Lions far from unfamiliar with Yankee Stadium

[Editor's Note: Penn State's Pinstripe Bowl game at Yankee Stadium this year will not be anywhere near as historic as the Nittany Lions' first game played there in 1923. In this slightly-revised article that originally appeared in Blue White Illustrated on Sept. 15, 2008, contributing writer Lou Prato tells of how one-time eastern rivals Penn State, Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia made history at the original Yankee Stadium.]

BY LOU PRATO

When the original Yankee Stadium was demolished after the 2008 baseball season to make way for the new ball park across the street, a visible part of Penn State's illustrious football history disappeared. Not only is Penn State's past linked to the old stadium but it is intertwined with the schools who were the Nittany Lions' biggest rivals for decades: Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia. And their connection to Yankee Stadium all stems from the bitter competition that evolved in the early years of the 20th Century between Penn State and Pitt.

Yankee Stadium officially opened on April 18, 1923, and was reportedly the first athletic facility in the country to be named a "stadium." With an official seating capacity of 57,545, it was almost double the size of most baseball parks, rivaling campus football venues such as Pennsylvania's Franklin Field (54,500), Harvard's Soldiers Field (57,166) and Yale's 70,869 seats in the mammoth Yale Bowl. In fact, with its unique triple decked grandstand of Yankee Stadium that stretched from foul pole to foul pole, some 70,000 fans could be squeezed into the wooden bleachers.

There had been an initial movement to name the ball park "Ruth Field" after the home run slugger who was captivating the nation and turning baseball into the country's most popular sport, but owner Jacob Rupert wanted it simply known as Yankee Stadium. However, spurred by the media, it soon had a popular nickname, "The House that Ruth Built." On that brisk, windy April day with temperatures hovering below 50, an estimated 60,000 fans saw Babe Ruth blast a three-run homer in the third inning and "Sailor" Bob Shawkey throw a three-hitter as the New York Yankees beat Ruth's old team, the Boston Red Sox, 4-1.

Almost six months later, on Sunday, October 14, the Yankees concluded their initial season in their new home field by beating the New York Giants 8-1 before 62,817 fans in Game 5 of the World Series, The next day, across the Harlem River in the Polo Grounds, the Yankees won the first championship of what would seemingly become their World Series birthright by defeating the Giants again, 6-4.

Within the next two weeks, an estimated 25,000 people would be back in Yankee Stadium on back-to-back Saturdays watching the first college football games played in the $2.5 million dollar facility. On October 20, 1923, Syracuse defeated Pitt, 3-0, and one week later, Penn State and West Virginia played to a 13-13 tie.

There were three more college football games in Yankee Stadium that season and three other games involving military football teams. Over the next several decades, the stadium would host some of the most historic games in college football history-including the classic Army-Notre Dame series. It was at Yankee Stadium in 1928 where Notre Dame Coach Knute Rockne delivered his legendary halftime speech to "win one for the Gipper" that sparked the underdog Irish to a 12-6 upset over Army. From 1923 until 1987, when the last football game was played there, the stadium was the site for 175 college football games, but the first two games have been long forgotten.

Today, one might wonder how--in an age before airplanes, superhighways, television and the internet--three teams from the eastern outlands wound up playing on the biggest stage in sports on successive Saturday afternoons. Syracuse may seem to have natural appeal for a Yankee Stadium crowd since it is a home state school. But in that era Penn State also was a big time football attraction in New York and other east coast cities like Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.

A few years earlier, Penn State had evolved into one of the country's college football powers. In a stretch from 1919 into 1922, the Nittany Lions had set a school record of 30 straight games without a loss. Two of those games had been played in New York's Polo Grounds, which was owned by the Giants with the Yankees as tenants from 1913 to 1922. Both games had been set up by Penn State athletics officials at the behest of the influential alumni in New York City as a way to enhance the Nittany Lions' prestige, boost recruiting and help fund raising. The Penn State brass also wanted to do something to offset the negative press and alumni discontent over the decade of embarrassment at the hands of Pitt, which had defeated the Lions in six of the eight games played between 1913 and 1920.

Penn State's first Polo Grounds' game was on October 29, 1921, when an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 fans, including the mayor of Atlanta, watched Penn State upset favored Georgia Tech, 28-7, in a game that helped make Glenn Killinger the Lions' fifth first team All-American in history. Killinger's electrifying 85-yard kickoff return in the first quarter shocked the Tech players, and as Arthur Robinson wrote in the New York Tribune, "Up and out of the throats and hearts of the crowd came a great roar…Now the State attack broke loose." In that era, the All-American team selected by Yale's Walter Camp, the father of American football, was recognized as college football's "official" team. Camp had sat on the Penn State sideline and personally congratulated Killinger in the locker room after the game.

One year later, Penn State was back in the Polo Grounds playing Syracuse for the first time ever. Syracuse had played four games in New York since its 1909 game against the Carlisle Indians, but, surprisingly, Penn State and Syracuse had never met in football, even though the schools were just about 235 miles from each other. Perhaps more surprisingly, Syracuse had been playing Pitt since 1916 and had already played Michigan ten times between 1908 and 1918 with six games in Ann Arbor.

Among the throng of 25,000 that turned out at the Polo Grounds on October 22, 1922 were the ten surviving members of Penn State's first football team in 1887 and two senior students dressed in costumes of an African Lion. A photograph of the two lions prancing on the field that day is evidence of the first known appearance of the Nittany Lion mascot. Unfortunately for the mascots and Penn State, the underdog Syracuse team battled to a 0-0 tie. Navy upset State the next weekend in Washington, 14-0, ending the undefeated streak at 29, and the team went into a tailspin, losing three of its last four games, including State's first post-season game, the Rose Bowl, 14-3. Coach Hugo Bezdek concluded that the mascots were bad luck and before the next season, Bezdek banned the mascot from all games.

Up until 1923, the most college games played in New York City in one year was six, all in the Polo Grounds. Now, the slightly smaller Polo Grounds, with its 54,555 seats, had competition from its cross-town baseball rival with the bigger stadium as both owners tried to line up headline games for that fall. In January, the Yankees convinced Army and Notre Dame to switch their October 13 game from West Point to the Bronx, with the caveat that the game would only be played there if the Yankees didn't make it to the World Series.

The Yankees also lured Penn State, fresh from its first post-season game in the Rose Bowl. The Lions had first tried to get Vanderbilt to be the Yankee Stadium opponent, but that didn't work out. State had played and beaten West Virginia five times from 1904-09 and when the schools talked about resuming the series in New York, West Virginia eagerly agreed. The Mountaineers had never played in the big city before and they knew what the exposure could do to their still underrated football program. West Virginia went even one step further and scheduled a second game in New York, this time in the Polo Grounds against Rutgers on Election Day, November 6.

Meanwhile, officials at Pitt, upset by the success Penn State was having in playing before the influential New York media and knowing its second longest rival, West Virginia, was now in the mix, went after a game, too. "Heretofore, (Pitt and Syracuse) have played on their own gridirons," the New York Times reported on January 7, 1923, "but Pittsburgh, wanting a New York game, persuaded the Orange to switch the locale of the 1923 game to the Yankee park."

So, when the New York Yankees clinched the American League pennant, sending Army and Notre Dame back to West Point, the Pitt-Syracuse game became the first ever played in Yankee Stadium. It turned into a defensive struggle with a 25-yard field goal by Syracuse's John McBride late in the third quarter providing the only score in a 3-0 victory for the undefeated Orange. Attendance was officially noted by the New York Times as "a colorful crowd of 25,000 persons."

The following Saturday another 25,000 fans were in Yankee Stadium, including 5,000 from Penn State, 3,000 from West Virginia, and the patriarch of college football Walter Camp. Both teams were undefeated and the game was rated a toss-up. However, Camp was sitting on the West Virginia bench and he almost always was on the sideline of the team he favored.

"West Virginia Ties Penn State, 13-13," blared the one-column headlines in the New York Times of October 28. "Bitter Struggle of Unbeaten Elevens Thrills 25,000 in Yankee Stadium. Rally Saves State Team. Mountaineers Outplayed."

Penn State scored first, recovering a fumble by West Virginia's star runner Nick Nardacci two plays after the opening kickoff with the Lions' triple-threat standout Harry Wilson going 16-yards for the touchdown. West Virginia went ahead in the second half on a pair of touchdown passes but the second extra point attempt was blocked. As the fourth quarter was winding down, a Penn State punt return set up a grinding 25-yard drive that tied the game on a one-yard run by Wilson. But place kicker Dick Shuster missed the extra point and that's how the game ended.

Still, Wilson had once again impressed Walter Camp, and so did Penn State's captain and starting guard Joe Bedenk, despite having to leave the game in the third quarter after being knocked unconscious. Camp picked both Nittany Lions for his first team All-American squad at the end for the year.

It's interesting to note how the four teams in those two first Yankee Stadium football games finished their seasons. The next week at Archbold Stadium, the Lions lost their first game, 10-0, as Syracuse remained unbeaten. State would lose once more, in a 20-3 upset at Pitt in the last game of the year. Syracuse also would lose its only game in an upset, to Colgate, and West Virginia would suffer its only defeat in its final game, losing to a Washington & Jefferson team whose only loss that season was to Pitt. And one more thing, W&J-at time the fourth big time team from Pennsylvania's tri-state region--also played in New York City in 1923, tying cross-state rival Lafayette, 6-6, in the Polo Grounds on November 3.

Penn State would eventually play two more games in Yankee Stadium - losing to Georgia Tech, 16-8, in 1925 and to NYU, 7-0, in 1929--and two more in the Polo Grounds - beating NYU, 42-0, in 1941 and Fordham, 75-0, in 1947. The Polo Grounds have been gone since 1964 and now, the original Yankee Stadium has disappeared. But their historical significance will always be part of Penn State football.