Top 50 Cal Sports Moments -- No. 44: East Feast, 1895

Track team’s cross-country tour sets up the first-ever athletic competitions between the East & West

As the Pac-12 Conference era comes to a close after more than a century, we count down the Top 50 moments involving Cal athletics.

THE MOMENT: On Thursday, May 2, 1895 — 129 years ago — an 11-man Cal track and field team departed Berkeley by train for a month-long tour that featured the first-ever East vs. West college matchups in any sport.

THE STORY: This was the world in 1895: Virtually no one owned an automobile. Films were silent. X-rays were discovered later in the year. Air flight wouldn’t happen for eight more years. Women didn’t get the vote for another 25 years.

Babe Ruth, the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century, was only three months old on May 2 when Cal’s track and field team boarded a train in Berkeley for a cross-country trip to engage in the first-ever college sporting events matching East and West. 

The Bears were part of eight separate competitions, with stops throughout the Midwest and East. In the first and most publicized meet, Cal beat a powerhouse Princeton team 61-51 at New Jersey.

There were meets in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, and Cal fared well in most of them, winning five of eight according to one account. They were a curiosity for East Coast fans, who were impressed. 

Three Cal athletes set American records during the tour: James Scoggins in the 100 yards (tying the record of 10 seconds), Ernest Dyer in the 120-yard hurdles (15.75 seconds), and Robert Edgren in the hammer throw (141 feet).

At 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, Edgren was the team’s headliner. He exceled in all the throwing events, later competing in the shot put and discus at the 1906 Olympics in Athens.

Edgren sent reports on the meets by telegraph for publication in the San Francisco Examiner and eventually became a renowned sports writer and newspaper cartoonist.

The team traveled with a blue silk banner, commissioned by Regent Arthur Rogers, that was emblazoned with a golden grizzly bear, the state’s symbol. 

Cal professor Charles Mills Gayley was inspired by the team’s performance to write a song, "The Golden Bear," which led to the university adopting it as the school’s official mascot.

* Top 50 Moment No. 45: Safety Valve

* Top 50 Moment No. 46: Stolen Axe

Only specific acts that occurred while the team or athlete was at Cal were considered for the Top 50 list, and accomplishments spanning a season or a career were not included. 

Leslie Mitchell of the Cal Bears History Twitter site aided in the selection of the top 50 moments.

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo