This past weekend, Notre Dame "hosted" Boston College at Boston's Fenway Park, the baseball shrine that housed plenty of college and pro football games until the late 1960s. In 1944, the Fighting Irish played their first-ever game in Boston at Fenway ... against the Dartmouth Big Green (a.k.a. Indians). This game and the 1945 rematch in South Bend marked the only times these schools squared off on the gridiron (World War II made for some strange football bedfellows).
The Valley News, where I work as a sports guy, did a fun story on their historic encounters a few years ago, with plenty of cool pictures and memorabilia.
As the for the uniforms ... This was when Notre Dame wore green, not blue, jerseys at home. Although Dartmouth was technically the home team, the Irish apparently insisted on wearing the green shirts. According to the Oct. 14, 1944 Boston Globe:
"One team will be Notre Dame, in this corner, wearing a fetching Kelley green jersey ... The other team will be Dartmouth, attired in white above the waistline, but festooned with deep green satin pants ... thereby salvaging its traditional color scheme for the day."
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| The 1944 Dartmouth Big Green/Indians, decked out in all green. |
From research, it appears Dartmouth also wore gray (possibly tan) pants that year, too, at least with the white jerseys. I have no record of the Big Green wearing the green pants before or after '44 ... at least until 2005.
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| Dartmouth, in white shirts and light-colored pants, takes on Holy Cross in 1944. These pix are from the phenomenal Dartmouth College Photographic Files. |
As for the game, it was pretty much over before the coin toss. Notre Dame won, 64-0. The Irish also took the '45 game in South Bend, 34-0.
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