Clif drew a long breath. His feelings oddly combined disappointment and relief. For the first moment disappointment was uppermost, but then the realization that he had long since discounted being dropped from the First Team, and that as lately as Saturday evening he had been doubtful of making the Second, produced a reaction. He guessed he was pretty lucky, after all. There were only some twenty names on this list, which meant that fully a dozen fellows had been dropped completely. Then his eyes hurried down the first column and across to the second. “Howlett, Jackson, Kemble—”
Good! Tom had made it, too! Then, as he went on into the locker room, it occurred to him that perhaps Tom wouldn’t be as gratified as he was. Perhaps Tom, in spite of his pessimistic utterances, had secretly expected to be retained on the First! But later in the afternoon Tom scouted the idea with convincing sincerity.
“I hadn’t the ghost of a chance, Clif, and I knew it the second day of practice. I can play football pretty well, but I haven’t had the experience fellows like Dave Lothrop and Billy Desmond and Pete Jensen and a lot more have had. And, of course, I’m light. No, sir, I’m satisfied to be here, old son. Besides, I’m going to get a lot of fun out of showing some of those First Team swelled-heads that they don’t know all the football there is, as good as they may be! Heck, I’m not kicking!”
And neither was Clif. In fact, after listening to Mr. Babcock’s talk to them on the old wooden baseball grand stand that had been moved aside to make room for the gridiron, he had begun to wonder whether being a member of so glorious a company as the Scrub wasn’t a far better thing than belonging to the First Team! Of course common sense told him later that it wasn’t, but Mr. Babcock had almost made it seem so for the moment!
“Cocky” seemed to have left behind him in the gymnasium some of the brusqueness that awed his classes. To-day he acted and looked and spoke like a “regular fellow.” He had on a pair of old canvas football pants, a faded red sweater and two of the most disreputable gray woolen stockings ever seen out of a rag bag. Those stockings had been frequently and variously darned until there remained but very little of the original material; and despite all the mending they still cried out for help. “Cocky’s” sturdy calves were visible in wide areas in more places than one! “Cocky” wasn’t a handsome man, for his face was too square, his nose too blunt and his eyebrows too heavy. To be frank, Mr. Henry Babcock, B.A., looked rather like a retired gentleman pugilist; or, perhaps, like one’s idea of such a person. He was about thirty years old, affected very loose tweed suits and, between the hours of five and six, behind the closed door of Number 19 East Hall, played weird melodies on an English horn. Any one who has ever heard an English horn engaged in rendering a solo will understand why the door was closed!
“I’ve got a little speech to make, fellows,” said “Cocky,” spreading a pair of muscular arms along the edge of the seat behind him, “so you’d better sit down, and make yourselves comfortable for a few minutes. Now, then, you know what a Scrub Team is for, but perhaps you don’t realize just how important it is. This School sets out every year at about this time to beat Wolcott. That’s what we all want to do; you and I, and Doctor Wyndham and Coach Otis and every fellow, big or little, who owes allegiance to Wyndham. To beat Wolcott we must have a whopping good team, a better team this year than last, maybe. We have a pretty stiff schedule arranged; eight games; three of them away from home; planned to bring us along slowly and surely to the final contest. When that comes along our team must be in top form, trained to the minute. That may sound easy, but it’s really pretty hard. It means lots of work, work that gets a little harder day by day; it means attention to diet, strict watch on the physical condition of every man, for it’s quite as easy to overtrain as to train too little; and it means putting into practice every day what you have learned the day before. That’s where we come in, fellows.
“Our business is to beat Wolcott, just as it is the First Team’s business. We do it—if we succeed—by helping the First to learn how. There’s glory in that, fellows, lots of glory. I want you to realize it. I want you to start in with the conviction that you are doing your share to secure a Wyndham victory over Wolcott. I want you to be just as proud of being a Second Team player as you’d be of belonging to the First. When the big day comes the cheers won’t be for you, maybe, but you’ll know in your hearts that you deserve a share of them, and you’ll be satisfied with what you’ve done, and proud of your team, the team that showed the big team how to win!
“I’ve handled this team for four years, fellows, and I’ve always enjoyed it, always taken pride in it, always felt a mighty lot of satisfaction, when the season was done, over my part in the victory or the defeat that came to us. Because you mustn’t think, any of you, that there isn’t honor in defeat. The team that plays cleanly, gallantly, fights its hardest when Luck turns its back, is downed and won’t stay downed, wins honor indeed. Well, now, here we are. Twenty of us. ‘Mr. Babcock’s Team,’ the ‘Second’ or the ‘Scrub.’ Call yourself what you like. It doesn’t make much difference what we’re called or what we call ourselves, so long as we do what’s expected of us with all our might. So let’s get together, fellows, and show Wyndham the finest, fightingest Second Team it has ever seen! Remember this, too. You’re not only helping to win the Wolcott game this year, you’re training yourself for next year. You Second Team fellows will be First Team fellows next fall. Most of you, anyhow. It isn’t unlikely that one or two of you will get to the big team this season. Just show Mr. Otis that you’ve got something the First Team needs, and you won’t stay here long!
“Just so that it won’t be all work and no play, I’ve arranged three outside games for you. We’ll play Freeburg High School a week from next Saturday, Minster High School on November third, and the Wolcott Second Team on November tenth. We could have more games if we were permitted to play away from home. But we aren’t, and I think three will be enough, anyhow. So now you know what’s ahead of you, Scrub. A lot of steady, grinding work, a little play, and virtue more or less its own reward. Who’s for it?”
It was evident that all were. A shout went up from twenty throats that carried as far as the diamond and aroused interest and conjecture there. Having joined his voice with the others, Clif turned and looked rather pityingly toward the First Team field. Those poor chaps over there didn’t realize what they were missing! Mr. Babcock was speaking again. He was on his feet now, and in response to the suggestion of his movement the fellows were leaving the seats.