FIRST TEAM VS. SECOND
The Second Team started its training table Monday. The First had done
so a week earlier. The tables, each accommodating eighteen persons,
occupied the two farther corners of the dining-hall. That of the First
Team was given a certain degree of privacy by two oak screens similar
to the one that stood before the door leading to the pantry, but the
Second Team consumed its meals in full view of the world. Joining
the training table, Toby discovered, added no luxuries to your menu.
Rather, it did quite otherwise, for pastry and puddings, save for one
or two very simple concoctions, were sternly barred. You got rather
more beef and lamb――too underdone to please Toby――and eggs were a drug
on the market. Potatoes were served sparingly and only in the baked
condition. On the whole, there was a notable monotony to the training
table fare, but as the fellows were generally extremely hungry that
didn’t trouble them greatly.
Toby’s presence at the Second Team board was somewhat of a surprise to
Toby, since, as there were places for only seventeen players,――Coach
Burtis sat at the head of the table,――it seemed to him that he was
displacing more deserving talent. Why he should be there and Stair and
Bird not there, was a conundrum, a conundrum that was partly answered
for him that Monday afternoon.
“You’re on B Team, Tucker,” announced Mr. Burtis when, at four o’clock,
the players were called back to the bench. “Show me what you’ve learned
the last week. You’ll have Lippman at half and I want you to use him
whenever you can. Play him hard. He will stand it. And don’t neglect
your kicking game just because your punters aren’t the best. The only
way for them to learn is to have it to do. Keep to simple plays; B Team
doesn’t know anything complicated; and speed it up all you know how.”
“Y-yes, sir,” agreed Toby. Then he shed his blanket and wondered
whether he had learned anything the last week, and if he had what it
was! However, it wouldn’t do to let either the coach or the players
guess the trepidation he felt, and so he pulled on his head-guard
quite snappily and limbered up his legs, as, he judged, was the
approved thing to do, and looked as smiling and care-free as possible.
Then the two teams trotted out, A with the ball, and Gyp blew a whistle
and his troubles had begun.
But, after all, the troubles weren’t so many, nor so formidable. He
made mistakes, and he shared in a perfectly ghastly fumble on A’s
twenty-six yards, and twice he got his signals so badly mixed that
the whole team howled at him. But, on the other hand, he put vim into
his fellows and followed the coach’s directions regarding Lippman and
the kicking game and the use of simple plays, and before the period
had ended he had the exquisite pleasure of watching the pigskin skin
the enemy’s cross-bar for a three-point tally. He could have wept
tears of joy on Crawford’s neck for that thirty-yard drop-kick, and A
Team’s sullen resentment was an added delight. But B had to pay for
her cheekiness. Already A had scored a touchdown, and now, bitterly
resentful, she set to work to wreak vengeance. And she did it finally,
for three long runs by Nelson and White took the ball back to B’s
thirty-five yards and White plugged along for another down through
a crumbling right side in spite of Toby’s shrill exhortations, and
Stover banged into Sid Creel, at center, and piled through to the
eighteen. Toby was very glad when time was called for Sid’s recovery,
for B was on the run and becoming more disorganized each moment. He
spent a precious two minutes ranging the line and “talking Dutch,” and
when Sid, looking vague and dizzy, shuffled into his position again
there was a perceptible stiffening of the defense. But it couldn’t
last against A’s battering-ram tactics, and presently it was crumbling
again. Short gains but steady, and B was on her last white line, and it
was second down and every one was shouting or grunting. Toby gritted
his teeth and danced about and hurled defiance across the bent backs
before him, all the time trying with the intensity of despair to
guess the play that was coming. He did guess, but he guessed wrong,
and Nelson shot unexpectedly outside right tackle, straight for the
center of the goal, and the only satisfaction Toby got was in sitting
on Nelson’s head after he had been pulled down by Crawford. Bowen
grinned miserably, and every B Team fellow was very, very careful not
so much as to look at him; for Bowen was right tackle and had been most
ingloriously eliminated. After that the horn squawked and the half was
over.
Toby and several others who had played through the whole twelve minutes
were dismissed to the showers, although all would have preferred
staying and watching the second half. Instead, they argued hotly
all the way up to the gymnasium――the two teams being very equally
represented――and still argued, though with diminished heat, while
the showers hissed. Toby was secretly rather well satisfied with his
performance that afternoon until, later, he learned that B Team, under
Roy Frick’s generalship, had actually scored a touchdown in the last
period of play!
On Tuesday, after a half-hour of light practice, the Second trotted
over to the First Team field and, before a large and interested
audience, was badly mauled and beaten. Frick and Rawson played quarter
through two twelve-minute halves, and Toby and Stair――Bird, it seemed,
had retired to private life――sat on the bench and watched and worried,
trying to believe that things would have gone no better for the Second
if they had taken part. Second used most of her substitutes in a vain
effort to stave off, not defeat, for that was inevitable, but dishonor,
and could make nothing of it. First Team piled up the scores with
a merciless and monotonous succession and the audience yawned and
drifted away.
“What’s that?” asked Lou Stair drearily. “Twenty-three?”
“Twenty-six,” answered Toby glumly.
“Gee-jiminy-gosh!” groaned Stair. “Say, what’s the matter with the
Second, anyway? What’s got into ’em, Tucker! Look at Smith, will you?
Why doesn’t he get down? Why doesn’t Frick get after him? He thinks
he’s a skyscraper! And there goes Dawson off-side again! Gee, our bunch
is playing like sand-lot kids! Well, he got away with it, and that’s
something!”
“What of it?” asked Toby dully. “We didn’t make enough to plant a row
of beans on! That’s third. White’ll have to punt.”
“Yeah, as much as ten yards!” jeered Stair. “What’d I tell you? Guess
he’s got a friend on the side-line, the way he kicked the ball there!
Well, here’s where First scores again!”
And presently First did that very thing, Toby’s gloom being slightly
relieved by the fact that it was Arnold who took the ball over by a
slashing run from the Second’s eighteen yards. Gloom enveloped the
whole blanketed line of watchers that second half, for they had been
doing a good deal of talking as to what was to happen to the First
Team when they tried conclusions. In fact, Second had even gone so far
as to hint that the real reason Coach Lyle hadn’t let his team face the
Second before was his fear of a disastrous defeat. Toby wondered how
Coach Burtis, pacing tranquilly to and fro along the side-line, his
hands buried in his trousers pockets, could maintain his expression of
unconcern in the face of such direful happenings! Toby would have felt
a heap better if Mr. Burtis had scowled or kicked at a pebble or shown
distress in some other manner. The coach’s unruffled demeanor seemed to
Toby to smack of treason! He was very glad when that farcical game came
to an end with a final score of 33 to 0.
Second, fagged, disheveled, outraged, climbed a weary path to the
gymnasium, muttering threats of vengeance; hearing which Coach Burtis
smiled a secret smile of satisfaction. Toby felt quite disgraced until
the lapse of an hour or two brought a realization of the fact that such
things had happened before and would happen again, and that no one took
them very seriously. At supper Mr. Burtis ate quite as much as usual
and with as much enjoyment, and talked and jested in his accustomed
manner; which encouraged Toby to satisfy a really ravenous hunger.
After a steak and a baked potato and the usual trimmings he found that
he could view the afternoon’s Waterloo with equanimity. There was, he
reflected, another day coming!
Wednesday found Toby learning A Team signals, his allegiance
transferred to that squad by order of the coach. In the scrimmage
Rawson led B Team and Toby adorned the bench until near the end of
the second half. Then Frick came out and Toby went in and received an
evil and portentous wink from Sid Creel. That wink said very plainly:
“You wait till I get at you, you renegade!” Just at first it was a bit
disconcerting to find himself slamming into his former teammates and
to realize that they not only no longer loved him but were eager to
grind his face in the earth and otherwise degrade him! Before the game
was over, though, he had very effectually forgotten the old ties and
was glorying in every foot of territory conquered by A Team. It was
remarkable what a healthy antagonism existed between the two squads.
Before the scrimmage they were all Second Team fellows, and afterwards,
in the locker-room, they fraternized nicely, but while the game lasted
they were enemies and aliens, and neither side asked quarter. Toby,
during a busy six or seven minutes of play that afternoon, was rather
rudely handled by his former comrades, and made his way up the hill
with a ruddy nose and several assorted contusions. But he had the
satisfaction of a touchdown and a brief word of commendation from Coach
Burtis; and nothing else much mattered.
Thursday they went against the First again and, while they were once
more decisively trimmed, they made a far better showing. Toby got
in for the whole of the second half and, after recovering from a
bad attack of stage fright, gave a fairly good account of himself.
Toby wasn’t one to seek personal glory, and there were times when he
might have taken the ball himself and didn’t. He did get off one good
twenty-yard sprint with the pigskin clasped in the cradle of his elbow,
and got a hearty thump on his back from Arnold as he trotted by that
member of the enemy forces and a rousing acclaim from the stands. But
for the rest Toby stayed modestly in position, letting Nelson and White
and, less frequently, Stover, perform the back-field stunts――or try to.
First Team was fast rounding into a hard-working, aggressive, snappy
organization, and facing her was no child’s play. That the Second held
her to four scores that day, and credited herself with a field-goal,
speaks well for Coach Burtis’ charges. Second didn’t consider that she
had actually wiped out the stigma of Tuesday’s overwhelming defeat, but
she derived a lot of comfort from her showing, and White, whose capable
foot had secured that goal from the field, was a twenty-four hour hero.
It was even whispered that Coach Lyle had been seen looking hard at
White and that the latter’s transfer to the First Team was inevitable.
Which, while it may have brought pleasant anticipations to the Second
Team while full-back, filled the rest of the fellows with gloomy
forebodings.
“That’s the way they do,” lamented Farquhar, the rangy left tackle.
“Just as soon as we get a fellow so’s he’s some use to us they nab him
for the First. What’s the use of that? If they want us to give ’em
good practice they ought to let us have some decent players. But they
don’t. Last year they swiped three of our fellows two weeks before the
Broadwood game. They make me very weary!”
However, it seemed that Second’s fears might be groundless, for Friday
found White still with them, and he was still with them the following
day when the First went up against Forest Hill School.