Chapter 4: The First Football Game, Part II

On a cold, November morning we played a football game under falling rain drops and above mud puddles. This is the story.

This is Chapter Four of The Stories We Tell, a nostalgic lookback on friendship, growing up, and the hopes we have of becoming heroes.

It’s The Wonder Years meets The Sandlot with sprinklings of Friday Night Lights. New stories will be published weekly. For a list of all chapters, please visit the Chapter List here: Chapter List - The Stories We Tell.

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November 14, 1992, Part II

In a place where the leaves turn to red and orange and collect in piles more fun to dive in than rake, where gridiron glories retold over cold longnecks on wobbly barstools sound better than any tune from a dusty jukebox, and teams from Columbus and Ann Arbor settle their scores late each November, there was another football game, one played under rain drops and over mud puddles, with kids who wore flags and carried hopes in their pockets.

They wore dark blue. We wore maroon. They had stylish wristbands and playsheets. Our cleats had gone soggy, and our coach chewed tobacco. They were older and bigger. We were younger and smaller. But destiny wanted it this way—in the cold and rain, with the morning fog fighting to stay—ten- and eleven-year-old kids playing a game that would last only an hour but rattle in the pages of their stories forever.

They danced in the end zone, a choreographed taunt of high fives and finger waves, after scoring on the game’s second play. Their two-point conversion made it 8-0, and for the crowd scrunched under their umbrellas the runaway everyone expected had just started.

But while the fans came for touchdowns and celebrations, what they got instead was a boiling stew of defense and tension. They played dirty. And we took the body blows.

Mike caught an elbow to the lip from Justin. He winced, his spit a crimson streak, then stopped a 3rd down run the next play. B got flipped on his head, undercut going high for a pass. He popped up laughing, “Got me on that one,” all he had to say. Streaks of brown with a hint of green zig-zagged down my shirt. I’d been planted hard into the ground long after a play stopped.

At halftime, Ryan, B, Mike, and I stood together watching across the field. Justin shoved Chad. Jared argued with someone we couldn’t quite see. Three parents sprinted from their lawn chairs to shout instructions at their sons. All season, they won games with scores like 56-6, 48-0, and 72-8. But on this Saturday, stuck sloshing around on a wet November morning and pressure rising with each clock tick, they found themselves in a game for the first time.

Mike wiggled one of his front teeth to see if it wasloose. We were bruised, bloodied, and scoreless, but we’d taken their best shots and were still in the game.

Early in the third, B reached over one of their cornerbacks and plucked a bad arm punt of a pass from somewhere up in the fog. The cornerback fell, B batted away the incoming safety, and ran toward the end zone. Then, in one of those ridiculously amusing things reserved from ridiculously amusing people, he turned at the fifteen and jogged the rest of the way backwards, carrying the football in one hand and, with the other, waving dismissively at two boys giving chase. B stopped one foot across the goal line, laughing as they crashed into him on their way to a splash in the mud.

Ryan added the two-point conversion. We were tied at 8.

The tension rose as the fog finally lifted. We were two teams being squeezed by the same boa constrictor and neither of us could fight free.

We stuffed their run game—Mike sniffing out a reverse, Ryan cutting off their option. On the other side, they might have been a**hats, but they could play defense. We spread them out—three, four, five wide—but the passing lanes open all year closed faster than a textbook at recess on this day.

For more than ten minutes, nobody got a first down.

Something had to break. Thankfully, it broke our way.

Mike, playing middle linebacker, tipped a pass heading over the middle. Ryan plucked it inches from the ground. He weaved and whirled and twisted, for a moment looking like Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl with the chance to go all the way. He returned it to their twenty. and we scored two plays later. We led 14-8 with half the 4th to play.

To their credit, they didn’t quit. Methodically, they answered our haymaker with a bunch of hard jabs. Up the middle for five. Around the right for six. A short toss for seven. The more we dug in at the line of scrimmage, the more they moved us backwards. When Justin ran in their two-point try, they had us in a 16-14 hole with only a minute to play.

If the minutes leading up to the game felt like hours, the final minute felt like it ended before we could even take a deep breath in the cold, November rain.

B took a short throw and gained fifteen. Ryan a swing pass for a dozen. I scrambled to the forty and after B caught a jump ball between half their defense—barking “too small, y’all too small” on his way back to the huddle—we’d reached their twelve-yard line with no timeouts and one play to win it.

In the huddle, we listened as Coach called the play. We held hands. We nodded our heads. But nobody said a word. We were nervous, sure, but mostly we knew what needed to be done. We clapped our hands and broke the huddle. The Tournament, and the hopes we carried, came down to this.

Justin sprinted left to right and right to left, barking orders to his defense. The big chests on their big line heaved up and down. In the secondary, Jared had his hands on his knees shooting breaths in quick bursts toward the ground. We’re gonna win, I remember thinking watching him suck wind.

Standing in the shotgun, the soggy, leather football came back to me at the seventeen. I rolled right looking for B. As I set to throw, three defenders boxed him out of the end zone. I turned and saw Ryan. He tried to break free, but a yank on his shirt with no call from the ref spun him in a circle. Moving left, I reversed field. Mike heaved his body at two of their defenders, bellyflopping in front of their cleats, three bodies now a tangled mess of mud and sweat on the ground.

For a moment, I could picture what came next. A short sprint through the open grass. Our sideline exploding in cheers. Hugs from family and high fives from friends. Our team’s name etched forever on the big trophy. In the stories to follow, we’d get to be the heroes.

Then, it happened.

One half step too far with my left foot, my right unable to clutch Earth. My legs flew to the side, followed by my shoulder smashing into the soft ground. The light rain felt cold against the back of my neck as I lay face half in the mud. The referee’s whistle pierced my ears. So, too, did their celebration.

In a place where the stories you want to forget seem to be the ones that get remembered, I had slipped. And we had lost, 16-14.

Coming next week:

Stay tuned, starting next week the stories take us back to Summer 1993, to days without school but with plenty of backyard baseball and mischief along the way. In time, we’ll return to the inevitable rematch between these two teams.

PS: This story borrows (sometimes heavily) from Dan Jenkins retelling of the 1971 Nebraska vs. Oklahoma Game of the Century. It’s amazing sportswriting.