Thursday 19 January 2023
Dream recall:
I was in a high school football game, on a cold, rainy late afternoon. An away game, it was late in the third quarter, and we were getting beat badly, and getting beat up. I hadn’t gotten in the game at all, so was jumping up and down trying to stay warm. Everyone was thoroughly soaked (no fancy rain jackets in those days), and the field was a mess. The guys who had been in were mud-splattered and gritty.
We had just punted, and there was a timeout, the defense getting ready to go out. With a jolt, I heard my name called, and: “Get in there and cover right, outside!” I jogged on the field, mud splattering; my uniform was so clean next to the others, I felt very conspicuous, like I had a light on me. No one said too much, just a few eye contacts. They were all pretty miserable and just wanted to get out of there. I was dispatched out to the right and no one seemed to care, because in the rain and wind there wasn’t any passing at all, so covering somebody meant their receivers had been jogging through their routes, not really serious. The other team (in the South-Central Penn conference) had a big line and big star running back, #28; our defense had spent all afternoon getting pushed around and run over.
They broke the huddle, and their wide receiver jogged out to my right. He looked at my clean jersey, and over the crowd noise and wind I heard him say something like: “…don’t worry, it ain’t comin’ this way …”, and stopped paying any other attention to me, he was looking up into the crowd for his girlfriend.
As I looked at their offense, time began to slow down. They lined up like they were going left, but I knew – I saw them telegraph it by all looking that way – that they were going to fake that way, pull a guard and come right. It was a good thing that time slowed down, in fact, almost stopped, because this whole dialog ran through my head:
‘I can do what I’m supposed to do and cover this guy, and no one will even be paying attention to us, and neither one of us are even involved in the play at all. He’s going to jog out about 10 yards and turn to the inside, but by then, 28 will already be through the line and being tackled in mid-field. Or … I know no one is even looking my way and I know what’s going to happen, and I can make a play. It’s a gamble, just a little, because there’s a chance that the quarterback might look up at the last minute, see a receiver completely uncovered, and lob him an easy pass for another score. But there’s something else I know, I know they’re getting careless, ‘cause I can hear their coaches yelling at them, and I can see them smirking. I also know that they’re ‘way ahead and now all they want to do is hurt somebody, to hear a guy grunt in pain, or see him wince. And there’s something else I know but don’t know why: 28 had changed his shoes. In fact, some of their linemen had changed shoes, too.
So, I can do the sort of safe thing, or I can mess up their schemes, even for just one play. It won’t win the game, but look at my guys, they’re almost gassed, and I gotta do something!’
Time speeds up again, something is yelling “Go at full speed.”
The count started, no one even glanced to the outside, and I slid left, took two steps to the inside. I heard faintly the coaches yelling “Cover, cover!”, but I had a totally clear path to the handoff. At the snap, I shot in – full speed – and crashed into the quarterback and 28 at the moment of handoff, driving them both down and back. A clean hard hit They were shocked and really mad, knocked down in the mud, barely hanging onto the ball. The whistle blew, we rolled, pushed and shoved to get back up, fighting and pushing. 28 was furious, spit at me, said something I couldn’t hear over the yells of my guys, pulling me up and slapping me. Their coaches are screaming at them, sending somebody else in at back.
Second down and 17 or 18 now, for the first time in the game, they might have to throw, so I go back to outside cover, watching the receiver’s eyes and expression, but he doesn’t have a clue what just happened. For the first time in a while, the quarterback looks left and right, glaring at me, but our guys are yelling back and digging in. They don’t pass, and try a half-hearted run up the middle, which is covered for a few yards.
Their coaches are in full throat again, and 28 comes back in. He glares at me, too, and turns around to look at me from the huddle. Something’s coming my way.
They’ve switched receivers and this outside guy is looking like he might be the target. But whatever the coaches might have called, they hand off again, start to the left and come back across towards me. 28 is hot-dogging it, stiff-arming someone into the mud, almost laughing. He’s holding the ball out one-handed, taunting guys to come at him. He sees me coming at him and speeds up to make a knockout collision. But someone almost gets to him, makes him change direction. His face is between a laugh and a sneer as he casually flips the ball from his left hand to his right. He turns back to line me up – but I’m not where he thought I’d be, trying to tackle him. Instead, I’ve gotten position to hit him under the arm and use both of my hands knock the ball out.
The ball squirts away behind the line and there’s a roar and a scramble. I’m trying to get up, get untangled from 28, but I see him actually kick at me, and feel a red-hot pain in my thigh. I put a hand out on the ground for leverage and 28 steps on it as he leaps into the pile. There is another red-hot pain all the way up to my shoulder, and blood mixed up with the mud. I think they’ve got the ball still, but some 10 yards back and they’ve called another timeout.
The noise seems deafening, and guys are pulling me up and running off the field. People are slapping me and punching me in the arm and yelling in my face. Coach is in front of me, yelling “Good play, son! That’s the way to get after it!” But he looks at my face, then hand, then leg. “What the hell’s the matter with you, boy? What’s on your leg?”
There was a fair bit of blood on the leggings. “I got spiked, Coach!”
“What do you mean, spiked?”
“I mean, 28’s got spikes on like track shoes, and he stomped me! Look at my hand! There’s spike holes in it!” and I held it out. The rain pelting down had washed the mud off, but there were two or three puncture holes running red. It was starting to throb.
“This is bullshit!” he yelled. But now more of the defense had gotten around.
“Coach, he’s right! We’re all cut up, too!” And looking around there are 6 or 7 other guys with bloody legs, cut hands. “Coach, 64 and 72 have those same kind of shoes on like 28 does, and they been stompin’ and kicking us with ‘em!”
The referee comes over to the sideline. “Let’s go, Coach! Get your team on the field!” He turns back to the field and starts to jog off.
There’s a moment of silence in the sea of noise. Coach looks around, looks at me, at the others. “You boys are sure about this?” He hesitates for a fraction of a second, and then answers his own question: “Of course you are! Hey, Ref! Just wait a minute!” And he is striding out onto the field after the referee, who turns around, startled.
“Hey Coach, what the hell are you doing? Get back to the sideline!” But the coach is already past him, heading to the other sideline. The team has come onto the field to follow him, and the other coaches are trying to get them to stop. The crowd is roaring and both teams are yelling. The refs and umps manage to get in front of Coach just before he gets into the face of the other coach, who is red-faced and yelling at his team.
“Let’s take a look at your boys cleats, coach, where’s 28?”
28 is moving to the back of the swarm of players, trying to hide, but he’s spotted.
“Hey, Hey! Get out here, son! And number 64 and 72, and who else?”
The coaches and players are face-to-face pushing and shoving, the refs are trying to yell louder and get order. A fight breaks out as two of our big linemen have gotten 64 to the ground, face down, and are holding his leg up. The pointed spikes on the bottom of his shoe are held up. Fights break out all along the line with our guys pointing to and grabbing all the other players they see with spiked shoes. 28 is still in the back of the crowd.
Whistles are blowing and more officials have gotten into the scrum of players to separate the teams. “Get back to your sidelines! Get Back!” They manage to get the players pulled apart, but our coach is now louder than ever.
“You got to throw them boys out, ref! Throw ‘em out, throw ‘em all out!”
“You let us handle this, coach, just get back, get back to your sideline!”
On the sideline, some doctors are cleaning punctures and wounds, pouring peroxide and trying to swab out the deeper holes. It is raining harder than ever, and everybody is soaked.
“Hey! Hey look! They’re doin’ it! They’re throwin’ those guys out of the game!” The PA system was crackling through the rain and crowd noise.
“Number 28 had been ejected, and number 64, number 72, 15, 55…” The yelling of our team and roaring of the crowd, screaming of the parents of the ejected players drowns out the rest of the announcement.
The refs get the coaches out on the field. The assistants are behind, trying to push back the players. “Let’s go coaches, we gotta finish this game!”
The other coach is furious, raging mad “We don’t have enough players now that you threw half of ‘em out!”
The head referee answers, “Well, coach, you can put the boys you got out there and play, or you can forfeit!”
Our team is sky-high now, looking at the other guys who are left, the 2nd and 3rd stringers. They looked on, wide-eyed.
Their coach looked at his boys, knew they would take a beating for the rest of the game. “All right!” he yelled, “All right! You can have your damned forfeit! Let’s go boys!” and he turned to lead them off the field.
There’s nothing left to do but cheer, get back on our buses and drive back to our own school, our own locker room. There, everyone is cleaned up, and bandaged. One of the assistants comes in with the rest of the news.
“They’re going to make them forfeit all the rest of their other games, too! They’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s caught up with them!”
- One more remembrance, added 24 hours later: Two of the holes in my hand were very close together – and looked exactly like a snakebite.