“You don’t play football!” asked Dick. “I mean, you never have?”
“No.” Sid shook his head. “I’ve always preferred baseball. I suppose I like it better because it gives more chance for individual work. Of course, if you’re a backfield player in football you have more show to work ‘on your own,’ but a lineman’s a good deal like a piece of machinery; the more he’s like it the better he is. Now in baseball——”
“He’s off!” groaned Stanley. “You shouldn’t have got him started, Dick. He’s good for an hour now!”
But Sid’s exposition of the advantages of baseball over the rival game was interrupted by the referee’s whistle and the thud of “Babe” Upton’s toe against the ball. Parkinson had put in what was to date her strongest line-up: Furniss, Harris, Cupp, Upton, Newhall, Wendell, Peters, Stone, Gaines, Warden and Kirkendall. Opposed to them were eleven heavier and yet apparently rangy youths. Even the Cumner quarter-back must have tipped the scales at a hundred and fifty, and the ends were unusually weighty for their positions. But Cumner soon showed that weight and speed may go together. The kick-off fell on her twenty-yard line, was seized by a long-legged back and, with the team closing in ahead of him, the back ran straight ahead for fifteen yards before he was downed. Bob Peters had followed the short kick closely, but even Bob couldn’t penetrate the close defence until three white lines had been crossed by the runner.
Three plays took the ball out of the danger zone and Cumner opened up with a dazzling forward-pass that put the ball well beyond the centre of the field. After that a penalty set her back and she was forced to punt. But three minutes later the ball was hers again, for Kirkendall, tackled on an end run, had dropped it and a Cumner youth had fallen on it. Again came a forward, this time far and swift, and Furniss, watching the wrong opponent, saw the pigskin settle into the hands of the Cumner right half. It was Stone who chased the runner out of bounds on Parkinson’s twenty-six yards.
“What do you know about that?” marvelled Sid.
“You tell me,” said Stanley.
“Sure I will! I’ll tell you that I smell a score, sonny!”
“Oh, we’ll hold ’em off, all right. They won’t try any more forwards. Watch them crack against our line.”