You Relays Got a Hold On Me

Some five decades after Dave Johnson’s first Penn Relays, the details still return to him with ease. There was the tingling sensation he felt on that mild Saturday morning in late April 1968, arriving at Franklin Field as an alternate miler for his high school team and seeing an “absolutely mind-boggling” crowd of nearly 29,000 track fans—more spectators than he’d ever seen, save for that time his dad took him to Connie Mack Stadium to watch Sandy Koufax pitch. And the chills he got leaving the Relays that night, hustling to the parking lot with a coach who was hell-bent on beating traffic, when Villanova’s Larry James set a meet record with a scorching 43.9-second anchor leg in the 4x440 final and the stadium’s roar rumbled through the streets of West Philadelphia.

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