Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog: Bender Like Billiken

The mascot for the St. Louis University sports teams is a Billiken. Although obscure now, the Billiken was a worldwide phenomenon and household word a century ago when the name became attached to the university. The Billiken was originally designed and marketed as a good luck charm, an idol of the “god of things as they ought to be.”

I am the Prince of Happiness,

I simply make you smile;

I prove that life’s worth living

And that everything’s worth while.

-Billiken.

At the time, the word mascot referred to all good luck charms, generally, and was not limited to team names, as generally understood today. Even teams with nicknames might have a “mascot,” an actual person, sitting on the bench with them to bring them luck. Or a particular player or opponent might be thought of as a “mascot” during a run of good luck or bad luck, in which case he might be a “mascot” for the opposing team.

So it is unsurprising that a team might choose a “Billiken” as the mascot (good luck charm) for their team. St. Louis University was not the first or only team at the time to use the term “Billiken” as their team nickname, or to invoke the powers of a “Billiken” good luck charm to help their cause.

It gives me great pleasure to name the Wichita baseball club. I suggest a name that I think very appropriate. It suggests good luck, and happiness, something our boys should possess and is a very good mascot. It is the “Billikens.”

The Wichita Eagle (Kansas), January 24, 1909, page 27.

A baseball team in Pueblo, Colorado adopted an image of an Indian called “Heap Crazy Fan” as a “Billiken of good luck for the team,”ⁱ using “Billiken” in a generic sense, meaning a good luck charm.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, a local fan of the Red Birds baseball team presented the team with a new “mascot,” in the sense of a good luck charm.

Mr. J. B. Pearce, the popular third-degree fan and supporter of the Red Birds, has presented the team with a mascot that always wears “the smile that won’t come off.” The mascot is quite novel, it being a “Billikens doll.

The “Billikens” always wears a broad smile itself, and causes the same mark of good humor to mount the countenance of everyone that gazes upon it. It is indeed an ideal mascot and will surely bring good luck to the Red Birds, who have accepted it and will take it on the trips as well as have it around when at home.

The Raleigh Times, June 23, 1909, page 6.

An amateur team in or near Philadelphia,ⁱⁱ and a professional team in Fort Wayne, Indiana adopted the name “Billikens.”

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, June 17, 1909, page 6.

A fan gave the New York Giants baseball team a “Billiken” that didn’t work very well - that is, until they moved it.

“The Luck Changed for the Giants when they Moved Their Billiken”

A billiken which some thoughtful “fan” had presented to the Giants on Tuesday had been relegated to the extreme outfield [for] its poor work, there was serious talk of asking for waivers on it. In the fourth inning Seymour put the ball into the upper grand stand, just a few inches foul, for one of the longest hits ever made on the grounds.

Journal and Tribune (Knoxville, Tennessee), April 24, 1910, page 12.

A professional team from Montgomery, Alabama of the Southern League (and later the South Atlantic League), were called the “Billikens” for at least five years, from 1911 through 1916.

The Montgomery team of the Southern League has dropped its old nickname “Climbers” and will be known this season as the “Billikens.”

The Lake County Times (Hammond, Indiana), April 3, 1911, page 3.

The Chattanooga News (Tennessee), October 19, 1914, page 9.

St. Louis University may not have been first, but they are the last one standing using Billiken as its team name or mascot. They mystery (if there is one) is why the stuck so quickly and permanently, even as the Billiken fad faded from our collective consciousness to become a footnote of American pop-culture. The answer may be that St. Louis University adopted the name for a particular purpose, connected to a particular circumstance directly related to the team, as opposed to other places, where they merely latched onto a fad which faded as the winds of time dispersed the ephemeral zeitgeist

In January 1910, when Billiken was still a household word, St. Louis University hired the former University of Nebraska football star as its new Athletic Director, football coach, baseball coach, track coach and jack of all trades. He only stayed on for two years, but left a lasting legacy. They say he looked like a Billiken – hence the name.

The Billikens - Up to 1911, St. Louis university’s athletic teams were Bulldogs.ⁱⁱⁱ A sports writer thought the late Coach Bender, smiling at the progress of a game, “looked like a billiken.” Billiken dolls were all the rage in those days and the name soon caught on with firm grip.

The Journal Times (Racine, Wisconsin), January 14, 1925, page 14.

Nashville Banner, January 17, 1935, page 10 (Note: The team had actually been called the “Blue and White,” not the “Bulldogs.”).

Bender had several features that may have reminded people of a Billiken; his “broad grin,”^iv “diminutive” size, and a high forehead topped off with a pronounced hair flip.

Johnny is not much larger than a good-sized minute, but is well stocked with ginger and "pep." His complexion is pink, his forehead high, his wig is blond and he works overtime with a winning, piquant, 4x9 smile.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 6, 1910, page 1S.

Long before Bender’s resemblance to an idol inspired the name of Saint Louis University’s sports teams, Bender himself was enshrined as an “idol” himself.

Johnny Bender, Nebraska university’s stocky football captain, and his ten teammates were pitted against Kansas University today on the gridiron and Bender won. Six to nothing was the final score of the fiercest, cleanest exhibition of the favorite college sport ever witnessed on McCook field.

Tonight the supporters of the Jayhawkers are rubbing their eyes in astonishment at the marvelous performance of the cornhusker captain, while the several hundred Nebraska rooters, who came from Lincoln to witness the struggle, have enshrined him as their idol, the greatest of all the great football warriors who ever battled in defense of the scarlet and cream.

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska), November 20, 1903, page 7.

The passing of the reign of the pigskin for the season at Nebraska witnessed the permanent retirement of the greatest player that Booth has developed during his five years of mentorship of the Cornhuskers. This is Johnny Bender, halfback, and quarter, the “Flying Dutchman” of the Nebraska eleven. Bender has proved himself a great foot ball player in every department of the game. Fleet of foot and a dodger of marvelous dexterity, his long runs have thrilled thousands of foot ball devotees during his career. One of Bender’s most electrifying tricks . . . is that of hurdling tacklers who disputed his path.

Omaha Daily Bee, November 27, 1904, page 9.

In 1910, St. Louis University brought in John Bender to jump start the school’s tepid sporting prospects, installing him as Athletic Director, as well as football, baseball and track coach. He lit a fire under his athletes, and their stock was on the rise.

In his first season as coach, the St. Louis University football team outscored their opponents 106 to 22, improving their record to 7-2, from a disappointing 3-5 in 1909. They were known as “Billikens” before the end of the season.

The earliest example I’ve found is from St. Louis University’s 3-0 squeaker of a win over in-state rival Missouri.

Two recovered kicks by Hall and Burress and two line plungers put the leather on the St. Louis 1-foot line when the Billikens’s head, [(St. Louis quarterback)] Dockery, punted out of his own 30-yard line.

The Kansas City Star, November 6, 1910, page 12.

They were still “Billikens” a few weeks later when Bender’s alma mater, Nebraska, refused an invitation to play St. Louis in a post-season game (perhaps the outcome of the Missouri game scared them off).

Nebraska has declined to clash with Johnny Bender’s Billikens in a post-season battle.

The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), November 18, 1910, page 13.

Although the general reason they became “Billikens” is well known, the precise mechanism by which the name was attached to the school is unclear. The traditional explanation, offered by St. Louis University’s sports information director in the 1930s, likely gets the essence of what happened correct, but a few critical details were later disputed by two of the men named in the story.

Something to Word Billiken

The word “Billiken” has been a mystery to me for many years. I’ve never seen it listed in the dictionary, but thanks to George Killenberg we now know how it got started.

He tells this story:

“During the fall of 1910, the strange-looking creature, representing the god of things as they should be, was the rage of the country. Girls wore miniature Billikens on the tips of their hat-pins, and fellows sported Billiken watch fobs.

One afternoon a cartoon of a Billiken was left thumb-tacked on the front door of Gunn’s Drug Store in St. Louis. Beneath it was written ‘Coach Bender.’ The author of it, Charley McNamara, got the idea from the St. Louis University coach, John Bender, known as “Moonface” to his friends.

“Bender had such a roly-poly face that every time he smiled his balloon cheeks completely covered his squinty eyes. During practice one day the team ran off its plays with a gusto that was particularly pleasing, and Cartoonist McNamara got his Billiken idea by watching Bender repeatedly resemble the popular image. Billy O’Conner, Post-Dispatch sports writer, saw Bender’s act one day and exclaimed, ‘Why that guy’s a regular billiken.’

“As was previously stated, McNamara drew the Billiken as a caricature of Bender and in a short time the whole team was called Billikens. As time went on the name was taken up by the press and now is the official nickname.”

The Jackson Sun (Jackson, Tennessee, October 10, 1937, page 14.

Killenberg may be forgiven for getting the story wrong. He was only twenty years old at the time he told the story. He was born after the events in question took place, and would have based his story on what he had heard around campus, in one form or another.

Years later, one of the two men mentioned by name in the story (O’Connor) told a different version of events, and a coworker of the other one (McNamara) told a version of events that does not seem to agree with the historical record.

Based largely on Kellenberger’s 1937 origin story, McNamara and O’Connor were invited to a homecoming basketball game in 1953, where they were presented with blue and white blankets in honor of their supposed role in the creation of the nickname. The hubbub triggered a sudden interest in nailing down the details.

Killenberg’s story had seemed like a good story until a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch started asking around the office. But no one could remember a cartoonist named McNamara.

When asked to clarify his role, if any, McNamara said that he had painted a Billiken for a football-themed window display at the drug store, but never labeled it as coach Bender.

“I don’t know where that story came from,” McNamara said. “I was no cartoonist. I was with the old Waters Pierce Oil Co. then. And I don’t remember ever being at a football practice with Billy O’Connor. I didn’t have time for that in those days.

“What did happen, however, was that I painted a Billiken on a window of Billy Gunn’s drug store at the corner of Grand and Laclede one day when they needed something more to decorate the window display devoted to St. Louis U. football.

“Billikens were all the rage in those days, the same as kewpie dolls and Teddy Bears were to be in a later time. I often think that it was lucky that it was the day of the Billiken, not the Teddy Bear, or we might now be referring to Capt. Tom Lillis of the Teddy Bears.”

“Free Throws,” Robert Morrison, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 25, 1953, page 3B.

A cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch did draw a number of cartoons of Bender when he first took the job in 1910, but none of them are labeled as a “Billiken.”

Although, in one of the pictures, he was sitting almost like "Billiken." The image is a reference to his time coaching at the Haskell Indian Nations University. He was quoted as saying it was more difficult to coach Indians than white players. But he also dispelled the popular notions about Indian football players frequently mentioned in the press of the day (Jim Thorpe's team, the Carlisle Indians, were a college football powerhouse at the time), that their "native trickery" of made them naturally skilled at trick plays, or that they played a particularly rough and dirty style of game.

St. Louis Post Dispatch, February 6, 1910, page 1S.

The reporter apparently never spoke with McNamara, but he did talk to another old-time sportswriter who had worked with the paper at the time. Willis Johnson claimed that the name had been adopted three years earlier, in 1907, which would have been impossible.

Willis Johnson, the veteran sports writer, places O’Connor’s invention as happening in 1907 - three years before Bender was head coach at St. Louis U.

“I remember very well, Billy O’Connor was the only one writing football at the time and he was the only one who made the post-season football trip to the west coast when St. Louis U. played post-season games,” Johnson said.

Willis was reminded that the record showed Eddie Cochems was coach in 1907 when the Blue and White, or the Jesuits as St. Louis athletes then were known, played and lost to Washington State and Multnomah A. C. of Portland in post-season games.

“Well, that’s when O’Connor wrote his story first naming them the Billikens,” Willis said. “The team had had a great season, then it had been soundly beaten in the post-season games. The boys were pretty well beat up and O’Connor, who always saw the sunny side of things, made up that story about the Billikens because that’s what they looked like to him.”

“Free Throws,” Robert Morrison, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 25, 1953, page 3B.

Johnson’s story is impossible, yet interesting. His story is impossible because Billiken statuettes were not sold until 1908. So-called “Billiken” characters had appeared in Canada West magazine several times in 1907, as early as May, but they looked more like cherubs than the finished Billiken statuette. So there would have been no occasion for O’Connor, or any other sportswriter, to refer to the team as “Billikens” in 1907.

Johnson’s story is interesting, because the opposing coach in one of the games St. Louis University played on the Pacific Northwest in 1907 was someone who would later be thought of as resembling a “Billiken” - Johnny Bender. Bender coached Washington State to an 11-0 victory over St. Louis University on Christmas Day, 1907, just over two years before taking the reigns of the Athletic Department of St. Louis University. St. Louis lost its next game, against the Multnomah Athletic Club of Portland on New Year’s Day, 11-6. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s accounts of both games are available online on Newspapers.com. Not one of those accounts refer to the team as “Billikens.”

So, although O’Connor may not have called them “Billikens” in 1907, and although McNamara may not have labeled his painting of a “Billiken” as Coach Bender, it seems likely that someone - anyone, perhaps more than one someone, recognized in Bender the features of a “Billiken.”

Does he look like a Billiken? You be the judge.