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As a player he has never been surpassed in his specialty of making long and brilliant runs, not only around, but through the ranks of his opponents. After one of his seventy- or eighty-yard runs his path was always marked by a zig-zag line of opposing tacklers just collecting their wits and slowly starting to get up from the ground.
As planned it was this: at the snapping of the ball the head of the tandem, the tackle, was to plunge straight through the line between tackle and guard as though leading a direct attack at that point; full back and left half were to turn sharply to the left before reaching the line and clear out a hole between end and tackle; right half back, standing well behind the quarter, was to receive the ball on a toss and follow the interference; quarter was to stop tacklers coming around the right end of his line; in short, it was a play apparently aimed at the left center of Yale's line, but in reality going through at the left end.
As Heston broke away from the last tacklers, I backed suddenly into the outstretched arms of the Ohio State fullback, who, it appears, had been backing up step by step with me. Heston ran thirty yards for a touchdown. You can imagine how unpopular I was with the home team, and how ridiculous my plight appeared.
He did not approach the skill of some of the first team members, particularly Neil Durant, the captain, who regularly romped through the scrub as if they were wooden Indians, but he did seem to have a natural ability to dodge and to worm his way through opposing tacklers. An incident occurred on the last Wednesday of October that had a distinct influence on Teeny-bits' career.
I remember well the great run of fifty-five yards which he made. He was a wonderfully clever dodger and used the stiff arm well. He evaded the Princeton tacklers successfully, until Billy Bannard made a tackle on Princeton's 25-yard line. Garry Cochran was one of the Princeton players who failed in his effort to tackle de Saulles, although it was a remarkable attempt with a low, diving tackle.
But that marvelous swaying motion of the hips that had eluded so many tacklers on the football field stood him in stead, and he just grazed the enormous claw that tried to stop him. That strategy proved his salvation. The grizzly plunged along for many feet before he could turn, and in that instant's respite Bert saw his chance.
The game then became a punting duel and after three exchanges Kendall, getting the ball on his own thirty-five-yard line, ran it back to the opponent's forty, dodging beautifully through a broken field and throwing off at least a half-dozen tacklers. Brimfield tried Claflin's left tackle twice and totalled five yards.
Some of the men weighed a hundred pounds more than he did, but he would get up and, with a smile, say: "Come on men, hit me harder; knock me out next time." After the first two weeks of the season, Johnny Poe was a complete mass of black and blue marks; and yet how wonderful and how self sacrificing he was in his eagerness to make the Princeton players good tacklers.
"While umpiring a game between Michigan and Ohio State, at Columbus," he says, "Heston, Michigan's fullback, carrying the ball, broke through the line, was tackled and thrown; recovered his feet, started again, was tackled and thrown again, threw off his tacklers only to be thrown again. Again he broke away. All this time I was backing up in front of the play.
"In one of his plays, Camp would run down the side of the field, the ball held far out with one arm, while the other arm was performing yeoman service in warding off the oncoming tacklers. Frequently he would pass the ball from one hand to the other, while still running, depending upon which arm he saw he would need for defense.
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