 TIGER TIDBITS
Here’s an article, courtesy of the Independent, that describes the environment for an important 1940 Massillon high game against Toledo Waite.
Cyclorama
By C.R. Chidester
Years ago, P.T. Barnum called his Circus the “greatest Show on Earth.”
Massillon is too modest to make such a claim for its Tiger team and band but it can assert, without fear of contradiction that it has one of the greatest shows on earth. For proof we subpoena 22,000 witnesses.
Herr Jupitor Pluvius did everything he could to blitzkrieg Friday night’s game. He began his attack Thursday night and kept it up all day Friday. The playing field was put in a canvass bomb shelter but Jupitor sapped it. He dropped a screen of smog and during practically the entire game machine-gunned with wind, rain and mist, mud and water. But did he vanquish Massillon ? He did not.
Those husky players looked like mud statues. Those little majorettes – well they looked as they do in sunshine. The band put on its show, complete, per schedule though the rain must have beaten into the bells of the doublebass horns. Lights and the fireworks were bullet proof. The slogan of the stage people the “show must go on” was strictly adhered to.
Nor were the customers less defiant than players and the band. Through the smog, the rain and the mud 22,000 worked their way to and from Tiger stadium. Except for a few thousand who were in the grandstand bomb shelter, every one of those 22,000 sat and took the blasts of Herr Pluvius. Rain ran off hats and down necks. Rain coats glistened. Overcoats and robes were soaked. Up on the roof a group of visiting newsmen clung to their precarious posts in momentary danger of being forced into parachute leaps equipped only with umbrellas. Thousands of people, hoping to buy general admission tickets, formed in the mud and rain a queue that stretched over the hills of the park. Thousands of these thousands were turned away. There was no more room.
From a less brilliant attraction multitudes would have departed when the victory seemed to be in the bag but the announcement of a band exhibition after the game, held practically every person in his seat. It was still raining but everybody stuck to see the show. And it was a show. The band had no cleats on its shoes but it kept its feet in a lake of mud. The routine was completed as scheduled.
No, you can’t keep people away from a Tiger game. And when they get there they stay. Neither President Roosevelt nor Wendell Wilkie could have drawn or held a crowd of such size on such a night. Verily Massillon has something on the (foot) ball.
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