EXPERT OPINION
Wolcott was waiting in Dr. Brayton’s reception room. Dr. Brayton had
been delayed at the hospital, the maid explained, but would soon be in.
So Wolcott, curbing his impatience, gazed with half-hearted curiosity at
the decorations of the room, and alternately wished that his father
would act like other fathers, and wondered what kind of a man Dr.
Brayton would be. There were books and magazines on the table, but at
this moment books and magazines offered no attraction. Through a door
opening into another room he caught a glimpse of one end of a framed
diploma, and as he moved restlessly to the next chair, two photographs
of football teams hanging one above the other came into view.
Now framed diplomas had no possible interest for Wolcott Lindsay, Jr.,
but pictures of football teams, probably famous teams, belonged to an
entirely different category. He strained his eyes to make out the
letters on the jerseys and sweaters, for the elevens were of the period
when uniforms always bore the college initial. Failing in this, he
advanced to the door, and, still tempted, boldly crossed the room and
stood face to face with the pictures. Yes, they were Yale and Harvard
elevens. Odd that the two should be hanging together like this! They
were fine-looking fellows, beyond a doubt, but light! Not one in either
picture looked a match for Laughlin.
An authoritative voice from behind startled him.
“Well, what do you think of them?”
Flushing deeply at being discovered in a place where he was perhaps not
expected to be, Wolcott turned round upon his questioner. Before him
stood a man a little shorter than himself, though heavier, whose breadth
of shoulders was not due to tailor’s padding, nor his girth of chest to
shirt front. He looked like the older brother of one of the players in
the upper picture. The head prematurely bald, the streaks of gray in the
close-clipped mustache, the serious lines about the mouth significant of
heavy responsibilities faithfully borne—all this befitted a man well on
in middle life. But the figure was still alert and young, the complexion
still fresh, and the eyes still shone with the vivacity and friendliness
of youth.
“They look rather small for members of big college elevens,” answered
Wolcott. “They must have been quick, though, and I don’t suppose they
needed to be so heavy for the game they used to play then.”
The surgeon’s gaze swept him from head to foot, resting fleetingly on
his chest and thighs, and returning again to his face.
“It was a more open game in those days,” said Dr. Brayton, “and less
elaborate. The crushing wedge attack and the complicated system of
interference hadn’t yet been developed. So the play was livelier, less
dangerous, and I think more interesting to watch.”
“So he calls it dangerous, too,” thought Wolcott, with a sinking at the
heart. Depressed at the doctor’s words, and shy under the searching gaze
of the strange eyes, he turned again to the pictures, rather to hide his
embarrassment than because his interest in them was still keen. In the
moment of silence that followed it occurred to him that this was a
strange way in which to conduct himself in the office of a distinguished
man who had interrupted his daily programme to give him a special
hearing, and still more dissatisfied with himself he swung round again
and opened his mouth to explain his business. Just then Dr. Brayton
began to speak, and the formal phrase on Wolcott’s lips took flight.
“Yes, as players they may not—I say _may_ not—have been the equals of
the football heroes of to-day; but your heroes of to-day will have to be
something more than football players to match the work some of these
little fellows are doing now.”
“What are they doing?” asked Wolcott, eagerly. Here was one of his
father’s criticisms anticipated.
“Their part in the world,” Dr. Brayton answered. “Take the backfield of
that Harvard team, for example. The full-back is head of an important
city church; the right half-back is manager of one of the great Western
copper mines; the other half is perhaps the cleverest surgeon of his age
in Boston; one of the quarter-backs is professor at Columbia, and the
substitute half is president of one of the largest publishing houses of
the country. The team has been out of college considerably less than
twenty years.”
“You don’t say anything about yourself,” said Wolcott, with
complimentary naïveté.
Dr. Brayton laughed. “I belong to the second class—those who have been
faithful in small things.”
“Have the Yale men done as well?” asked the young man.
“I don’t know so much about them. That man holding the ball is a full
professor at Yale. The man at his left is governor of the Hawaiian
Islands.”[2]
-----
Footnote 2:
These records of Harvard and Yale ex-football players are taken from
the teams of a certain year between 1885 and 1890—teams with which the
author happens to be familiar. They are quoted not as remarkable, but
as typical.
-----
“I’m much obliged to you for telling me all this,” said Wolcott. “My
father thinks football players are an inferior kind of men, who never
will amount to anything, and I’m glad to know some facts that prove the
contrary. I suppose I ought to introduce myself,” he added, his shyness
suddenly recurring.
“You don’t need to do that,” replied the doctor, laughing pleasantly.
“When I have an appointment with a young man who wants an examination
for football, and I find a stalwart youth in my inner room so absorbed
in studying old football pictures that he doesn’t hear me come in, it
isn’t difficult to guess who he is. But now for business. What is it
that you wish me to do?”
Wolcott explained his situation. He wanted Dr. Brayton to look him over
and see what condition he was in, and then he hoped—he really had no
hope—that the report to his father might in some way permit him to slip
back into the game.
“If you have any idea that I’m going to say that football is not a
dangerous game, you are mistaken,” said the doctor, gravely, poising his
stethoscope in his hand. “It is a dangerous game; but while for some the
danger is considerable, for others it is insignificant—not greater than
in any sport where physical strength and endurance are severely tested.
In my judgment football doesn’t compare in risk with bicycle riding or
automobiling, or sailing or swimming. Given the right man in the right
conditions, and the danger is trifling. The only question is whether you
are the right man, and whether you play under the right conditions.”
For some minutes the thumping and sounding went on. When at last the
stethoscope went back into the drawer, Wolcott asked eagerly, “Am I the
right man?”
But Dr. Brayton, instead of answering, started a series of questions as
to how long he had played, what injuries he had received, whether he had
gained or lost in weight during the season, how he felt at the present
time, whether listless and tired, or elastic and eager for the game;
whether the coach and trainer were capable and trustworthy men, what
kind of a game was played at Seaton, and between Seaton and Hillbury;
and a dozen similar questions. The last question touched on the
accidents of the season.
“There have been hardly any at Seaton this year,” said Wolcott. “A
few have been out for a while with bad ankles or Charley Horse, and
one fellow had a football ear. Why, the manager told me this morning
that the doctor’s bill for the care of the first and second
elevens—thirty-five men—for seven weeks was only nineteen
dollars.”[3]
-----
Footnote 3:
The bill for medical and surgical attendance on the school football
squad (thirty-five men) at Exeter in the season of 1904, reckoned at
full rates, was twenty-two dollars. The injuries were mainly muscle
bruises and strained ankles. The most troublesome case was a neglected
scratch on the foot. The trainer reports for the same season, among
the one hundred and twenty-five fellows playing football on the
various school and class teams, “practically no injuries at all.” The
record for the year 1903 was much the same. In a private school in
Boston, where seventy-five to one hundred boys, from ten to eighteen
years old, were engaged during the fall of 1904 in playing football,
the only accident of the season was a broken nose, suffered by a boy
who did not wear a nose guard. At Harvard, after a peculiarly
unfortunate season, in which, it is feared, men were sometimes played
when not in the pink of condition, those best acquainted with the
facts could still report in January, 1905, “We had no injuries that
could be called serious.” From New Haven a most trustworthy authority
writes: “We have been fortunate here for many years in having no
serious accidents. The most incapacitating accidents this season have
been muscle bruises, generally called ‘Charley Horse,’ which, while in
no sense permanent and, as the surgeons would put it, with a
distinctly favorable prognosis, cripple a man’s speed so much as to
make it almost impossible to use him if he is a player in the
backfield. For this reason Yale’s backs in the Harvard game were
different from those who faced Princeton a week before. Yet though
these two hard contests came close together, no Yale man left the
field in the Harvard game, and no time was taken out on Yale’s
account.”
It is safe to say that no harder football is played in the country
than at Exeter and Yale; yet the reports from these centres of the
game bear little resemblance to the lurid tales of murder and
mutilation which newspaper correspondents delight in. The worst
injuries from football known to the writer have occurred in games
played by workingmen out for a holiday, or by untaught, unfit lads
trying what they imagined to be football.
-----
Dr. Brayton stared incredulously. “I shouldn’t want that doctor’s job.
You must have a good trainer.”
“We have,” said the boy, simply.
The interview was apparently over. Wolcott put on his coat. “Would you
mind telling me what kind of fellows it is dangerous for?” he asked.
“The overtrained and the undertrained; the weak and the flabby; and the
man who plays against dirty football.”
“What about me?” asked Wolcott.
But Dr. Brayton would not answer. “I’ll see your father this evening,
and he may hand on to you my opinion, if he chooses. If he _does_ let
you play, I shall expect of you two things: first don’t get hurt;
second, beat Hillbury, as in my day we sometimes failed to do.”
That evening Wolcott hovered within sound of the door-bell, and watched
from a retired place as the parlor maid opened the door. He heard Dr.
Brayton ask for Mr. Lindsay and saw him shown into the reception room.
After an endless half-hour he was ushered out, and Wolcott went boldly
in. Mr. Lindsay was standing in deep thought.
“I want to know my fate, father,” said the son, looking eagerly down
into his father’s eyes.
“Do you still want to play in that foolish game?”
“There is nothing in this world I want more.”
“Then if you hold me to my promise I shall be forced to let you do it,
though it is against my better judgment. Brayton has gone back on me.”
Wolcott’s face shone with joy. “It’s awfully good of you to give in.
Can’t you come to the game? You’ll see that it isn’t so bad as they
pretend.”
“Thank you for the invitation, but it is unnecessary,” said Mr. Lindsay,
grimly. “I shall be there! And if I’m convinced in the course of the
contest that you are risking life or limb, I shall take you out, Dr.
Brayton or no Dr. Brayton.”
There was joy in the football clique on Monday morning when Wolcott
returned with the good news. He joined in the practice once more that
afternoon, and went into his game like a storage battery recharged, full
of fire and dash and strength. The head coach and the trainer took his
case to heart in their after-practice consultation, and the result was
that the work of the last week was materially lightened. The last signal
practice left the team fresh, vigorous, and eager for the fray.