Wild Bill Who? The Country's Best What?

One of the curious aspects of American sport is the way games embed themselves in the public consciousness for a period of years, then become dislodged by a shift in taste, by a war or by a better game. Such a one was roller polo, an early-day version of ice hockey, but played on roller skates. Though nearly forgotten today, the game enjoyed the kind of success around the turn of the century that seemed to assure a rich and boundless future.

Today it is as if the game had sunk without a trace. Gone now are the small wooden arenas heavy with smoke and the deafening noise of roller skates, the crunch of bone on hardwood and the rabid, rollicking crowds that often numbered in the thousands. All that remain of those glory days are some fading memories, a few mementos and newspaper clippings.

The game began in the late 1870s, when wealthy young socialites in their summer haunts in Newport, R.I. bemoaned the passing of the polo season each fall. They started playing a proletarian version of the game—on roller skates, a new national craze—and moved the whole thing indoors. They used substantially the same equipment, including a polo goal later modified to a sort of wire hockey cage, but limited themselves to one-tenth the space: the regulation playing area was 80 by 40 feet.

The new game was an immediate hit, and. soon Ivy League young bloods picked it up and returned to school with it. At that point it was just a pastime like scrub football or pickup baseball, but before long slick promoters saw in it a money-maker and started forming franchises, bidding for players and streamlining the rules.

In time the professional version spread through most of the Northeast. The New England League featured teams like the Providence Grays (later the Bears), the Waterbury Blues, the Newport Trojans, the Salem Witches and the New Bedford Whalers. The Taunton (Mass.) franchise briefly considered a club nickname to match the town's—Herringtown—but decided the name offered too many opportunities for verbal mischief and called itself simply The Taunton Club. Whatever the teams were called, roller polo excited people, and New York soon started a league with teams in Albany, Amsterdam, Newburgh and Gloversville. From there franchises spread to the Midwest and such thriving cities as Muncie, Ind.

The game was fast and tough. It opened when a bright-red hard-rubber ball was dropped into a neutral zone, called "the spot," in the middle of the floor. On that signal, the opposing first rushes (forwards) skated from their own cages to the center of the floor, where there was a fierce battle for the ball with four-foot-long sticks resembling those used in field hockey. After one player gained control, play then proceeded about as it does in ice hockey for four 12-minute periods. Another race to the spot followed each goal, and ties were played off promptly by sudden death.

Goalies had the toughest time of it. The ball bolted around like lightning, and because players often tried to screen one another's shots a goalie needed protection. He wore a baseball-type chest protector and mask, padded gloves, fiber shin pads two to three feet high—and no roller skates.

Penalty shots were awarded for rule infractions, and when the goalie had to go one-on-one against a man with a hard shot in a noisy, smoky, poorly lighted building, he really strained for something extra. The ball was fired so hard and fast that arenas had nets above the boards to protect the spectators. Maybe they protected fans from the players as well, since the threat of a participant going after a loudmouth was always real. Players wore leggings and jerseys for uniforms, carried the hockeylike sticks fastened by 10-inch leather straps to their wrists, plus shin pads and crudely padded roller skates fitted with a piece of metal that helped them stop and turn quicker.

Of all the memorable figures that made roller polo such a rage during its heyday, none was more exciting than Wild Bill Duggan, who died in 1971 at the age of 82. Duggan was the game's all-time best first rush. He set all the scoring records and was a hero to an entire generation of spectators that followed the sport from its beginning.

Fast and agile, Duggan played tennis and minor league baseball to stay in shape for roller polo, and after an outstanding career in local polo, he turned pro at 18, joining Bridgeport of the New England League.