Courtesy of the UC Rally Committee:

When the West was still young and sports were the measure of a school's worth, a rivalry budded by the San Francisco Bay. Leland Stanford Junior University sprung up from the secluded, barren fields of Palo Alto in 1891. More than two decades earlier, the University of California set its roots in the fertile soil of Berkeley, and her age offered experience. Therefore, as Stanford came on the collegiate scene, Berkeley took a supercilious view of all she surveyed in the West.

Without question, Berkeley maintained her superiority, but with a few wins, Stanford began to feel a bit too large. California reminded everyone who was best in 1899. Winning in football and track, Berkeley was scheduled to face Stanford in baseball. Stanford was favored to win, but as Cal fans know, rankings mean little to the Bears. Cal upset her new rival, 4-1, in the first game of the series. Humiliated and furious, Stanford took action.

What action could such a young University take against its older foe? Looking to their favorite Axe Cheer, penned by Will Irwin and based on a segment of Sophacles' "The Frog," Stanford decided to use an Axe to rally the students. Before a rabid crowd surrounding a blazing bonfire, yell leader Billy Erb brought out the famed fifteen-inch blade on April 13, 1899. Along with their Axe Cheer, the Stanfordites now possessed the proper intimidating factor. Cal was not to be deterred from victory.

The next day at the baseball diamond south of Market Street, the two teams met. Cal brought its nine men ready to seize the best of three series. Stanford came hoping to defend its streak of wins that dated back to '92. Through the ninth inning, the Cardinal appeared to have kept its hopes alive, leading 7-5. But Cal, not to be defeated and never to be underestimated, brought out the lumber in the bottom of ninth staging a four-run rally. Throughout the game, Stanford fans had used the Axe to chop at pieces of blue and gold ribbon. Their taunts proved useless.

Yet California fans were insulted by the giant Axe, so a few young men designed a plan to gain the resplendent red blade. Evvy Brown and Jimmie Hopper conspired to snatch the tool through a blitzkrieg attack. Along with a half dozen other students, California wrested the Stanford Axe from the Cardinal. The game was on.

As Brown struggled for the prize, a Stanford man punched him in the eye. Still, he managed to gain the Axe and pass it on to Jerry Muma. Losing his suit in the fray, Muma passed the piece to Archie Cloud. The only bodily harm inflicted in that whole day by the Axe was a cut finger on Cloud's hand. In spite of black eyes, ruined suits, and cut fingers, the California men managed to keep hold of their coveted treasure. But they had to get it out of the area surrounding the baseball field.

For the getaway, Cal utilized their track star, Billie Drum. Through a series of passes, the Axe ended up in Drum's hands. His feet took it from there. As he escaped, the San Francisco Police Department arrived. In order to give Drum room to evade the police, Californian Jack McGee told Officer Conboy that Stanford had stolen their axe. Conboy is purported to have responded in his thick Irish brogue, "They are college byes. Let them foight it out." So they did.

Thankfully, Drum took off through the city. Upon reaching a livery stable, Drum tried to acquire a horse on which to ride away. But Stanford was hot on his tail, so ol' Billie decided to keep running. After covering several blocks, the sprinter's stamina dwindled. At that point, two young men (Drum identified them later as Strout and Gilman) offered to help him carry the cumbersome load. Gladly, he handed over the blade, only to realize that they were Stanfudites. Everett Brown and Jimmie hopper caught up with Drum and helped him reacquire the Axe in a major scuffle on the sidewalk. Other Cal men arrived and once again gained the Axe back from Stanford. Prize in hand, they boarded a carriage to 14th and Market Street. On foot again, they found a butcher who helped them make the Axe more manageable by cutting the handle in two. With the two pieces, the group of Cal men moved toward the ferry building at the end of Market.

Axe in tote, Cal man Clint Miller approached the building. Though the area swarmed with cops, Jack McGee was there again to confuse their efforts. Miller approached a female friend, grabbing her arm as a cover. Together they walked to the line for the Oakland ferry. Jimmie Hopper saw Miller's plan and slipped a ticket into the axe holder's pocket. Without even a quick search, Miller, his lady friend, and the axe boarded a ferry to Oakland. The Axe was safe in California's hands.

Over the next days, months, and years, Stanford worked indefatigably to regain their precious blade. Only a few days after its capture, a Stanford man named Dutton came up to Berkeley trying to seize the axe through disguise (a fake mustache that fell off), cunning (he rode a horse into a California Axe Rally), and force (he along with nearly thirty others raided Chi Phi, the purported home of the Axe). His efforts all failed, and Cal held onto their new trophy.

Bitter Stanfordites decided that they needed a new tactic: beat Berkeley at her own kleptomaniac game. In the cold, dark hours of the night, men from Leland Stanford Junior University crept onto the U.C. campus and took the beloved Senior Fence. With the lumber on board their wagon, the men returned to Palo Alto to the cheers of their fellow students. With an air of self-assuredness, California wired Stanford with a "thank you" note for cleaning up the "unsightly and worthless piece of junk." To cement their message, a group of Californians collected the few remaining pieces from the fence and sent them down to "The Farm." In spite of their best efforts to avenge the theft of their Axe, Stanford was foiled again.

Every year after 1899, Stanford would send men up to scope out California's Axe Rally, hoping to find some way to regain their lost treasure. Each year the task became bleaker and bleaker. Until 1930. Just a year after the infamous stock market crash, Stanford staged a brilliant coup d'axe which will live in immortal infamy. Twenty-one Stanfordites traveled to Berkeley, and set themselves strategically around the campus. Some were at the rally, while some waited at the bank where the U.C. Rally Committee (the new guardians of the Axe) kept the Axe. A few, posed as journalists, asked to get a picture with the Axe, and with the confusion of the flash, and an ensuing fisticuff, Stanford grabbed their beloved Axe and hightailed back to Palo Alto. Quite possibly their plan would have been foiled crossing the San Francisco Bay had it not been for one helpful Stanford man. At that time still a drawbridge, the Dunbarton Bridge was about to be raised for a passing ship. Just after the fleeing Axe thieves passed the bridges entrance, the Stanfordite working the drawbridge stopped traffic to lift the two sides, effectively cutting off the chase. Stanford was in the clear.

Over the subsequent decades, more raids failed and more raids succeeded. Through everything from broken Axe cases to sabotaged Chinese restaurants, the Axe changed hands six times after 1899. Thanks to men like Jimmie Hopper and Billie Drum, Clint Miller and the Immor(t)al Twenty-One, the Stanford Axe has become a special part of collegiate lore. Indeed it is a precious trophy (now it is the official trophy for the annual California-Stanford football match--the Big Game), and hopefully it will continue to be a tremendous source of pride for its possessors in the years to come. In any case, that fifteen inch piece of steel fanned a cross-town competition into a storied rivalry that inspires the hearts of thousands of students and alumni on both sides of the Bay. May that inspiration lead California to victory this November! Go Bears!