EXCERPT FROM "TOUCHDOWN"  BY AMOS ALONZO STAGG  1927

"The tuition at Yale then was fifty dollars a term. As a future divinity student I was given an abatement of $20.00. I found an unheated garret room for which I paid one dollar a week. I allowed myself five cents for breakfast, ten cents for the noon meal and five cents for supper. It was a starvation diet and I fell ill for the first time in my life. Chills and fever overtook me on my way to class. There was no college hospital and Jesse Lazier, now of Augusta Ga., led me to his room, put me to bed and called a doctor. The doctor was not long in recognizing a case of undernourishment, and ordered me to drop my nickel and dime meal nonsense. 

I was up again in two or three days and shortly after fell into a job waiting tables for my board in a students dinning club. Most of the boys were from distinguished or wealthy families. Gill and Solley, of Orange, were members and probably I owed the job to their friendship. Harry Beecher, quarterback of the 85, 86 and 87' teams, and a grandson of Henry Ward Beecher; a grandson of Secretary Seward, a grandson of Chief Justice Waite; Henry L. Stimson, later Secretary of War in Taft's cabinet; and J.O Heyworth, who directed the Emergency Fleet's wooden-ship construction program during the war, were other members. I found a few chores to do and my older brother and sisters were able to help a bit for the first time.

EXCERPT FROM "THE UNRECONSTRUCTED AMATEUR"  BY BOB CONSIDINE

"Yale had a strapping big ball player named  Jesse Dann. who likely was the fastest pitcher in college ball. He was the Walter Johnson of the then unchristened Ivy League and few could hit him. But if few could hit him, none could hold him, and there was Yale with an iron-armed pitcher and no catcher. The problem was resolved by making Dann a catcher and Stagg the varsity pitcher.

It was a phenomenal stroke, and Stagg and Dann immediately became the most famous battery in in Eastern college baseball. Lonnie was a spectacular success as Yale's pitcher. In his first year on the varsity he won nine games and lost two, beating Harvard twice, and Princeton twice. He pitched Yale to five successive championships, continuing to be the varsity ace after he was graduated in 1888 thru a year in postgraduate work and a year in the divinity school. In all, he won 34 games, lost eight, and was in one tie. Most satisfying was his remarkable record against Yale's revered rivals Harvard and Princeton. He beat Harvard 15 times while losing only four, and Princeton 14 times while losing three.

On May 26, 1888, as a senior, he reached the apex of his Yale baseball career by striking out twenty Princeton batters in a game played at Princeton, and allowing only two hits. The accomplishment received wide notice in the new York papers, and set the big league scouts on young Stagg's trail. He got offers to play on six National League teams (the American league had not yet come into existence), including one of $4,200.00 a season for three months from the New York Nationals. Stagg turned them all down and said he did so for two reasons: the first was loyalty to Yale, in as much as he would be lost to the team if he played professionally. The second was the then character of professional baseball. Underlying it all, of course, was his true and unswerving love of the amateur game."