The West Roxbury Toilet Bowl Thanksgiving game may not be the cleanest football you can go out to see on Thanksgiving morning, but it’s a tradition that’s been going strong for 73 years. That’s how long the tradition has been in existence.

Organizer Richie Moses said they took 2020 off because of COVID-19, but stipulated that they have had now, after this past Thursday, 72 total Toilet Bowl games in the neighborhood.

The colorful euphemism for the annual game doesn’t stem from the fact that the game is played over a sewer/drainage basin. In fact, construction of the sewer was actually a great improvement for the players as the Draper Field, behind the Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF) Draper Pool, used to regularly flood into a muddy mess. Yet they played anyway.

“This place used to be all mush and slush back then,” Moses said. “But it’s been nice weather for the past 10 or 15 years… But if you came down here a few years ago, you would have seen us up to our waists in muck.”

And this is somewhat verifiable, because if you go to the city’s map database website – https://tinyurl.com/zcc2v9ah – you can see definitive brown spots on the borders of Draper Field from the city’s 1955 aerial map of the city.

Luckily, Thursday’s game had solid ground beneath it while the black shirts played the green shirts for the coveted Toilet Bowl Trophy – which is wrapped in toilet paper.

Moses said 13 neighborhood friends started the tradition back in the 50s including Tom Grattan, Nick Tobichuk, Barry Krug, Bob Guiney, Bob Runci, Jerry Quinn, Fred Grattan, Frank Crossen, Larry Deraney, Paul Mantosh, Dennis Guiney Jr., Dan Lavache and Leo Glover. Moses pointed out all the houses of the founders that can be seen from the field as the game went on.

He said the day has a way of generating new recruits as it passes down (or runs down, depending on the play) the generations.

“It’s a neighborhood thing; every generation comes down,” he said. “The younger kids would throw the football around on the sidelines while the founders would play the main game. As the kids got older they infuse themselves into the game itself, IF they could handle the punishment.”

Moses said the two teams facing off against each other this past Thanksgiving had a lot of history behind them, but also have a decent amount of history ahead of them too.

“From the original generation that started it, there is probably six generations on the team out there now,” he said.

Richie’s Brother Bob Moses said while many of the old guard have moved away, that doesn’t mean they stop playing. “A lot of people moved away, some far away, but they tend to come back because they have such great memories of each other,” Bob Moses said.

Bob Moses said he bowed out from the game a short while ago, but still makes it a point to come out. “This game started the year I was born,” he said. “I’m 73 this year and there is no way I’m getting out there.”

Richie Moses said their morning game is a good start to the rest of the high school and college bowl games throughout the nation.

“So it starts at 9 a.m., then there are the high school ones, then the college ones start and so we think this kind of starts off a great day,” he said.

Richie Moses said the games are pretty serious but injuries are pretty rare. “They take it seriously so they play hard, but nobody gets into a fight,” he said, almost at the same moment as a verbal argument broke out as a pass reception took place with one foot out of bounds.”

“We do argue a lot,” Bob Moses allowed.

“Yeah, there were more arguments about close plays years ago, but nowadays people play with more precision and they don’t really get in each others’ faces,” Richie Moses said.

And, this was broadly true. No one fought, during the game at least. The Bulletin was not invited to any of the players’ Thanksgiving Dinners, and so there is no information as to how those went.

If you’re interested in playing next year make sure to show up before the 9 a.m. start time. The games start on time so as to leave enough time for cooking and watching all the other bowls (and plates, and gravy boats, and turkeys).