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For a few years after the turn of the 20th century, the Northwestern faculty fielded a squad to challenge the seniors in a friendly baseball game.
The springtime tradition began in 1906 as a fundraiser for the Northwestern Settlement and the Debate and Oratory Association.
“No admission fee will be charged, but a voluntary contribution (We are Methodists, you know) will be thankfully received,” according to a preview in an April 1908 Daily Northwestern. “Drop your pennies in the contribution plate and see an interesting game.”
Faculty dismissed classes to play for and cheer on the squads. More than 300 students came out to root for the seniors in 1906, when University business manager and former Evanston mayor W.A. Dyche 1882, 1890 MA/MS umpired the game.
The seniors most often held the upper hand, at least on the scoreboard. The most dramatic of the contests came in the spring of 1907, when the faculty took a four-run lead, only to have the “cap and gown wearers” storm back in the late innings to win once again.
In 1908 Northwestern baseball coach A.B. Cunningham, a former National League pitcher, took the mound for the faculty, leading the “wise” to a rare victory. That squad also included Omera Floyd Long, for whom the University’s intramural field is named.
A similar tradition in the 1960s pitted law school faculty against its students in an annual softball game. The matchup even inspired President John F. Kennedy to write a telegram to Northwestern law professor Willard Pedrick ’39 JD proclaiming his support for the faculty based on the number of Northwestern law grads in his inner circle, including United Nations Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson II ’26 JD and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow ’49, ’50 JD, ’65 H.
“With so many from Northwestern Law School’s ranks in my own line-up,” Kennedy wrote, “I express my hope … that the faculty nine will demonstrate once more in Friday’s encounter the ultimately inevitable mastery of mind over matter.”
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