In First Meeting With Cadets, Midshipmen Got Their Goat

One hundred years ago today, a team of Midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy got off a ferry at West Point, N.Y., and walked to the parade field for its first football game against the U.S. Military Academy.

John Kekis of Associated Press wrote this week that the Army-Navy game was the idea of Cadet Dennis Michie, Army class of 1892, who learned football as a prep school student. During the summer of his junior year, he met a group of Midshipmen who were eager to play Army in football.

Navy issued the challenge, the Army brass responded and all Michie had to do was choose a team from 271 cadets, none of whom knew a thing about football, and prepare them to play a school that had been at it since 1879.

Navy won, 24-0.

Add Army-Navy: Kekis wrote that on their walk after getting off the boat, the Midshipmen “ran into an ornery goat on the long walk up to the parade field, thought the beast would make a good mascot and decided to take him along to the game for good luck.”

Trivia time: Which Cleveland Brown wide receiver caught only three passes in a season, all for touchdowns?

Halfway to the stars: San Francisco State’s Division II basketball team won’t have to go looking for its heart in Green Bay, where the local branch of the University of Wisconsin turned its Division I team loose on the Gators in a 91-59 thrashing Tuesday night.

And when they come home to San Francisco, they’d just as soon forget about the opposing coach’s son, who led the Phoenix with 28 points. His name, Tony Bennett.

Handwriting on the wall: In their book about troubled basketball star Lloyd Daniels, “Swee’ pea and Other Playground Legends,” Newsday sportswriter John Valenti and co-author Ron Naclerio include a quote from Stan Dinner, who once coached Walter Berry and other stars at Franklin High in Harlem.

Said Dinner: “(Daniels) is Magic Johnson with a jump shot, all right. Larry Bird’s jump shot. Lloyd Daniels can do everything with a basketball except one thing. Autograph it.”

Tough sledding: Wednesday, Ira Dreyfuss of Associated Press began his story on sledding injuries: “Think sledding is harmless fun? Well, it may be fun, but it’s not harmless.”

His own Boss: Exiled New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, whose sporting empire also includes the Florida Clippers Track Club, has plenty of time on his hands these days.

So when officials of the Sunkist Indoor track meet called club headquarters to recruit hurdler Tony Dees for the January event at the Sports Arena, a voice answered the phone: “This is George Steinbrenner.”

Trivia answer: Keith Wright, in 1980.

Quotebook: Detroit center Bill Laimbeer, explaining after the Pistons’ 120-97 victory over Atlanta Tuesday that his team wasn’t “into the game” until he and the Hawks’ Dominique Wilkins got into a shoving match: “That’s our game. We’re at our best when we go to war. Maybe we should be part of Operation Desert Shield.”