Right Tackle Todd

by Ralph Henry Barbour

There were changes in the line-up of each team when the ball was kicked off again, but Alton presented more new faces than did her opponent. There were new men in the line and two new men behind it. One of these was Latham at quarter-back. Latham proved good medicine while he stayed in, for Alton worked faster and with more vim than in the first half. Yet for seven minutes of the ten neither team threatened. Then a fumbled punt was recovered by Levering on Lorimer’s thirty-three yards and suddenly the Gray-and-Gold visioned success and went after it hard. Crumb, who had borne a great deal of the work in the first two periods and had been taken out to rest, was hurried back and celebrated his return with a fine off-tackle charge that took the ball to the twenty-six. Latham gained a yard straight through center and Crumb made it first down on the enemy’s twenty-two.

An end run put away a scant two, and Frost was stopped trying to get inside right tackle. Steve Whittier went back to the thirty-three yards as though to try a goal, but the ball went to Crumb and the full-back got another two through right guard. With six to go on fourth down a field-goal seemed the only hope, for Alton’s passing game was still undeveloped, and when Steve again went back the eyes of the Lorimer sympathizers sought the cross-bar. But Steve didn’t kick the ball when he got it. He lifted it in his right hand and stepped back and out to the left. Then he shot it diagonally across toward the right-hand corner of the field, where Levering was speeding toward the goal-line. The right end looked over his shoulder, stopped abruptly, letting a Lorimer back go past, and pulled the pass out of the air on the seven yards. He made the four before he was forced over the side-line. When the ball had been brought in and a winded Lorimer man had been administered to, Crumb tried the right of center and made a scant yard. Pandemonium reigned in the stands. Latham tried to knife himself through center and added part of a second yard. Crumb again went straight at center. It seemed that Alton was determined to make that score there or not at all. The linesman’s little iron stick moved forward another two feet. Fourth down and still about two to go. This time Crumb went back a little farther from his line, and when, once more, he took the pass from center he was going hard when he reached the swaying lines. Playing desperately but playing low, Lorimer might have withstood this final attack by the heavy full-back had he stayed on his feet, but he didn’t. He went up and over, and although he was soon borne back again, he had reached the last white line first, and that long-deferred score had been won at last!

When the last quarter started, a minute and a half after Captain Fingal had missed the try-for-point by inches only, Coach Cade put back most of his first-string players, and for the succeeding ten minutes of playing time the Gray-and-Gold punted on first down as often as the ball became hers inside her forty-yard line. She was frankly on the defensive now and sought delay by all fair means. Twice, early in the period, Lorimer started an advance by forward-passes that got no farther than the thirty-five. The second one ended when Levering intercepted a long heave and ran it back into enemy territory. On the whole, that final quarter was all Alton’s, for the ball reached her territory only three times and never stayed long. Lorimer’s passing game failing her, she had little left to offer, for while her backs could still gain through the opposing line the gains were too short to score with.

When the quarter was almost over, Coach Cade ripped his team apart and put it together again with many new components. It was risky, but the results upheld him. Jim Todd, never for an instant expecting the call to duty, failed to hear it until a neighbor ejected him from the bench with a rude hand at the back of his neck. Jim, blinking, found Coach Cade beckoning. “Go in at left tackle,” he commanded. “Roice is out. Report to the referee and don’t speak to another person until the first play is over. Let’s see what you can do, Todd. If any one gets through you you’ll hear from me!”

Jim tried to remember all those instructions as he hurried on and concluded that he had probably missed some of them. Probably he hadn’t, though, for he fulfilled them all. No one threatened his position seriously during the remaining three minutes of actual play. Or, if any one did, Jim didn’t realize it. Once he got quite a thrill when a scowling, dirt-smeared face crashed into his shoulder, and he seized a writhing body and deposited it back where it had come from, and once he got a terrific jar when, seeking to tackle a speeding Lorimer half, he missed badly and landed, to the best of his knowledge, on the back of his neck and did a wild and doubtless inelegant somersault. He felt both hurt and foolish and wondered for an instant if any one had observed his humiliation. There was, he concluded, quite a difference between tackling the dummy and tackling an enemy runner. He made up his mind that the next time he would do better. But, although he ran around a good deal during the rest of the game, and got slightly winded when some unknown person butted him in the stomach with a knee, he had no opportunity to redeem himself as a tackler. To his surprise, he discovered that he was considerably excited, so excited, in fact, that after one play a horn squawked and a voice that Jim didn’t like at all called: “Alton left tackle off-side!”

“Me?” demanded Jim in tones of outrage. “Who says so?”

He looked about for some one to discuss it with, but Pep Kinsey, back at quarter, told him to shut up and watch what he was doing, and then Lorimer’s signals came again and he had to accept the verdict. Fortunately that five-yard set-back, occurring as it did well inside Lorimer territory, made no real difference, and after a Lorimer back had made a desperate effort to skirt the Alton left end and had been piled on his head for a scant one-yard gain the game ended.

Going back to the gymnasium, with the lessening cheers of the Alton supporters in his ears, Jim tried to convince Charley Levering that some one had done him a great injustice. But Charley only grinned and said rudely: “You’re cuckoo, Todd. You were off-side a yard when the ball moved.”