Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to like in BL Classics. As the Bears play in the Texas Bowl today, we look back on a less-fortunate 1953 team.
As the 1953 Football Season unfolded into November, Mr. and Mrs. William Harold Taylor, Jr., of Brownwood, both Baylor graduates (she’s Mary Nell Durie, B.A. ’45), purchased Cotton Bowl tickets, anticipating seeing the Bears in the bowl. They made hotel reservations in Dallas; planned a reunion there with former classmates.
Longhorns and Owls impolitely intervened to change their plans.
The Taylors were at home in Brownwood during the holidays; attended a Christmas party of Baylor alumni and friends from other Southwest Conference schools.
Mrs. Taylor’s gift on the Christmas tree was a battered, patched-up little Teddy bear, ribboned with Rice and Texas colors, tin cans tied to his tail.
The little poem below, written by Wendell Mayes, Jr., Brownwood newspaperman and Texas grad, was rolled up in one of the cans.
Cotton Bowl Blues
Now here’s a gift for Mary Nell, who said she would regret.
She thought she’d see Big D tonight. She hasn’t left as yet.
We’re glad she’s here, we really are, and hope she has a time.
So listen. I’ll tell the way it was and try to make it rhyme.
Her Bears gave Cal their worst defeat in six long years they tell us.
Twenty-five to zero was the score. The Bears were real fine fellows.
Miami was next to test the Bears. The Bear’s were Dallas bound.
A trip out west and one back east – a tough one hadn’t been found.
But Arkansas gave her quite a scare. They led her Baylor Bruins.
A pair of passes saved the day and saved her plans from ruins.
And poor little Vandy. There’s a foe that should have stayed at home.
Ol’ Baylor won, forty-seven to six, and Dallas here they come.
That James Ray Smith’s a guy with poise. A point is plenty you know.
And Smith’s the one who downed the Aggies with an educated toe.
Then Baylor was the third in polls. The U.P. says it’s so.
The Horned Frogs fell twenty-five to seven. Oh Boy! Six wins in a row.
Twenty-one to twenty, a horrible score for Texas to hand on Baylor.
Look’s bad from here, but still there’s hope, provided her Bears don’t fail her.
You can’t expect to win ’em all when hiring only scholars.
So Houston won thirty-five to seven and got two-million dollars.
But then the Bears got in the groove and won from S.M.U.
Mrs. Taylor packed her bags next week. She did it a bit too soon.
‘Cause then there came the worst of all, to Mary Nell’s sad sorrow.
Since Rice beat Baylor, Owls – not Bears – will play the game tomorrow.
And this is why she’s here tonight. You probably know already.
Her Bears started off a great big Grizzly but ended up a Teddy.
