citing “objections for maintaining basket-ball at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as an intercollegiate sport.â€�

The primary objection was that the “best materialâ€� — i.e., the best athletes — already played football, baseball, or track, and were overstretched. “In the past those students who have had to sacrifice their studies for athletics have had a chance in the winter term to vindicate their ability as students. But with basket-ball included, the winter term holds out the same distractions from study.â€� 

A decision was made. “Basket-ball� was dropped as a sport. Its return would come 12 years later, in 1920.

Keaney was one who could surely use the break. In his first year, he played football, ran track, played baseball, joined interclass competitions, and pounded the books.

He also worked. In his first year, tuition was $50 a year, and board was $3 a week. To pay for his board, Keaney washed dishes 20 meals a week for 60 students. On one Saturday, he dashed from the dish sink to Garcelon Field, where he “took the ball on a double pass around Bowdoin’s left end for 20 yards.� On Sundays, he mixed ice cream in an “old fashioned electric freezer with paddles.�

To pay for his room with amenities like “steam heat and electric lights,â€� Keaney cleaned out the lab in Hedge Hall, and two classrooms, and kept the coal fires burning in pot-bellied stoves. “At 6 in the morning I took out the ashes, carried the coal up two flights in coal hods. At noon I looked the stoves over. At 6 p.m. or at 7, I banked the fires, and at 10 saw they were O.K.â€� 

An aspiring teacher, he taught in a one room schoolhouse between Thanksgiving and February. On campus, he studied Latin, Greek, chemistry, physics, and English. 

As baseball approached, the Student predicted that “the Cambridge High man seems to be the fastest man to fill Captain Wilder’s old place at shortstop.� The team finished 11–8, with freshman Keaney batting .216, behind senior Wilder (displaced now to second base), who hit .320. 

By junior year, Keaney was hitting his stride. In football he was named Second Team All-Maine, but with a caveat: “Some may pick him (first team) in preference to the Bowdoin man. Keaney’s play is decidedly of the spectacular order while Smith is perhaps more reliable.â€� 

In the classroom, Keaney excelled in Latin and Greek. “He loved the structure of the language,� according to his biography, Keaney, written by William Woodward. “He learned to appreciate its potential impact in influencing others and making things happen.�

And in baseball, he led off and batted .380 with 38 steals, developing the swashbuckling style soon to become his trademark. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ beat Bowdoin three times. In a 5–2 win, Keaney was “the star of the game,â€� the Student reported, with three hits and four stolen bases. In a 5–4 Memorial Day win, he had three hits, including a triple, and stole two bases. And in a 6–5 Ivy Day win, he stole home, “the feature for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€�

Keaney added another activity destined to change his life. As scorer for interclass girls basketball in the old Rand Gym, he watched the Class of 1911 defeat the Class of 1910 in overtime, 18–14, as “Miss McKee threw two baskets for the Juniors, winning the game.� He and Winifred “Mac� McKee, Class of 1911, of Newark, N.J., soon became inseparable.

Following his junior baseball campaign, Keaney was elected captain senior year, prompting a Boston Globe headline to gush that he was “not only a fine ball player, but is a brilliant student and popular.â€� 

But days later, the papers published a shocking story that Keaney was headed to Chicago to try out for the Americans. Further, “Keaney could not be found at the college. His trunk had gone and so had he. None of the students could verify the story and all hoped that it was untrue, as a job with the Chicago Americans would debar him from college baseball another year.�

Keaney did not play in Chicago that summer (had he, he would have joined Harry Lord and Bobby Messenger, both Class of 1908, who played with the White Sox in 1910). Instead, he played for the Cubs — not in Chicago, but his hometown Cambridge Cubs, at shortstop. He never again played for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. “On account of financial reasons, he was obliged to play professional baseball during the summer vacation, thus making him ineligible,â€� the Student reported. He resigned as captain. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 10-5.

Interestingly, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had earlier students who played minor league ball yet retained eligibility. Prior to 1906, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was in the Maine Intercollegiate Athletic Association, whose rules and enforcement were haphazard. 

In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was created, to standardize football rules — such as the “forward passâ€� — and make the game safer. Renamed the NCAA in 1910, the new entity established tighter eligibility rules, forcing Keaney from baseball in 1911, and making him an early casualty of “amateurâ€� rules. 

Senior season, football hopes ran high. But Keaney, “one of the best backs in Maine,â€� according to the Globe, chose not to play. “He prefers to give his entire time to baseball.â€� Two weeks later, came news that Keaney would coach the Gardiner High School football team, just up the road from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Why no football his last year? Was it the opportunity to coach? New-found love? Perhaps, but Cupid did not stop Lovely, who later married Isabell Kincaid, Class of 1911, of South Portland, from playing. The reason was NCAA eligibility rules once again, according to the Lewiston Journal. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 5-1-3, losing only to national champion Harvard, 22–0, at Soldier’s Field. Lovely, along with Keaney’s backfield replacement — his brother, Allan, Class of 1916 — led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to its best season since the undefeated 1898 team.

While courting “Mac,â€� Keaney kept busy as sports editor of the yearbook and led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to the YMCA basketball championship, beating Bangor 25–21 and Hebron 17–6. In baseball, Allan replaced him at shortstop. The 1911 yearbook listed Keaney’s three majors (Latin, chemistry, and English) and thesis (“The Sources of Petroleumâ€�), but most telling was the poem beneath his photo:

He was always strong in athletics
Be it baseball, football, track
But during his last two years
He has given his time to win Mac

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Keaney was developing a philosophy that focused on human potential that would drive his career as a coach and teacher. He filled journal pages with ponderings. 

Keaney was particularly taken by the ideas of William James, the father of American psychology. He was moved by James’ famous speech before the American Philosophical Association at Columbia University in 1906 in which he said that “compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.�

In his journals, Keaney reacted to James’ thought with this question: “Do we ever go all out 100 percent?â€� As a coach and teacher, he would spend his life’s work wrestling with that question. At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, he had sown the seeds of all his future success: teaching, coaching, playing four sports, yielding to the NCAA, giving 100 percent, finding love. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had been a yeasty time; now he would rise to the challenges ahead. 

Like many new grads, he took advantage of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni network. C.C. Spratt, Class of 1893 and principal of Putnam (Conn.) High School, hired him to teach algebra, chemistry, and physics and coach all sports — for $900. Mid-year, he followed Spratt to Woonsocket (R.I.) High School with the same duties, but for $1,200. 

Success followed immediately. His baseball teams won 77 straight; track won a state title; and basketball beat Reading (Mass.) High School, coached by brother Allan. 

In 1914, he married Winifred, and sons Frank Jr. and Warner followed. In 1917, he moved to Everett (Mass.) High. By then, he had begun to perfect his philosophy: “Coaches and teachers should be full of ‘pep,’â€� he wrote. “They should love life and impart it…fun improves interest.â€� 

Drawing on James, Keaney believed that athletes could awaken from their slumber and attain peak performance when, they were given “some unusual stimulusâ€� — a challenge, funny pep talk, creative sports drill, or hard exercise — that “fills them with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity which induces them to make an extra effort of will.â€� 

Ever the lover of language, he developed a colorful lexicon, dubbed “Keaneyana.â€� A 1941 newspaper article shared over 130 distinctive Keaney sayings, including his signature “Give me some Old Gazazza!,â€� which meant go all out, beyond limits. He would evangelize with anyone — the press, players, colleagues — about his work. Taking his cue from Demosthenes, he said the three most important things in speech-making are, “Action, action, action.â€� Keaney saw “actionâ€� as a chance to “show your true character… what you are made of. Action is fire and dash.â€�

In 1920, as basketball resumed at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Rhode Island State College (which would become the University of Rhode Island in 1951) hired Keaney as a chemistry professor and one-man athletic staff. Founded in 1892, the college had hired its first athletic director in 1916, but three men quickly came and went. 

“Keaney brought in ingenuity, dash, and flamboyance to the tottering athletic program.� His first year, football went 0–4–4, including a 27–0 loss to Brown. But basketball improved from two wins to 9-8, and rival UConn was beaten in three sports.

In 1925, the athletic staff doubled when Olympic hammer gold medalist Fred Tootell, a graduate of Bowdoin, was hired to coach track and assist in football. From 1925 to 1930, Keaney teams went 122–65, including 15–1 in basketball in 1929.

He coached football for two decades, and baseball for three. Even at 50, he could out-kick any player, including his sons, both Rhode Island kickers. Harkening back to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ days, his baseball philosophy was: “If you run the bases with abandon, you will win.â€� His baseball record was 221–110–1.

But it was coaching basketball that brought national attention to Keaney and Rhode Island. For decades, the slow-paced college game had been seeking an identity, and Keaney provided it. 

Inspired by the aggressive forechecking and outlet passing at a Boston Bruins game, Keaney “turned a game of patterned plodding into 40 minutes of frenzied excitement,â€� said Sports Illustrated. With the full-court presses, fast breaks, and long outlet passes, Rhode Island led the nation in scoring, and would do so in nine of 10 years in the 1930s. 

In 1937, a rule change turbo-charged Keaney’s offense. Now, a jump ball following each basket was replaced by an in-bounds pass. With that, Keaney’s teams went from “point a minute� wonders to “two points a minute� marvels. Dubbed “firehorse� basketball, spectators loved it. In 1940, Rhode Island beat Connecticut 102–81 in the highest scoring game ever played.

“The system was deceptively simple,” Sports Illustrated said. “Rhode Island came out with a full-court man-to-man press and stayed in it the whole game. Whenever a Ram player got his hands on the ball after an opponent’s basket or in the back court, he heaved a long pass to a breaking teammate.”

Purists dismissed the pell-mell, fast-break style as undisciplined and too physically demanding. But writing in 1954, the legendary coach Red Auerbach lauded Keaney’s approach, saying it was based on the premise that a “team will normally score more points than the opposition if it gets more shots at the basket than its opponents.� Keaney’s team approached each possession as if there were just a few ticks of the clock left.

Keaney, the erudite polymath who taught chemistry as well as coached, dismissed critics with a Latin phrase, “nihil ex nihilo est nihilâ€� — â€�Nothing tried is nothing gainedâ€� — and pointed to the science behind his strenuous conditioning at a time when lingering belief . “A normal heart is never injured by hard work,â€� he wrote in his journal.â€� In Latin, he would yell to his athletes, “Elle conditioâ€� — “Get in condition!â€�

Ahead of his time, Keaney explored the connection between physical conditioning and mental performance. A well-conditioned athlete, he wrote, “makes fewer errors of the head.� When an athlete performs at maximum physical efficiency, “arising problems in a game are quickly solved, fewer errors are made, and players are more attentive, more alive, and more alert.�

Not that Keaney’s own appearance reflected this. Long before Bill Belicheck made his hoodie chic, Keaney “ambled about on stubby, bowed legs, and his more-than-ample stomach sagged comfortably over his low-slung football breeches or sweat pants, with draw strings rarely tied. His attire also included a loose-fitting T-shirt or sweatshirt.â€� 

Until 1941, “Little Rhodyâ€� was just a regional sensation; they’d never appeared at college basketball’s mecca, Madison Square Garden. That would end in January when “little, unknownâ€� Rhode Island, according to the New York Daily News, came to the Big Apple. 

His provincials had never even used a glass backboard, so he installed one at practice. Anticipating stage fright, he roared to his team, “Don’t be looking at tall buildings!â€� A special train, filled with fans, left Kingston for the national unveiling. 

“Rams 42 points in First Half Sets Record at Eighth Ave Arenaâ€�; “RI Cagers Unorthodox Tactics Dazzle Garden Crowd — Lives Up to Ballyhooâ€�; “St. Francis Victim of ‘Racehorse’ Basketballâ€�—headlines blared. His 6-foot-4, 270-pound son Warner led the team in rebounds. 

In the war years, when Rodman Gym’s skylights were blacked out, the nation’s attention turned elsewhere. Frank Jr., a B-24 navigator, flew bombing missions over France and Austria. College basketball continued, but Keaney added another job, training troops on campus, inventing a toughening game called “murder ball,� combining basketball and football.

In the 1940s as throughout the mid-1900s, there was no such thing as March Madness, and the major men’s college basketball tournament wasn’t the NCAAs but the National Invitational Tournament, which vastly eclipsed the NCAA tournament in prestige and media attention, partly thanks to the tourney’s location, Madison Square Garden. 

In 1941, 1942, 1945, and 1946, Keaney-coached teams earned invitations. In 1946, Rhode Island finished the regular season at 19–2 to earn its fourth invitation to the exclusive eight-team NIT to compete for the national championship. To prepare for smoke-filled Madison Square Garden, he placed “smudge pots� filled with cartons of smoldering cigars and cigarettes throughout the practice gym.

A shot from 62 feet out by Ernie Calverley tied the opener against Bowling Green before Rhode Island won 82–79 in overtime. 

Next, they beat West Virginia. In the championship against Kentucky, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp, the “Baron of the Bluegrass,� Rhode Island lost 46-45. Impressed by Keaney’s abilities, Boston Celtic founder Walter Brown offered him the job to coach his new professional team. Keaney initially said yes,

Keaney’s dazzling style was hardly confined to the basketball court or the baseball diamond. Indeed, “the fast break was only the most spectacular product of his maverick genius,� wrote Sports Illustrated. “There was a touch of originality in everything he did.�

Ever the tinkerer, to promote sharpshooting, he devised the Keaney Ring, a 15-inch iron rim placed inside the standard 18-inch rim. “He loved to create and experiment, as was his modus operandi for his career as a coach.â€� 

Keaney taught chemistry with the same passion and ingenuity. Some of his chemistry demonstrations were outlandish, like putting a tennis ball in liquid air (minus 321 degrees), then fire the ball at one of his athletes and laugh as the brittle rubber ball broke into a thousand pieces. He used chemicals in his lab to create powerful liniments for his athletes. 

He once asked, “Why not a state high school championship in chemistry?â€� He then devised an exam and awarded trophies. With 300 competitors in 2018, the . 

In his laboratory in Rodman Gym, he devised a new color, “Keaney Blue,â€� the school color to this day, “more pronounced than Columbia blue, more fluorescent than a Carolina blue,â€� said his biography. Unveiled at Brown Stadium in 1935, the new color heralded the first ever victory over Brown, 13–7. In celebration, he was hoisted on the shoulders of his “Keaneymenâ€� and “carried the length of the football field.â€� 

Keaney continued as athletic director until 1956. Across all sports, his record stands at 707–322–14. In 1960, Keaney was inducted into the Hall of Fame, a year after inventor Dr. James Naismith. “He was a wonderful, boisterous Irishman, an old-fashioned type coach who was half-father and half-Rockne,� wrote Woodward in Keaney. “He seemed to be saying to his players, ‘I’ll build your character son, you just listen to what I have to say.’� 

In his forward to Keaney, Chuck Daly, who coached two NBA championship teams, as well as the 1992 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball “Dream Team,â€� wrote, “The game as we know it today places tremendous emphasis on conditioning, speed, quickness, tough defense, and sharp passing,â€� “[Keaney] introduced all these concepts 25 years before they became the norm.â€�

Red Auerbach called Keaney “a great psychologist,� hailing him as “very innovative and ahead of his time.� Sports Illustrated said he had “a restless imagination and flair for showmanship.�

In 1953, URI dedicated Keaney Gym, with 5,000 seats, on Keaney Road. But he isn’t the only one in his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ backfield with that honor. At Andover (Mass.) High School, the football stadium is named for honoring his contributions as a longtime science teacher, principal, and football and baseball coach. (His wife, three children, and two grandchildren all graduated from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.) “He probably influenced more 20th-century people in Andover than any other person,â€� a 2016 Andover Townsman story said. 

All his life, Keaney filled dozens of notebooks chock-a-block full of diagrams, reflections, and verse — his own version of Leonardo’s Notebooks. From one, a poem “The Coach’s Wife,â€� he read at the dedication of Keaney Gym in 1953: 

There are lines of praise to the athletic star
And the boys who make the team,
And the winning play of a crucial game
Has been many a poet’s theme.
There are headlines bold for the winning coach
And of how he directed the strife,
But here’s to a soldier behind the lines,
To the valiant coach’s wife….

Someone to rejoice when the victory’s won.
To share sorrow in times of defeat.
To have faith in the coach’s dreams and plans.
His alter-ego, who makes life complete.
So we laud the deeds of the coach and team.
Their success is the aim of her life.
She’s content to console, to exalt, to inspire.
And to be, just the coach’s wife.

On road games, he sometimes stopped the team bus in front of his home, strode to the porch and kissed his beloved Winifred “Mac� McKee Keaney before returning. Maybe there was a lesson somewhere there — more profound even than William James. They were married 53 years until his death, at age 81, in 1967. She died a year later.

Bob Muldoon ’81 lives in Boston. The author of the novel , he has written a variety of historical sports features for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News.

The Colby-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Bowdoin football rivalry that kicks off Saturday afternoon was in its infancy when the mighty Nathan Pulsifer came across the Androscoggin River to enroll at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in the fall of 1895. 

Organized football at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had existed for only two years. Colby had played five seasons, Bowdoin seven. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had not yet defeated its neighbor to the south.

But by the time Pulsifer graduated with the Class of 1899, the rivalry was renowned. 

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, in both football and baseball, his feats were Bunyanesque. Captain of the first two undefeated football teams in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history, ¹ Pulsifer was a star running back who demanded that his teammates commit to the game.

Decades later, the head coach of the University of Wyoming football team declared Pulsifer the best player he’d ever coached.

In baseball, he hit the first home run at Garcelon Field — days after helping finish construction of the field, his hands still “blistered.� He was a debater, too.

After graduation, he played professional baseball, alongside the likes of Christy Mathewson, one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The first college graduate to manage a baseball team in the rough-and-tumble New England League, he once used his wits to avoid a forfeit by inserting a 9-year-old mascot in a game. 

He served in World War I as a regimental surgeon, was a physician in Lowell, Mass., to Jack Kerouac, and inspired a character in one of his novels.

Born across the Androscoggin River in Auburn in 1876 to Augustus Moses and Harriet (Chase) Pulsifer, Nathan was the youngest boy of seven children. His father, a Bowdoin grad and lawyer, was treasurer of the Little Androscoggin Water Power Co., which owned an Auburn mill and provided water power to businesses along the river. His mother ran the household. Family life stressed education and achievement.

Before matriculating at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Pulsifer attended the Nichols Latin School, a preparatory school housed in John Bertram Hall (graced then with a cupola), a school whose “special object…is to prepare students for the Freshman Class at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€� 

Eligibility rules being loose back then, Pulsifer started for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at halfback while a 17-year-old Nichols student in 1894, eclipsing his older brother Tappan, Class of 1895, a substitute right guard. Nathan scored a touchdown his first game, four the next. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 4–1, defeating Colby twice but falling to Bowdoin, 26–0. 

In spring, he played baseball alongside Tappan, going 2-for-5 in a 17–7 rout of Colby. Back at Nichols, he won a singles and doubles tennis tournament against Lewiston High School.

That summer, the brothers played baseball for Camden in the Knox County League, before Tappan headed off to medical school at Columbia University and Nathan crossed the Quad to officially enter ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. In the largest first-year class ever (40 men, 39 women) to that point, he joined .

Together they would make ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ football history, but it would take time. In his first year, the football team, averaging 157 pounds, went 4–2, losing again to Bowdoin, this time 22–6.

Sophomore year, football dipped to 3–3–1, including a 22–0 drubbing by Bowdoin. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had never beaten Bowdoin — not even close. In four years, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had been outscored 124–6 by its larger, all-male rival. “Bowdoin administered her annual defeat to us,â€� wearily noted The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student. “Pulsifer was the only ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ man to gain ground materially.â€�  

In one early game, “Purinton sent Pulsifier round the end.�

In time, the duo of Lewiston-born quarterback Royce Davis Purinton ’00 and Pulsifier would form a formidable one-two punch on the gridiron and diamond.

In fine ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tradition, Pulsifer debated. He argued the negative to: “Is it desirable for the United States to annex Hawaii?â€� In spare moments, he ran track and played tennis. It was a well-rounded ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ life.

About this time, a Brunswick-postmarked letter arrived from older brother Chase. A Bowdoin senior who had studied two years at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Chase urged Nate also to transfer “because the athletics here are much better.â€� Indeed, Bowdoin football had never lost to any Maine team. Ever. 

Pulsifer was unswayed.

Elected captain his junior year, he signaled resolve and formulated a set of team principles: “Captain Pulsifer has given out a few simple rules, which, if followed, will insure good results: Every man in bed at 10:30 p.m. Entire abstinence from tobacco and stimulating drinks; no pies etc., punctuality at practice.â€� The Student endorsed the draconian policies: “Let every student assist Captain Pulsifer to enforce the rules.â€� 

By 1897, all the pieces were in place. At quarterback, Purinton was field general and ball distributor (the forward pass was not yet legal). Pulsifer (5-11, 160 pounds) was running back. Guards , Class of 1898 (6-1, 178 pounds) of Danville, Va., and Saunders (5-10, 173 pounds) were battering rams — who also ran the ball. 

Bruce had graduated from Nichols behind older brother, Nathaniel, Class of 1893, who named his first born ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Shaw Bruce, after his alma mater. 

The fullback was “auburn-haired� Frank Halliday, Class of 1901 (5-6, 137 pounds), who also drop-kicked — at a time when a touchdown was four points, extra kick two, and field goal five.

First up in the 1897 season: Bowdoin, away: “The grand stand had the biggest crowd ever seen at an opening game, and included a large portion of feminine Brunswick.â€� Yet ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, at last, prevailed, 10–6. On the winning drive, “Captain Pulsifer followed his blockers around left end for 60 yards and a touchdown.â€� 

Next: Maine, away: “The journey was very hard, particularly the nine-mile ride in the open electrics from Bangor to Orono in foot-ball clothes.â€� Down 6–0, Pulsifer tackled the quarterback for a safety, then scored the winning touchdown. Halliday kicked the extra two points for the 8–6 victory. 

A week later, the two met again at Lee Park, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ home before Garcelon, located near the intersection of Sabattus Street and East Avenue. 

Down 4–0, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ won on a last-play drop-kick field goal, 5–4. (Yes, a field goal beat a touchdown and missed kick!) “The city’s hum was silenced by the yells of college youth, who, bearing Halliday (the kicker) on their shoulders, marched down the street singing,â€� the Lewiston Evening Journal wrote. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tied Colby 6–6, capping a 4–0–1 season, to capture the Maine Championship. Five ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ players made All-Maine, including Pulsifer, Saunders, and Purinton. Coach William Hoag, a Harvard grad, noted every player “gained not only in knowledge of the game but also in weight during the seasonâ€� (the heaviest: 182 pounds).

Back on campus in 1898, the “Pulsifer Rules� were back in effect — with familiar enforcement mechanisms: “Now each student should see to it that these rules are obeyed; a man who breaks them should be criticized.�

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, another winning season would take a village. Here’s a look at the six winning games of 1898:

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ vs. New Hampshire State, Oct. 6

In the first game of the 1898 season, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ pummeled New Hampshire State at Lee Park, 35–0, with Pulsifer scoring twice. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at the University of Maine, Oct. 8

Next, they routed Maine in Orono, 36-0, with Pulsifer “who never seemed to get tiredâ€� running for five touchdowns, including a 65-yarder. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ vs. the University of Maine, Oct. 15

At Lee Park against Maine, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ again dominated, 34–0, Pulsifer scoring three times. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ record stood 3–0. Combined score: 100–0. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at Phillips Exeter, Oct. 22

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ beat Phillips Exeter, 18–11.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ vs. Bowdoin, Oct. 31, 1898

The showdown against Bowdoin at Lee Park was dubbed “Maine’s Harvard-Yale Game.â€� A bygone city commons, Lee Park also hosted traveling circuses, and the atmosphere that day was no less exuberant, Bowdoin students and townspeople flocking to the park.

“They left nobody behind but the college janitor, to ring the chapel bell when the tidings of victory reached Brunswick,” reported a confident Bowdoin Orient. More than 2,500 fans crammed the stands.

But the home team was also well represented. “Talk about your garnet! Garnet, garnet, garnet everywhere,” reported the Lewiston Evening Journal. Caps, hats, capes, buttonhole ribbons, parasol streamers — all ablaze in garnet. Across the field, Bowdoin ceremoniously unfurled its solemn white banner. 

“The Bowdoin crowd was very confident of victory,” said the Orient. “They knew their team was strong, heavy, active, well coached, and possessing no end of grit and spirit. It had scored on Harvard, something no other small college has done in years.â€�

After kickoff, the pattern was set: “Saunders is playing like a fiend…time after time, the giant Saunders went into the line and always for a gain.â€� And “Captain Pulsifer played in his usual form and made several of his long runs.â€� At precisely 3:32 p.m., “Saunders took it six yards, with Pulsifer and Halliday with him,â€� for the lone score. 

The extra points made the final score 6–0 in what was “universally admitted to be the greatest contest ever between Maine colleges.â€� Joyous students heading home “awoke the citizens of Lewiston and Auburn on the electric line.â€�  

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ vs. Colby, Nov. 5 (away)

With a second Maine Championship at stake, a bonfire on Mount David kicked off the finale against Colby. At Waterville, Pulsifer capped his career with two touchdowns in the 17–0 shutout.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ finished 6-0, unscored on by any college. Praise for the captain gushed forth: “Pulsifer is recognized as easily superior to any halfback in the state, and his long runs have been features of every game in the last two years.â€� Moreover, his “personal efforts and ambitionsâ€� had driven his team to dominance and elevated the college’s athletic standing.

Baseball could hardly equal it — but then came the uproar surrounding Pulsifer’s eligibility. And then his historic home run. 

Perhaps still smarting from its football defeat the fall before, Bowdoin demanded that Pulsifer be barred from baseball in his senior year because he had already played four years, including his pre-college time at Nichols. (Bowdoin was perhaps also peeved because one of its players had been ruled ineligible.)

“May every building upon our campus be a pile of ashes before any college of the status of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ be permitted to hoodwink Bowdoin,” protested the Orient.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ kept its cool, citing the fact that a majority of “base-ball managers of the Maine Intercollegiate Base-Ball League” — ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Colby, and the University of Maine — had decided that “according to the rules of the constitution…Captain Pulsifer of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ should, being eligible, be allowed to play on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ team.”

But now all eyes were squarely on Captain Pulsifer, and his final (fifth) season.

In spring 1899 — Pulsifer’s senior year — Garcelon Field was completed. President George Colby Chase’s annual report praised its aesthetics and economics. “One of the most satisfactory changes has been the grading of the former ugly pasture field east of Roger Williams Hall and its conversion into Garcelon Field with its ample grounds and tasteful grandstand…at a cost of $8,000.â€�

The project “would have required nearer $10,000 but for the enthusiastic help of students in removing stumps and in grading.â€�   

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student lauded the laborers: “We all had a hand in transforming the rough uncouth pasture into this fine level park. Even the cedar posts surrounding it stand as monuments to the blistered hands, aching limbs and weary bodies, which we carried home after the day’s work.â€�

On May 30, against Bowdoin, Captain Pulsifer christened the new field with his clout: �a drive to center field, which proved to be a home run, because of the fielder’s inability to field the ball, which had gone into a ditch in the rear of the yet-unfinished field.� The Lewiston Sun added cheekily, “Pulsifer’s home run isn’t done every day — neither is there so convenient a place to lose the ball.�

Late innings saw “choking, blinding, suffocating clouds of dust (that) rolled up from the new clay field. But when the dust lay quiet, the scene was one to inspire both artist and poet.�

Year after year, Pulsifer’s baseball talent had been getting more attention.

After a season in the Knox County League, he moved to Lewiston in the Maine State League after his sophomore year. “Pulsifer to the rescue,” shouted The Boston Globe on June 10, 1897, reporting on his bases-clearing, game-tying double vs. Rockland. Upon scoring the game-winning run, “he was carried on his shoulders by his admirers.”

After his junior year, having been elected senior class president, he reported to Hartford of the Atlantic League, a 33-year-old ex-major league pitcher who became a mentor.

After graduation, Pulsifer and Purinton played ball for the Portland Phenoms, named for manager Phenomenal Smith. Pulsifer then took a coaching position at Hebron Academy. He then became math instructor at Dean Academy in Franklin, Mass. — just as brother Tappan opened his medical practice in Berlin, N.H., in logging country, where horrific lumbering accidents often occurred.

For seven years, he taught and coached at Dean, playing baseball in the summer. In 1900, he headed south to the Norfolk Phenoms in the Class D Virginia League, again under Smith, who also recruited 19-year-old Christy Mathewson of Bucknell College. With Mathewson going 18–2, and Pulsifer batting .303 with five home runs and 22 steals, Norfolk won the pennant going away, with a 43–14 record.     

“One so clever as Pulsifer should look for faster company than his present associates, for surely he is the best left fielder that ever played in the Virginia League,� the Virginian-Pilot wrote. “There is a score of fielders in the Big League who can’t hold a candle to Pulsifer, and although fans would regret to lose him, still they would be glad to hear of him associated with some National League team.�

Weeks later, that prediction came true — but for Mathewson, who signed by the New York Giants in September. Although the Giants later signed Pulsifer, in December, he remained at Dean Academy — and stuck in the minors.

In 1901, he followed Smith again, to the Class C Norfolk Skippers. From there, he bounced to Tarboro, N.C., then back to Portland. He was .

The next three seasons, he played for the Concord Marines, created after a trolley line was extended north from Manchester. In 1904, at 27, he became player-manager, the first college graduate to “be given the entire charge of a New England League team,� according to The Boston Globe. Playing first base and outfield, he batted .282 with 138 hits, including seven triples and 52 steals.

Pulsifer became part of baseball folklore when he inserted a 9-year-old boy into a game to avoid a forfeit in Lowell. Concord had only brought 10 men. After one suffered an injury and one was ejected, Pulsifer was down to eight players.

“It looked as though the game must be forfeited when young George Diggins, age 9, stalked forth in his miniature mascot’s uniform and offered to stop the gap,” wrote Charles Bevis in The New England League: A Baseball History, 1885–1949. Diggins struck out, played right field, and was paid a dollar. Concord lost, 5–4, and newspapers called it a “farce.â€�

In 1905, he headed to Sioux City, Iowa, to play in the Class A Western League. “Two more college men were added to the ranks of the Packers. Modest in mien and conversation, both Pulsifer and Hatch (of Brown) are ornaments of the great profession of baseball,â€� the Sioux City Journal noted. The story dubbed Pulsifer “occupant of the chair of math.â€� 

Notwithstanding his learned pedigree (and 91 hits), he was released in the off-season.

In 1906, he returned to the Class B New England League as player-manager of the Haverhill (Mass.) Hustlers, hitting .271 in 91 games at first base. 

By now in his late 20s, Pulsifer’s life was about to change. Perhaps at the behest of his family and their high expectations — his brother, Tappan, had earned a medical degree from Columbia, in 1899 — he left Dean Academy in 1906, heading to medical school at Cornell. 

But still he clung to baseball, playing two more years, with Haverhill in 1907 and the Lynn (Mass.) Shoemakers in 1908, after which he was released with this epitaph from the Fall River Globe: “His hitting (.181) has been woefully weak.”

He owned his failures — blaming only himself, noted the Lynn (Mass.) News. “He says this is the first time he has been let go in the middle of the season but manfully declares he can only take himself to task for the event.�

At 30, he was out of professional baseball. His star had set, as rising former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ stars Harry Lord and , both of the Class of 1908, were on their way to the majors.

The withdrawal must have stung. After two years at Cornell, he left to serve as athletic director at Tufts, “with charge of all branches of athletics except track,â€� the same position Royce Purinton had at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. He stayed a year, coaching football to a 1–6–1 record and basketball to a 10–5 record.

But more changes were coming. In 1909, he married Edith Coggeshall, of Lowell, an art teacher at Dean. After returning to Cornell to finish his medical studies, he and Edith settled in Lowell, a bustling mill city on the Merrimack River. Their only child, a daughter, Edith, was born in 1911.

But sports still beckoned. From 1914 until World War I, he coached Lowell High School. “Doc has been out of the limelight for some time and no doubt relishes the chance to get back for a little spring work on the diamond,� reported the Fall River newspaper

During World War I, he served with the Medical Corps, earning promotion to major and serving as the regimental surgeon for the 340th Infantry. Serving near Toul, France, he wrote home of “the thunder of heavy bombardments from battlefields.�

Meanwhile, former teammate Royce Purinton had left ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to serve with the YMCA in France, directing soldier-welfare programs. He also went to the front lines where, in two days of fighting, according to the Student, he witnessed the loss of 1,800 men.

Both returned in November after the Armistice. Purinton, perhaps shattered by his experience, died months later, at 41, leaving a wife and two young children. All of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mourned.

Pulsifer returned to private practice in Lowell, where he also served on the surgical staffs of three hospitals, including Lowell General Hospital. 

In 1923, he testified in an illegal surgery trial that left a woman seriously injured. His diagnosis was “abortion followed by peritonitis,â€� reported the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel. “He expressed the opinion that if such an operation were done by a competent physician…he would not expect septicemia to set in, except rarely.â€�

Around this time, Pulsifer encountered the family of future beat writer Jack Kerouac

In 1926, Pulsifer diagnosed the cause of death of 9-year-old Gérard Kerouac, Jack’s older brother by five years, as “purpura hemorragica� — a horrible bleeding disorder that caused the boy to choke to death on his own blood.

Pulsifer’s presence in the Kerouac home made an impression on 4-year-old Jack. In his novel Visions of Gerard, a meditation on the life and death of his brother, Kerouac describes one character, Dr. Simpkins, who “came and went with his old fashioned satchel and his listen-tubes and pipes and pills and pumps and surprised us all by his gravity and inability to speak.â€� 

Alas, “the big doctor betakes his black suited bulk out of that house of sorrows and goes home, having given up hope a long time ago.�

A decade-plus later, when Kerouac was a star running back for Lowell High School, Pulsifer served as team physician. Perhaps Kerouac recognized the tall, grave figure alone at the end of the bench, surrounded by a small pack of Scottish Terriers he bred. 

Perhaps Kerouac remembered how, with each injury, both dogs and doctor raced onto the field to attend to the fallen player. Pulsifer’s grandson Jon MacDonald described the dogs helping to “lick the player better.�

After the Depression, Pulsifer’s finances declined. Jon remembers trips to the country to collect vegetables from patients who could not afford payments. Grandson Bruce MacDonald recalls how “Papa treated people for next to nothing.â€�

After his daughter’s divorce, Pulsifer took in his two young grandsons and their mother. The boys found their grandfather “taciturn and distant,” much like Kerouac’s Dr. Simpkins. “Papa” would send them out with a box and shovel to collect manure from the scrap iron man, who used a horse and wagon, to fertilize his potato garden.  

By the 1940s, Pulsifer was suffering from age-related dementia. His grandsons helped him clean out his office, shuttering a 37-year medical career. At home, as his condition worsened, he became unmanageable. He died at the Worcester Veterans Home on Aug. 5, 1950.  

He is buried in anonymity at Edson Cemetery, 50 yards from Kerouac’s celebrated grave — about the distance of a Pulsifer touchdown run around end. 

In 1920, a reporter asked the head coach of the University of Wyoming football team to name the best player he ever coached. “ replied John Corbett, who had coached Pulsifer at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ just one year, his sophomore season.

In 1936, Nathan Pulsifer was named halfback on the All-Time ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Eleven team, alongside Purinton, Saunders, and Halliday. ²

Today the four teammates are forever etched in immortality on the Pulsifer paperweight, donated by his two grandsons — both Bowdoin grads — depicting Saunders’ famous touchdown in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ 6–0 upset of Bowdoin in 1898 — the greatest ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ game ever.

Blanche Sears, Class of 1900, wrote this verse to celebrate the win:

For though Bowdoin was old Bowdoin — when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was but a pup
They will find that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ can bite as well as bark
So with sorrow running over is each Bowdoin student’s cup
And they think of six to nothing and Lee Park.

End Notes

1. Though the famed 1946 football team lost its final “game,” the Glass Bowl vs. the University of Toledo, that game is considered a post-season exhibition contest. Thus, the 1946 squad, which went 7-0 during the regular season, is considered one of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ three undefeated football teams.

2. Scottish-born Frank Halliday transferred to Dartmouth after the 1899 football season. He played fullback for a year and graduated in 1901. He became a professor of law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The author would like to dedicate his research on this project to the memories of the late Dave Linehan ‘82 and Jerry Donahue ‘82.

He’s perhaps the best baseball player in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history, yet Harry Lord, Class of 1908, is little-known today, his campus years shrouded in mystery and misinformation.

How good a ballplayer was he? As captain of the Boston Red Sox in 1909, he hit .315, good for fourth in the American League behind future Hall of Famers Ty Cobb (who admired Lord’s vim and vigor), Eddie Collins, and Napoleon Lajoie. 

As captain of the 1911 Chicago White Sox, he did even better, batting .321. “Lord is acknowledged to be the best third baseman in the circuit,� wrote The English News of Indiana.

Yet even basic facts about Lord’s time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ are often wrongly stated. Wikipedia states Lord “graduated in 1908 and pitched for the baseball team.â€� The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student in 2014 says much the same. Accounts from his era make similar claims. But he neither pitched, nor graduated. 

The truth is complicated. Lord’s story is one of headstrong decisions, Dickensian twists — such as playing for and against ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in a single season — and loyalty to his team tested by his love for a woman.

Lord was born in 1882 in Kezar Falls, a village in the southwest Maine town of Porter. He attended Bridgton Academy, captaining the baseball team that won a tournament at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in spring 1904. That September, along with Bridgton teammate George W. French, also from Kezar Falls, Lord entered ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as a 22-year-old first-year student.

By tradition, the first big campus event each fall was the freshman-sophomore baseball game. With bragging rights at stake and accompanied by what The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student called the “usual spectacular and noisy demonstration,â€� the first-years won, 9-3.

Lord led off for the first-years and French batted cleanup. Classmate C.W. Messenger of Bangor — who would also become a major leaguer — batted fifth. Each had one hit in five at-bats. “The freshmen have some promising material,â€� The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student observed.

From there, the talented first-year trio turned to football. On Sept. 24, the season opened on Garcelon Field with a 6-0 win over New Hampshire State. On a team of 30, Messenger subbed in at right halfback. Lord and French did not play.

Holy Cross was next. Coming off an 8-2 season, “Holy Cross ranks with Harvard and Yale and is the strongest team that ever came to Maine,â€� The Lewiston Daily Sun front page declared. 

The Crusaders also featured a Maine connection and future Major Leaguer, first-year halfback Bill Carrigan, a Lewiston native who would play 10 seasons for the Red Sox and manage two teams to World Series championships. 

But ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, with 159-pound Lord and 148-pound Messenger starting in the backfield, outrushed heavily favored Holy Cross 125 to 95 yards — but with a costly miscue.

“Had it not been for a fumble by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½…touchdown undoubtedly would have been scored,â€� The Boston Globe reported. Messenger was the culprit. The final score was 0-0.

Next up was Harvard, coming off a 9-3 season, including a 23-0 rout of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. After Messenger’s fumble, head coach Royce Purinton, Class of 1900, shifted him to left end, making Lord the workhorse in an era when the forward pass was not yet legal. 

In a downpour at Soldiers Field, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ took the opening kickoff and drove for four first downs before Lord fumbled. But ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ held, and drove again. “The whole ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ team was with Lord who was pulled along for six yards,â€� the Globe wrote.

Eventually, Harvard prevailed 11-0 (at the time, touchdowns and extra points were five and one points, respectively). But ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, whose heaviest man weighed 188 pounds, earned respect. “Harvard had a heavier line and backs and yet ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was able to gain at will through Harvard’s line,â€� the Boston Herald wrote.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ reeled off shutout wins against Maine (6-0) and the Pine Tree Athletic Association (40-0), before the much-anticipated Colby game. Special trains to Waterville accommodated the big crowds.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ won 23-0, highlighted by two Lord touchdown runs, including one of 80 yards. “Lord had the longest TD run in the game, carrying the ball through the Colby line, hurdling her secondary…then a magnificent run of 80 yards, followed closely but hopelessly by Capt. Pugsley,â€� the Daily Sun rhapsodized. 

“ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Whales ’Em,â€� blared the Daily Sun’s front page, though a subhead noted that the game was marred by fisticuffs: “Slugging Used Freely By Both Sides.â€� Indeed, penalties for slugging — which back then often referred to hitting an opponent during a play, as a dirty way of blocking— were flagged throughout. Lord was ejected late in the game, with French replacing him. Messenger topped off the rout with three extra-point kicks and a fake kickoff recovered by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

The season finale at Bowdoin, with the Maine State Championship at stake, attracted 3,500 fans. Both teams were 2-0 in state play, and spectators ringed the field. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ took a 6-0 lead, with Messenger kicking the extra point.

But Bowdoin came back with two touchdowns, and led 12-6. With nine minutes left, according to the Lewiston Evening Journal, Messenger shifted from end to halfback, replacing Lord, who left the game. On a crucial third down, with two yards to go for a first down, Messenger was stopped at midfield, resulting in a punt. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ would have one more possession, but could not move the ball. With the win, triumphant Bowdoin players were carried off the field on the shoulders of fans.

Why did Messenger replace Lord on that crucial third-down play, late in the game? Lord had rushed well all season, and Messenger had been relegated to end. The answer comes in a 1913 Boston Post story that recalls Lord’s playing days. The game is not identified, but likely was the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Bowdoin tilt.

“Some of the strongest men…are to be found in this year’s entering class,â€� the Student noted. The top-20 list had Messenger at No. 1, French No. 3, and Lord No. 4.

“During one of those fierce clashes that always take place between Maine colleges in the struggle for football supremacy, Harry, one of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ halfbacks, had his leg broken as a result of a savage, flying tackle. This may have been one big reason why he never figured as a candidate for honors on the track (team).â€�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ended 5-3-1. With such a talented first-year class, the team’s future seemed bright. 

That winter, the physical prowess of Messenger, French, and Lord was confirmed during strength workouts. “Some of the strongest men…are to be found in this year’s entering class,â€� the Student noted. The top-20 list had Messenger at No. 1, French No. 3, and Lord No. 4.

That spring, with the three first-years in the lineup, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ opened its 1905 baseball season at Garcelon on April 25, walloping Hebron Academy 12-4. Lord, leading off and playing third base, hit a home run and drove in two runs. Messenger, in center field, added three RBIs and two stolen bases. French, in right field, batted ninth.

“Assured that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will be represented by a winning team this season. All are in good condition, and the new material is fast,â€� the Daily Sun noted.

But then something unexpected happened: C.W. Messenger vanished from campus, never to appear again in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ uniform. The team stumbled along without him, and by the time ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faced Maine on Garcelon Field on May 20, the team had just two wins against five losses. 

As the Post reported, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “undergraduate body wrathfully bewailed the desertion of the star.â€�

Then, something unexpected happened again. After the game, another loss for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, “Cupid met Harry on the campus after the [Maine] game,â€� as The Boston Post reported in a 1913 story. “Cupid was accompanied by a young lady whose eyes soon made Harry lose sight of the benefits of a four-year’s course and the crying needs of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ athletic prestige.â€� 

Whether it was the lure of new love or for another reason, Lord, like Messenger a few weeks before, went AWOL. On Memorial Day, Lord missed the game vs. Bowdoin, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ lost 11-5 at home. Without Lord the infield was in shambles. “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ scored more errors than Bowdoin did runs,â€� the Globe wrote.

On June 7, Lord finally reappeared on a Maine baseball diamond — but now he was playing against ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and for Portland of the Pine Tree Athletic Association, which was paying him $25 per week. With ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ again making key errors, Portland won 3-1.

Without Messenger and now minus Lord, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ continued to stumble, finishing at 3-13, its worst record in 21 years (though one of the wins was a dazzling 1-0 victory in 11 innings over Colby and its ace hurler, future major leaguer Jack Coombs). 

Lord’s new love was 17-year-old Hazel Hannaford of Cape Elizabeth. As the Post reported, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “undergraduate body wrathfully bewailed the desertion of the star.â€� And while accounts vary, the couple were likely married by October 1905.

After marrying, Lord tried to settle down, securing a job as a collector in Boston — but he was apparently not happy with the work part of his life. On Christmas Eve 1905, returning by boat to Portland, he happened upon Purinton, his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ football coach, and vented his frustrations. “Why don’t you try your hand at professional baseball?â€� suggested Purinton.

Through Purinton’s connections, Lord hooked up with the New Bedford Whalers, an entry in the New England League. He later joined the Worcester Busters, where he batted .280 and led them to a flag. 

In September 1907, then with the Providence Grays of the Eastern League, Lord belted a triple during an exhibition game against the major league Boston Americans, who brought Lord up for the last 10 games of the season.

In 1908, the Americans changed their name to the Red Sox, and Lord was a member. Barely a month into the season, “Lord had electrified the entire American League,� the Post wrote.

The Red Sox were dubbed the “Speed Boys,� with Lord the fastest. Lord hit .259 with 145 hits, including 15 doubles, six triples, two homers, and 23 stolen bases, but the Sox finished 14 and a half games behind Detroit.

Lord’s breakout year was 1909. With Tris Speaker joining the Sox, Lord became captain and batted .315, fourth in the AL, scoring 89 runs and stealing 36 bases. On April 21, he stole home in a triple steal against Philadelphia. Still, the Sox finished nine and a half games behind Ty Cobb’s Tigers.

The following year, on July 10 while facing the Washington Senators, Lord was struck on the left hand by a Walter Johnson fastball, breaking a finger. Despite team objections, he left to recuperate in Maine and was benched after his return. 

A Cleveland paper wrote Lord was “money mad.â€� Former teammate Cy Young egged him on: “You’re being given a raw deal, Harry.â€� Lord demanded a trade and got dealt to the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 9, hitting .297 over the last 44 games of the 1910 season. 

In 1911, as Chicago captain, Lord had perhaps his best season as a major leaguer, hitting .321 with 180 hits, 103 runs scored, and 43 stolen bases. Noting his college experience, The English News called Lord “brainy.�

In Chicago, Lord rejoined his old ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ backfield mate, Charles Walter Messenger. After pulling his vanishing act at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1905, Messenger  had reappeared with Chicago in 1909, and by then was known as “Bobby.â€� The Chicago Tribune, discovering that the two were “old college chums [who] played together on the football team,â€� noted that “each says the other was a star player.â€� 

And how fast were Lord and Messenger? In 1911, the latter would win a 100-yard dash, in 11 seconds, against the fastest American League players during a field-day event at White Sox Park.

The former, during an exhibition game in 1910 that included skill contests, was timed from home to first in 3.4 seconds — nearly a second faster than today’s major leaguers. A 1909 Boston Globe story refers to Lord’s speed when describing his dash “nearly to the home plate” to catch a foul popup in 1909.

In his time with Chicago, Lord also settled a score, homering twice off Walter Johnson, the fireballer who had broken Lord’s finger and precipitated his Boston departure. (Johnson is statistically among the most difficult pitchers to homer off in baseball history.)

But Lord’s headstrong — and perhaps hardheaded, too — way of doing things, seen at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and in Boston, surfaced again. In 1914, he clashed with White Sox owner Charles Comiskey over salary and with manager Nixey Callahan over signals. After 21 games, the 32-year-old demanded, and got, his release.

Out of baseball, he had free time. In June, the Student wrote that “Harry Lord of the Chicago White Sox� would appear in the first ever Alumni Parade at Reunion.

Over the next three years, Lord served as player-manager with Buffalo Blues of the “outlaw� Federal League. He also played for Lowell, Mass., in the New England League, for Gardiner, Maine, in a semi-pro league, and for Portland of the Eastern League.

In 1918, Lord intersected with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ again. With Purinton serving in France during World War I with the YMCA, Lord stepped in as baseball coach. “Harry Lord Arrives!â€� the Daily Sun declared on April 22. He coached ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to a 4-4 record in a war-shortened season. 

As for . Ever the mysterious figure, little is known of his life. He died in 1951, age 67, in Bath, Maine. 

As for their classmate George French, he actually graduated from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. French served as the official Maine state photographer from 1936 to 1955, winning more than 200 awards, including a medal from the Photographic Salon in Tokyo. All his prints and negatives reside today in the Maine State Archives. 

French died in 1970, age 87, having said that “I hope to leave a monument to a life devoted to picturing the beautiful side of the great outdoors.�

, Harry Lord finally did settle down, entering the grocery and coal business in Portland. He became a Mason, joined the Rotary Club, coached at South Portland High School, and served on the South Portland school board and in the Maine House of Representatives as a Republican.

In 1948, Lord died at age 66 and was buried in Kezar Falls. Lord’s wife, Hazel, survived him and herself went on to serve three terms in the Maine Legislature. She died in 1974. Also surviving were a son, Harry Jr., and daughter Corrine, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Class of 1927.

In 2018, after the death of Lord’s grandson, a team photograph of Lord, Cobb, Johnson, Speaker, and others, taken at an unofficial 1910 all-star game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, went to auction. The vintage photo sold for $6,063. 

In photographs, Lord’s jutting jaw is prominent, a physical signal of a competitive nature that marked his career — regardless of Lord’s team. In his later years, the old White Sox captain expressed a regret born of a competitor, that he wasn’t there to stop his Sox from throwing the infamous 1919 World Series.

“Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver and the others would have listened to me,� Lord said. “I could have stopped it if I’d had to punch the ringleader in the nose.�

Bob Muldoon ’81 lives in Boston. The author of the novel , he was a in July.

“The game is afoot,” writes Bob Muldoon ’81 in his Boston Globe essay about his annual quest for the first sign of spring.

Mourning cloak butterfly. (CC license: Jamie Jones / USFWS)

“Each year in March, as gray winter shuffles off stage, and colorful spring waits in the wings, I hold my own private competition: to spot the year’s first butterfly. Aye, for many the robin is the harbinger of spring, but for me ’tis the mourning cloak. For you the bird, for me the butterfly!”

In Muldoon’s novel, (the title refers to the official the team returns to Hartford and gets a shot at the Stanley Cup.

The novel’s hero is the diminutive player Tiger Burns, whom Muldoon describes as “standing 5-foot-3, with one-eye, cauliflower ears, and a full-rigged ship tattoo on his chest.” He’s a good fit with the Whalers. “In a league where players date supermodels, ice princesses and Miss Americas, he is a misfit. But in a league of Los Angeles, New York and Boston, so is Hartford.”

Muldoon’s first-hand experiences with the team inspire the book that he calls “Rocky on skates meets Field of Dreams.” Moonlighting from his Travelers insurance job, he  worked part-time in PR for the team starting in 1984. First he was the guy who opened the penalty box door. He then moved up to driving new cars onto the ice between periods, and by the end was writing features for the team’s magazine.

As the Observer‘s John Murray writes, “The Whalers were the only professional sports team in Connecticut, and…[their departure] was like getting slapped across the face with a 20-pound sockeye salmon –- it left many people in Connecticut stunned, and feeling a bit slimy about themselves. Aren’t we good enough, we wondered?”

“Your job has been outsourced to India.� I shouldn’t have been surprised — though a week earlier, at our insurance company’s Holiday Concert Celebration, the CEO had trumpeted our “three-times-the-industry growth rate� over hot hors d’oeuvres and good tidings.

Pittsburgh steel. New England textiles. American information technology. Is the last going the way of the others — overseas? Apparently. The communications revolution could mean another surge of job losses in the coming decades — maybe 40 million — according to former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder. Is it too late to stem the tide? It is for me.

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, I scratched my way back into IT as a contractor. Then, on Feb. 20, 2006, I landed a full-time position. Terra firma, I thought. But signs of trouble came in May when my boss breezily mentioned the new “off-shoring� initiative. It was a good thing, he said, that would rid us of “repetitive� functions and free us to “strut our stuff.�

Soon after, the CIO had his quarterly meet-and-greet with new hires. It was a feel-good fest, so I felt like the skunk at a garden party by mentioning the off-shoring. One woman mentioned breathlessly that she’d never worked at a company where everyone held doors open for each other. Yes, everyone agreed, it was so!

So we embraced the off-shoring. What choice was there? Soon we were meeting regularly with our Indian partners in “hand-off� sessions. We (the “native team�) demonstrated, step-by-step, the “Wave 1� tasks, those to be transitioned first.

I worked with Praveen. Though I was leery of the off-shoring process (the condo hunt was on hold), I couldn’t help but like him. He managed to use my first name in every sentence in an unaffected way. “Yes, I understand, Bob!� It was like sitting with Dale Carnegie, who noted that “a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound.� Akhilesh and Pavan spoke the same.

One day, Praveen proudly clicked up a Web site showing HITEC City, the self-contained technology city in Hyderabad, India, to which Praveen would soon be returning — after absorbing the “Wave 2� tasks. And it was breathtaking, rising like Emerald City out of Oz. The first structure at HITEC city was the 10-story Cyber Towers about a decade ago. Then came Cyber Gateway and Cyber Pearl. Now there are 29 IT parks at HITEC City.

As I feverishly trained Praveen and Akhilesh to meet tight turnover deadlines, they in turn passed my “brain dumps,� bucket-brigade style, across two oceans to Maitreyee back in Hyderabad. Things moved swiftly, and soon I was tapped dry. The day Praveen flew home was awkward. “Goodbye, Bob.�

A week after the Holiday Celebration at Mechanics Hall in Worcester — built in 1857 to support manufacturing workers — the CIO gathered us to review the budget. It was true, he said, it’s been a “terrific year.� Fourth quarter is looking good. ROI is double-digit. We are exceeding plan, he said.

But the company was moving into “softer� markets. A lot of business is in slumping Michigan, and we over-invested in technology in 2006. Storm clouds are gathering. Yes, he admitted, the timing could have been better on last week’s $2 million corporate gift to restore the downtown theater, but we’re “committed to the community.� His voice choked when he announced 53 layoffs, more than 10 percent of the American IT staff.

Back at our desks, everyone was white-knuckling it. When my phone rang, I was directed up the escalator into a plush office and the door was shut. “Is this for my new promotion?� I joked lamely. No one laughed.

What happened next was a blur. Outsourcing. Changing directions. Not performance related. My manager didn’t use the word “expendable,� but it’s all I could think of.

The sharply dressed woman from the Office of Talent Management went over the “Separation Agreement,� typed on letterhead, addressed personally (“Dear Robert�), and listing 22 bulleted items. As she moved down the list, my throat caught momentarily. Just then, pugilist-philosopher Mike Tyson’s words after his last bout raced through my head. “I’ll take my beating like a man.� I didn’t want them to see me cry.

Oh, they held the door open for me on the way out.

By Bob Muldoon ’81 Illustration by Marty Braun

Bob Muldoon lives in Andover, Mass.