Cat Tales: Tragedy strikes best friends and teammates
(This is excerpt #4 from the book currently being written by Greg Eckerle called “Cat Tales: Jasper Sports Stories.” Eckerle can be reached at gregeckerle@twc.com)
The city-wide exhilaration at Jasper’s unprecedented run to Indiana’s 1934 basketball Final Four was squashed just five months later with the devastating news that star guard Eddie Rottet had died.
With his best friend and teammate Cyril Birge, Eddie was working with a surveying crew on State Road 164 between Celestine and the eastern border of Dubois County. During breaks, they both drank contaminated water from wells along the road. They both contracted typhoid fever, presumably from that water. Rottet was critically ill for seven weeks, finally dying on August 18. Birge was in a coma for over two months.
In his autobiography, Birge wrote about the day after Eddie and he drank the contaminated water: “We met as usual on the Dubois County Bank corner to be picked up and taken to work. We were feeling so bad, however, that we told the surveyors we couldn’t go with them that day. Eddie and I both said, ‘See you later,’ and went home. That was the last time we ever saw each other. . . . Eddie died at his home. He was just 17 years and 8 months old. Eddie’s doctor and family friend threw his stethoscope across the room in anguish and pain when Eddie breathed his last.”
When Birge later learned of Eddie’s fate, he wrote, “It was if my life was gone also. . . . I went home to spend the loneliest night I had ever gone through.” Adding to his gloom was that he was unable to use his basketball scholarship to Purdue University.
As Birge struggled with Eddie’s untimely death, he wrote Eddie’s parents a letter on how he felt about him. Their reply moved Cyril to tears. He kept their letter in his scrapbook until his 2008 death. That letter read: “To ‘Eddie’s’ best pal: You don’t know how glad we all were to think that you thought of us while in Louisville. Your letter was so interesting. I never thought of his success in that way. Maybe you are right. I don’t think ‘Eddie’ ever sought any glory, or ever realized his opportunity or ability, as you call it. Cyril, if you ever knew what that letter meant to us, although I cried all the while I was reading it and thought it over and over again since. Yes, you are welcome to go to ‘Eddie’s’ grave anytime we go. Just come anytime you want to go to the cemetery. (Then Penny Rottet wrote) I feel that you are and really were his true pal . . . That is the best letter I ever read. ‘Eddie’s’ pal will always be welcome in my house.”
Cyril had a huge section of his scrapbook devoted to Eddie, beginning with a page inscribed “My Pal Eddie.” He and Eddie were also softball teammates in the summer of 1934. So Cyril kept forever his old softball scorebook, which he wrote he “wouldn’t take a fortune for,” noting it included Eddie’s last game on June 28.
Another close friend of the Rottets was Carl Seng (1911-1990), later chairman of Jasper Desk Co. and a co-founder of Jasper Little League Baseball. He had worked for Eddie’s dad, Edward “Penny” Rottet, at Jasper Desk in the early 1930s. In a 1939 Herald poll of area fans, Penny Rottet was named as Jasper’s outstanding baseball player of all time.
Seng was interviewed in 1988 by the late area sportswriter Jack Schneider. Asked by Schneider who was the best Jasper High School basketball player he ever saw, Seng responded, “Eddie was the outstanding ballplayer that we had. He was the best athlete that Jasper produced because he had a combination of talents. He had a contract to sign with the New York Yankees in baseball. Eddie was the (basketball) floor general. He was the leader, and boy, they followed him. I was on the Jasper Reds the same time he was. Eddie could knock it out over the fence. He could do anything on the (basketball) floor. He had a built-in confidence. I was the last civilian outside of the family to talk to Eddie before he died. I took a half a bushel of green beans to them one morning. He’d been sick for weeks. He had gone down from 180 to about 70 pounds. That day I said, ‘How are you, Ed?’ ‘Oh, Carl,’ he said, ‘I don’t know.’ He died the next day.
“I can recall when the Reds played Ferdinand here (when Eddie was sick). His dad called the team together and said, ‘Fellas, there’s one thing that my son Ed wants. He wants the Reds to win this game today. I’d appreciate it if you would all give it your best.’ But the game was halted after 14 innings with the score nothing to nothing. Ferdinand had a heck of a good ballclub. Penny congratulated everybody. He said that will be a shot in the arm (for Eddie).”
As heartbreaking as Eddie’s tragic death was, it generated an honor in his memory that continues to inspire others, 91 years after his passing. The Eddie Rottet Memorial Trophy, instituted in 1935, is still awarded annually to a Jasper Boy Scout whose academic, athletic, scouting achievements and character most live up to Rottet’s excellence in those areas. The trophy, which is displayed in the Dubois County Museum’s sports exhibit, is adorned by figurines of Rottet’s three best sports – baseball, basketball, and tennis.
Ironically, Rottet’s tennis achievements eventually linked to his only nephew, Ed Yarbrough, who was named Ed at his 1946 birth in honor of his late uncle. As a longtime tennis coach, Yarbrough built Jasper High School into a statewide tennis power, winning a boys’ team state championship in 1999. Yarbrough’s son, Scott, has continued that tradition, as the head coach of the girls’ team state champions in 2025.
As for Eddie’s final resting place, it has a most fitting gravestone. One side has a regulation-sized stone basketball inscribed “All State JHS 1934.” It appropriately overlooks Jasper’s high school baseball field, standing in silent tribute to a player, a time and a team that should forever be known as a real catalyst for Jasper’s enduring love affair with sports.
(The next “Cat Tales” excerpt will cover how Cyril Birge rebounded from his struggles to become a state championship referee.)
Eddie Rottet’s gravestone in Jasper includes a replica basketball with the inscription All State JHS 1934.
