Top 50 Cal Sports Moments -- No. 46: Stolen Axe, 1899

Did you ever wonder how the Axe became so important in the Cal-Stanford rivalry? You have to go back to the 19th century.

Cal players display the Axe after winning the 2022 Big Game / Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

THE MOMENT: Late in the afternoon of Saturday, April 15, 1899, following a Cal-Stanford baseball game in San Francisco, several Cal students wrestled away an axe belonging to a group of vocal Stanford students, establishing the axe as the symbol of superiority in the Cal-Stanford rivalry.

THE STORY: In 1896, Stanford created the Axe Yell, the one that starts, “Give ‘em, the Axe, the Axe, the Axe.” But they needed a prop for that cheer, and on Thursday, April 13, 1899, they brought a 12-inch lumberman axe to a pep rally for the upcoming Cal-baseball game and used it to decapitate a straw facsimile of a Cal athlete.

The Stanford axe was brought to the Saturday, April 15, Cal-Stanford baseball game played at the corner of 16th and Folsom in San Francisco, and the Stanford students used it to shred ribbons of blue and gold during the game. 

Cal rallied in the ninth inning to beat the favored Stanford team 9-7, and as the noisy group of Stanford yell leaders headed for the exit wielding the axe, they were met by a group of Cal students who had laid in wait at the exit.  They pounced on the Stanford group, a melee ensued and police were brought to the scene. 

Amid the skirmish, a Cal student wrestled the Stanford axe away and took off through the streets of San Francisco, followed closely by angry Stanford students and the police.  At that point, the axe became the most important possession in Cal-Stanford history.

It also led to a wild chase throughout the city as the axe was exchanged through various hands and means of transportation, traveling as far north as Fillmore Street before heading back toward Powell Street and the Ferry Building. Along the way, the axe was re-taken by a Stanford student, but quickly re-re-taken by a Cal student with police in hot pursuit all along the way.

There is some discrepancy about which Cal student was wielding the axe when it reached the Ferry Building, but it was either Clint Miller or Everett Brown. The question at that point was how to get the axe on the ferry to the East Bay – there was no Bay Bridge at the time – under the noses of the police, who were searching the pockets of every male who boarded the ferry, looking for the stolen axe.

The are two versions of how this was achieved.  One version suggests Miller (or Everett) spotted a former girlfriend and convinced her to put the axe under her dress and board the ferry with him.  The other version says Miller (or Everett) slipped into a boutique at the Ferry Building, bought a dress, put it on and placed the axe under the dress as he boarded.

In any event the axe made it back to the Cal campus and was hidden.  This led to a midnight raid by Stanford students that resulted in extended damage to buildings and other property on the Cal campus but did not yield the axe. Cal then kept the axe in a Berkeley bank vault and brought out in an armored car for pep rallies.

The most impressive theft of the axe took place on April 3, 1930, when four Stanford students posing as photographers and several others disguised as Cal students used the blinding effect of flash bulbs and a smoke bomb to cause confusion, enabling them to steal the axe at a rally at Cal's Greek Theatre. (There are versions of that theft that differ slightly).

In 1933, Stanford and Cal agreed to designate the Axe as a trophy to be awarded to the winner of football’s Big Game, although it has been stolen several times since. But the significance of the Axe in Cal-Stanford lore was locked into history by that first theft on April 15, 1899.

Previous top 50 Moments:

* Top 50 Moment No. 47 -- Chicago Seven, 1922

*Top 50 Moment No. 48 -- Wide Right, 2014

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