JIM DABBLES IN STRATEGY
November was nearly a fortnight old and football was fairly on the
home-stretch. With the New Falmouth game out of the way, Alton had
still to face Mount Millard, Oak Grove and Kenly Hall, the first two
at home, the latter at Lakeville. Frosty nights and frequent chill
and lowery days had taken the place of October mildness, and football
enthusiasm, which, like the witch hazel, only comes into full blossom
after the tang of frost is in the air, was rampant. Football tunes were
heard in the dormitories and wherever two or more fellows were gathered
together the talk was of the team and of Kenly Hall’s warriors and of
the prospects of a Gray-and-Gold victory. In short, it was the season
of the year when most normal American youths talk, think and dream
football.
Kenly Hall had won her five games with seeming ease, rolling up large
scores on three occasions, and Alton scouts had returned to speak
with much respect of the Cherry-and-Black. Those seeking light on the
comparative merits of Alton and Kenly had little to work on. Lorimer
Academy was the only adversary appearing on the schedules of both.
Alton had won from Lorimer 6 to 0. Kenly had defeated Lorimer 27 to 6.
From these scores a variety of conclusions could be and were drawn.
Pessimists pointed gloomily to the fact that whereas Alton had been
able to put over but one touchdown against Lorimer, Kenly had made
four. Optimists dwelt on the fact that although unable to cross Alton’s
goal-line Lorimer had found Kenly’s pregnable. So there you were.
Unlimited argument was possible.
Coach Cade and his assistants, though, had more information to work
on. To them it was known that Kenly had a heavy, powerful team which
had developed early in the season and which had yet to meet opposition
strong enough to thoroughly test it. Kenly’s line was strong, if
sluggish, and her backfield had weight and experience. So far her backs
had shown better ability at plunging than at running plays, and Kenly
had won her battles largely on assaults inside and outside tackles.
If she had any running game it had not been shown, and the same was
only slightly less true of her kicking. In short, Kenly appeared to be
standing pat on the style of football played by her last year and the
year before; and for several years before that. She was using a fairly
well diversified attack inasmuch as she used short over-the-line
passes inside the opponent’s forty-yard line and pulled off an end run,
not often successfully, frequently enough to keep the adversary in
doubt. If the Cherry-and-Black had one weakness it was in the position
of quarter-back. She had tried out three men there and none had
exhibited much genius for generalship, although all had plenty of skill
as players. Coach Cade drew most satisfaction from the fact that so far
Kenly had persisted along old lines and still showed no disposition to
upset his plans by introducing innovation.
On the Tuesday following the New Falmouth game the second team, when
it faced the first for the first scrimmage of the week, discovered
that the opponent was using a new arrangement of the backs. Quarter
and one half-back stood five yards behind the line of scrimmage, the
former opposite left tackle, the latter opposite the guard-tackle
hole on the right. The other half-back and the full-back stood three
yards behind the first two, the first directly back of center and the
second directly back of the outside half. With this arrangement every
pass from center was necessarily made straight to the runner and every
member of the back-field was eligible to take a forward pass. There
was no variation of the formation save for drop--or place-kicking. The
punting was done by Whittier from approximately six yards behind the
center. This necessitated getting kicks off quickly, but Steve was
equal to it. The first team’s first punt from the new formation so
surprised the second team that the ball went over the defensive back’s
head!
Combined with line shifts of various sorts, the new backfield formation
showed more and more merit as the season progressed. Plays in which the
back received the ball while moving seemed especially adapted to it
since speed was one thing that the Gray-and-Gold backfield possessed.
Such plays demand extreme nicety in their execution and following the
New Falmouth game the blackboard became a prominent feature in the
instruction and dummy drills a favorite occupation. Evening sessions
were held five times a week and plays were set forth in diagram on the
blackboard and then walked through on the gymnasium floor. A second
volunteer coach had appeared in the person of an old Alton player named
Lake, and to him fell the task of putting the final polish on the
backs. Football at Alton was now running under forced draft.
Thursday, which would ordinarily have seen a hard practice in
preparation for Mount Millard, was very nearly a wasted day, for a hard
rain set in about mid-morning and continued until long after dark. The
gridiron became a squashy, soggy territory interspersed with miniature
lakes by three o’clock, and so, although the afternoon was to have
been devoted to the perfecting of several plays to be used on Saturday,
the best coaches and players could do was to hold a blackboard party in
the gymnasium. Five first-string men were to go to Lakeville Saturday
to watch Kenly play Comerford and the players who were to take their
places were none too well drilled in their rôles. Jim was one of the
latter, for Rolls Roice was included in the scouting expedition, and he
and George Mulford would both be called on to fill in. Jim suspected
that Mulford would be Mr. Cade’s first choice, and the suspicion didn’t
worry him at all. Of course he would rather play against Mount Millard
than sit on the bench, but whether he was put in at left tackle at the
start or only sent in as a substitute for Mulford or Sawyer didn’t
matter much to him. He paid strict attention to the blackboard talk and
went through formations and signal drill afterwards conscientiously
enough, but his heart wasn’t in it. The squad was dismissed early,
with instructions to report there again at seven-fifteen for a night
session, and Jim trailed back to Haylow through the downpour to find,
whether to his relief or disappointment he couldn’t have said, Number
15 empty.
He was up on his studies for Friday, and so he tried to read a story
in a magazine, stretching his long form on the window-seat and
holding the pages close to the pane in the dim white light. But the
story failed to win his interest, and after a while he arose, found
his rules book, a pad of paper and a pencil and began to make lines
and circles and crosses. Lots of times, lying wakeful in bed, Jim had
concocted quite marvelous plays in his mind. At least, they had seemed
marvelous at the time. Now he proposed to set them down on paper and
see what they really looked like. It proved to be a most entertaining,
even absorbing, occupation. The plays he had figured out in bed, or,
at least, the few he could remember now, weren’t at all startling when
put to the test. Indeed, few of them were original even to Jim, and
those that were transgressed some rule of play. A perfectly gorgeous
end-run looked like a world-beater until it dawned on its inventor that
it depended for its effectiveness on the presence of a back between
tackle and end and that if the back put himself there one of the other
line-men would have to drop out. But difficulties were made to be
overcome, problems to be solved, and as soon as one diagram had been
proved valueless Jim tore off a sheet from the pad and began all over
again. When it was almost too dark to see he heard Clem’s steps in the
corridor and gathered the discarded sheets up very quickly and stuffed
them in a pocket. He suspected that trying to discover football plays
not already discovered was a puerile pursuit, and he didn’t want Clem
to catch him at it. What he did not have time to do, however, before
the door opened was to tear off the top sheet of the pad on which he
had just finished the plan for a forward-pass. So he dropped the pad
face-down beside him, and when Clem entered he was innocently gazing
through the rain-washed pane at the dripping trees and sodden turf
below.
“Hello,” said Clem. “Why the gloom?”
“Too lazy to get up,” replied Jim. Clem put the lights on and viewed
his room-mate curiously. “Probably,” he had thought, “the poor duffer’s
sort of blue and lonesome.” And, being sorry, he was prepared to “eat
dirt,” if necessary, to put things back on something like the old
footing. But Jim was thinking of the last play he had fashioned. It
had looked good to him, although there had not been time to go over
it thoroughly after completion. He wished that Clem had delayed his
arrival by another five minutes; or would take himself out again so
that he could study the new play at his leisure. Consequently, when
Clem looked for pathos in Jim’s face he didn’t find it. Jim looked
anything but lonesome and unhappy. Sitting in the dark and staring out
onto a rain-drenched world, which would have given Clem the dumps in
no time, appeared to have an animating, even cheering, effect on his
room-mate. Clem grunted as he turned to hang up his cap.
“No practice to-day, I suppose,” he remarked, returning to the table.
“Only indoors. What sort of a team does Mount Millard have generally?”
“Fair to middling, I believe. Seems to me they’ve beaten us once or
twice. I think they licked us in my freshman year. I forget, though.
Maybe it was the year before, and I just heard talk of it. You playing
Saturday?”
“Guess so. I’ll probably get in for a while. Roice is going to
Lakeville with three or four other fellows to see Kenly Hall play.”
“I see.” Clem settled himself in a chair under the light and began
to read over a theme that had been returned to him that morning,
frowning over the red-penciled criticisms that adorned the margins.
Surreptitiously Jim tore the top sheet off the pad, folded it and
consigned it to a pocket for future reference. When supper time came
Clem showed no disposition to leave, so Jim went to the lavatory
first. There, finding it empty for the moment, he disposed of soap and
towel and drew out the diagram and studied it for a moment under the
light. He was still so occupied when footfalls beyond the swinging
doors caused him to thrust the paper hurriedly from sight again. The
arrival proved to be Clem, but Jim didn’t take the paper out again.
He washed and went back to the room for his cap and was soon on his
way to Lawrence Hall and supper. In other times he and Clem had always
gone together, but now they carefully avoided doing that. Sometimes the
avoidance resulted in quite embarrassing situations; as when, a night
or so before, Clem had started off first only to stop in the lower
corridor to talk to an acquaintance and Jim had come down just as Clem
and the other chap were parting. Jim had had to retrace his steps to
the mail-boxes and search for a letter he knew wasn’t there.
At supper he asked a question of Jake Borden, the right end, who sat
beside him. “How do they make up these plays they use, Jake?” Jim
inquired.
“What plays?” asked Jake.
“Any of them. Like that end-around play the second sprung yesterday.”
“Oh, that one’s as old as the hills,” replied Jake contemptuously,
helping himself to a third piece of toast. “So old we weren’t expecting
it. Going to use your butter, Slim?”
Jim pushed it over. “Well, who do you suppose thought of it? And--and
how?”
“Search me! Some one’s always springing new ones. It isn’t hard to make
’em up, but only one in a dozen amount to anything. A play may look
great on a blackboard and not amount to a row of pins when you try it
out against another team.”
“I suppose so. I guess there are lots of them, too.”
“A couple of hundred, probably. Whose apricots are those, Pep?”
“Mine. Want ’em?”
When the dish of stewed fruit had reached Jake and been sampled he
resumed. “I don’t suppose there’s any limit to the different plays that
could be invented. Of course, most of them would be a whole lot like a
whole lot of others, and not many of them would be--er--practicable,
but just consider that you’ve got, say, four backs and two linemen
who can carry the ball and that there are eight holes for them to
go through. There you’ve got forty-eight straight plays right off
the reel. Then you’ve got all sorts of forward-passes, punts, drops
and placements: maybe another twenty-five or thirty. And you haven’t
started on fakes and tricks at all yet! Two hundred? I’ll bet there are
three hundred already! And all over this benighted land Smart Alecks
are sitting up with paper and pencils trying to dope out more. It’s a
fearsome thought, if you ask me.”
“I suppose all the good plays have been used, anyway, by this time,”
reflected Jim.
“Well, I don’t know. No, I don’t believe so. Besides, the Rules
Committee sees to that. Just as soon as there aren’t any more nut
plays to spring on us poor players the Committee changes the rules and
the parlor strategists start all over again. And then there’s this
forward-pass, Slim. That’s got all sorts of possibilities that haven’t
been--what you might call developed yet. Last year folks thought there
wasn’t anything new under the sun and two or three wild western coaches
had brain-storms and showed the eastern guys how they’d been asleep at
the switch. You know, Slim, it takes those western chaps to spring the
new stuff. If it wasn’t for them we fellows back here in the effete
east would still be thinking the criss-cross the absolute knees plush
ultra of trick football!”
“What are you fellows gassing about so earnest-like?” inquired “Tip”
Benning from across the table.
“Football plays,” answered Jake. “I was saying that if it wasn’t for
the fellows out west we’d still be doddering along with the delayed
pass and the good old criss-cross. They’re the guys who give us the new
stuff.”
“How do you get that way?” demanded Billy Frost derisively. “Who
invented the unbalanced line, for instance?”
“Well, who invented the shift? And what about the pass to moving back?
And--”
“All right! What about the concealed pass? I suppose Harvard sent west
for that? And what about Cornell’s--”
“I’ll tell you one play the west did invent,” interrupted Latham, “and
that’s the concealed ball trick! It took an Indian to spring that, and
if Indians aren’t Westerners--”
“Listen! Who was coaching the Indians that year?” demanded Billy Frost.
“How do I know? I wasn’t born, I guess!”
“Well, it was a man named Warner. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
“I’ve heard of two Warners,” laughed Latham. “One of ’em makes
speedometers.”
“Well, I’ll bet that Indian would never have thought of hiding the ball
under his jersey. It was the coach pulled that one. And, anyway, it was
against the rules.”
“No, sir, it wasn’t! Not then. Anyhow, the Indians won the game with
it!”
“Come to that,” some one else broke in, “Glenn Warner’s a Westerner,
anyway, isn’t he? Didn’t he go to Cornell?”
“What of it?” asked Jake. “Say, where do you think Cornell is?” The
first speaker had to acknowledge that he had confused it with Kenyon,
and while Coach Cade, at the farther end of the long table, was being
appealed to to locate Kenyon College, Jim left the board.
Back in his room he settled down to study that forward-pass play again.
He had told himself, coming back from Lawrence, that there was probably
nothing in it, or, if there was, the play had long since been evolved.
Still, however, Jake Borden had distinctly stated that the forward-pass
still held unthought of possibilities, and so it was barely possible--
Right there his reflections were rudely disturbed by the fact that his
precious diagram was not where he had placed it. Nor was it in any
other pocket. All he could find were the several crumpled sheets of
paper he had thrust from sight before Clem’s arrival. Probably he had
failed to put in safely back in his vest pocket in the lavatory and it
had fallen out. He tore the discarded diagrams into minute pieces and
placed them well at the bottom of the waste-basket. Then he proceeded
to redraw his forward-pass play.
When it was again accomplished he tried to find its weak points. He
made certain by repeated reference to the rules book, now pretty
well worn and parting from its covers, that he had not violated any
of the twenty-eight mandates, and after that he viewed it from the
enemy’s side. In the end he decided that the play was perfectly legal
and that it was capable of success, but those facts made him doubly
suspicious of its originality, and, after admiring it for some time and
speculating about it and trying to improve it, he crumpled the paper
up and dropped it, too, into the basket. He guessed he was no football
strategist.
On Friday, although the gridiron was still soggy and slippery under a
cloudy sky, the squad held outdoor practice for two full hours. Two
very full hours indeed, Jim thought. With half the first-string players
on the bench, the big team met the second for thirty strenuous minutes
and failed to score in spite of the fact that three coaches bellowed
and thundered, threatened and implored. Twice the first reached the
second team’s ten-yard line and twice it was forced to yield the ball.
Field-goals were not in Mr. Cade’s philosophy this afternoon, and so
that means of scoring was denied. However, even though the second was
time and again given an extra down, it was equally unable to pass its
opponent’s goal-line, and the wearied and somewhat disgruntled first
team players derived some satisfaction. After a five-minute rest a team
of substitutes was run out and the first eleven, somewhat changed, was
sent against it with instructions to use only forward-passes. There
was ten minutes or so of that added insult, during which Jim, without
really trying and without knowing it, somewhat distinguished himself
as the receiving end of several tosses, Kruger, playing right end,
being shifted to the other side of the line at such times and leaving
Jim eligible. It was almost too dark to see the ball when Jim made
his final catch of a long heave toward the side-line that netted a
good eighteen yards to the first, and that play ended the work. In the
evening there was an hour of drill in the gymnasium followed by a brief
quiz by the coach. And then, on Saturday, Mount Millard came charging
down on Alton, with most of her students in the line of march that
wound through town from the station, and when Josh Plant, down to play
right half in place of the absent Billy Frost, glimpsed the team as it
romped away from the gymnasium he turned strickenly to Steve Whittier
and grasped his hand.
“Tell them,” he said tremulously, “that I died game, fighting against
tremendous odds!”