Herb Maus and the 1920 and 1921 Pacific Fleet Teams
You never know where or when a story will take you to a new destination. However, the first story I posted on my old site in 2017 recently sent me on a new journey.
The story, The Mystery of the Tournament Park Postcards, covered my attempts to figure out the events depicted in a handful of postcards from the early 1920s. The real photo postcards (RPPCs) showed an Army and Navy crowd at a football stadium in Pasadena in 1921, a year when the Army-Navy game occurred in New York City. I eventually figured out the game happened on Armistice Day at Tournament Park in Pasadena between all-star teams representing the Pacific Fleet and the Ninth Army Corps. Armistice Day games between the Army and Navy continued in one form or another until WWII and sometimes garnered crowds of 50,000 or more.
The Tournament Stadium postcard story led to my being contacted by the grandson of Herbert Maus, an enlisted man who played for the Pacific Fleet team in 1920 and 1921. Maus was born and raised in New Philadelphia, Ohio, spending most of his life there other than his nearly three years in the Navy.
Maus was a three-year starter on the offensive line at New Philadelphia High School, leaving school a year early to join the Navy. After basic training at Great Lakes Naval Station, he was assigned to the U.S.S. North Carolina when it finished its last trip ferrying troops home from France. Soon renamed the U.S.S. Charlotte so that a new battleship could take the North Carolina name, the ship sailed to the Pacific, where Maus was reassigned to the U.S.S. Mississippi.
During the 1920 football season, Maus played guard for the U.S.S. Mississippi team and earned a spot on the Pacific Fleet all-star team. The Pacific Fleet team included sailors selected from all ships from ports between Seattle and Mexico. Since the all-stars trained at San Pedro in Los Angeles harbor, the Mississippi's home port, Maus could play for his ship and the all-star teams.
The 1920 Pacific Fleet team went undefeated against the University of Nevada, San Francisco's Olympic Club, Portland's Multnomah Club, and in the Armistice Day game against the Ninth Army Corps, a game Navy won 124-0. (In the pre-NFL days, the Olympic and Multnomah clubs had numerous ex-college stars and were competitive with top college teams.)
The 1920 Pacific Fleet team included five or six young ensigns who had starred at the Naval Academy, including two first-team All-Americans. Bill Ingram was their star fullback and captain, who later coached Indiana, Navy, and Cal. Several West Coast colleges refused to play the fleet team after they pounded U.S.C. in a scrimmage, but their reputation led to them being touted for postseason play. Regular readers may recall that the 1918 and 1919 Rose Bowls featured military teams, and as San Diego and San Francisco looked to follow Pasadena's lead by sponsoring postseason games, Pacific Fleet was targeted to play Centre College or Notre Dame somewhere in California.
Everything was set for the sailors to play Notre Dame on Christmas Day until their star halfback, George Gipp, became ill and died on December 14. Gipp famously told Rockne to tell the boys when they were up against it to "Win one for the Gipper." Of course, Notre Dame canceled their trip, sinking the Pacific Fleet's hopes of playing a big holiday game.
Pacific Fleet's 1921 team received another influx of Naval Academy talent, giving them ten former Midshipmen to put on the field, a sizable number during the single-platoon days. Herbert Maus again earned a place on the fleet team, playing offensive guard. Playing all their games away from home, the Pacific Fleet team opened the season by slipping past Nevada 14-13.
Next up was Andy Smith and one of his Cal Wonder teams. Cal had several players nursing injuries, but Pacific Fleet had the same issue, dressing only 12 players and losing 27-10. Still, Smith told reporters after the game that the Pacific Fleet team was on par or better than the top college teams on the coast. The 1921 season proved him out. Cal outscored their opponents 312-33 and went 9-0-1, tying Washington & Jefferson 0-0 in the 1922 Rose Bowl. Pacific Fleet was the only team to lead Cal in a game or to score double digits against them, and Cal's margin of victory over Pacific Fleet was the narrowest among the nine teams they defeated. So, the Pacific Fleet team was a damn solid outfit.
The newspaper reports do not list Herbert Maus playing in the Nevada or Cal games. Perhaps he was injured, but he started in Pacific Fleet's next game against Stanford, which the sailors won 27-7. The victory over Stanford positioned the sailors well for their game two weeks later in Pasadena against the Ninth Army Corps, a team far more competitive in 1921 than in 1920.
The weekend before the Army game, Maus played for the U.S.S. Mississippi in their division championship game against the U.S.S. Nevada. While Maus played on the offensive line for the fleet team, he was the star running back on his ship's team and scored a first-half touchdown to help win the championship game. Unfortunately, Maus suffered a severe leg break while carrying the ball around the end in the third quarter. The medical staff used a fence post and bandages to stabilize his leg before taking him to the hospital for surgery. Maus remained on the hospital ship for weeks while recuperating.
Pacific Fleet beat the Ninth Army Corps the following weekend, 24-6. The Navy Signal Corps set up a line to Maus' bedside so he could keep up with the game in progress.
Additional fleet victories came in San Francisco over St. Mary's and the Olympic Club before heading to Portland for the season finale against Multnomah on December 3. At that point, Pacific Fleet was considered the second-best team on the West Coast, and the rumor mill swirled about their involvement in postseason play with Centre, Notre Dame, or others. However, the Multnomah boys proved more challenging than expected. Bill Steers, the former Oregon and Mare Island Marines fullback, scored ten points for Multnomah as the sailors were held to seven points, resulting in a second loss on the season for Pacific Fleet.
The team’s final season record was as follows:
10/1/21: Pacific Fleet 14 Nevada 13
10/15/21: Cal 27 Pacific Fleet 10
10/22/21: Pacific Fleet 27 Stanford 7
11/11/21: Pacific Fleet 24 Ninth Army Corps 6
11/20/21: Pacific Fleet 28 St. Mary's 0
11/24/21: Pacific Fleet 14 Olympic Club 7
12/3/21: Multnomah 10 Pacific Fleet 7
As mentioned earlier, the Cal team that beat Pacific Fleet early in the season accepted an invitation to the Rose Bowl, while Pacific Fleet dropped from the postseason conversation. Centre College ended up playing Arizona in San Diego on Christmas Day. San Diego hosted a postseason game the following year before dropping from the postseason festivities for several decades.
Whether it was the result of the severe break or how they set his broken leg, Herb Maus' leg did not heal correctly, leaving one leg shorter than the other for the rest of his life. Due to his disability, Maus was honorably discharged in February 1922. He returned to Ohio and worked for the county roads department during much of his career while remaining active in veterans' organizations until passing away in 1970.
Military or service football remained popular through the 1920s. The East Coast had its President's Cup games between active duty Army and Navy teams (the Quantico Marines generally represented the Navy). Dwight Eisenhower assisted or was the head coach for several Army teams in those games.
The West Coast had its Armistice Day games through the 1930s, but the services slowly deemphasized football beyond the intramural level. They reversed course during WWII, and competitive football continued in the military for another fifteen years before fading for the second time. America's armed forces might have embraced football as our colleges did. However, the generals and admirals decided football was not central to their mission or worth the risk of catastrophic injuries such as the one Herb Maus suffered.
Click here for options on how to support this site beyond a free subscription.
Wow that was really cool and really deep in the history of this early player