,
"the celebrated Yale and Penn track trainer, 'you can beat a team that
can't be beat, but--you can't beat a team that won't be beat!' Latham must
be in the latter class."
It was the Bannister-Latham game, and the first half had just ended.
Captain Butch Brewster's followers had trailed dejectedly from Bannister
Field to the Gym, where Head Coach Corridan was flaying them with a tongue
as keen as the two-edged sword that drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of
Eden. A cold, bleak November afternoon, a leaden sky lowered overhead, and
a chill wind swept athwart the field; in the concrete stands, the loyal
"rooters" of the Gold and Green, or of the Gold and Blue, shivered,
stamped, and swung their arms, waiting for the excitement of the scrimmage
again to warm them. Yet, the Bannister cohorts seemed silent and
discouraged, while the Latham supporters went wild, singing, cheering,
howling. A look at the score-board explained this:
END OF FIRST HALF: SCORE:
Bannister ........ 0
Latham ........... 3
The statement of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., swathed in a gold and green
blanket and humped on the Bannister bench, to shivering little Theophilus
Opperdyke, the Phillyloo Bird, Shad Weatherby, and several more collegians
who had joined him when the half ended, was singularly appropriate. In
Latham's light, fast eleven, trained to the minute, coached to a shifty,
tricky style of play with numberless deceptive fakes from which they worked
the forward pass successfully, Bannister seemed to have encountered, as
Mike Murphy phrased it, "A team that won't be beat!" According to the
advance dope of the sporting writers, who, in football, are usually as good
prophets as the Weather Bureau, Bannister was booked to come out the winner
by at least five touchdowns to none.
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