SPORT FOR SPORT’S SAKE
The football weeks were coming to an end. With the loss of eight strong
players who had graduated the year before, or for other sufficient
reasons had left school, and the lack of proper new material with which
to work, the coach and school had been hard put to it to develop an
eleven worthy of Seaton traditions. Sam played on the second eleven
when he got the chance, and regularly did practice kicking to give
exercise in catching punts to the backs on the first. He understood
well, however, that he was not of the chosen, and cherished no
illusions as to chance of promotion.
With the best of skill and labor a perfect finished product cannot
be expected from poor materials. The school, whose pride had been
exalted by the achievements of the Great Year just past, felt keenly
the failure of the eleven to round into proper form. Weak spots,
apparently incurable, developed in the line. The attack was frequently
forceless and scattered, the defence slow, the whole game perfunctory
and spiritless. Inferior elevens were allowed to score; teams which
Hillbury had found easy, proved serious foes at Seaton. General
sentiment grew pessimistic as the season advanced.
It was perhaps for this reason that the class games aroused so great
an interest. The juniors got out their heavy men, inspired them with a
spirit of dash and defiance, and beat the lower middlers. The seniors
drafted four fellows from the school second eleven, filled up the
number from the squad of brawny candidates, and went forth to bag the
upper middlers. Varney, the captain of Archer’s class team, took what
he could get from the second eleven,--three, all told,--picked the best
of the crowd of ambitious amateurs, and took up the gage of battle. Sam
found himself, as the only man who could put the ball back straight,
playing at centre, expected to change places with Bull Norris, the
full-back, when there was occasion for kicking.
The school team, with the faculty director of athletics, had gone to
Cambridge for a game with the Harvard freshmen. Some of the teachers
were out of town; others were busy with their own affairs. Not a soul
of them was on the campus--a fact which was not at first observed.
An umpire and a referee were chosen from the two lower classes. The
referee, from the defeated lower middlers, showed himself a model of
fairness; the umpire, a junior, favored the seniors, whom he considered
the weaker team, hoping that they would survive the fray to meet his
own class. The class supporters took their places decorously on the
side benches, and cheered their representatives in due and seemly
fashion. Archer kicked the ball to the seniors’ ten-yard line, where
Hoover took it and ran it back fifteen yards. At this point there was
a wrangle over Fairmount’s illegitimate blocking. The umpire affirmed
at the outset that the performance was perfectly legal; but on being
pressed, took safer ground for his decision by declaring that he didn’t
see the blocking at all. This aroused a new spirit. The upper middlers
jeered at the umpire, the seniors jeered at the upper middlers. In the
next scrimmage, Taylor, who was playing quarter, didn’t receive the
ball cleanly from his centre, and Archer, sprawling his full length
through a narrow hole beside the guard’s knees, got his hands on the
ball and pulled it under his chin. The squirming layers were stripped
off and Sam was adjudged the rightful holder. Then the upper middlers
pushed Kendrick, their heavy half-back, through the line again and
again, now behind big Ames, now behind Mulcahy, the other tackle, now
through the centre, until a touch-down was achieved, and later a goal.
This score temporarily soothed the inflammation caused by Fairmount’s
holding.
The seniors sent the ball down to Mudie, who fumbled it and was caught
on the fifteen-yard line. Archer now gave up his place to Norris, who
passed back for a kick. The ball came so high that Sam had to jump for
it, but he managed to get his kick off before Putnam carried him down.
The ball went out of bounds on the forty-yard line, where the seniors
got it. They had no star like Kendrick, whose playing was surprisingly
hard and fast, but they worked well together, and Taylor ran his game
cleverly. Through guard and centre was no thoroughfare, but the upper
middler ends were hugged and pulled out of the way, without protest
from the short-sighted umpire, and the ball was shoved down upon the
goal line by a series of successful flank movements, helped out by an
occasional frontal attack on the tackles. So the score was made even by
a senior touch-down and goal.
Meanwhile the audience was warming up. A detachment moved down from
the benches to the side-lines, whither the balance of the interested
sympathizers speedily followed. Regular cheering ceased. From either
side now rose spontaneous yells of exultation or hoots of disapproval.
The witty indulged in jocose personalities directed against players of
the opposite camp. The two classes not concerned took sides, juniors
with upper middlers, lower middlers with seniors. Archer kicked off
again to the seniors’ fifteen-yard line. Taylor tried a quarterback
run, and was nailed on the starting line and thrown back two yards.
The seniors’ kick was blocked by Ames, who struck down the arms of
his opponent, and rushing through, took the rising punt on his chest.
From Ames the ball bounded against the goal-post and rebounded among
the pack. It was found, in time, under an upper middler’s body. Wildes,
the senior left end, declared that it had been stolen from him, but
the referee would not allow the claim. Then Kendrick threw himself
into several breaches, and plunged, wriggled, and crawled his way to a
touch-down. Soon after this the half came to an end.
By this time it had become generally known that not a prof was on
the field. A wild spirit possessed the crowd, a spirit of frolic and
horse-play. Each party wanted victory, but it wanted fun also, and on
the whole more. The ground was cleared for the second half by volunteer
policemen, who made a great show of eagerness for order, and in fact
led in the disorder. The crowd toed the side-lines when the seniors
kicked off; when Kendrick got the ball and ran it back, the throng
of upper middlers crossed the lines and swept in behind the wake of
the play. Varney’s men rushed the ball until they were blocked, when
Archer kicked. Hoover took the ball safely for the seniors, and started
his team on a return trip. Immediately another line of spectators crept
up behind the ball, crowding in upon the game, cutting off the seniors’
crack end runs and forcing the play directly through the line. Here the
upper middlers held, and got the ball.
Yet, strange to say, though the upper middlers now found conditions
exactly to their liking, the line plunges, which had been successful
before, suddenly failed. Every attack that penetrated the line seemed
to meet three men in the secondary defence. Big Ames glanced over the
heads of his two opponents and yelled: “Referee! referee! they’re
playing thirteen men!”
The line, and the crescent of supporters behind it, took up the cry.
The crescent contracted, and meeting the line of seniors, enclosed the
players and cut off escape. The two centres knelt at the ball, gazing
at each other through sweat-dimmed eyes, while the officials counted.
The senior uniforms numbered twelve!
[Illustration: “REFEREE! REFEREE! THEY’RE PLAYING THIRTEEN MEN!”
_Page 44._]
Groans and taunts greeted this discovery. The senior team was
reduced to the normal number, elbow room was won by the use of elbows,
and the play went on. Two tackles developed such a mutual interest
that they disregarded the game altogether and devoted their energies
during every scrimmage exclusively to each other. Each was goaded on
by a troop of ardent backers. The ring of spectators narrowed and
thickened and heaved and sputtered. Ambitious volunteers sprang in
behind and lent a hand in pushing or in staying the enemy’s charge.
In the increasing confusion, a loud voice shouted “Game’s over!” In a
twinkling began a stampede for the possession of the ball, a confused
running and pushing and swarming. The football bladder burst in the
mêlée; all that the outnumbering upper middlers carried away was the
collapsed cover of the much-tormented ball.
In spite of the assertion of spectators of all classes that the
senior-upper middler game had been the most enjoyable event of the
school year, Sam was not wholly content to have his serious efforts
turned into a joke. Duncan, who was manager of the senior team,
likewise strongly disapproved of the course of things, and vowed that
he should protest the game. Together they talked it over in the second
spontaneous conversation of the year, in which Peck took great pains to
deny that there had been any intention of putting twelve men into the
field against eleven.
The next morning the whole school were treated to a chapel lecture on
the extreme impropriety of their conduct on the field the day before,
and to an exposition of the irreparable injury caused thereby to the
dignity and fair fame of the institution. At the same time the game was
declared null and void, and command was issued that it be replayed. The
ruling as to the game the boys accepted as reasonable; the invective
against their rowdyism served but to sweeten the recollection of an
hour when they had actually enjoyed sport for sport’s sake.