Los Angeles herald., 1906-12-06
WESTERNERS CAN
BOOT THE BALL
PUNT FARTHER THAN EASTERN
CRACKS
o'Dea and Hersehberger Are Greatest
kickers Developed in the His
tory of the Gridiron
Game

y
is driven home the fact, so CALLING to
fasteners. that there exists much
higher standard of kicking efficiency in
the west than in the east. 1t was ever
thus.
While the east has had her Brooke,
Butterworth, Bell, Moffatt, Dewitt and
Mitchell, none of them, though rated at
their various times the best in the east,
was in the class with the vests two
greatest kickers, Herschberger and
O'Dea.
Where sixty yards was considered a
great punt by any of the fasteners
here enumerated, there was no atten-
tion paid to any kick by either Hersch-
berger or O'Dea that did not go at
least 80 yards.
Then there was also Seely of Michi-
gan, year or two ago, who was far
and away better than anything we
have seen in the east since De Witt,
and he was a little better than the YER
satile Princeton captain.
Herschberger was by far the better
all-round player of the three and more
reliable in games than O'Dea. In the
Chicago Michigan game of 1897, Chi
cago won Il to IL, and Herschberger
made every point for Chicago. He
kicked three field goals for 15 points,
from all sorts of distances and angles,
and then made a 6O-yard run through
the Michigan team for touchdown,
from which he also kicked the goal
with drop kick, not deigning to have
any one hold the ball for him.
When the Wisconsin team came east
to play at Yale in 1899, O'Dea was their
star, and in an exhibition on Yale field
before the game he electrified the spec
tators with his awful floaters, mile
high and about ninety yards long.
Then every once in a while he would
vary)it with drop kick from ten yards
behind the center field that would sail
directly between the goal posts, max
ing goal from the field almost every
shot from the 65-yard mark.
Did Not Possess Nerve
But O'Dea's kicking let him out. He
was about as timid as any player ever
seen in a game, and where he could
kick actually so and 80 yards in prac-
tice, when he got against Yale he was
lucky If any of his kicks went so yards.
1t is a matter of record that he was
outkicked In that game by Mcbride, by
no means a good punter.
Moreover, that game resulted in a g.
too victory for Yale, the score being
made by Richards. a sub, late in the
second half on a 60-yard run that
" Oed might nave stopped naQ ne not
been afraid of the Yale interference
Subsequently O'Dea, in 1900, when the
Yale scrubs went against the Chicago
Athletic club team on Marshall field on
Thanksgiving day, showed in much bet
ter form. The latter outfit was a fine
bunch of huskies, gathered together by
William Hale Thompson, the Chicago
alderman, who is always in front when
the honor of Chicago was to be upheld
in athletics.
and the feature of the game was
O'Dea's kicking. In that game he
seemed to have more nerve, and not
one of his punts went less than eighty
yards.
They were awful hard to catch, fol
they were up in the air so long and Sc
high that you would get the blind stag.
gers watching them float tantalizingly
along, apparently bouncing off the
neither edges of the clouds.
But If you did happen to catch one Il
was cinch for a run back, for the
ends were seldom anywhere near you
and, by the time you got where they
We're they were going so fast after their
sixty-yard sprint that they couldn't re.
cover quick enough for any kind of {
sure tackle.
But back to the western kickers. You
may notice that the scores of the west.
ern games indicate q great many more
field goals than those in the east Fol
instance, in one game the past season
Eckersall of Chicago, undoubtedly tn,
greatest quarterback who ever played
the game, kicked five goals from the
field from the forty-yard line.