The pages of polo history are filled with interesting people, even in the footnotes. Browsing the winners’ list of the Pacific Coast Open, you might breeze right by J.C. Besley; he only appears once, winning the trophy in 1913 with the Coronado Country Club. His teammates were all better known: Malcolm Stevenson and C. Perry [...]
Archive for the ‘Yale’ Category
The Obscure Mr. Besley
Posted in Polo, Yale on July 23, 2010 | 1 Comment »
A Tale of One Polo Photo
Posted in Polo, Yale on January 28, 2010 | 5 Comments »
On the face of it, it’s the trophy presentation at the 1929 Pacific Coast Open Championship, with the sweaty but pleased San Carlos Cardinals accepting accolades while a woman smiles under a cloche hat. Oh, but the history in this photo. On the left, polo coat open and eyes on the prize, stands George Gordon [...]
Yale, Football and Pudge Heffelfinger
Posted in Yale on December 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“It is enough to say that when in action ‘Pudge’ Heffelfinger, six feet three in his cleated shoes and as hard as iron, was sheer devastation. During that one season of actively intermingling with him on the trampled turf, a broken nose, a telescoped neck, and a leg in a plaster cast convinced me that [...]
C.M. Woolley, Yale & Polo
Posted in Polo, Yale on July 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Clarence Mott Woolley Jr. led, for a time, a charmed existence. Clarence Mott Woolley Sr. made central heating possible in America by providing cast iron radiators for millions of homes; for this, he was well compensated, so young Clarence’s educational options were not limited. He attended Phillips Andover and then Yale. Because his father had [...]
Winston Guest, Patron of the Arts
Posted in Art, Photography, Polo, Yale on January 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Winston Guest, trailed by Lewis Lacey, 1930 Westchester Cup I have read much about Winston F. C. Guest (1906-1982), who in his youth led Yale’s polo team to the Intercollegiate Championship, playing, in the words of Time, “polo that was fast and sportingly rough enough for international cup matches.” Guest did become an internationalist, playing [...]
O.M. Wallop, Yale and Polo
Posted in Polo, Yale on January 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The other day, I stumbled across another Yale polo story, this one with a player named Wallop. How could anyone resist picking up that thread of history? The story began in 1883 when Oliver Henry Wallop graduated from Oxford and went to Wyoming. This may strike you as an odd move, but he was the [...]
Henry D. Babcock, Yale and Polo
Posted in Polo, Yale on November 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Henry Denison Babcock Jr. had the world by the tail. His grandfather, Samuel D. Babcock, was a wealthy businessman with a home on Fifth Avenue, a “country seat” at Riverdale-on-Hudson, and memberships in the Metropolitan, Union and Manhattan clubs, the New York Yacht Club, and the Country Club of Westchester County. Henry’s father, Henry Babcock [...]
Flash Gordon, Yale and Polo
Posted in Film, Literature, Yale on December 5, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Yale graduates who have excelled at polo include J. Watson Webb, Winston Guest, Lewis E. Stoddard (chairman of the United States Polo Association, 1922-1936), Tom Buchanan (of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 1925), Flash Gordon (of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strip which began in 1934, and subsequent movie serials with Buster Crabbe), William [...]
