Danforth Plays the Game: Stories for Boys Little and Big

by Ralph Henry Barbour

But that didn’t seem probable, for there was the magic football, and the magic football did just as the fairy had said it would. That afternoon when he was let out of school half an hour late—Tommy’s head was so filled with football these days that there was almost no room in it for lessons and he was kept after school as a result—he hurried home, unlocked the closet door in his bedroom and took the magic football down from the shelf. It looked just like any other football. There was the name of a well-known maker stamped on the clean leather and no one would have ever suspected that there was anything unusual about it. But there certainly was, as Tommy proceeded to prove when, the ball under his arm, he reached the vacant lot behind the dye works in the next street. The dye works had no windows on the back, there was a tumble-down board fence around the other three sides of the lot and Tommy was safe from observation.

When he had crawled through a hole in the fence he placed the football on the ground, swung his leg gently and said, “Og!” softly as his foot struck the ball. He hardly more than touched it with the toe of his scuffed shoe, but the ball flew up and away as straight as an arrow and bounced away from the fence at the further end of the lot. Tommy looked carefully about him. No one was within sight, and so he said, “Come!” very softly, and the ball began rolling toward him along the ground. That was too slow, and so Tommy said, “Come!” once more and a little louder. Whereupon the ball left the ground and arched itself toward him. Tommy held out his hands, and the ball settled into them.

That day and every afternoon until Thursday Tommy continued his practice with the magic football until finally he was able to judge just how to address it to get the results he wanted. For a short kick or pass one “Og,” not very loud, was enough. For a longer kick a single “Og” spoken loudly accomplished the purpose. For a very long kick, say thirty or thirty-five yards, beyond which Tommy had never tried to kick a ball, three “Og’s” were sufficient. And the same rule worked when he wanted the ball to come to him. He could make it just trickle toward him slowly across the turf or he could make it come slam-banging to him so hard that as often as not he jumped out of its way so it would not knock him down. When he did that the ball, instead of going past, stopped short in the air and dropped to the ground. In fact, Tommy learned what the fairy had called “ography” and “comeology.”

A funny thing happened the next day. When he got home after school—he wasn’t kept in that afternoon, for there was a teacher’s council in the Superintendent’s office—it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t necessary for him to go up and get the ball, even though it was in the closet with the door locked. At all events, he thought, there was no harm in trying it. So he said “Come!” very loudly and waited halfway up the front path. But nothing happened; not even when he said “Come!” again, very much louder. But when, for the third time, he said “Come! Come!” almost at the top of his lungs, something did happen. There was a frightful noise at the top of the house, a scream from Tilda, the maid, and a grunt from Tommy himself! When Tommy picked himself up, gasping for breath, he was six feet nearer the front gate and the football was bobbing up and down in front of him. It had taken him squarely in the stomach!

When he went into the house Tilda was sitting halfway up the stairs having hysterics, an overturned pail beside her and a flood of soapy water trickling down the steps. Something, declared Tilda, when she had been calmed by the use of smelling salts and other restoratives, something had flown at her as she was going upstairs and clean knocked the feet from under her! Just what the something was Tilda couldn’t say, but she was sure that it had been “as big as a washtub, mum, and kind of yellow, with two big glaring eyes!” Tommy, hiding the magic football behind him, crept up to his room. In the top of the closet door was a big jagged hole and the floor was littered with splinters!

Tommy looked and gasped. Then he stared at the magic football. “I guess,” he muttered, “I won’t try that again!”

On Wednesday he went out to see practice. What he saw didn’t impress him greatly. Hillside didn’t play like a team that was going to win on the morrow. The scrub eleven held the School Team to one touchdown and a very lucky field goal, and, when practice was over, the supporters of the home team came back looking very dejected. Tommy waited for George Marquis at the gate.

“George,” he said, twitching the captain’s sleeve, “don’t forget what I told you!”

Captain Marquis pulled his arm away and scowled angrily at the youngster. “Oh, dry up, Tommy,” he muttered. “You make me tired! I’ve got enough troubles without having to listen to your nonsense!”

Tommy went home and wondered for the hundredth time whether that fairy was putting up a game on him. Suppose, after all, the fairy had just been poking fun at him! If George didn’t let him play how was he ever going to win the game for Hillside? It was all well enough to have a magic football that would come or go just as you wanted it to and that would break its way through closet doors and scare folks into hysterics, but if you didn’t get into the game what good were a dozen such things? Tommy was sad and doubtful and pessimistic that evening.