Early Auburn football star of 'National Fame' once coached Pine Apple, Alabama high school team

Benjamin Joseph "Sheep" Lamb

I believe that The Wilcox Progressive Era has some of the most observant readers of any newspaper in all of Alabama. By way of example, consider the following.

Over a month ago, way back in the newspaper’s Sept. 7 edition, I reviewed all of the big news events from over a century ago in September 1923. In that column, I rehashed how in the Sept. 20, 1923 edition of the paper, under the headline “FOOT BALL GAME,” readers were invited on “Friday afternoon, to come and see Sam Jones, Robert Riggs & Co. battle the Lads from Pine Apple. The Pine Apple team is being coached by the famous Sheep Lamb, a player of National Fame.”

A few days ago, a reader reached out to me wanting to know more about this item, including “Who the heck was Sheep Lamb?” With that in mind, let’s deep dive into the short news item mentioned above to see what we can learn when we examine it closely. As with most things, there is more than meets the eye.

First, this short paragraph was published deep in the paper, on Page 5, near the lower left-hand corner of the page. This indicates that the football game probably wasn’t considered important enough to make the front page that week. An event that did make the front page that week was a series of public speaking engagements in Camden, Pine Apple and Pine Hill that featured Prof. Allen G. Loehn of Birmingham-Southern College, Chattanooga lawyer Boyd W. Hargraves and W.M. Howe, who was the regional director of the Near East Relief for Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

I thought it was also interesting that the headline printed the word “football” as two words. Back in those days, “football” and “baseball” were often written as two words. This seems to have fallen out of practice in the 1930s.

The article also reports that the game was to be played on “Friday afternoon.” The paper was published on Sept. 20, which was a Thursday, so the following Friday would have been the next day, Sept. 21. While the article doesn’t specifically mention the game’s start time, games in those days typically kicked off around 3 p.m., around the time that school let out. These were the days when very few schools had lighted football fields.

While it doesn’t specifically say who would be playing Pine Apple, I think it’s safe to presume that it was the high school team from Camden. Sam Jones and Robert Riggs must have been well known players on the Camden squad that the reading audience would have known. The game was also presumably played in Camden since the article doesn’t indicate that it was to be played anywhere else.

“Sheep Lamb” was the nickname of Benjamin Joseph Lamb, who played tackle at Auburn University between 1908 and 1912. A native of Eutaw, Lamb was named “All Southern” twice during his college career, and he apparently was Pine Apple’s head coach in 1923, when he was 35 years old. Records reflect that the 1923 season was the first season that the school at Pine Apple fielded a team.

No account of this game’s outcome appeared in the following week’s paper. However, according to the Alabama High School Football Historical Society, Camden won this game, 73-0. AHSFHS records also indicate that the game was played on Sat., Sept. 22.

In the end, there was much to be gleaned from this short, 35-word paragraph. If anyone in the reading audience has more to add, please let me know. It’s highly possible that there is more to learn from reading between the lines.