{"id":128452,"date":"2019-11-01T11:05:37","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T15:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=128452"},"modified":"2021-03-02T12:20:56","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T17:20:56","slug":"recalling-the-1898-bates-bowdoin-football-game-that-cemented-a-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/11\/01\/recalling-the-1898-bates-bowdoin-football-game-that-cemented-a-rivalry\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1898 Bates-Bowdoin football game that cemented a historic rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"

One hundred and one years ago, the build-up to the annual Bates-Bowdoin football game had disputes and divided loyalties \u2014 classic trappings of a historic rivalry.<\/p>\n

And, for Bates fans, the 1898 game delivered what a rivalry game should, a victory and a hero, William Allen Saunders, the unlikely scorer of the game\u2019s only touchdown.<\/p>\n

Yet in 1898, the grid rivalry, now one of the nation’s longest-running, was just seven years old. And, at least from Bates\u2019 perspective, the rivalry had gotten off to a slow start, with Bowdoin easily winning the first five editions by a combined score of 186 to 6.<\/p>\n

\nBates-Bowdoin Football, No. 122
\n<\/strong>The 2019 Bates-Bowdoin football game, No. 122 in the historic rivalry, is now history: See highlights from the Bobcats’ 30-5 victory<\/a> at Garcelon Field on Nov. 2.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

At the time, interest in college football was surging both nationally and in Maine. With questions of masculinity at the fore in late 19th-century society, the country\u2019s college football fields \u2014 offering a far more violent version of the game than today\u2019s \u2014 became popular proving grounds for the modern man<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Newspapers played up the game\u2019s war-like violence. One pre-game headline in the Lewiston Evening Journal<\/em> of the era proclaimed, \u201cBowdoin and Bates arrayed in the panoply of war at Brunswick.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the 1897 game, a year before Saunders\u2019 star turn, Bates supporters filled the trolley for the 90-minute trip to Brunswick. At the station, the Bates contingent let loose their traditional cheer: \u201cBoomalaka, boomalaka, Bates \u2014\u00a0boom, boom!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Mirror<\/em> yearbook photo of William Allen Saunders, Class of 1899, the hero of the Bates-Bowdoin game of 1898. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

And boom, like that, Bates won the game, securing its first title in the nascent Maine State Series competition, later to become the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin series when the University of Maine left the group in 1964.<\/p>\n

Perhaps smarting from its first setback in the budding rivalry, Bowdoin in 1898 played hardball. Pointing to its \u201cability to draw a big crowd,\u201d according to a\u00a0Journal<\/em> story two days before the Oct. 29 game, Bowdoin demanded a bigger share of the gate receipts before agreeing to travel to Lewiston.<\/p>\n

“The people are coming, coming from everywhere.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the two schools reached a revenue agreement a day later, the Journal<\/em> headline declared, \u201cFoot Ball Peace Assured.\u201d With the game on, the hype machine was on, 19th-century style.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who knows the difference between a football and an egg will be on the grounds,\u201d said the Journal<\/em>, noting that anticipation for the game in Maine has \u201cresembled the feeling throughout New England over the Yale-Harvard games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, the paper said, \u201cthe people are coming, coming from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they did, a throng of 2,500 attending the game on a foggy, drizzly day at Lee Park (Garcelon Field wouldn\u2019t be completed for another year). A bygone city commons once located at the intersection of Sabattus Street and East Avenue, Lee Park was known mostly for hosting traveling circuses. It became a housing development in the early 1900s.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The undefeated 6-0 Bates football team of 1898 poses for a team photo. William Saunders, scorer of the winning touchdown vs. Bowdoin that year, is standing third from right. Team captain Nate Pulsifer, who made a key block on the winning play, is seated at center. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Bowdoin, considered the bigger and more physical of the two teams, entered the game with a 5-2 record, its only losses being to Ivy League powers Dartmouth and Harvard. Hardscrabble Bates, often called \u201cthe farmers\u201d in media accounts, was 4\u00ad-0, having beaten New Hampshire State College, the University of Maine (twice), and Phillips Exeter Academy.<\/p>\n

(Winless Colby, meanwhile, wasn\u2019t part of that year\u2019s Colby-Bates-Bowdoin talk; its football team needed more \u201cfirmness in muscle before they can hope to cope successfully with Bates or Bowdoin,\u201d noted the Journal<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

“A few of the young women…bolted outright from the Bates standard and bravely shook the black and white of the other side.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know a sports rivalry has arrived when it moves outside the sports media, and that\u2019s what happened in 1898. On game day, the late edition of the Journal<\/em> devoted its \u201cSocial World\u201d column to the Bates-Bowdoin game, noting that \u201cthe young people were at Lee Park this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than football \u2014 something tribal \u2014 was at stake, the column suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe raw October air brought the Bates color into the cheeks of the lassies,\u201d the paper said, \u201cbut \u2019twas hard for some of them to be loyal to the garnet and white. A few of the young women…bolted outright from the Bates standard and bravely shook the black and white of the other side.\u201d Ouch!<\/p>\n

The 1898 game, a 6-0 victory for Bates, was \u201ca nerve destroyer,\u201d the Journal<\/em> reported. The teams moved the ball, but had trouble scoring; the action drove the throng into a tizzy, and \u201cpolice were unable to keep the crowd from swarming over the field at times,\u201d reported the Bowdoin Orient<\/em> student newspaper.<\/p>\n

Midway through the first half, Bates\u2019 William Allen Saunders, a senior from the South, ran for the game\u2019s only touchdown.<\/p>\n

Born in Louisa Court House, Va., Saunders came to Bates after attending Storer School, later Storer College, in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., a historically black institution founded just after the Civil War with the help of Bates founder Oren Cheney. (Stella James also studied at Storer before she became the first African American woman to graduate from Bates, in 1897.)<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

Before matriculating at Bates, William Saunders (standing, second from left) attended Storer School, graduating with his fellow students in 1895. (Storer College Digital Photographs Collection \/ West Virginia and Regional History Center)<\/p><\/div>\n

Besides football, Saunders competed in track and field at Bates, in the hammer and shot put. He also served as librarian of one of the literary societies, Eurosophia.<\/p>\n

Following graduation, Saunders taught public school in Coaldale, W.Va., and served as a grade-school principal in Hagerstown, Md., before joining the faculty at Bluefield Colored Institute, now Bluefield State College.<\/p>\n

He joined the faculty of Storer College in 1907, teaching math, natural sciences, religion, and Latin. He married Inez Johnson and they built a home near the Storer campus, which today is a bed and breakfast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saunders retired from Storer in 1951, and his date of death is unknown. A Bates oral history tells the story of a classmate, George Parsons, who visited Saunders in the 1950s, when both were in their 80s. Parsons wanted to take Saunders to dinner but Saunders demurred \u2014 no white restaurant in town would serve a black man.<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

Shortly after joining the faculty of Storer College, William Saunders (second from right, with clarinet) poses with the Storer College Cornet Band in 1908. (Storer College Digital Photographs Collection \/ West Virginia and Regional History Center)<\/p><\/div>\n

While Saunders was the hero of the 1898 game, by today\u2019s rules he would never have been a ball carrier. He was an offensive guard \u2014 a blocking position today.<\/p>\n

Back then, the rules required only five players to be on the line of scrimmage at the start of a play, compared to seven today. That allowed more players to line up in the backfield. And that led to battering-ram formations, including the flying wedge, in which a big lineman, in this case Saunders, and several blockers would line up in the backfield and get a running start into the defense.<\/p>\n

Known as a \u201cguard-back\u201d or \u201ctackle-back\u201d formation, it\u2019s what made Saunders the hero of the Bates-Bowdoin game of 1898.<\/p>\n

Indeed, football in the 1890s hardly resembled today\u2019s game. With the forward pass still a few years away, the game was all about the ball carrier and his blockers bashing into the defense, time and again. In Bates-Bowdoin terms, the Journal <\/em>described the \u201cslap of canvas against canvas\u201d as two sides crashed together.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime and again the giant guard, Saunders, went into the line and always for a gain,\u201d said the Student<\/em>. \u201cSaunders played like a fiend,\u201d reported the Journal<\/em>. \u201cIt always took two men to bring him down.\u201d (Though not big by today\u2019s standards, Saunders, at 5-foot-10 and 173 pounds, was among the tallest and heaviest Bates players.)<\/p>\n

\"Items<\/a>

This commemorative paperweight depicts William Saunders’ gate-winning touchdown vs. Bowdoin on Oct. 29, 1898. It was given to Bates by Bowdoin graduate Bruce MacDonald, grandson of Nate Pulsifer, captain of the 1898 football team and Saunders’ classmate who made a key block on the winning play. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Bates\u2019 game-winning, 14-minute touchdown drive started at midfield. With a \u201csteady humming between tackles and guards,\u201d Bates advanced to the Bowdoin 20. The Bates captain, senior running back Nate Pulsifer, carried to the 10 for a first down.<\/p>\n

Then came Saunders\u2019 turn. He carried to the Bowdoin 4, and then, with Pulsifer and sophomore running back Frank Halliday leading the way, Saunders \u201cwent over the line for the first and only touchdown of the game.\u201d (A commemorative paperweight, given to Bates by Pulsifer\u2019s grandson, depicts the winning play and the huge crowd at Lee Park.)<\/p>\n

The rest of the game, reported the Student, \u201cabounded in runs, fumbles, plunges that seemed to be back-breakers, punts, and hard tackles\u201d \u2014 but no more scoring. Bates\u2019 defense held; it would allow just 11 points in its six wins in 1898.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>

Two days after the Bates victory, headlines in the Lewiston Evening Journal<\/em> on Oct. 31, 1898, gave kudos to the “happy farmer boys of Bates.”<\/p><\/div>\n

The Bates victory was \u201cuniversally admitted to be the greatest contest ever held between Maine colleges,\u201d stated the Student.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Journal<\/em> agreed, saying the game was \u201cthe fiercest foot ball ever seen in this state\u201d with a deserving winner: a \u201clight, stocky, well-trained team that was playing a game of foot ball only excelled by the crack teams of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The victory kicked off a night of celebration at Bates, including boisterous rides around town on the local trolley. Known as the Figure Eight for the shape of its route around Lewiston and Auburn, it \u201cwas traveled with a liberal amount of fireworks and red fire on each car,\u201d reported the Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And there were victory songs aplenty, at Bowdoin\u2019s expense, including a new one sung to the tune of \u201cMarching Through Georgia,\u201d with this verse:<\/p>\n

The farmer boys at Bates have learned
\n<\/em>The way to plough the ground,
\n<\/em>As the headless birds at Bowdoin,
\n<\/em>To their sorrow now have found.
\n<\/em>Then with cheers and shouts of triumph
\n<\/em>Let the atmosphere resound,
\n<\/em>While the Bowdoin dudes are marching back to Brunswick.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The build-up to the 1898 Bates-Bowdoin game had disputes and divided loyalties. In the end, it was \u201cuniversally admitted to be the greatest contest ever held between Maine colleges.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":128506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,24,224],"tags":[2060,10875],"class_list":["post-128452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-athletics","category-society-culture","tag-cbb","tag-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128452"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138378,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128452\/revisions\/138378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}