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From the archives | Oct. 14

Notre Dame routs Dartmouth 64-0 at Fenway

Fighting Irish romp in their Boston debut

According to the script, the Notre Dame football teams supposed to appear at Fenway Park yesterday and merely flex its muscles in front of a mirror, like the star physical culture student.

Strange to relate, this is precisely what happened. In their Boston debut, the green shirts from South Bend traveled at express-train speed through, around and even over the outmatched Dartmouth representatives to a 64-0 victory.

As a competitive match it scarcely substituted for a midweek scrimmage at the campus back home in Indiana. The 35 young men Ed McKeever turned loose at the ball park yesterday dominated every phase of football.

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No other Notre Dame team since 1932 has scored so many points in one matinee. No Dartmouth eleven has been scalded so unmercifully on a football field since Harvard buried Big Green by an identical score in 1890.

Still, the sellout congregation of 40,000 seemed to be satisfied. Notre Dame went into the game at about 100 to favorite, and the patrons merely hoped to see the Irish take off their wraps. They did. Ten touchdowns were scored by nine different Notre Dame operatives -- including Frank Dancewicz of Lynn, Johnny Corbisiero of Medord and Eddie Clasby of Natick.

Buzzing hither and yon from the T-formation behind a swashbuckling line that keelhauled the opposition, the Notre Dame backs galloped for 429 yards on the ground. The redoubtable Dancewicz forward passed for 128 yards more.

To all intents and purposes, the contest, as such, was over on the first running play of the game.

Robert J. Kelly of Chicago, Ill., came whooping around the D. right side with a Dancewicz lateral and sped 51 yards before he was almost accidentally tipcarted from the rear.

Dartmouth rolled up its sleeves and stifled that initial Irish movement at its five, and kicked short to its 31. Dancewicz whaled a pass to O’Connor, a veritable giant of an end, for nine yards, and another on which Kelly made a super-dooper running catch for nine more, and presently Dancewicz q.b. sneaked through the middle for the first score.

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From then on it was a riot of action -- 99.7ths of it by Notre Dame.

Notre Dame was just too good. It was a prewar football team with an unshaven, juvenile personnel. The Dartmouths were a wartime product, fit for matching skill with the likes of Coast Guard and Harvard and maybe a few more. This is no discredit to them. They fought the good and honest fight all the way.

But it was like handing one of the Fenway Park ushers a flyswatter and sending him out to fight an armored division.