With a pardon to the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare of Staten Island NY, displayed poetry in motion with his own style of play while 81,000 football fans and two young boys on a crystal radio witnessed the “greatest football game” of the century, November 2, 1935 between Notre Dame and the mighty Ohio State Buckeyes.
It could be said that William Shakespeare had no idea he would become a hero in a football game but indeed he did. Not the English playwright but “the bard of Staten Island” William Valentine Shakespeare, who enrolled at Notre Dame University in 1932. He became somewhat of a star at halfback by his junior year.
The day of the big game, Ohio State had an impressive record and was favored to win by two touchdowns. At the end of the third quarter the Buckeyes were leading 13 to zip. Notre Dame rallied to close the gap to 13-12 with only minutes to play. In the best tradition of Knute Rockne, who challenged his team a few years earlier to “win one for the gipper” (a reference to former player George Gip, who had died). Layden pressed his players to make something happen. Notre Dame’s eleven took up the charge. Andy Pilney was the QB that day. With under a minute to play, Pilney drove the team to the Buckeye 30-yd line. Andy got hurt on the play and had to be taken out of the game on a stretcher. Enter halfback William Valentine Shakespeare. Only seconds remained. We’ll never know if he drew that play up in the dirt. We’ll never know how he found an open man with barely enough time left. It was a reverse by a hand off from fullback Jim McKenna to Shakespeare and (excuse the expression) a HAIL MARY to Wayne Milner who has slipped to the seat of his pants in the end zone to catch the ball.
Those 81,000 fans had been screaming wildly at Ohio stadium while two young boys were listening with great excitement on the crystal radio set in Portland, Oregon that day.
My best friend “Poose” LaDoux lived across the street from us on N. Simpson Street. We were both 10 and crazy about football. Every Saturday we’d grab my mom’s crystal set (we called it a cat whisker radio), lay down on the hardwood floor upstairs and split the ear pieces so we could each listen to the live broadcast from that week’s game. The pre-game hype was notable. The Irish didn’t have a chance against those tough brutes from Ohio. We listened intently at every play. We were cheering for Notre Dame. Poose was Catholic and was praying real hard for them to get back into the game as the minutes of the last quarter were waning. I was Protestant and praying right along with Poose. That game is why I believe in prayer to this day.
Fast forward to 1985. Charlie Ganong, a family member for as long as I can recall, heard me tell this story. A few days later he presented me with a framed article by Damon Runyon written for the Seattle P.I. I was crying with joy as I read and re-read the article.
With the bowl season upon us, it brought back so many memories of those days of big football games and the excitement of my youth. I was almost the fastest boy on Russett street, except for speedy Darrell Clover, but he had brand new U.S. Keds and anyone knows you can run faster in new tennis shoes. I dearly wanted to play big league football when I was 10. I could toss the old leather ball three car lengths up Russett street and draw great plays in the dirt but I was too small; even at 17 I could get into the picture show for a nickel. I resigned myself to worshiping my heroes Bobby Grayson and Erling Jacobsen. Now where did that cat whisker radio go?
(Note: Last week, I wrote about cutting the top off a tree for our Christmas holiday. We were kids. I certainly do not advise people to do this today. It was wrong then and is wrong still.)
Jerry Robinson is the publisher of the West Seattle Herald/White Center News. He can be reached care of
Ken Robinson at
kenr@robinsonnews.com.
