Through decades of wins and losses, fans forever

Their collective memory spans seven decades. They have seen wars, boom and depression, coeducation, the rise and fall of Yale athletics, and perhaps most importantly, hundreds of Yale football games and thousands of practices. Together, these five retired men from the New Haven area together have watched the team practice for over a decade.

Practice: Wed., Oct. 29. On the Wednesday before the Sat., Nov. 1, game against Pennsylvania, they watch kick returns. Gene Lacobelli, the only one of the five with a Yale connection, wears a Bulldog jacket and scarf. Always devoted to Yale sports, Lacobelli worked for Yale University Dining Halls for 40 years. Retired postal worker Jimmy Ambrosio, 81, started watching the Bulldogs in 1927 with free tickets from a New Haven store. "I think one day Yale's going to put it together," he says.

"But before the Harvard Game?" a skeptic asks. Ambrosio does not reply.

Julia Tiernan/YH New Haven residents Gene Lacobell and Jimmy Ambrosio, rarely miss a Bulldog football home game

"It's never been this bad," Ambrosio postulates. "Maybe it's the recruiting." The men see other reasons for Yale's decline. While they blame admissions and the outdated "Cozza regime," they respect the duality of the athletic and academic traditions at Yale.

Yale vs. Pennsylvania: Sat., Nov. 1. Stanley Celmer sits with security guard Paul McGovern above Portal 12 at the rainy, windy Pennsylvania game. A fan since age eight, Celmer kept abreast of Yale football during World War II by mail even when he was in the Pacific. Since then, he has seen every home game and has missed just nine away games. Celmer appreciates the spirit in the stands: the residential college rivalries, the Saybrook Strip, and the raucous Yale Precision Marching Band.

Nonetheless, he says, "There isn't enough spirit anymore." Only two college flags brave the winds; an intrepid cluster of Sillimanders raises theirs and Davenport's standard bearer briefly waves the tapestry banner in the rain.

When Celmer worked for Marlin Firearms in New Haven, he took his vacations during the first week of practice. He rescheduled his wedding, originally set for a season-opener against Columbia. "I told [my fiance] that we'd have to change it," he says. "We moved it up a week." His brother's wedding conflicted with another game. "I was the best man...did the toast...[and] came to the game in a tuxedo," he says.

Practice: Wed., Nov. 5. Tony Marrandino sits on a folding chair, laughing silently. The sky is dark, though it's not 5 p.m. yet. An ex-Marine, Marrandino lives closest to the Bowl, in West Haven. "My brother used to take me here in the late '20s," he says.

Calvin Hill, PC '69, Dick Jauron, PC '73, and Heisman Trophy winner Larry Kelley, TC '37, are mentioned as favorite Bulldogs, but Albie Booth, '32, towers in their memories. "He was our hero," Ambrosio announces. "Everybody wanted to be Albie Booth.... He's buried right over there," he says, gesturing towards the nearby sideline.

At the mention of Booth, Monroe resident Dick Lush tunes in. "You talking about Albie Booth? The first time I saw him back in 1929, I'm twelve years old," he says. "Yale-Army. Army has three All-Americans, winning 13-0. Eighty thousand people in that Bowl over there. All of a sudden, bada-boom! Like a snake. Nobody could nail him! The headline--Booth Beats Army, 21-13."

"Nobody could nail him," Ambrosio echoes. The last ten minutes, Lush continues. "Thirty-two yard drop kick. We were lucky enough to have seen it. We still keep our fingers crossed. They had to go both ways in those days. Leather helmets, leather everything. None of this plastic stuff."

Sideline supporters in the truest sense, they are Yale athletics' living media guide and a compendium of New Haven history, recalling a bygone era of Yale glories. But they remain confident that the program can rebuild the tradition.

The conversation meanders from basketball to laxatives to Abbott and Costello in Buck Privates. "George Murphy, the big star," Lavelli says. "A Yalie, born in New Haven. Became a senator." "His father was a football trainer here," Ambrosio knowingly adds.

No matter what, the conversation somehow returns to Yale football.

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