Those Times and These

by Irvin S. Cobb

In another regard as well, and a more essential regard, too, she showed superiority. For these champions from the upper Corn Belt had what plainly their opponents always before during the season had likewise had, but now lacked: they had an enormous conceit of themselves, a mountainous and a monumental belief in their ability to take this game away from the rival team.

They had brought it with them—this assurance—and they had fed it stall-fat beforehand; and now, with the easy and splendid insolence of lusty, pampered youth, they exhibited it openly before all these hostile eyes upon the enemy's soil. It showed in them individually and as a unit. Almost as visibly as though words of defiance had been stencilled upon their tight-laced jerkins fore and aft, they flaunted forth their confidence in themselves, somehow expressing it in their rippling leg muscles and in their broad backs and in their hunched shoulders as they bunched up into formidable close formation, and in everything they did and said in the few minutes of practice intervening before they should be at grips with their opponents.

They accepted the handclaps from the onlookers—a tribute of hospitality this was, extended by people to whom hospitality for the stranger was as sacred as their religion and as sincere as their politics—with an air which betokened, most evidently, that presently they meant to repay those who greeted them for the greeting, by achieving one of Sangamon's customary victories in Sangamon's customary workmanlike fashion. Among them Vretson, the much-advertised, loomed a greater giant above lesser giants, justifying by bulk alone his title of the Terrible Swede.

As for Midsylvania's players, upon the other hand, it seemed to me, as I watched them, that they, in turn, watched the young Gogs and Magogs who were to grapple with them in a half-fearsome, half-furtive fashion. I marked that they flinched nervously, like débutantes, before the volleys of friendly applause from the crowd. It occurred to me that their thoughts must be studded with big black question marks; whereas we all could understand that no suggestion of doubtfulness punctuated the anticipations of the opposing eleven touching on the possibilities of the next two hours.

The feeling of foreboding spread like a cold contagion from the field to the press stand, affecting the newspaper men; and, becoming generally epidemic, it reached the spectators. That earlier lustiness was almost altogether lacking from the outbreak signalling the beginning of play. In the salvo there was nothing heartening. It appeared rather to be pitched in the tone of sympathetic consolation for a predestined and an impending catastrophe; and even the bark and roar of Midsylvania's yell, as all Midsylvania gave it,' seemed to have almost a hollow daunted sound to it. Where we sat we could sense this abatement of spirit with particular plainness; in fact, I rather think Major Stone was the only person there who did not sense it in its full effect and its full import.

I am not going to spend overmuch space in describing the first half of that game; this was in the days when games were divided into halves, and not quartered up into periods. Anyhow, I have forgotten a good many of the details. The principal points are what stick out in my memory. I remember that on the toss of the coin Sangamon won and kicked off. It was Vretson—no less—who drove his talented punting toe into the pigskin.

There was a sound as though some one had smote a taut bladder with a slapstick, and the ball soared upward and away, shrinking from the size of a watermelon to the size of a gourd, and from a gourd to a goose egg; and then it came whirling downward again, growing bigger as it dropped. Woolwine, our quarter, caught it and took a flying start off his shoe hobs. Fay and the other Sangamon end, whose name I have forgotten, were after him like a pair of coursing beagles after a doubling hare; and together they nailed him before he had gone twenty yards, and down he went, with Fay on top of him and What'shisname on top of Fay. When they dug the three of them out of their heap little Woolwine still had the ball under him.

As the teams lined up, boring their heads forward to a common centre, billy-goat fashion, and Morehead, who was playing end, called out the signals, “Six—eight—twenty-eight—thirty-one”—or some such combination of figures—we caught the quaver in his voice. Ike Webb, sitting next to me, gave a little groan and laid down his pencil, and put his pessimistic face in his sheltering hands.

“Listen to that tremolo note, will you?” he lamented from between his fingers. “Licked, by golly, before they start! They won't play to win, because they're scared to death already. They'll play to keep from being licked by too big a score, and that means they won't have a chance. Just you fellows watch and see if I'm not right. Ah-h! There she goes!”

We watched all right; and we saw that our boys meant to try to carry the ball through for gains. There was not a chance of that, though. They butted their heads against a stone wall until they fairly addled the football instincts in their brains. In two attempts they did not advance the ball six feet; so they tried kicking it. Young Railey punted well into Sangamon territory and now Sangamon had the ball. She lost it on a fumble, but got it back a minute or two later on a fumble slip by the other side. In their respective shortcomings as regards fumbling it was even-Stephen between the teams; but Ike Webb couldn't view the thing in any such optimistic light. He had turned into a merciless critic of the Varsity outfit.