At one point in the third period of the Yale game, this correspondent, who has followed the current Dartmouth football team with reasonable assiduity, was totally unable to recognize even the names of three members of the Dartmouth backfield. These new and unfamiliar operatives, with the collaboration of several old timers who have been on the Hanover Plain for all of three or four months, almost managed to beat or at least tie a favored Yale team and provide one of the upsets of an utterly unpredictable season. In the fourth quarter, trailing 6 to o, the Green staged an inspired rally, sparked by a young fellow named "Smiley" Braatz who, as noted above, had appeared two days before from Camp Lejeune, just in time to get fitted for a new jersey and catch the train for New Haven.
Starting on the Yale 49-yard line, our Mr. Braatz first recovered a fumble and then went on a personally conducted tour of Yale territory, one of the few times during the afternoon when that part of the turf was seriously disturbed. Smashing savagely at the left side of the Yale line, Braatz and his supporting colleagues managed to work the ball down to the 9-yard line where, with a first down at that point, the teams temporarily rested from their labors. The Yale stands, expecting an easy victory over an undermanned Dartmouth team, were in a frenzy, as the Yale linemen dug in before their own goal posts. Three attempts at the line, coupled with a five-yard penalty for too many times out, left the Green on the Yale 19 with a net loss of ten yards. A desperate fourth down pass to Peck in the end zone went wide, and the game was as good as over for Dartmouth. But not before an inspired Green team had given undefeated Yale the scare of their lives.
The game started out like a romp for the Boys in Blue. Again and again in the first two periods, the Yale backs penetrated almost to the Dartmouth goal line, only to be thrown back by the heavier and savagely charging Dartmouth line. The first half was played almost entirely in Dartmouth territory, with the Green forced to kick on several occasions from their end zone. Unable to gain consistently through the line, however, Yale resorted to passes, one of which paid off with their only score of the game. A short , pass to Paul Walker, the Yale end who reminds nostalgic old Blues of the fabulous Larry Kelly, was the scoring play. Walker took the pass in the right flat and went the remaining 25 yards for a touchdown without any serious opposition by any of the Dartmouth defenders. Prior to this successful attempt, Yale had attempted a field goal from the 15 yard line, which was thoroughly blocked by the surging Dartmouth line. The rest of the game, particularly the second half, was a struggle on the part of Yale to protect and perhaps augment this slender lead, in the face of increasingly determined efforts of the Dartmouth backs to pass that last white line.
The bitter defensive character of the contest is seen by the modest display, of first downs, which totaled only 10 for Yale as against 6 for Dartmouth. Yale gained 1.25 yards BY rushing die bail, compared to 99 for the Green; almost all of this yardage was gleaned in the hectic final period. Yale completed 5 out of 8 passes for a total of 63 yards, while the abortive Dartmouth passing attack resulted in no completions out of 5 attempts. Dartmouth was aided in the punting department by the return of Ed Gingrich, hitherto bedded with virus pneumonia, who got off some very satisfactory boots from the nether reaches of the end zone. The running attack of the Green operated surprisingly well in view of the rudimentary character of the preparation of the new men, who played a considerable part of the game and threatened more than once to break it up completely with their powerful thrusts at the Yale line. Incidentally, one of the bulwarks of that same blue line all afternoon was none" other than our erstwhile Dartmouth friend and colleague, Nick Fusilli, whose pigskin peregrinations between Hanover and New Haven enlivened the columns of the New York papers the week before the game.