Grass Fields Grass Fields A lot has been written about high school football. The glories of athletic struggle, the crucible that shapes young personalities for the rest of their lives. The merits of lessons learned while engaged in combat on a field of honor. The value of teamwork. The tangible rewards for hard work and the mindless repetition of drills that lead to repeatable performance. The friendships that are forged and last forever and the conditioning of body and honing of skills that fades sooner than we realize or desire. For some, the development of leadership ability that carries over into later endeavors. For others, the knack of following those leaders and just learning to contribute in a meaningful way to an enterprise larger than themselves. Self esteem is garnered as each youngster at some time, on some day, on some play, knows that no one in the history of the sport could have just done what he did as well. Learning to be gracious in victory. Learning to accept defeat and move on to the next Friday night convinced that it was the last loss you would ever suffer. For me, nothing that I have ever read can adequately describe the emotions and feelings that those days and years of competition generated. It is hard to describe the sensations that the smell of freshly cut Bermuda grass during the month of August creates even today. It is warm and pleasing like bread that has just come out of the oven, but at the same time a tension is present and I feel myself tightening up. It is time to start. An inexplicable feeling of dread that is difficult to understand settles into my stomach and I feel ready and alive. Nervous energy leaps from the hair on my arms and I anticipate contact. And pain. My muscles twitch. I feel fast. I can run and leap. I will soar down that field and no one will be able to stop me. Colors are brighter. I see everything in my periphery. My senses are heightened and I again feel like a young god with my whole life ahead of me to do with as I please. God created autumn Friday nights in Southwest Georgia for the sole purpose of playing football. It is in my estimation one of his finest creations. The smells of just picked crops still linger and blend with aromas of freshly turned earth as preparations for the spring planting are already underway. In Southwest Georgia in many places you can still get a hint of the warm smell that has been made by the peanuts that never made it into the hopper during harvesting and were left in the fields to slowly roast under the late summer sun. There is usually a nip in the air that just caresses the skin. Mingled with sweat after warm-ups, it feels like you have jumped in a pond in the middle of a hot day. Most nights I recall were cloudless, and stars were so close you could grab a handful and give them away to the spectators. The band was always playing something loud and the sound of brass instruments mixed with the war-like banging of drums, would wake the dead. Everything was alive. The visiting band would answer, measure for measure, decibel for decibel, anything our band would offer. This mingling of sounds resulted in a steady THUMP, THUMP, THUMPING, like a gigantic metronome ticking out the moments of your life. Excitement, mixed with nervous anticipation steadily built and the bands led this crescendo up to the point where we would crash screaming and hollering through the paper sign hung between the goal posts. Our uniforms were clean and fresh and unstained. The smell of liniment was everywhere, hanging like a fog and surrounding all participants like a cloak of protective invisibility. Our eyes were bright. Little kids usually raced around the end-zone for a while, launching streamers, shouting, playing touch, and doing anything they wanted while their mothers admonished them from the stands. Later they could all claim that they never heard their moms tell them to stop running around and behave over the noise of the bands. The referees would gather at mid-field; a team of impartial UN observers on hand to make sure that we followed all the rules of the Geneva convention during the coming minutes. Most of the refs had at one time, been in the same place we were. The same butterflies, the same nervous energy, the same feeling of dread. The same feeling of invincibility. The same attitudes that we wore as a part of our uniform. The attitude that cried out for the visitors to take their best shot. The attitude that said that their best shot wouldn�t be enough. Not tonight. Not for us. We were gods and we determined the courses of our chariots. The sound of the first whistle is a sound that I can never forget. It possesses magic that can not be replicated. It seems simple. A shrill, medium pitched warbling, that I would find annoying in any other place. To most in the stands I would guess that it represented the start of the game. Nothing more and nothing less. The clock began counting down with its sounding and it was on. Gentlemen, start your engines. On the grass though, it was different. This sound was received and a metaphysical, perhaps spiritual, transformation occurred in all the young warriors present. This simple sound changed you. Whatever you had been, you were no more. I can not explain it better than that. You were for the next few hours a creature of the grass. You were possessed and held captive by the field until the final gun signified that you had been released. Sprinting, sweating, spitting, punching, hitting, swearing, jumping, throwing, crashing, hurting, banging � living! I do not ever once remember feeling like I had been playing. It was not a game. ______________________________________________________ Randolph County was not a place that I particularly like to visit. Cuthbert, the county seat and location of the high school, was a small, mean looking town that never had been and never would be considered quaint. The streets were filled with mostly closed shops; signs of failed enterprises reminding everyone that this town had never amounted to much and never would. It was dirty and run down. It looked like and was, a tired little town like many others in Southwest Georgia. We were not favored to win. This was understandable since we were not a very good football team. The Herald had us listed as 2 touchdown dogs and most of our supporters considered this generous. It probably was. We weren�t fast, but we were small. We weren�t particularly talented, had no future Division 1 prospects, let alone future stars on our roster, and had played in 5 homecomings so far that year including our own. This would be number 6. In a ten game season, when all your away games are somebody�s homecoming it is not a good sign. We ran the veer offense but were so inept at running the ball, we ended up passing mostly. This didn�t help in particular as we normally couldn�t catch either. We couldn�t block well and did not tackle worth a poot and on the rare occasion when we scored, we usually had it called back due to some mental error that the refs referred to as a penalty. As the quarterback I couldn�t throw a pass longer than 45 yards (with a tail wind) so I saw very little that would qualify me to throw rocks at my team mates. It had been a long year and we were heading to Randolph County to finish off my senior year. It was in fact probably the last game I would ever �play�. It was important to me to get it right at least once. My team did not hear the opening whistle that night. We were not transformed. We did not become some thing or somebody else The magic did not work for us that night. We went into the locker room trailing 25 -0 at the half. I don�t remember what the coach said or if he even said anything. There wasn�t much to say. We stunk in all phases of effort. We had only briefly slowed Randolph on their way to 4 touchdowns and the only reason it wasn�t 28 to zip was because their kicker was as bad as ours and he had missed 3 extra points. I had completed maybe 2 passes and we had amassed roughly 15 yards on the ground; 12 of that coming on a fake punt that wasn�t supposed to be a fake. I thought that we couldn�t be any worse but remembered that we pretty much had been all year. We were models of consistency if nothing else. It was time to start the second half. I wondered why we should bother to go back out there. I had a good selection of purple spots coming in nicely on my rib cage, my left ankle wasn�t feeling all that great and someone had apparently tied concrete blocks to my back during intermission. It ought to be over. One last bus ride home and I�d be done with this nonsense. The second half started and the unexpected happened. For the first time that season my team mates and I all heard the whistle. We began playing like we had actually been to a practice before. Like we knew the plays in the playbook. We performed for one half of our lives like we had been born to be football players. It wasn�t luck. We were beating them like a bunch of red-headed step kids. On the opening kick off Charlie Brown hit the opposing team�s kick returner so hard he had to be helped off the field on a stretcher. Each play built momentum as our defenders played like crazed men, brutalizing the Randolph County offense. Play after play we stuffed them. This confused the other team mightily. They looked across the line trying to see what had happened to the group that had gone into the locker room. What happened to that bunch of sad incomps that had been here 15 minutes ago? This was prior to performance enhancement drugs. Coaches did not normally dispense speed to high school scholar athletes. What they saw shocked them. This group of boys had finally heard the whistle and they meant business. They were going to get it right this time. On the offensive side I began to play like I had never played before. I felt no pain from my ribs and was suddenly able to perform super-human feats. I had become possessed along with my team on that field of grass. There was no crowd noise, no sound from the band, no screaming from the sideline � there was nothing. We played in a vacuum. One in which we could do nothing wrong. We were invincible. Moving with methodical precision we scored 2 times in the third quarter and again early in the fourth to cut the score to 25-21. I made passes that really looked like passes- not wounded ducks begging to be picked off. Guys that previously could not catch a cold were reeling in long passes like all-pros. Our running back was doing a Jim Brown imitation and the defense was simply an impenetrable wall that let nothing through, around, or over them. It was unbelievable. More so because we weren�t suddenly sleeping giants waken from our slumber. We weren�t that good. This feeling began to creep into the huddle with about 2 minutes left in the game. We had the ball and needed to go 60 yards for the score. I looked around and in a moment of awareness realized that for once in my career as the quarterback I could actually lead us to a win. Or not. I wanted this so bad. Since I had been a kid, I had dreamed of making the final pass with time running out to win the big game. This wasn�t a big game to anyone but me and the guys on the team but it was the size of Texas to us. My shoulders did not feel big enough. I was a skinny kid and weighed 130 pounds soaking wet. I was slow and possessed of modest athletic ability. That was the reality. I was not the hero. I must have said something about choking in the huddle because Al looked up through his face mask at me and said, �You gotta have faith man. That�s all. Faith. Shut up and call the play.� From that second on I knew we were going to win. 10 yards, then another first down completion for 17 yards. The doubt was gone and Randolph County�s chances with it. Al made a spectacular catch for a first at the 25 and Moses reeled off a run up the middle to the 4 yard line. There were 6 seconds left in the game and we called our final time out. We were breathing hard but energized. Puffs of steam were coming out of face masks in the huddle and the intensity and concentration shining from the 10 pairs of eyes around me could have been confused for religious fervor. It was blinding and pure. One play then a kick and the bus ride back home wouldn�t be so long. We didn�t even have to call the play. Everyone in the huddle knew what the call would be. A pass off of a pick, to our best player in the corner of the end-zone. It was our best play and we had saved it for the unlikely event that we would ever need it. We broke the huddle and got set. The Randolph players lined up across from us. They knew they were about to lose. I recognized the look. The play went off and even now I can still see it in slow motion in my head any time I care to view it. I dropped back, avoided one tackler, rolled to my left and was hit by their linebacker from my blind side. I remember thinking: Oh God, not this way not now, we are so close. God heard me in that minute because I withstood the hit, shook him off momentarily, and with him draped around my ankles threw the prettiest pass I had ever thrown in my life to a wide open Lee Allen in the corner of the end zone. As I was falling I was ecstatic. We had done it. I had done it. The gun sounded. It was over. I sighed and remained sitting on the grass unable to move; spent. All 25 of our fans were going wild, I could hear the band and the coach was jumping up and down like a mad man. This was victory. It turned out to be sweet after all. Then I saw the flag. A small yellow piece of cloth lying unobtrusively by the Randolph bench. My team mates had not seen it yet. The coach had not seen it yet. I�m not sure that anyone had seen it yet, but it was still sitting there by the bench and it wouldn�t go away. I looked toward the opposite bench and saw the coach sneering at me. �It don�t matter what you do son. You ain�t never gonna win up here.� The coach then laughed and started slapping his players on the back and began to hustle them off towards the locker room. Most of them still did not understand what had happened and were a mixture of anger and embarrassment over having lost to the worst team in the region, possibly the state. As they begin to figure it out, their players started to jump and shout and talk trash about how they had kicked our butts. A sideline that could have passed for a graveyard seconds before started to gain noise and energy as the players, the band, and then the fans saw what had happened and the roles of the respective sidelines were reversed. The call was for unsportsman- like behavior on our fans. I had never heard of this call in my life but just like that our win was taken. I stood and ran towards the ref screaming for an explanation of the call. �What did they do? They were just cheering. You gotta be shittin� me man. We won this game. You can�t take it away like that. That ain�t fair. It�s not right.� �Go home son. It�s over. Life ain�t always fair.� He kept his head down and never would look me directly in the eyes. He walked off the field and I collapsed back to a sitting position right where I had just finished screaming at the ref. I cried. I cried hard. I couldn�t stop the tears. Tears of rage I think. Tears for this miserable end to this miserable season. Tears for the unfairness of it all. Tears for every wrong that had ever been. Tears for my team mates. Tears for myself. The tears kept coming and I was a monument to self-pity. A poster boy for injustice. I was still crying after everyone had left the field. Still sitting there, struck suddenly dumb and lame, unable to get up. I guessed my Dad must be embarrassed by now, but I didn�t care. I thought about getting changed and about that damn bus ride, but I was paralyzed with some previously unnamed malady�unable to move. After a while I couldn�t cry any more so I just sat there. I wondered if the bus would wait for me. Dr. Conner, the superintendent of our school, found me that way and came up to me. He was, as always, in a suit and tie and had a fine London Fog trench coat with him as if he were expecting rain. I was looking up at him through rings around my eyes. I thought it strange that he looked funny and that I felt like I had chlorine in my eyes from the swimming pool. I didn�t say anything. He watched me for a while before speaking. �What�s the matter son? You going to get on the bus?� At the time I thought this was the dumbest question that I had been asked up to that point in my life. Did he just get here or something? Where had he been? It was pretty damn obvious what the matter was from where I was sitting. I looked at him like he had just stepped off a star cruiser from Venus and he returned my look with not unkind eyes. �Life isn�t fair son. It never has been and it never will be. You take your best shot at it. Get a win where you can and when it doesn�t work out the way you wanted, you move on. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You made us proud. Now let�s go home.� Dr. Conner draped his trench coat over his arm and moved of the field toward the bus and the Sheriff�s escort car. After some time, I don�t know how long, I got up too. The field finally released me, and for the first time I could think about what the superintendent had said. It wasn�t fair and I wasn�t likely to change that. I played hard and now I was going to move on with my life. That�s what you do. This realization was the only win I got that year on the grass field but it stayed with me for a long time and seems important now.
Copyright © 2005 Mark A Stuart |