Blast From the Past

3 Days Until Kickoff!

As we all wait for the start of the 2006 season, I thought it might be fun to take a look at this picture of Dwight Eisenhower speaking with the Columbia football team.
Ike and the Lions

I suppose this was taken when Ike was the President of Columbia University, (1950-52). He was not only a former football star himself, (his grid career at West Point was cut short by a knee injury that plagued him until he died), but a huge fan who wanted to see great things happen for CU football. In one of his many elegant biographies of Eisenhower, the late Stephen Ambrose wrote that Ike was alarmed when he learned that Coach Lou Little had accepted an offer to take the top job at Yale. Ambrose writes that Eisenhower immediately went to Little and explained that one of the reasons he came to Columbia was to meet and work with him. Presented with that kind of respect from the great general, Little decided to stay at Columbia where he remained until retiring at the end of the 1956 season.

The picture itself is interesting, especially for youngsters like me who don't remember the old configuration at Baker Field. The Lion statue is off in the back to the left at the top of a hill. I think the statue is still in that spot, but the Chrystie Field House which houses the locker rooms, is now directly behind that statue. The team is standing at the bottom of a steep hill, which is still there, although it looks like it was cut into a bit to make the paved road that winds its way to the baseball field today.

All the trees off to the right are interesting. Some of them are still there, but it looks positively like a forest in this old picture. All in all, Baker Field must have seemed like a very rural spot compared to the rest of the neighborhood and Manhattan overall back at that time.