Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University

by Charles K. Field; Will Irwin

"I can't help it, Die; I feel dead, somehow. I'm afraid I'm going stale, after all."

He recalled the drawn look on Fred's face. But the boy would come out the next night, for there was only a week before the team would leave for the Springs, and so much had to be done that the captain simply couldn't lay off. Toward the end of the practice, he collapsed. With his arm over Lyman's shoulder he had gone back to the Hall, dragging his feet heavily, while the crowd sat on the bleachers, quiet and frightened. Then the pain came, tearing its way into the heroic body, and the specialist hurriedly summoned from San Francisco had said that they must get him to the hospital.

Now it was all over, and Diemann was following his melancholy telegram to college. He could guess the effect of the news. A week ago the knowledge of Blake's illness had staggered them; the college had grown sick at heart; the city papers published details and the hopes of Berkeley bounded to certainty of victory, for there was only one Blake. Without him the Stanford team was nothing exceptional, and common estimate gave the chance to California. The Stanford management did the only thing they could do by putting in Ashley, the scrub fullback; but this did not help matters materially. Ashley was a man of beautiful physique, and the most conscientious player on the field. There he stopped. He utterly lacked the head-work that Blake put into the game.

For the star fullback had possessed the football instinct. Beyond his quickness and dash, he had the mysterious faculty of staying with the ball. If he were breaking the line, he placed the hole the fraction of an instant before anyone else perceived it. They used to put him at quarterback in defensive work, and he knew by inspiration where the play was going, so that the line felt confident with him at their backs.

Tom Ashley had nothing of all this. He punted as well as the 'Varsity man, generally better, at the beginning of the season; but was slow with his kick, often fatally slow when the 'Varsity broke through the scrub line. He was late in starting, too, though a strong runner when out in the field. The chief beauty of his game was a quick and certain straight-arm. At another time he might have easily been the 'Varsity fullback, for he put up a hard, steady game from one end of the season to the other; but he had come to college with Blake, and the position had been out of the question. Besides, there were a couple of star halves; he was not good at end, either. So he staid on the Scrub eleven, and worked doggedly for three years.

Diemann lay back in the car seat and aimlessly thought of his work with the substitute the week of Fred's illness. He had done his best with Ashley, trying to instill into him something of the other's style and dash. He had talked with him long and carefully, showing him the subtle points of Blake's game. During the few practices following the star's departure he had watched the new man faithfully through every play, giving him all his time. He was sorry for the sub. A man could be placed in no more exacting position.

Ordinarily, such a chance would have been a god-send to a scrub player, for the second-eleven man is the type of the Great Unthanked. Diemann thought of the three months through which the scrub trains religiously, sacrificing beloved pipe, or sorority dance, or week's end trip to Mayfield, or to the Orpheum in town; leaving the "gang" singing in the moonlit Quad, while he turns in at ten according to pledge; faring day after day on the same service of rare beef and oatmeal water; getting pounded and battered about over a hard field every afternoon. Ashley had had three years of this sort of thing—and all for what? At best, to squat in football clothes on the side-lines, Thanksgiving day, with Blake's or Smith's sweater around his neck, waiting for the accident that may give the game to Berkeley at the same time that it lets him trot out on the field, while the crowd calls out to him encouragingly, although they are sick at heart. He goes through each season borne up by the excitement, working breast to breast with the honored 'Varsity, but lost in their mighty shadow. When the big day comes he slips back into the great, wild crowd that lifts the team to its shoulders; worship is not for him, no, nor remembrance either, in that hour of homage. Such men, to the bleachers, are but working material for the 'Varsity; the scrub player is part of an inorganic thing—until his chance comes.

Yet, when fortune gave Ashley his chance he was not to be envied. To be put suddenly, at the last moment almost, into the shoes of the college hero, when the hopes of the University had been centered in that one man, this was too much for any fellow. In his docile way the substitute went into the trying place, working along as faithfully, and to all appearance with as little concern, as in his old position. Secretly, the responsibility wore upon him. It was a hopeless undertaking to be like Blake; but everybody expected it of him. He tried his best to grasp the patient coaching of Diemann and to put it in play at the right time, but he never seemed quick enough; that cursed slowness of his came in to show how futile it all was. Everything he did or could do as a football man was made negative by the fact that he was in Blake's place. It was a hard graft.

Diemann had known all along what the fellow was suffering, and he pitied him. According to Ashley's room-mate, the boy talked in his sleep, all night sometimes, chiefly about Blake and the play. If they did not look sharp, the coach said to himself, there might be another stale man on their hands.

Diemann had been thinking of this that very morning when he got the doctor's telegram. The shock had driven out every thought of Ashley and the team. All through his work with the sub it had not occurred to him that anything fatal could come to Blake, he had been doing so well; then, without warning, came the message saying that he was sinking. He had got there just in time. Now it was all over and he was going back to college, where Fred would never hear them shout for him again, never feel an arm about him in the long walks over the hills.