"Zack" Crusey, the
mellifluous sports writer of The Sidney Daily News, apparently noted the success of
the IUTIS event. He was the chief architect of the idea of a charity football game between
the alumni football players of Sidney High School and Holy Angels. All the proceeds would
benefit the new Wilson Memorial Hospital. With Crusey heavily involved, the event would
not suffer from a lack of dramatic promoting.In announcing the game in the evening
edition on November 13th, Crusey gushed: "I cherish the thought of watching these
honor gridiron grads line the field again. I can't mention one outstanding race
horse-legged scintillate with brains and brawn and do justice to the remaining
group." (In what was to turn out to be a tragic irony, Crusey also reported that
evening on a Florida football player who suffered a serious neck injury in a game). This
game was to be played on Saturday, November 21st.
Zack Crusey set about hyping the game as he had no other. In the week before the tilt,
he noted how "Particular effort has been accumulated in securing the top notchers
of both alumnis to cavort in the forthcoming struggle..." Zack promised that the
game "...will arm one with a reminiscent glow. It's going to be smoke with good
football."
A number of team captains and some college talent was slated to be on the football
field during the game. Jimmy Zimmerman and Gussie Palmisano played for the University of
Dayton Flyers. Bernard McCashen and George Collins were Ohio University Bobcat players.
Former team captains Pee Wee Baumann, Will Holder, Johnny Casey and Johnny Salm were
returning to bolster the Holy Angels Titans.
Pee Wee had graduated from Holy Angels High School in 1928. His brothers, Bill and Dick
Baumann, still reside in Sidney. Other than perhaps as a reference to his relatively short
stature, they cannot recall why he was called Pee Wee. Despite his height and slight
build, he played football all four years, and captained the team in 1928. After finishing
school, he accepted a position as an assistant bookkeeper at Wagner Manufacturing. Bill recalled that life was
good for brother Ralph. He liked his job, and he was engaged to a fine young lady named
Gilletta Wolf.
Just a few days before the big game, Zack Crusey began to beat the drums with
increasing intensity. In the Wednesday edition of the Daily News, he wrote: "Just
picture in your mind two combinations who play football in the same cutting, slashing
style, who put a swagger and a swing into the thunder that they cut loose and who face
each other as evenly matched as one might hope to expect." Crusey predicted a
"gifted confab of high promise."
Even the Sidney High School band, which was to play at the contest, caused Crusey to
wax poetic: "The stirring songs and marches that they render have a power of
enchantment about them that makes one acclaim these dispensers of intoxicating melodies of
Sidney High as unparalleled as any scholastic institution."