YALE 6, DARTMOUTH 0
Full of high hopes, the Green journeyed the next week down to the Bowl, there to meet some of the disappointments which had been endemic to that site before 1935 and which have remained to plague us off and on ever since. The margin of this Yale victory was, in full justice to all concerned, just about the difference between the two teams. There was little if any of the feeling which followed the Holy Cross and Penn encounters that we would have won this one but for a combination of our own ineptitude and official malevolence. On this Saturday afternoon before a crowd of 45,000 people (the largest in the Bowl since before Pearl Harbor) Yale was clearly the better team. Not much. But definitely better.
Dartmouth started off as though she were going to push the Yales right out of the park. After receiving the opening kick-off, the boys in Green passed and ran their way down to the Yale 28-yard line before the opposition was able to recover its poise. We lost the ball on that series of plays, but not before Frost had managed to kick out of bounds on the Yale 2-yard line. The kick from the end zone was returned to the Yale 32 by Frost and Dartmouth had another golden opportunity. On this as on similar occasions throughout the afternoon, however, the progress of the Dartmouth team was stopped by the performance of the large and talented Yale forward wall. In that connection, both lines gave the opposing backs a bad afternoon, particularly in the passing department. Yale lost 40 yards on fadebacks for attempted passes and Dartmouth 70 yards in the same manner. The total overall yardage gained through rushing was 210 by Yale and 123 by Dartmouth, with Yale outfirst downing us by 14 to 10.
The solitary score in this bruising afternoon was made by a character who was not even on the program. Fellow by the name of Fitzgerald, who had just checked into New Haven two days before the game from (guess where) Notre Dame by way of an intermediate Naval station. Out there he had been on the fourth or fifth team in 1944, but at Yale (and elsewhere in the Ivy League) he was hot stuff—at least to the extent of making the only touchdown of the game. This Fitzgerald had been in New Haven only long enough to master the most rudimentary sort of sweep from the T formation, but that was just enough. The touchdown came after a long march down the field, where it was climaxed by Fitzgerald's ride around the Dartmouth left end for 10 yards. And that was the ball game.
This was a contest marked by 60-minute players. A number of the Yale men, led by their great All-American end and captain, Paul Walker, played the full distance. For Dartmouth Frost was in there with his 160 pounds all afternoon, doing everything there was to do and that superlatively well. Sharing full-game honors with him were George Rusch, end; Fritz Alexander, the stalwart Negro center; and big Bob Harvey at tackle. The. game was such a desperate affair right up to the closing whistle that neither coach dared experiment to any great extent with other than tried and true performers. As he has been in every game this fall, with but one possible exception, Frost was the outstanding player on the field.
ONLY TOUCHDOWN OF THE SYRACUSE GAME being scored by Meryll Frost from the 1-yard line in the final quarter of the contest at Archbold Stadium. John O'Neil (53), of the Indians, who paved the way.
