WILL ROGERS
(Posthumous Nominee)
Inducted February 18, 2005
There
may have been no better spokesman for the sport of polo than Will Rogers.
Well-known and highly regarded as a colorful and witty personality, humorist,
syndicated writer and actor, Rogers was also a good polo player, reaching
a handicap of 5 goals during what he described as the "hay day"
of polo back in the 1930s. He was a consummate cowboy and championed the
cause of polo in the West and introduced many movie stars to the sport.
He played with many of the top Western players and identified with the
"underdogs" style of polo, comparing the Western ways of cowboy
polo to the ways he learned growing up throwing a rope in Oklahoma. He
played all over the world and helped establish and finance interscholastic
and intercollegiate polo programs. He coined many famous phrases that
have endured, one of which originated from the 1933 East-West series of
polo matches: "Well, the hillbillies beat the dudes and took the
polo championships of the world right out of the drawing room and into
the bunkhouse." Rogers met an untimely death in 1935 when he was
killed while flying with celebrated aviator Wiley Post in Alaska.
There
may have been no better spokesman for the sport of polo than Will Rogers.
Well-known and highly regarded as a colorful and witty personality, humorist,
syndicated writer and actor, Rogers was also a good polo player, reaching
a handicap of 5 goals during what he described as the "hay day"
of polo back in the 1930s. He was a consummate cowboy and championed the
cause of polo in the West and introduced many movie stars to the sport.
He played with many of the top Western players and identified with the
"underdogs" style of polo, comparing the Western ways of cowboy
polo to the ways he learned growing up throwing a rope in Oklahoma. He
played all over the world and helped establish and finance interscholastic
and intercollegiate polo programs. He coined many famous phrases that
have endured, one of which originated from the 1933 East-West series of
polo matches: "Well, the hillbillies beat the dudes and took the
polo championships of the world right out of the drawing room and into
the bunkhouse." Rogers met an untimely death in 1935 when he was
killed while flying with celebrated aviator Wiley Post in Alaska. 