THE VARSITY DRAG

I got a kick out of describing my sandlot football exploits. Read this and you may too. 02/20/2016

THE VARSITY DRAG

I loved to play tackle football while growing up despite my puny size. Hoboken’s public high school did not field a football team during my years of attendance. As a result, sandlot teams sprang up around the city. I organized a team in 1941 called the Condors, a junior version of another team with the same name. I named myself quarterback and installed the ‘T’ formation system utilizing plays I had seen diagrammed on the sports pages after the 1940 Chicago Bears crushed the Washington Redskins for the championship by a rather resounding score of 73 to nothing. Any system good enough to produce that result had to be good enough for the Condors.

This quarterback position suited me to a “tee”.  In this formation, I usually passed the ball or handed it off to one of the other three backs, minimizing the number of times I had to carry the ball. On defense, I stayed far back of the line of scrimmage in an effort to avoid getting involved in any serious tackling. Standing only five feet three inches tall at the time, this seemed prudent.

In our second year, members of the Condors raffled off our mother's cakes, using the proceeds to buy sweaters with the block letter “C” emblazoned on them. They looked just like an official high school varsity sweater. Our colors were maroon and white. Regrettably, my mother washed the sweater at the end of the season and the colors ran, making it impossible for me to wear thereafter, even though it still fit.

Under my superior guidance as quarterback, the Condors went undefeated for three years. My association with the team ended in 1944 when I began attending my first year of college. It saddened me to learn the team’s undefeated streak ended when it lost its final game against a team from Jersey City. That squad used “ringers”, two black sailors, who were older, bigger and faster than the high school aged boys the Condors had played against previously.

In my final game played against a team from Weehawken, I fumbled a punt that the other team recovered and went on to score a go-ahead touchdown. With just a minute to go, I ran back the next punt almost the length of the field to score the winning TD for the Condors, the highlight of my athletic career. I went out on top.

My worst day of playing sandlot football happened to me a week earlier. We faced a team from Union City whose star lineman weighed five hundred pounds and who stood seven feet tall. Well, maybe not that big, but he was huge compared to the rest of us. He enjoyed himself all game long, knocking me around like a rag doll, laughing at my inability to block him. I got the last laugh after he bowled me over while rushing toward our kicker, trying to block a punt. My teammate’s kicking foot hit him in the gut, breaking one of his ribs. This injury forced him to sit out the rest of the game that we went on to win.

A few days later, we met at a high school dance, where I spotted him limping, listing to one side. “You big ape,” I teased. “The Navy managed to right the Normandie, so there’s still hope for you.”

I had too much speed for him to knock me down again.

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