Poor Eli's hopes we are dashing into blue obscurity.
Lest anyone care, Raymond G. Williams '11 never won a Major H.
However, sandwiched between Harvardiana and Hubris lana are the exploits behind the Major H's. An introductory chapter on "Harvard and the Ivy League," sections on individual sports, short features on outstanding athletes and coaches, and scores of photographs fill the pages of Bertagna's captivating history.
MEET PERCY Haughton, Class of 1899, an All-American tackle and football coach from 1908 to 1916, looking like a face out of Brideshead Revisited. Meet Bill McCurdy--McCurdy to his friends--who molded the track program for 30 years. Meet the Cleary brothers, the Hughes brothers, and the Fusco brothers, maintaining a tradition of sibling-led excellence on the ice.
Bertagna manages to transform 250-odd pages of encyclopedia material into attention-grabbing vignettes. Witness the shot of Ryan O'Neal mugging with the 1969 freshman hockey squad--complete with freshman Bertagna--during filming of Love Story at Watson Rink. Bet you never knew that then-freshman coach Bill Cleary '56 helped direct the skating scenes--and stood in for O'Neal during the on-ice shooting.
And when Harvard hasn't been acting as Hollywood's East Coast link, it has been cluttering up the annals of history.
The first football game (vs. McGill in 1874), the first large sports arena (the Stadium), the first catcher's mask (invented by Fred Thayer, Class of 1878), the first real intercollegiate athletic contest (Harvard crew vs. Yale crew on Lake Winnipesaukee, August 3, 1852)...
All hail, Crimson athletics--perpetually teetering on the cutting edge of sports fashion. Nonetheless, a few questions peek through the pervading glow.
Why, for instance, do 90 pages elapse before a two-and-a-half page segment on women's ice hockey marks the first piece not to concentrate on male athletes?
And have swarms of angels really peopled the playing fields across the River for the past 134 years?
But then again, Crimson in Triumph is more of a mentality than a chronology, with Triumph the key word.
What self-respecting alumnus gives money, year-in and year-out, to a losing cause? Like it or not, success and its fellow-traveler--money--have always been the standards by which sports are judged.
Thus football and hockey--the two big revenue gatherers--fall first in the anthology, and each receives two to three times as much coverage as basketball, with its history of poor finishes and sparse attendance.
More important, Bertagna doesn't neglect the outstanding individuals behind both the successes and the failures. Its their story--their triumph, if you will. And Bertagna's as well.