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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1942)
MONDAY MORNING, SEPT. 21, 1942- Sophomore Aces Sophomores Due to Play Big Part in Ags’ Attack Page 9 Wanna Be a Statistician? H. B. McElroy Knows Plenty About Job; Is SfVC Statistician Sophomores have often been the backbone of championship teams and it may well be- the same with the 1942 edition of the Aggie team. Coach Norton and his aides will get the best crop, of first year varsity men since 1937. Ed Sturcken Foremost of all the grid sopho mores is, of course, big Ed Sturck en, 224 lb. fullback who was in eligible for varsity play last year. Sturcken, although groomed at pre sent as Jake Webster’s understudy, has been sensational in practice, both in running and passing. Po tentially he is one of the greatest prospects to come to A. & M. in many a day. Marty Karow, a de veloper of great backs, dubbed the big San Antonio gridster as one of the best looking backs that he has ever worked with. With his great all-around abili ty the future for this boy looks more than rosy. The only draw back is that Ed has not yet met the acid test of actual game com petition and he may do just like so many other practice field stars have done—flop. At any rate, the question will be answered this coming Saturday against L. S. U. Stout and Foldberg Two of the best bets coming off the freshman team are Ben Stout and Henry Foldberg, tackle and end respectively. With Coach Ho mer Norton in a dire need for tackles, Stout may prove to be just the answer to the perplexing problem. He has been injured in practice so far this year but look ed like a million dollars in prac tice last year. Ben was voted the most valuable man on the 1941 freshman squad and he well deserved it. His crash ing play at tackle was the feature of most Fish games. He is a 213 lb. gridster from Dallas, with plenty of. speed for a man his size. At present he is a second string tackle, but with aggresive play it is more than probable that he will come through to win a starting berth. Foldberg was the star end of the freshman team and probably will understudy the pass-snatching Bill Henderson. Hank was an all-around athlete last year, lettering in three different sports. He has been look ing great in practice, being the No. 1 left end since Henderson was in jured. He may start against L. S. U. should Bill not recover from his back injury. Flashy Backs The line, however, is not the only spot that Norton expects to be reinforced by these erstwhile sophomores. He has a galaxy of stars in the backfield that includes such stars as George Wilde, triple threat tailback; Vernon Belville, passer deluxe, who also can boot that ball a mile long; Otto Payne, hard-smashing fullback; Dickie Hass and Barney Welch, swivel hipped marvels who have been giv ing the A team plenty of headaches; and Jennings Anderson, one of the smartest youngsters on the team who backs up Cullen Rogers at the wingback slot. v Tassos Great Prospect Getting back to the line, Norton is sure to get plenty of help from such notables as Ed Ogdee, who has decided to come out for the guard berth after a layout of three years; Johnny Davis, stocky-built THE BATTALION Aggies Have Won Seven Southwest Conference Titles The Maroon and White wearers of Texas A.&M. hold the lead at present in conference champion ships won beginning since the year 1915 when the conference began awarding titles. The Aggies have come through in 1919, 1921, 1927, 1939, tied with S.M.U. in 1940 and again won undisputed possession in 1941. Herewith is the complete record of the conference champions since 1915: Year Champion 1915* No championship awarded 1916** No championship awarded 1917 Texas A.&M. 1918t No championship awarded 1919 Texas A.&M. 1920 Texas University 1921 Texas A.&M. 1922 Baylor 1923 Southern Methodist 1924 Baylor 1925 Texas A.&M. 1926 Southern Methodist 1927 Texas A.&M. 1928 Texas University 1929 Texas Christian 1930 Texas University 1931 Southern Methodist 1932 Texas Christian 1933** No championship awarded 1934 Rice 1935 Southern Methodist ,1936 Arkansas University 1937 Rice 1938 Texas Christian 1939 Texas A.&M. 1940 Texas A.&M. and S.M.U. co-champions 1941 Texas A.&M. guard; and Damon Tassos, big rug ged center. Tassos is one of the brightest prospects to come from last year’s frosh eleven. Charlie DeWare, co-freshman football men- itor of the ’41 team, and producer of such stars as Bill Sibley and Tommy Vaughn, all-conference centers, was plenty high on Tas sos before he left for the army. “That boy is the best prospect to come out from the freshman squad,” Deware said. With these twelve and a host of others to work from, Coach Homer Norton’s worries about ample re serves are over since he is sure to receive plenty of backing from those supposedly green sophomore stars who at times are the spear head of the team. By John Holman You probably think it is im possible to go through both the fish and senior year down here at A. and M. at the same time, but the college publicity depart ment has just such a fellow hand ling most of the sports publicity that emerges from College Sta tion. You probably know him as “Mr. Mac”, but sports writers and editors all over the country, from Associated Press to the Podunk Center Gazette know him as “Mac —the statistics man”. H. B. McElroy was born in Pit tsburg, Pa., September 28, 1899, the son of Scotch-Irish parents. He attended public schools in Pittsburgh, and went to Peabody High School where he was forced to quit and go to work during his sophomore year. That day in 1913 when Mac left school, he went to work in his Grandad’s Equitable Gas Company, where he was really put through the mill. Starting as a messenger boy, he worked his way to stock clerk, pipe fitter, and on into the transportation and pro duction end of the business. He stuck with it three long years, and at the end of those three years figured that because he was from a family of “gas” people, he might as well be a salesman. So, Mac said good-bye to one phase of the gas business. Taking his talents into the men furnishing business, it took him another three years to decide that men’s furnishings just wasn’t the thing for him either. World Mess Number One was buzzing about that time, so Mac up and joined the Army. He went to France as a sergeant first class (master sergeant) in the Quarter master’s laundry corps, in com mand of one of the laundry units. They worked about thirty miles be hind the lines, and as they had to use lights for working at night, made perfect targets for German artillery. Of the 17 laundry units in his division, three of them came back, and Mac’s outfit was one of the three. Just before being commissioned a Captain, he left the Army to become a tobacco salesman. In the • tobacco business, Mac became not only a salesman, but also such an expert on pipes that he no longer had to go from door to door, but had his business' brought to him. This went on for 17 years, and Mac was doing all right in the tobacco business when the floor dropped down (as did the ceiling) and everything hit rock bottom in the big depression of 1929. This forced him back on the road, and so he travelled un til 1933. At that time, he made the amaz ing discovery that it is much cheap er not to work at all than it is to travel. His expenses were about $35 per week, while his income was only $15-$20. It didn’t take a lot of arithmetic to figure out that it just wasn’t worth it, so disgusted, broke, and down on the world, Mac scraped up a little money and boarded the first boat east. Once again in France, he left $15 and a return trip ticket with the steamer company, “just in case”, and became a capitalistic loafer in the American colony of / Paris. That trip changed the course of his life. While in Paris, he met and be came friends with Lee Dickson, Paris “staff” of the Chicago Tri bune. The Tribune published a Paris edition at that time, and Dickson did thnee-fourths of the work. One afternoon, Mac went by Dickson’s office and found him in quite a dither. It seems as though Lee’s cable editor had run out on him, and as Mac as anxious for Lee to get out of the office, he sat down to help him. Unable to locate the cable editor the next day, Mac again took down the cables to assist Dickson in getting out his paper. “All the copy was written in English,” said Mac, “and sent down stairs to a linotype man who couldn’t read a word of English. He would just set the letters as he saw them, and if any mistakes were made in the copy, they went right on into the type.” In a couple of days, the cable editor was discovered on a boat steaming to America, so Mac took over the office of cable editor for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. Thus it was, a man who had never seen a journalism book started out in a spot that is the am bition of every cub reporter—a foreign correspondent. However, Mac didn’t like the idea of getting paid $15 a week for being a foreign correspondent, especially when in flation in America was making the American dollar so jumpy in value, so after a month as cable editor, he pulled stakes and re claimed his return trip ticket home. When he arrived in the United States, he went to work on the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, and later went to the Youngstown, Ohio Vindicator. Somehow, Mac didn’t like the way things were turning, so he be gan looking about for a job as a publicity man. Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood took him up, and away he ran for California. (See McELROY, Page 12) WELCOME TO AGGIELAND W. S. D. Clothiers Welcomes You to Our Convenient College Store in Mitchell Building at North Gate. Our Bryan Store Located at 108 Main Street, Bryan • We give you R. O. T. C. Patches and Fish stripes and sew them on FREE • We give you the best in QUALITY • We cash your checks. For your convenience both our College and Bryan Stores will remain OPEN each evening during the Opening Week of School. YouTl find Aggies on duty to welcome and assist you in any way they can. We Are Agents for Regulation STETSON ARMY HATS and ARROW ARMY SHIRTS Every Item Guaranteed To Be Regulation — Every Uniform Guaranteed To Fit. Reg. 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