Follow the Ball

by Ralph Henry Barbour

We don’t charge for any of the games except the big game with Munson, and so we usually draw pretty fair-sized crowds. Warrensburg folks are mighty keen for anything they don’t have to pay for. So we had the stands pretty well filled that afternoon by the time Mills kicked off, and the other fellows had fetched along maybe a hundred and fifty rooters who made an awful lot of noise when young Thompson juggled the ball almost under our goal and gave me heart failure for a moment. He managed to hold on to it finally, though, and we soon kicked out of there, and the old game settled down to a see-saw that didn’t get either team anything but hard knocks.

We weren’t looking for a very good game, even with three of our first-string players out of the line-up, for Mills wasn’t very heavy and had lost more than half her games that year, but I’m here to say that she sprung a surprise on us for fair that afternoon. For one thing, she was so blamed quick that she found us napping time and again; and she had a new variation of a fake forward pass that fooled us finely until we got on to it. By the time we were hep to it she had thrown a full-sized scare into us and worked the ball down into our twenty-five yard line. But that was in the second quarter. The first quarter didn’t show either team up much. We both punted a good bit and tried the other fellow out and looked for a lucky break that didn’t come. It wasn’t until that second period began that Mills got down to work and had us worried for a while. She got two short runs away around our left end, where Slim Porter’s absence was sorely felt, as they say, and then pulled a lucky forward that made it first down on our thirty-four. Then she stabbed at Babe and lost a yard. Then that bean-pole of a full-back of hers worked that fake forward for the second time, and made it go for ten yards, coming right through between me and Conly when we weren’t looking for anything of the sort. I got a nice wallop in the face in that play and had to call for time and get patched up.

After that, Mills got a yard outside Means, who was playing in Slim’s place at left tackle, and made it first down on our twenty-five. I read the riot act then, though not being able to talk very well on account of having one side of my mouth pasted up with plaster, and we held her for two downs. I guess she might have scored if she had tried a field goal, but she was set on a touchdown and went after it with a short heave over the center of the line that Thompson couldn’t have missed if he had tried. I felt a lot better after that, and in two plays we had the old pigskin back near the middle of the field. Then Pete Swanson gummed things up by falling over his big feet and we had to punt. Just before half-time we worked down to Mills’ twenty-seven and after Brill had been stopped on a skin tackle play Pete went back and tried a drop kick. He missed the goal by not less than six yards, the big Swede! That about ended the half, and when we got over to the locker room in the gymnasium we knew we’d been playing football! We were a sore crowd, and Newt Lewis didn’t make us feel any better by telling us how rotten we’d been. He kept it up until Babe told him to shut up or he’d bust him and I said “Hear! Hear!” out of one side of my mouth. Everybody was sore at everybody else. Thompson had the nerve to tell me I’d interfered with his business of running the team and I told him where he got off. Brill was mad because Thompson hadn’t let him try that goal instead of Pete Swanson, and Pete was sore because he had failed. I guess about the only fellows there who weren’t nursing grouches were the subs who hadn’t got in, and amongst them was Joe in nice clean togs, looking anxious and making signs to me and Babe.

Well, we’d fixed it all right for him before the game. Babe was so blamed stubborn and insistent that I had to agree to his frame-up in self-defense and so I told Newt about Joe’s folks being there and how he wanted to bask in the spot-light on account of them and that girl and how it was my opinion that he hadn’t ever been given a fair chance and was every bit as good as Hearn or Sawyer. It seemed that Rusty had instructed Newt to use all the subs he could in the last half and so Newt didn’t put up any holler about Joe. And when we went back again there was our young hero at left half, in place of Torrey, looking nervous but determined. I could see his folks in the school stand, the girl in a blue dress, and his Uncle Preston’s black mustaches standing out six inches on each side of his face.

We had six second- or third-string fellows in our line-up when the third quarter began, and I was plumb certain we had our work cut out for us if we were going to win the old ball game. Mills came back at us mighty savage after the kick-off and had things her own way until we took a brace and made her punt. We sort of got together then and worked the ends and a long forward pass and made her thirty-one. Then we got penalized for holding and finally had to punt and Brill sent the ball over the line. Play sort of see-sawed again for a while, with Mills having slightly the better of the kicking game, and then the first score came, and came unexpected.

Joe had been holding his end up pretty well, partly because I’d tipped Thompson off to go light on him, and he’d made a couple of yards for us once or twice. Well, pretty soon Mills had to punt from around her forty-five and Thompson went back up the field, taking Joe with him. Torrey had been taking punts and Joe had taken Torrey’s place and so Thompson calls him back without thinking much about it. The punt went sort of askew and landed in the corner of the field. Joe didn’t judge it for beans and it hit about on the fifteen yards and went up again with him grabbing for it. He missed it but got it near the five-yard line, and by that time a red-headed end named Brennan was right on top of him. I don’t know how Brennan got there so quick but there he was. Of course, if Joe had thought he’d have let the old ball alone, but he didn’t. He grabbed it, juggled it a bit and froze on to it just as this red-headed Mills right end came up. Then he started to run. By that time there was a mob on the scene and I couldn’t see just what happened. But when it was all over there was Joe a yard behind our goal line with the ball still hugged tight and Bert Naylor was putting a big white 2 on the score board where it said “Opponent.” Joe had scored a safety!

I started to bust into the poor boob, but he looked so unhappy I didn’t have the heart to say much. I just told him he had probably lost the game for us and a few things like that, and let it go. He certainly did look sick over it.

The Mills rooters went crazy and howled like a lot of red Indians and we went back to the job, pretty well determined now to make the fur fly and get a score. The quarter ended pretty soon after Joe had scored for the enemy and we changed goals. Newt threw in a couple more subs, the silly jay, and I expected he’d sink Joe, but he didn’t. If we could have opened up on those fresh Mills guys and used a few of our scoring plays we could have licked them quick enough, I guess, but Thompson had his orders from Rusty not to show anything and nothing I could say would move him. Just the same, we got going pretty well in that last period and ate our way down to the enemy’s nineteen yards only to have a sub that Newt had stuck in for Pete Swanson boot the game away by a perfectly inexcusable fumble that Mills captured. Newt had a brain storm then and sent Bentley in to take my place, and although I offered to punch him full of holes if he didn’t get off the field and told him I was captain the umpire butted in and I had to beat it. So I saw the rest of the game from the bench, and didn’t mind it much after Newt pulled Babe out two plays later. Babe was so mad that I felt a lot better.

Mills was just playing for time now, willing to quit any moment seeing she was two points to the good and had us beat if only the whistle would blow. But there was still one kick left in the old team, even if it was mostly subs by now, and when there was something like four minutes left Thompson got off a corking forward pass to left end that landed the ball on Mills’ forty-two yards. Another attempt at the same stunt grounded, and Brill, pretty near the only first-string man left, snaked through for four yards and made it third down on the thirty-eight. The stands had sort of quieted down now and I could hear Thompson’s signals plain. They called for a cross-buck by right half, and when the starting number came I saw Thompson grab the ball, swing around half a turn and hold it forward. Then everything went wrong. That idiot Joe Kenton had got his signals twisted again! He beat the other half to the ball by inches, grabbed it from Thompson and shot through outside guard. I guess there’s a special luck for fools, for Joe found a hole as wide as the Mississippi River, and the first thing I knew he was side-stepping one back, giving the straight arm to another and twisting right through the whole outfit!

Well, there’s no use making a long story any longer. Joe had speed, if he didn’t know much football. Baseball had taught him that; and it had taught him to be quick on the getaway, too, and it was quickness on the getaway that got him through the Mills’ lines. After that the quarter was the only thing between him and the goal. I guess there wasn’t one of the Mills bunch that could have run him down from behind. That quarter tried to get Joe near the twenty-yard line, but it looked to me like he was too certain, for Joe sort of skidded on one foot, twisted his body and was off on the other foot, and I don’t believe the quarter even touched him. Two long-legged Mills guys chased him over the line, squarely between the posts, but it wasn’t until Joe was lying on the ball that they reached him.