Osler's Razor

As now, much interest in the State of Texas was given over to the sport of football in the 1920's. Baylor had a quite interesting, if not talented, team, and I attended many of the games.

Much of my own attention to the sport of football was due to the exploits of my good friend, Thaddeus (“Tailpipe”) Laker, who was a renowned player of the time. My God, how that Tailpipe fellow could run! In 1929, he beat UT-Austin (then known as Texas Normal School for Women) single-handedly. This was before the days of all this sissy “equipment” the players wear now, of course. Tailpipe scored the last 37 points in a 67-32 win with no teeth left in his mouth—after the game we scavenged them up in a Bell jar and old Doc Ritter put them back in with a rivet gun on the train back to Waco. This was back when a football player was still allowed to have a good time, and no one had more fun than Tailpipe Laker—he used to bring his “dames” right into the locker room, feed them moonshine whiskey and once the booze took effect, he would sweet-talk them in a form of Latin which was mostly made up. Despite his frequent episodes of inappropriate behavior, he was perhaps the best yapback in Southwest Conference History.

I don’t think many teams use the yapback any more—you need the exact right player. Much of the job involved what is now called “trash talk”-- once the teams broke from their huddles, the yapback would get up on the shoulders of the halfback and yell stuff at the fellows on the other side, over the head of the linemen. All kinds of insults would be hurled—about the opposing team’s grades and their girlfriends. Some guys made it racial, but that didn’t go too far since it was all-white teams. About the only position like it now is the coxswain in the row-boating races.

Labels: Baylor History