The Waterbury Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1917-1946, 1940-10-19
"reminiscences
OF The Great
Knute Rockne
BY JOE WILLIAMS

New York, Oct. 1--we came
across a letter the other day in our
file. 1t was written from Roches-
ter, MINI, and dated December 26,
1890. It was from Knute Rockne
and he was in the hospital at the
time having his infected leg treated.
1t was an infection which for a
time threatened his life. He finally
whipped it only to die in an airplane
crash somewhere in Kansas three
months later. Apparently his num-
Der was up anyway and when that
happens the bookies are going to
lay a very short price against your
winning.
We don't know why we kept the
letter except it was from Rock and
he was one of our favorites and
parts of it were personal. He had
Just finished a remarkable season
with his 1880 team (the. one Jock
Sutherland calls the greatest college
team he ever saw and we had
written him for some dope on this
team as compared with his fabulous
four horseman team.
Here are some of the comments
he made: ION Wednesday be-
| fore the Southern California game
I told the team was going to use
Bucky O'Connor at full and just out
of curiosity I asked some of the
backfield men what they thought of
it. I had already indicated I
thought O'Connor would do all
right.
"Carideo said That's hot one.
Say, Bucky can play fullback with
anybody in the country and with
him in there we will win :. Brill
said: You can double that for me.
There isn't anything about the job
he can't do Schwartz said ::
There isn't a chance for us to lose.
Bucky will be a. sensation. Well
give EN- the surprise of their lives
Nov this wasn't egotism. I once
heard egotism defined as the 'anas-
thetic that deadens the pain of ones
stupidity (How Rock liked to re-
member lines like that oneD This
is self-confidence and confidence in
teammate who though somewhat
untried had played some fine foot
ball on occasions.
All For One.
"In the case of Carideo, to make
an exception. it might have been
cockineSs, but I like to have our
quarterbacks cocky. It's good for
the team. I would say the outstand-
ing feature of this 1880 team was
the close knit bond of friendship
and respect and inspiration that
made it one big driving, ambitious
force. Everybody was pulling for
the other fellow"
But the team that was closest to
Rocks heart was the four horse
men. Even with the Carideo team
riding the crest, with the critics
calling it national champion, with
Rock himself insisting it could beat
any professional entry, the famous
coach withheld the supreme acco-
lade.
On this subject he wrote us.
However, for real athletes you
would have to hand it to our four
horsemen team. Somehow they
seemed to go whenever they had to
go. In their senior year never
saw game that in their minds
there was any doubt as to the result
Stuhldreher always felt they could
go and you would hear him say to
the men, Let's go to town before
these fellows get an idea they can
hold u.s.
"In other words, they had had
their offense going SO smoothly the
year before they knew just what
they could do; they felt they could
go out and get. touchdowns when
ever they applied the pressure suf-
ficiently hard. At the same time
they had learned something else
that was vital; they had learned
that to be at their best they had to
play the game up to the hilt.
i Nothing Comes Easy.
r For instance. the one game they
had lost the year before was due to