Monday, January 14, 2019

Battle of the Brazos, by T.G. Webb

Lots of colleges have bitter rivalries.  Thankfully, few rivalries result in fatalities.  But in 1926, at halftime of the football game between Baylor and Texas A&M, an Aggie was hit on the head.  The next morning, he died as a result of the injury.  Many Baylor and A&M alumni don't know this story.  Waco writer T.G. Webb has gathered a variety of sources from around the state and has collected his findings into a comprehensive account of that fateful day.  Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder tells the story.

Baylor and Texas A&M fans and alumni will find much to love in Webb's history of the two schools and their football rivalry.  Some of the names of the coaches, players, and school administrators are familiar parts of the schools' legends.  Others are more obscure.  Texans of all stripes will enjoy the accounts of life in central Texas during the first decades of the 20th century.  College football fans will enjoy this portrayal of the early years of college football.

The heart of the book is the riot itself.  The football rivalry had been heating up.  Texas A&M dominated the series for many years, but in the 1920s Baylor was on the way up.  Emotions ran high at the games.  In 1922 the Bears won a tough game and clinched their first conference title.  The Aggies present were none too pleased with the 13-7 outcome, but were dispersed with fire hoses.  The A&M year book rather humorously said, "After the game, all went smoothly except that the Waco Fire Department undertook to lay the dust on the football field by sprinkling.  A thousand or more Aggies and several policemen prevented this being done effectively."

Despite the dismissiveness about the riot's avoidance, fans were on edge at subsequent games.  Baylor students taunted and provoked the A&M cadets with their antics in 1925, but Baylor lost the game and everyone went home without incident.  At halftime of the 1926 game, things got really wild.  A carload of Baylor women rode around the stadium, the women holding signs displaying the scores of past victories over A&M and other schools.  What happened next sounds like a cartoon.

When the car was in front of the A&M student section, an Aggie rushed from the stands and "leapt from three to four feet away from the vehicle headfirst into the driver's compartment and quickly grabbed for the steering wheel."  Another Aggie "grabbed hold of one of the rear wheels and held on until the vehicle came to a stop."  One of the ladies tumbled head over heels off the truck.  Students from both schools rushed the field.  The freshman players, who were sitting on the sideline, "broke up the wooden chairs they had been sitting on . . . to use as clubs."  One cadet "was struck over the head with a wooden club . . . as he tried to disable the vehicle by letting air out of one of the back tires."  The melee finally subsided when the Aggie band played Taps and then The Star-Spangled Banner.  Remarkably, the game resumed.  Baylor got the win.

In the midst of the riot, an A&M student named Charlie Sessums was struck on the head.  He was taken to the hospital, where he died the next morning.  After the detailed account of the riot, Webb spends the rest of the book with the historical whodunnit.  Drawing on previously unexamined documents, newspaper accounts, and investigative material, Webb tries to put the puzzle pieces together.  At the time, the killer was never identified and brought to justice.  I won't be a spoiler as to Webb's conclusion, but I will say that the point of the book is the journey, not the end.  And a fun and entertaining historical journey it is.

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