How I Revolutionized the Game of Football

Nothing much has happened in Maine since the brutal 1813 battle of war brigs off Monhegan Island, when the British Boxer was hammered into submission by the American Enterprise before being towed to the victor's corner. The state's last high-water mark come in 1851, when an old bluenoser named Neal Dow finagled a piece of legislation that forbade the distillation, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. This so-called Maine Law put Mr. Dow's stamping ground, for the first and last time, 69 years ahead of the other United States. As might be expected, when the entire country was put on Prohibition over a half century later, the best hard cider and applejack to be had anywhere came from good old long-dry Maine. Only the loving care and subtle expertise of generations of illegal distillers could have produced such potent, honeyed nectar.

Maine's principal exports, aside from bootleg booze, have always been lumber, live lobsters, potatoes and people--not necessarily in that order. The emigration of native-born was accelerated by the Civil War, when whole regiments of farm boys, fishermen and peavey wielders discovered with astonished delight that, south of Boston, each year had four seasons, instead of merely winter and the Fourth of July; and the outbound exodus has continued ever since. But one item that Maine has never exported is men who play games well, for the simple reason that there haven't been any. On the map of competitive sports, the state appears as a big, green, rock-bound terra incognita. Take football, for instance: No Maine college has ever fielded a single outstanding team, left alone a great player. The same holds true for coaches. The most encyclopedic football buff won't be able to name a coach who achieved national prominence by guiding Bates or Colby in the way Pop Warner did with Carlisle, nor even a Maine-born coach who became famous after he emigrated to a big Midwestern university that offered him four seasons, a recruiter behind every bush and more football scholarships than a Bryant could bear.

But I am in a position to say that a master coach might have begun his transmigration to gridiron immortality if an anonymous and now-forgotten woodworker had been somewhat better at his job. The reason I can say this is that I, Harry Peter McNab Brown, aged 15 and a whisker, was that potential master of coaches. Unheralded as a trail blazer, my discoveries unsung, a cipher to American sports desks, I revolutionized the game of football a full eight years before Clark Shaughnessy immodestly took unto himself the credit that was due unto me. Of course, he had the advantage of a sizable audience when his Chicago Bears whupped the Washington Redskins 73-0, whereas my boys got delusions of grandeur as soon as the crowd on the side lines totaled seven; but such injustices tend to embitter good men, who then bring empires down. Yet, in fairness to Shaughnessy, if he was unaware of my earth-shaking innovations--well, so was I, gentlemen, so was I.

In late September of 1932, the civilized world lay flat on its economic back as I began my senior year at Portland High School. The slump had no noticeable effect on Portland business, which at best was none too good. Maine may have heard about the Depression, but the Depression either hadn't heard about Maine or (and more likely) considered the state a kissin' cousin. Anyway, near noon on a mild Saturday in this particular September. I was sprawled with six other adolescent males below a stone wall in a corner of the old Dell estate, a prime parcel of acreage that ran from Forest Avenue to the back cove of Casco Bay. Evidently, the Dell family was extinct, for in the estate's deepest fastnesses, an empty Charles Addamsish gingerbread mansion loomed frighteningly among ancient, lightning-struck elms and brooded over unkempt vistas. At the southwest end of the Forest Avenue side was an open, fairly level space that the neighborhood boys used for their pickup games of football.

At the moment, the seven of us were taking it easy after a fast two hours of touch, in which Hal Alvarson's three-man team had routed Phil Pike's four-man brigade. I had been the extra man on Phil's side. I had fumbled twice, dropped three easy passes, missed every ball carrier I tried to touch and failed to block a living soul. Indeed, I'd played rather well, considering a few of my past performances. But now, along with the others, I was endeavoring to keep my mind off the dull but unavoidable chore of shuffling home for lunch, by means of a group-therapy discussion on the finer points of Jack Beaumaison's twin sister, Felice, who was the belle of 40 square blocks.

When Stilton Cartright swung over the wall and flopped down beside us, the discussion of Felice was interrupted by a couple of listless greetings and then went on as before. Cartright was new to the neighborhood and he was such an odd-looking creature that God, when He put the kid together, must have had all He could do to keep a straight face. A tiny, pale, cue-ball head wobbled on a body so scrawny and elongated that any keen-eyed stork, seeing him for the first time, would have done a double-take and then gone flapping away to the nearest ophthalmologist. When I think of Cartright, as I occasionally do, I visualize him as a figure in one of Bosch's wilder paintings. His matchstick arms were an illogical three inches too long and ended in a pair of hands that were perhaps a shade small for a side-show giant but looked grotesque when attached to a 14-year-old boy. We had called him Pipestems or Pipey until the day Simmy Schwartz, after pondering on the Cartright hands, said: "Hey, Pipey, if your family's got two garbage cans, I bet you save 'em money on lids." From then, Stilton Cartright was Garbage to us, usually (and mercifully) shortened to Garb.

Mrs. Cartright's great passion was to see her gawky son become a world-renowned concert pianist, and her strictures toward that end made serious inroads on his social and sporting life, such as it was. In school or out, Garb had to practice two hours a day, six days a week. Sunday was, comparatively, a day of musical rest: A half hour's practice, early in the morning, served to keep the outsized fingers limber. If a concert pianist needed nothing more than a pair of hands that, between them, spanned four octaves, Garb Cartright would now we the toast of five continents and Cumberland County, Maine.

I was fascinated at the sight of him descending from the wall and reclining next to me; it was like watching an Erector-set tower collapse in slow motion. "I had to go to Congress Street," he told me, "to buy some sheet music. You been playing football? Who won?"

"Nobody," I said.

"I saw Billy Whittaker on the streetcar coming home," Garb went on. "Him and a bunch of those Stevens Avenue guys've got a football team, regular size, eleven men, and Billy said he'd like to take on a team from around here, except he didn't think we could--"

Garb was suddenly the center of attention; the subject of Felice Beaumaison had been forgotten. "They play touch?" Hal Alvarson demanded. In January, he and Billy had had a superantagonistical fistfight, on skates, because of a hard body check by Hal. Billy won, and the Alvarson hackles had bristled automatically ever since at the sound of the Whittaker name.

"Naw," Garb said cheerfully, "tackle. But what Billy said was, he didn't think there was eleven of us with enough guts to play his Stevens Avenue guys."

"Eleven hundred we can get," the Burning Bush said. This was Sammy Schwartz, Simmy's big brother, a plumpish 15-year-old whose mushroom cloud of wiry black hair, combined with his chain-smoking of Fatimas, had caused me to liken him, in an unwise moment, to that Old Testament phenomenon. My reward had been the sore nose I took to bed with me that night, but the name stuck. Now he took the latest Fatima out of his mouth and added: "Eleven goddamn thousand, even. It's no problem. If you don't believe me, ask Hal here."

Hal was frowning at the ground, gnawing at his lower lip. "Well," he said, "I guess we can dig up eleven, anyway. Ayah, I'm pretty sure we can."

Jim Fletcher's eyes went from Garb to me. "Make that nine," he said. Jim took pleasure in pounding nails into the coffin from which my self-confidence was always trying to escape. At a time when the best-dressed teenage boy was the one with the droopiest plus fours, Jim was the neighborhood fashion plate.

"Oh, yeah, another thing," Garb went on. "The Stevens Avenue bunch've got a real coach, too. Billy's brother, Fred."

"He's playing on their team?" Hal asked. His frown had deepened, but we were all frowning now. In June, Fred Whittaker had graduated from Deering High, where he'd been the second-string quarterback. As a player, he was better than any three of us combined.

"Nope," Garb said. "He's only the coach."

Hal looked relieved, but not completely so; the Stevens Avenue crowd was tough enough, without being coached, and Fred Whittaker's presence was an unknown threat. The honor of Forest Avenue had been mocked, however, and there was no alternative to picking up the gauntlet. "OK," Hal said, "let's get all the guys together at eleven tomorrow morning. Pass the word around."

"Get together where?" the Burning Bush wanted to know.

"At your house," Hal said. "Where else?"

Although their children were sent to Hebrew school, along with the normal public schooling, the Schwartzes were very unorthodox Jews, and not merely in the religious sense. Mr. Schwartz, for instance, was--of all things--a boiler-maker, the founder and working president of the Casco Bay Boiler Works, Inc. Nothing fazed him and his wife, least of all the stream of young goyim that flowed through the house with the Schwartz children. Sammy and Simmy were the oldest of a regular clutch of Schwartzes, in a happy, rambunctious, casual house without any of the fretful (continued on page 184)Revolutionized Football(continued from page 166)very unorthodox Jews, and not merely in the religious sense. Mr. Schwartz, for instance, was--of all things--a boiler-maker, the founder and working president of the Casco Bay Boiler Works, Inc. Nothing fazed him and his wife, least of all the stream of young goyim that flowed through the house with the Schwartz children. Sammy and Simmy were the oldest of a regular clutch of Schwartzes, in a happy, rambunctious, casual house without any of the fretful formalities and taboos that the rest of us were hounded with at home.

Until Garb Cartright came ambling around the corner on the dot of 11 the next morning, there had been only ten of us tossing Phil Pike's football around in front of the Schwartz house. The football, less than a month old, had been Mr. Pike's present to his son on his 15th birthday. We called Phil "Rumble Seat." There may have been a touch of adolescent cruelty in the term, but it was an accurate description. Phil's five feet of hard-muscled body was warped by a spinal defect that made his back, from the lower reaches of the rib cage to well beyond the coccyx, resemble a ski jump in clothing, while his buttocks stuck out so far to the rear that once, when Phil fastened an old bicycle taillight to the seat of his britches, he didn't get the laugh he'd hoped for; on the contrary, the light seemed to us a sensible precautionary measure. He also had a minor speech defect, but perhaps from unconscious adolescent compassion, we never took advantage of that.

Garb stopped beside me just as Jack Beaumaison, 20 yards down the street, was hunting a receiver for the pass his arm was cocked to throw. Suddenly, the endless Cartright arms were in the air and Garb was yelling, in his cracked voice: "Hey, Jack, me! Throw it to me!"

With an Oh-God-what'll-he-think-of-next expression on his handsome face, Jack threw it to him.

I'd never seen Garb so much as hold a football, and I doubted if he could play the game at all. I therefore viewed the approaching pass--a soft, wobbly floater--with a contemptuous disinterest that changed, as the ball slipped through Garb's huge hands and went bouncing crazily along the street behind him, to smug satisfaction. But when Garb, after disjointedly pursuing the ball and clumsily picking it up, threw it back to young Beaumaison--Yipes!--my eyelids popped apart so hard, fast and wide that they were sore for a day and a half. For what came at Jack, and nearly knocked him galley-west when he caught it, was a flat, perfect spiral that covered 40 yards and had less drop in trajectory than a .30/.30 bullet. "Hey!" Jack bawled. "You trying to kill me?"

"Gee, I'm sorry, Jack," Garb said. When he returned to where I was standing, he didn't notice the astonishment on my face. "I can throw pretty good sometimes," he told me in a matter-of-fac-voice. "My mother don't like me to play, though. She's scared I'll hurt my darned old hands or something."

"What're you doing here, then, if your mother won't let you play?"

"Aw," Garb said, "a guy can have one secret, can't he?"

Our business was too important to be done inside the Schwartz house, which was echoing with the fun and games of the smaller Schwartzes and their caterwauling cronies. By twos and threes, we drifted into the back yard, where nicked and climbable trees, festooned with swings made from rope and old tires, spread above the bare earth like a living jungle gym. Frightened, stunted clumps of grass shrank up against the fence or huddled between its pickets in a last stand, desperate but doomed, against the feet of little boys at frantic play.

There were three matters on the agenda: (1) The election of a captain, (2) a name for the team and (3) the assignment of positions. The first of these was no problem and was settled quickly. Jim Godalming, who was known (I forget why) as "the Old Black Doctor," nominated Hal Alvarson; the Burning Bush seconded; the vote was unanimous; and that was that.

The second took more time. A dozen suggestions were tossed into the hopper, ground to dust, then dumped. I turned one possible name to powder singlehandedly: the Pine-Tree Punters, which little Mush McWhirter had timidly proffered. "Good teams don't punt," I said with unaccustomed firmness. It was a fine, ringing statement that I'd read somewhere; the others, who hadn't read it, were impressed. Eventually, we decided to call ourselves the Forest Avenue Rangers, which had all sorts of virile connotations.

I had reason to feel that the third item on the agenda would dissolve into a Donnybrook, since everybody, including me, would expect to be quarterback, or at least in the backfield. I was trying to choose the tree that would give me the best protection against the roundhouse swings of my friends when I heard our newly minted captain announce, ex cathedra: "I've been thinking, and I think that if Whittaker and those bums've got a coach, we oughta have one ourselves."

Uncomprehension in the ranks. Then: "Who here's got a brother that used to play football?" the Old Black Doctor asked.

"Who said a coach has to've been a player?" Hal demanded. "All he's got to be is smart."

"So who's that smart?" Simmy Schwartz asked.

"Him." Hal's finger pointed straight at me. I became an instant statue. My abruptly accelerated heart threatened to bust right through my breastbone. If I hadn't been made breathless, I'd have caught my breath at the thought that perhaps here, now, at last, my near decade of omnivorous reading was going to pay off. I wanted to close my eyes and wait to hear loud shouts of assent ringing in my ears.

I kept them open, however, and all I heard was loud consternation. Raucous laughter. Contemptuous snorts. Then: "that guy?" Jim Fletcher said. "My dog's smarter than him."

"Better lookin', too," What's-His-Name added. This was a squat, square-faced, hard little towhead whose real name, John Smith, was so common that we could never think of it.

"Look, fellas," Hal said patiently, "he's the youngest guy in his class at school, right? So that makes him smart. And he reads all the time, don't he? So he can read up on trick plays and stuff like that and pick out the best ones to give us. And, besides," he went on, clinching his argument, "he's the worst player around, right? So if he's the coach, he can't play, and with him on the side lines, we can't lose."

While this dialog droned on, I was seeing visions of myself, borne in triumph of field after field on the victorious shoulders of what every sportswriter, from Grantland Rice on down, called "Brown's Juggernaut"--the most brilliantly coached powerhouse in the history of football.

"Brown may be lousy," said Jack Beaumaison glumly, "but we'll only be ten men without him."

"And we've scraped the bottom of the barrel already, it looks like," said the Burning Bush, glaring at tiny Mush McWhirter.

"Right through the bottom and out," said What's-His-Name, glaring at Garb.

Snapping back to reality, I babbled, "I know a guy I can get to play for us. A big guy. Real tough."

"Who?" Jim Fletcher asked nastily. "Who do you know that's real tough?"

"He lives on Bradford Street, off Pine, on the way to the Western Promenade. Near where I used to live. And he's good. I can get him. Tomorrow."

My tone must have carried more confidence than I felt, because, after a few dying grumbles, I was elected coach--but without much enthusiasm on the voters' part. A good deal of ire was aroused, however, by coach Brown's statement that he would not announce his line-up until three P.M. the next afternoon, when practice would begin at the Dell estate; meanwhile, he would make an intensive study of the various positions (continued on page 270)Revolutionized Football(continued from page 184)to be filled, taking proper cognizance of each player's individual talents. This ukase very nearly brought on the Donnybrook I'd anticipated, but Hal Alvarson nipped any violence in the bud. As far as he was concerned, Hal said, a coach's word was law, and if anybody present didn't choose to obey the lap, as interpreted by captain Alvarson--why, then, the captain would be delighted to beat the bejesus out of him. As Hal had done this in the past to every boy there, and thoroughly, he had no difficulty impressing this viewpoint on the querulous crowd.

I was walking home when Rumble Seat appeared from between two houses in front of me. He held his precious football against his chest with both hands. "I non't care where anybony ess plays," he said, the old speech impediment in full flower, "but I wanna play cennuh. If I non't play cennuh, you non't get to ooze my baw."

I was surprised that anyone would want, let alone insist, on playing such a thankless, bruising position. I wouldn't have played there even if it had meant automatic selection as all-time all-American. "What do you want to play center for, Rumble?" I asked, putting on my finest coachly frown.

"Because cennuh's the crocus," Rumble Seat said. "The crocus of the whole narn tea'."

The kid was not only turning into a loony, I thought, but he was beginning to talk in tongues, like a Holy Roller. (Later, I discovered that he'd meant "crux," which his impediment turned into "crocus.") "I'll think it over, Rumble," I said pontifically.

Until I climbed over the Dell-estate wall the next afternoon, everything had gone like clockwork. I'd spent study period in diagraming eight basic plays--two off-tackle, two end-around, three forward-pass and one that could be either an end-around or a pass, depending on the traffic situation. The rest of my waking hours had been devoted to the line-up and the fitting of players into positions that would result, I was certain, in an unbeatable team. And I had Pat Clancy in tow.

Pat was my ringer, the real tough guy I'd promised to deliver if I were made coach. When my family lived on Pine Street, Pat had beaten me up so often that he finally grew fond of me, to the extent that he defended me from everybody else. This fondness wasn't deep enough for him to play for the Rangers, however, unless I paid him a dollar a week, plus streetcar fare. I agreed, even though that would amount to $1.60, and my weekly allowance was a flat buck. How I scraped together the other 60 cents every seven days is neither here nor there. Let it be recorded simply that I suffered my own private Depression that fall; but it was a condition not without its benefits. Since I couldn't afford a single Baby Ruth, my skin was amazingly clear for the ten weeks of the football season. At least I wasn't stuck with Pat's room, board, tuition and laundry.

Despite Clancy's impressive presence, things began to disintegrate the moment I started reading off the line-up:

L. E. Jack Beaumaison (Too handsome to enjoy violent contacts that might result in a broken nose, or worse; therefore, deficient as a blocker or tackler. But a fast runner and a fair pass receiver.)

L. T. The old black doctor (Too slow for an end or a halfback, too light to play guard, but not scared of being banged around. Adequate as a tackle.)

L. G. What's-his-name (Short, stocky, stubborn and mean--everything a 1932 guard had to be. And, as 1932 guards were also anonymous types, the right man in the right spot.)

C. Rumble seat (His odd bodily construction made it next to impossible to move the "crocus" of the team in a backward direction. Besides, he owned the ball.)

R. G. Simmy Schwartz (Not as big as I'd have liked, but an abrasive, hell-for-leather kid, quick as scat.)

R. T. Jim Fletcher (Somebody had to play the position, and I wasn't partial to fashion plates, anyway.)

R. E. Mush McWhirter (Most beat-up-on boy in the neighborhood and, consequently, the fastest, having developed speed by running for his life. I figured that Mush might be able to snare one pass out of four--if he lived.)

Q. B. Garb Cartright (I'd seen that he could pass, and I was keeping my fingers crossed in the hope he could do something else. If so, the Rangers would be home free. If not--well, I'd better take instruction in sprinting from Mush. But I had a very strong hunch about Garb, and I rode it.)

L. H. B. Hal Alvarson (A fine blocker and pass receiver, but only mediocre as a passer and absolutely no good as a ball carrier. Perhaps his balance had something to do with it. Anyway, he was unbelievably easy to tackle, going down almost at the touch of a finger. Even I could tackle him.)

R. H. B. The Burning Bush (A slightly larger Simmy, he did everything fairly well and was especially good at punting. Persisted in chain-smoking during games, however. Fatimas, of course.)

F. B. Pat Clancy (Happiest when allowed free play in a game's more destructive aspects--blocking, tackling and bulling head down through the center of the line. As I had forecast--real tough, not to mention real expensive.)

When I finished reading, a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth reverberated from the stone wall. These ululations gradually progressed to human speech of a sort, mouthings that I interpreted as complaints about my quarterback selection. Even Hal, whom I had lately conceded to be a most imaginative type, was vociferously shocked. For a long while, it was ten against two: coach Brown and fullback Clancy (who didn't care who played where, as long as he himself was paid his $1.60 a week). I realized that unless I stuck to my guns now, I'd be through as a coach before I started--and the Forest Avenue Rangers might be through, as well. So I drew on a seldom-used streak of Scottish stubbornness--forged by Loch Lomond ancestors, tempered in the Nova Scotia snows--and stood my ground. Saying not a word, I waited until they surrendered, boy after angry boy, to the overwhelming force of my silence, out of either breath or resignation. "Aw, let's do it the way Coach wants," Hal Alvarson said, which was his method of handing over his sword. "See what happens, anyway. OK, Coach, give us a play to try."

We saw what happened, in short order. I gave them a simple forward pass, run off the usual diamond formation (7-1-2-1) of that era. It had the halfbacks legging out to the opposite flats and the fullback, after faking a plunge into the line, pulling up to protect the quarterback. By the rules then in effect, Garb had to pass from not less than five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

The Rangers tried the play six times, in the course of which: (1) Garb fumbled Rumble Seat's good snapback from center; (2) a bad snapback went over the Cartright head and almost over the Dell-estate wall; (3) Rumble's snapback was all right, but Garb bobbled and lost it; (4) he couldn't hang onto this one, either; (5) another crummy snapback; and (6) Rumble's best effort, except that the ball was snapped at Hal instead of Garb. Hal instantly heaved it at Rumble's backside, accompanying the action with a razzle-dazzle recitation of Anglo-Saxonisms.

I hastened to get a mental half nelson on these potential mutineers. "Well," I said, with theatrical disappointment, "this team's going to need a lot of coaching." before it's ready. A lot of coaching."

"Before it's ready for coaching," the Old Black Doctor said, "this team's going to need a new quarterback and center."

"And a new coach," said Jim Fletcher.

Ignoring this insurrectionary remark, I said firmly, "A coach's job is to get the most out of his players--and correct their mistakes as they're made. So"--I hesitated, clutching for a straw to keep myself afloat. I felt myself going down for the third time, when it came to me. "So," I continued easily, as though I'd known all along what to do, "here's how we'll correct this mistake. C'mere, Garb." I went over and stood behind Rumble Seat.

Garb came. "Here's what I want you to do," I told him. "Stand smack behind the center. Like this. And take the ball from Rumble. Down here, right under his crotch, get it? And, Rumble, you hand him the ball, but hard. Just shove it into his hands, then d-r-i-v-e! Got that, both of you?"

"Ayah," said Garb.

"Neyuhp," said Rumble from between his legs.

"But what do I do then?" Garb asked. "I can't pass from here."

"Run back to where you can," I said. "OK, fellas, except for this, the play's the same. Let's try 'er again. Go!" I clapped my hands for emphasis.

Each player was probably thinking that he might as well humor coach Brown while the fool was digging his grave, so everyone grudgingly moved into position. Garb's gargantuan hands spread open under Rumble Seat's butt. "One-seven-nine-five-eight-HIKE!" he barked--and the ball smacked into those bear-trap claws. Off for the flats went the halfbacks. Pat Clancy thundered head down toward left tackle. Garb loped backward like a drunken ostrich, stopped with a creak of joints, turned and threw a bullet at Jack Beaumaison, 35 yards downfield. Naturally, Jack couldn't hold it.

But the play had worked. When the team lined up again, it was with alacrity and in a different mood; interest had replaced sullen resentment. "OK, once more," I said. "This time, the Burning Bush gets the pass."

He did get it, too, far down the right side line, at the price of a broken Fatima. The music of cries like "Atta boy!" and "Now we're rollin'" rang in my ears.

Garb might not have been able to catch a football, but he could sure as hell pass and, as I discovered in jig time, his mammoth hands were perfect for fake hand-offs and suchlike deceptions. During the remainder of the afternoon, everything worked; and even today, I find myself imagining that if it hadn't become too dark to see the ball, we might be practicing yet, our clocks stopped forever in the twilight of that wonderful, happy, vanished afternoon in 1932.

As we broke up to wander off to our various houses, captain Alvarson punched me cheerfully on the biceps. "Well, Coach," he said, "I guess we've got a big thing going for us."

"Ayah," I said, "I guess we have."

I slouched homeward, hands deep in my pockets, eyes on the sidewalk, every slumping contour of me at odds with my inner excitement. Yet, while I sensed the "big thing," I couldn't define it. If a stranger had approached me at my front door and announced that I'd just taken the first step toward the creation of the T formation--that fluid, intricate, subtle and dangerous offense--I would've laughed in his face. And if he'd gone on to remark that I'd also taken the first step toward a revolution in football, I would've pegged him as a lunatic.

In the early 1800s, when the boy Longfellow roamed beneath them, Deering's Oaks had been called Deering's Woods; and in 1932, when the boy Brown was treading on their acorns, they still were as fresh and fair as they'd been in Longfellow's eyes. In the intervening years, they'd been landscaped by degrees into a stunning public park that was extraordinarily extensive for a city as small as Portland. Along the northern boundary of the Oaks lay ten or so acres of fairly level land that in Longfellow's boyhood must have been a soggy meadow or an even soggier marsh. In Brown's boyhood, the area encompassed four baseball fields. Immediately after Labor Day, park workmen would store away the bases, erase any visible remnants of the foul lines, and then mark out gridirons with a little hand-pushed cart that voided a two-inch-wide strip of white lime. There were no goal posts, however, so the amateur teams that played in Deering's Oaks had to do without field goals and extra points. It was on one or another of these public fields that the Forest Avenue Rangers worked out their tragicomic destiny.

On the first Saturday morning in October, we opened the season against Billy Whittaker's 11, the Stevens Avenue Wolves. The public fields were on a first-come, first-served basis, but reserving one was no problem. I simply told Mush McWhirter to be on the scene no later than six A.M. and to hunker down on the 50-yard line until the rest of us showed up at 9:30--even if he froze to death during his vigil. This exercise of squatter's rights took place before every game on our schedule. The crisp dawn air did Mush a world of good.

The Rangers and I had spent the two previous weeks sweating out refinements on the clutched-straw offense that coach Brown had so unwittingly grasped. The original breakthrough was made the moment I snuggled my quarterback against the center's backside; in its wake, improvements and variations rolled out of me faster than the Third Army later rolled east from Avranches. I began by changing the backfield's offensive formation from 1-2-1 to 1-3. Then, since Garb Cartright's arm would be our principal weapon, I did some jockeying with my ends. Defensively, the teams of 1932 used a seven-man line similar to their offensive setup, but offensive lines tended to play in tight and thus were invariably outflanked at the corners. I thought that if I shifted one or both ends five or ten yards away from the tackles, it would resolve this situation neatly; Jack and Mush wouldn't find themselves in unwanted bodily contact when they should be running downfield. I also thought that this splitting of ends would confuse our opponents defensively, although I couldn't judge its aptitude for confusion until the experiment had been tried under actual combat conditions.

Naturally, we couldn't take to the air on every play, so I had to invent a running game of sorts, if only to take advantage of Pat Clancy's bruising power. Garb's talent for fake hand-offs was almost as natural as his passing arm, and frequently in practice, even I wasn't sure whether Pat or Hal or the Burning Bush had the ball. Pat took a special pleasure in this hocus-pocus, which appealed to the latent larceny in his reformed-delinquent heart. Along with this backfield prestidigitation, I gave the Rangers a play in which the blockers and ball carrier followed a man in motion to the right. A sneaky switch usually ensued, wherein the man in motion and the blockers went hither but the man with the ball went yon. All in all, when the team toed the line with Billy Whittaker's Wolves, it had become fairly adept at ten basic plays, plus the wicked variations thereof. And it was full of confidence and cockiness, to boot. Until it got a good look at Whittaker's Wolves, that is.

They were wolfish, all right--lean, mean and out for blood--although a couple could have passed for half-grown grizzlies, and another, the fullback, was a downright red-eyed bull. He was as big as Billy's brother, Fred, and he lunged around in the pregame warm-up with a competence that chilled the heart. The only Ranger who liked the sight of this horrendous hulk was Pat Clancy, who was pretty lean, mean and wolfish himself. "He's my meat," said Pat, "that fella."

Mush's father, who was hardly unique in being unemployed that fall and who wanted (somewhat apprehensively, I dare say) to watch the puny lone issue of the McWhirters in action, had brought a timer's watch with him. Some Wolf's old man had tagged along, too; and coach Whittaker and I agreed that these ancient football buffs would do double duty as head linesman/timekeeper and field judge/referee--switching jobs at half time. The assistant linesman was a nine-year-old fugitive from the Schwartz kibbutz, known as "Bookey." He'd made the chain himself, out of odd lengths of links that he'd found or pinched somewhere.

The Rangers won the toss and Hal elected to receive. At the kickoff, I fell to fretting over the possibility that Garb might fail to glance at me before the huddle on each offensive play. I intended, you see, to indicate to him what play I wanted run next. At odd moments, over a fortnight, I'd been imparting to Garb a system of body signals. The antics of baseball coaches, in the box behind third, had long been a marvel to me; and today, if Garb saw me kicking dirt, picking my nose or scratching my left kneecap, I expected him to decepher the code and act accordingly.

The kickoff nearly wrecked us before we'd been launched. A low bouncer, it caromed away from What's-His-Name on our 35 and jounced crazily to our 15, where Garb's ungainly lunge for the ball merely deflected it backward across the 10. Garb fell on it at the seven, a millisecond before the majority of the Wolves fell on him. When the layers of players had been removed and Garb became visible again, he had a peculiar expression on his face--bemusement, perhaps; or it could've been that he was in shock. In any case, he didn't think to look at me for the signal I was giving him, over and over again. The team huddled and got ready for its first play from scrimmage with no coaching at all from the side lines.

No sooner had Garb set himself against Rumble Seat's bottom, however, than Billy Whittaker called time, complaining that the Rangers were using an illegal formation. The duties of field judge/referee, in the first half, had fallen to the father of one of the Wolves, who, unfortunately for his son's team, had brought a rulebook with him. Much thumbing of pages revealed no rule as to where the quarterback had to stand when taking the snapback from center. Billy Whittaker's crew were left with egg on their faces. Meanwhile, to add to the Wolves' misfortunes, Garb remembered to look in my direction as the Rangers huddled again. He was probably the only person present who didn't think I'd suddenly developed psoriasis.

The play I'd ordered was the man in motion to the right, and with the third number that Garb called, Hal Alvarson went galloping that-a-way. The snapback came on the five-count. Garb took a couple of rearward steps, faked a hand-off to Pat and pitched a lateral to the Burning Bush and his Fatima, who were already moving in Hal's wake. The play gained maybe ten inches.

Second down and a long nine to go. I signaled Garb to run the dishonest variation of the play we'd just gone nowhere with.

Again, Hal was the man in motion to the right. Again, Garb faked a hand-off to Pat and, again, he lateraled to the Burning Bush. But this time, the Bush stopped dead as he caught the ball, spun on his heel and went winging around left end.

The Wolves' crystal ball had informed them that we were giving the previous play another try, so they all headed for where they expected the action to be, undoubtedly intending to hold us to four inches this time. But already, the Burning Bush was around the other end and digging for pay dirt. The crystal ball exploded like a glass grenade.

Only two Wolves were near enough to the Bush for a shot at him--Billy Whittaker and their bull of a fullback. Pat Clancy, who had crashed through the line empty-handed and was looking around for something to keep him occupied, threw himself at the fullback's knees like a horizontally swung steel girder. His target did a slow cart wheel in mid-air and then crumbled limb by limb, onto the hard-packed earth. Almost simultaneously, Hal, who'd made a half circle through Wolf territory, knocked Billy ass-over-teacup, not to mention breathless, with a brutal blind-side block.

We had to delay our kickoff until Billy could breathe again, after a fashion; but more than the wind had been knocked out of him by that one delicious play. And out of the Wolves, as well. Their first series of downs carried them no farther than their own 38, and Pat Clancy returned the poleaxed fullback's punt to our 47. I signaled Garb to pass. (On first down, in 1932? Unimaginable!) The play was run with Mush split out ten yards and Jack Beaumaison five. At the Wolves' 26, little Mush caught Garb's pass, cleverly using his shoulder and left ear to do so, and the sheer momentum of the ball hippered him all the way over the goal line. Score, with four minutes gone in the first quarter: 12-0, Rangers. Mr. McWhirter was literally jumping for joy--until his false teeth popped out.

After that, it was no contest. Oh, the Wolves did some scoring now and then; and the Rangers had a few runs of bad luck--fumbles, interceptions and similar acts of God. But that second play of ours had demoralized Whittaker's pack, and they couldn't quite regain their leanness and meanness. Final score: Rangers 54, Wolves 26 (the two odd points came through a safety).

For the next month or so, I was the biggest thing in the neighborhood, eclipsing even the delectable Felice Beaumaison. Indeed, Jack was continually offering to get me a date with her, thus fulfilling a fever dream I'd nurtured ever since I learned that girls were not the gaggle of gigglers they seemed to be. But I'd become very Spartan. A great coach, I decided, can't afford to waste his time on such creature comforts as women and Baby Ruth bars. No, a great coach has to be an example and an inspiration to his players, including those to whom he slips $1.60 every Saturday morning. For it has been written, in letters of gold on myriad press releases, that a team is only as good as its coach. Or so I'd informed the Rangers eight or nine times a week. I guess I was feeling my oats, as they used to say of a snorting horse.

Our next three games were no sweat. We mauled the Munjoy Hill Maulers, 48-18. Then we sashayed up and down the Western Promenade Promenaders to the tune of 60-0, in a pathetically easy game that gave me a chance for further experimentation with my T formation. In this game, for instance, I put a half-back, the Burning Bush, close to the line of scrimmage, thus filling as well as taking advantage of the gap opened when Mush split out his five or ten yards. This gave Garb a third potential pass receiver, who could get downfield faster than his normal position would permit. Our fourth game, against a nondescript and nameless 11 from Woodfords, was another pushover. Final score: 66-6, Rangers.

In our next game, however, I suspected that our opponents, the Morrill's Corner Sheiks, would be a different kettle of fish, and an unsavory chowder in the bargain. The Sheiks had played Billy Whittaker's boys twice, tying them the first time and thrashing them soundly the second. I made my final offensive experiment for this game, spotting the Burning Bush far out on the right flank, close to the side lines and a jump away from split-end Mush. But even so, I was worried. The Sheiks' fullback was another bruiser along the lines of the one the Wolves had--but the lines were larger. He was a moody behemoth who, if he were in the right mood, fired up and r'arin' to go, could make mincemeat of any defensive 15-year-old 11 that might stray into his path. He'd been red-hot against the Wolves the second time around. What if he were red-hot against the Forest Avenue Rangers? Well, some people have recourse to prayer, I've heard, in moments of duress. Maybe I did then, too, for somebody, somewhere passed a miracle of sorts on the flat part of Deering's Oaks that day.

But things looked black to begin with. Not only was the moody fullback unstoppable at the start but, after a few running plays, he really caught fire. Hal kicked off and the Sheiks needed a mere eight plays to reach our seven-yard line, first down and goal to go. Their massive fullback toted the ball each time in a no-nonsense, power-play attack, treating our defenses as water would a cobweb sieve. Daunted and dispirited, the Rangers gave the impression of being beaten already, going through the motions for form's sake alone. Perhaps this attitude was due to the letdown that befalls any winning team at some point in its schedule. Whatever it was, it made a cheerless prospect for their coach.

From the seven, the Sheik fullback smashed through our right guard and tackle, literally stomping the length of a recumbent Simmy Schwartz; and he might have gone all the way if our backs hadn't been in close for a goal-line stand that I was convinced would be short and sour. The Burning Bush, chewing his Fatima like a cigar, annoyed at the disrespectful treatment given his younger brother, dove forward from behind the goal line to jackknife the fullback down hard on our three. Both of them got up as though they didn't want to, but I could tell that the Bush had gotten the worst of the encounter; he had turned a pale green and the Fatima was nowhere in sight. I figured that he'd swallowed the butt in the course of that bone-jarring tackle. In spite of the gloom engendered by what seemed to be our impending defeat, I couldn't avoid a tiny glow of righteous satisfaction; it served the hairy butt fiend right.

On second down, the red-hot fullback, with three men running interference, charged straight at What's-His-Name, who'd taken more punishment in the nine plays thus far than in all of our previous games. But suddenly, just as the fullback was about to blast through the hole where What's-His-Name--hit high, low and bellywise by the three blockers--had been, he howled like a banshee, threw the ball up into the air, grabbed his left thigh and rolled on the ground in a frenzy.

Hal Alvarson, in our end zone, who was moving toward the line and expecting to attempt a tackle of the fullback, was surprised to find himself holding a football that seemed to have fallen from heaven. He wasn't so startled, however, that he couldn't tuck it under his arm and take off for the far end of the field. And for once, he wasn't an easy runner to bring down--mainly because there wasn't anyone immediately available for the assignment. Only two Sheiks were still erect when Hal got under weigh; he was almost at mid-field, under full sail, by the time they'd collected their wits; and when he made the touchdown, the nearest pursuer was still 20 yards behind him.

That Saturday has been enshrined in memory ever since as The Day the Fullback Caught Fire, for that is precisely what he did. The missing Fatima hadn't gone down the Burning Bush's gullet at all. It had found a home away from home, instead--in the Sheik fullback's left pants pocket. The secret weapon had worked its way through to his leg at the most providential moment for the Rangers. The accident not only took the starch out of the Sheiks and their scorched fullback but, long before my team was able to bring its laughter under a measure of control, every Ranger was as loose as a goose and hell-bent for Arab blood. During the remainder of the game, I rendered silent thanks to good old Prometheus, who first brought fire to man. Final score: Rangers 36, Sheiks 12.

We approached our final game, a return match with Whittaker's Wolves, with what can only be described as swaggering arrogance--heedless of that well-known Biblical injunction about the fate that followeth pride. At game time, it was what State-of-Mainers describe as "nice, crisp fall weather"--that is, five degrees below zero, give or take an icicle. On the Deering's Oaks' brownsward, the Wolves were all present, accounted for--and ravenous. But the Rangers were waiting for their quarterback, of whom neither hide nor hair had been seen since the previous afternoon. Garb Cartright's absence kept us jumping up and down, not so much with impatience as in an effort to avoid becoming human stalagmites in the nice, crisp fall weather. The missing Garb, needless to say, wasn't my only concern: Pat Clancy had shown up in the coughing stage of a wracking chest cold, which meant that every physical effort he made in the game would end in a paroxysm of lung-grating hacks.

"Maybe Garb's old lady heard he was playing football and made him quit," Hal remarked at 10:35, a point at which, had we been playing, the first quarter would have been just about over.

"Maybe he caught a cold, too, and she put him to bed," said Mush.

"I hate these women that treats their kids like glass," Pat Clancy said. "The hell with him. I'll play both positions. Me, by myself." A coughing fit both ended and answered this dramatic statement.

Billy Whittaker failed to lift our spirits when he sauntered over and said to Hal: "If you wont, I'll let you borrow one of my guys and we'll play with ten. It won't make any difference to us. We're gonna massacre you, anyway."

"Aw, shuddup!" was captain Alvarson's witty retort.

Billy strolled, smirking, back to his team. "Or you can forfeit," he called. "That way, you can lose without getting your necks broke."

Captain Alvarson's reply was even more brilliant than his first one: silence.

It lacked 13 minutes of being 11 o'clock when the Old Black Doctor spied Garb at the far corner of the field, hurrying toward us with his peculiar birdlike gait. He was wrapped in an overcoat and was holding both arms tightly motionless against his sides, which more than ever made him resemble a loping ostrich.

"Where the hell have you been?" I demanded as soon as he reached us.

"Aw, you know, Coach. Getting bandaged."

"Bandaged? Bandaged for what?"

"For the swelling."

"What swelling?"

"There's two. I sprained 'em."

"Sprained what, damn it?"

"Aw, my wrists. Both of 'em. Looka." Garb stretched his hands toward heaven, drawing his forearms from the sheath of his overcoat. Each skimpy wrist, sure enough, was tightly wound in elastic bandages. "So I came to tell you I reckon I can't play, Coach."

Like some ham in a creaking melodrama, I clapped palm against brow. "Oh, Lord!" I groaned. "How'd you do it?"

"I fell off the piano stool," said Garb, sheepishly.

"You what?"

"Well, maybe not fell, exactly. You know, sometimes I like winding the old stool way up high, then set'er to spinning and sit there, with my legs stretched out, till she winds down. Well, last night I was whirling round and one of the legs broke clean off. You know, one of those legs that ends up in a claw. It wasn't well made, my mother says, and the wood was low-grade. She's gonna write to the stool company and raise hell. Well, anyway, I lost my balance and come down on my hands when they was bent wrong. The doctor said I was lucky. I could've broken 'em."

"I wish you had," I said.

"Aw, it's not as bad as all that," Garb said. "Shucks, you can play quarterback better than I can, anyway, with all the stuff you taught me."

"I can play quart--" I started to say. My mouth snapped shut abruptly, as I reeled from the sledge-hammer blow.

"Sure, Coach, you'll do fine," I heard captain Alvarson say; and in the time taken by one thudding heartbeat, I knew that I had become a playing coach who, for the next two frigid hours, would be a Dr. Frankenstein trying to control the monster he had created. God help me, I thought.

But God didn't lift a finger in my behalf. I fribbled, I frabbled, I fumbled, I fuddled, I flopped. I called the right play at the wrong time, and vice versa. My fake hand-offs were about as difficult to detect as the midday sun in a cloudless sky. When it came to forward passes, I threw some eight- or nine-yard beauties toward receivers who were waiting about half a mile downfield; but most of my long ones were good enough to be snapped up by some insatiable Wolf or other. Come to think of it, the Wolves' appreciation of my aerial efforts grew as the game went on, to such an extent that Billy Whittaker announced, midway through the third quarter, that he wasn't going to throw anymore touchdown passes himself, since I was doing such a good job of hitting his receivers for him. The only facet of offensive football that I couldn't be faulted on was that of ball carrier, simply because I wasn't foolish enough to try it. The final score? Us 0, Them 62.

It was small comfort, but instead of blaming the shellacking on me, the Rangers took it out on poor Garb Cartright. Their resentment didn't take the form of words or physical violence; all they did was exclude him totally from their activities--a ban that lasted until his family moved from the neighborhood in the spring of 1935. Though I was nominally accepted back into the fold, the team indicated their mute disapproval of their former coach by refusing to discuss that day of shame. The only direct comment on my conduct of the game came from Hal Alvarson immediately after the debacle, while the hangdog Rangers were plodding home along Forest Avenue. "Ayah," he said cruelly, "a team is only as good as its coach." Unforgivingly, they continued to call me Coach for more than two years afterward, in place of my normal nickname, which I prefer not to mention here.

One of my favorite daydreams is predicated on the assumption that, among the seven spectators who watched us demolish the Morrill's Corner Sheiks was a man who subsequently emigrated to Chicago and became a friend of Clark Shaughnessy. On the morning after the Bears have blown a close one, the ex-Portlander and Shaughnessy are having breakfast together. "Hey, Clark," this fellow says, in an effort to lift the coach's spirits, "I been meaning to tell you. Back in Portland six, seven years ago, I saw this kids' football game, and the team that won used the damnedest formation. Their quarterback called signals from way up against the center's butt, see, and the halfbacks and ends were...."

If this fantasy be fact--as I suspect it is--then let it be recorded that there was a boy in Maine who set in motion, long ago, a chain of events that culminated on a balmy Sunday afternoon last January in the defeat of the Baltimore Colts by the razzle-dazzle New York Jets--a historic upset unjustly attributed to Joe Namath and his overrated coach, Weeb Ewbank. This has been the story of that boy.