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Ralph Sauer ’40, who played center for “The Thunder Team” of the late 1930s, kept in the trunk of a succession of family cars a red-and-gold wool blanket. “We didn’t have much respect for it,’’ recalled Betty Sauer, Ralph’s wife. “The joke was that it was USC colors."  Time passed. But in fact, the blanket signified Cal’s last greatest triumph on the football field. Ralph Sauer and each of his teammates were awarded one for their 13-0 victory over Alabama in the 1938 Rose Bowl. That team would be the last group of Bears to win a Rose Bowl. For a time, for most of the Thunder Team, their football triumph paled compared with their “other life” experiences. Fourteen out of the 15 players who played in the 1938 bowl game served in the military during World War II. Following the war, the specter of the victory blanket faded further with the course of events and personal pursuits. Further, there was the commonly held belief that if the Bears could pull off a Rose Bowl victory in 1938, sooner rather than later they would do it again. The wait for the return to glory was well into its 65th year when Ralph Sauer died in October 2002. As his family was sorting his belongings, they came across the shabby and forgotten blanket. “It turns out this was the only survivor—the only one left from the team,’’ said Perry Conner ’40 who, along with 1938 Rose Bowl teammates Sam Chapman ’43and Bob Wilhelm ’39, joined by Dick Bahme ’40 and Ed Arnold ’40 from the 1940 team, presented the now cleaned blanket in a low-key ceremony in June to the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame. “I knew it would please him,” said Betty Sauer, who lives in Alameda. “It has brought back some wonderful memories. I’m just delighted it’s finally found a proper home.” The return of the 1938 Rose Bowl blanket is a tantalizing run-up to the 2005 football season, now that Cal’s return to the Rose Bowl has again become a realistic goal. Occasionally, last spring, Conner drove from his Walnut Creek home to the Cal campus to assess the new crop of players and note improvements of the returnees. “They have some excellent talent out there,’’ the former Bear guard said. “But the real key is that coach (Jeff) Tedford has assembled an outstanding coachingstaff. They stress solid fundamentals, blocking, and tackling as well as character and class—the old stuff." |
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