Postgame Tiddlywinks Was Harder on Leahy Than USC

After Notre Dame defeated USC in 1930, the victory party lasted all night--at two locations. The Irish players returned briefly to the Ambassador Hotel, where they dressed for a victory dinner at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. After that, fullback Larry (Moon) Mullins invited the entire Notre Dame football team to his parents’ house in South Pasadena, where Mullins had gone to high school. Two buses were summoned.

The Los Angeles Examiner reported that the party at Mullins’ house lasted until 5 a.m., that the players sang the Notre Dame Victory March (“Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame . . . “) several dozen times, or until the neighbors called the police.

A tackle, Frank Leahy, who would later become a Notre Dame coach nearly as successful as Knute Rockne, told friends for years that he suffered a serious knee injury that night in South Pasadena playing tiddlywinks.

Tiddlywinks?

Leahy, who told the story numerous times, said he was sitting on the kitchen floor playing tiddlywinks with another player’s girlfriend. When he stood up, Leahy said, something snapped in his knee. He had to be carried onto the train the next day and was on crutches for months.

Mullins’ parents lived on Milan Avenue, a South Pasadena street of old, well-kept homes and old, leafy trees. It’s that way still.

And the old, two-story Mullins house not only still stands, but bears fresh yellow paint and a cheery green awning on the second floor. Two magnificent magnolia trees grow out of a neat, healthy lawn out front.

If you’re a Notre Dame fan, and you listen carefully on a quiet night, perhaps you can hear faint echoes of happy young men who sang joyously on a night long ago, and who no doubt woke up a few echoes themselves.