Semi-Tough

  Jimmy Keith Joy hobbled over into the center of the dressing room.

  "I got 'em, Daddy, I got 'em," he said. "Everything's groovin'."

  "We ain't takin' no more shit!" T.J. Lambert hollered, a lot louder than he can fart.

  "Giants has got one more half to be men," T.J. said. "Them fuckers ain't won nothin' yet."

  A group of us around Hose Manning's locker got a mite testy. I guess Shake Tiller started it.

  "How much did you bet on the Jets?" Shake needled Hose.

  Hose only looked up at him.

  "Why don't you try throwin' balls in the same stadium the rest of us are in?" Shake asked.

  Hose drew on his cigar and squinted and said, "And when did you forget how to run your routes, playboy?"

  Shake said, "I can't run 'em in the stadium tunnels. They call that out of bounds, where the ball's been going."

  Puddin Patterson interrupted.

  "Let's stay together, babies," he said. "We can move it on them cats. I can feel it. We gonna sail like a big boat this half."

  Shake said, "Bite my ass, Puddin. You haven't been off your belly all day. Sixty-four's all over you like the crabs."

  Puddin said, "We gonna move it this half. We gonna fly like a big balloon."

  "Yeah, and I'm gonna be the first nigger on the moon," Shake said, spitting on the floor.

  I said for everybody to cut the crap and let's talk about what might work.

  "A runnin' back wouldn't hurt us any," Hose said, calmly. "You haven't showed me a lot of Jim Brown out there."

  "Line gonna move them cats this half," said Puddin. "We gonna spin like a big record."

  "Nothing wrong with us that a Namath or a Jurgensen couldn't fix," said Shake.

  We had to get together, I said. "We got two quarters to play football and that's plenty. We only need three sixes if the defense can shut 'em down," I said.

  Hose said, "I think the counter will give us something if Puddin and Euger can start gettin' a piece of somebody."

  "Fuck Euger," said Shake. "Seventy-one's spittin' his ass out like watermelon seeds."

  "We gonna stuff 'em like groceries," said Puddin.

  It was from the other side of the room that we all heard T.J. cut one that sounded like a drum roll and then heard him call out: "Where the hell are the goddamn coaches? Shit, I wouldn't blame 'em for not wantin' to hang around this bunch of tootie fruities."

  It must have occurred to all of us at the same time.

  The coaches weren't there. Shoat Cooper wasn't there. The star-spangled Polack wasn't there. None of the coaches were in the dressing room at the halftime of the Super Bowl.

  The only indication that a coach of some kind had even been there was on a big blackboard at the far end of the room.

  Written in big chalk numbers was a message of encouragement, I think you could call it.

  The blackboard said: 24 to 21.

  None of us saw it when we first got to the dressing room because we were too busy throwing our hats and cussing each other. And who would have thought that the Giants' coaches would have sent us a simple message instead of their own selves?

  We never did get around to discussing among ourselves what we ought to try to do. Speaking for myself, I think I just sort of thought I'd try to run harder. And I hoped Hose would discover something important on his clipboard.

  Football studs, by the way, get a considerable laugh out of the things they read in the newspapers and magazines after a game.

  We're always reading about our strategy and adjustments, and invariably it's wrong.

  For instance, the New York Daily News said that during the first half of the Super Bowl the big problem of the Giants was trying to "shut off the concealed rush" of the Jets.

  Well, I'll read you what the Daily News says. I clipped it out and saved it for the book.

  The halftime was devoted to a serious discussion of the options the Giants had. Shoat Cooper and his war counsel of Hose Manning, Billy Clyde Puckett and Shake Tiller calmly agreed to go with less deception in the last two periods.

  In the first half, Manning had not been able to throw effectively into the seams of the Jets' sliding zone. Thus, the Jets had taken away Manning's favorite weapons — the double zig-out, the hitch-and-fly, and the post-and-go, all to Shake Tiller.

  The different look of the Jets' defensive line, which shuffled in and out of a five-two, a four-three, four-four and a gap six, created disorder among the Giants' blockers.

  "Our stutter rush, or what we call Foxtrot Green, gave 'em plenty of trouble," said Dreamer Tatum.

  The rush not only stifled the Giants' passing game, it kept guessing exactly right on where Billy Clyde Puckett wanted to run. He had no room. He was virtually shut down, and you could see the frustration written on his square jaw as he came to the sideline, time after time.

  Wisely, however, Shoat Cooper went to Plan B. After halftime consultation with his war counsel — Manning, Puckett and Tiller — the Giants switched to Man blocking from their linemen and decided to employ basic muscle.

  Although their lucky white jerseys with the blue and red trim were now soiled and tattered, and their proud blue helmets were dented and smudged by the relentless thudding of the Jets' defense, the Giant attack came alive in the second half and prevented no less than an outrageous embarrassment.

  Now is that some cheap crap or isn't it? Do you know when we finally saw Shoat Cooper? The halftime festivities were practically over and we were getting ready to take the field when Shoat stuck his head in our door.

  The door opened incidentally just as we all were yelling and rushing toward it. The door hit A1 (Abort) Goodwin in the head and knocked him cold. That's the real story of why he never played the last two quarters.

  "Awright, quiet down," Shoat said. "Al will be O.K. You can't hurt a sprinter unless you tweak him on the tendon. If Al ain't O.K., we'll go with Randy Juan, and that's that. Now I only got one thing to say to you pine knots. You got thirty more minutes of football to play and you can do one of two things. You can play football the way you're capable of playin' football, or you can go back out there and keep on lookin' like a bunch of turds what dropped out of a tall cow's ass."

  And Shoat Cooper spit and left.

  THERE'S NO POINT IN ME TRYING TO ARGUE THAT WE weren't lucky right after the second half started. They kicked olf out of our end zone and we got the ball on our twenty, and it was important for us to show the Jets that we had come back with some spunk.

  What we needed to do was get a good drive going, and more than anything we needed to get us six.

  In the huddle on first down at our twenty, Hose said:

  "O.K., ladies, let's tend to our knittin'. Lots of time now. Plenty of time. Let's block now, bunch. Everybody blocks. Ain't that right? O.K., bunch. Here we go. Gotta be smooth now, bunch."

  Shake Tiller finally said, "Why don't you call a fuckin' play so we can get on with it?"

  Hose called an inside belly and I got four yards. It was the longest run I'd made. And Puddin got a block.

  "They all mine now, babies," said Puddin, back in the huddle. "We gonna stick like a big knife."

  As everybody knows, the drive was not exactly semi-perfection.

  An interference call on Shake Tiller didn't hurt us any, and neither did another one on Thacker Hubbard. Something else that didn't hurt was the quick whistle which saved us the ball at midfield after Booger Sanders fumbled.

  "We got a little luck goin'," said Hose. "A little luck, bunch. A little luck's out here with us now. O.K., bunch. It's all there to be had. It's all there waitin' for us. Just a stroll in the country, bunch. That's all it is. Just pickin' up flowers."

  Shake said, "Hose, you want to can the shit and call the game? We know why we're here."

  That was a hell of a catch Shake made on a wobbly pass that Hose threw which got us down to their thirty-one. Just a typical one-hander from the repertoire of old Eighty-eight.

  I guess this was the f
irst time that we felt like we had moved the ball, and we were sure in sniffing distance.

  I made a little yardage on a sweep, thanks to Euger Franklin's blocking, and Hose scrambled for about ten, and now we were down on their seven, and Hose called time out.

  Me and Hose went to the sideline to chat with Shoat, and this was the first time that I actually think I heard the crowd. It was almost as if I had just woke up. Say what you want to, but a big old thing like the Super Bowl causes nerves and numbness.

  "What's workin'?" Shoat asked Hose.

  "That interference play ain't bad," Hose said, winded but grinning slightly.

  Shoat looked down at his feet.

  He said, "One way or another, we got to get in that end zone. I'd sure like to stick that sumbitch right up their neck."

  He said, "They's men down in the trenches and if we could score down in there it would let 'em know they's men on both sides."

  Shoat took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, "Try old stud hoss here and see if you get anything. You may have to throw. We ain't goin' for no more threes."

  I got two yards on a slant and I got four more on a wide pitch, and we had third down at the one. Actually, Dreamer tackled me on the three but I crawled to the one and the zebras let me have it.

  "Good lick," I told Dreamer, getting up.

  He patted me on the butt.

  Hose called me on a quick hitter on third down, and I knew when I took the handoff that I wasn't going anywhere. It was like trying to run over the Davis Mountains. I just hugged the ball and hit in there, and it was fourth down at the one-foot line.

  Shoat called time out again, the dumb-ass, wasting one we might have needed. And over on the sideline, he chose to recite some coaching wisdom for us.

  "They's one thing you always do when you're down to the nut-cuttin'. I never knowed anybody from Bryant to Royal to Lombardi who didn't say to go with your best back on his best play. Let's stick stud hoss here in there behind Puddin and see if we can get just enough of a crease. Is the Pope blockin' anybody? Tell that toothless Catholic sumbitch to give you a good snap. We got to have this sumbitch, Hose. You hear what I'm sayin'?"

  Some people will probably always look back on this play as the biggest of the game, but there were a lot of those. This one was sure the play which caused the most fuss, of course.

  It's always a close call when a back tries to leap up and dive over the line, and then gets shoved back. Was he over or wasn't he? I climbed right up Puddin's ass, and I remember hearing a lot of grunts, and I surely remember the lick that Dreamer and Hoover Buford put on me, up there in the air, on top of the heap.

  The question that the head linesman had to decide was whether I had crossed over the goal before the ball jarred loose, and I was thrown back, and there was that scramble and fist fight for the football.

  One zebra signaled a touchdown. Another one signaled a fumble and a Jet recovery. Another one signaled time out. And, meanwhile, six or eight Giants and six or eight Jets got into what you call your melee.

  Both benches emptied out onto the field, and whistles were blowing, and guys were cussing, but the one thing I could hear above all of it was guess what? You got it. T.J. Lambert cut some that really and truly belonged in a zoo.

  As much as anything, I think, it was the odor that broke it all up.

  I didn't get into the fisticuffs because all you do in something like that is get injured. Neither did Dreamer. What we actually did was sink to our knees, off to one side, and laugh.

  When the fight stopped, the zebras talked a long time and finally decided to give us a touchdown. I don't like to think that their decision was swayed by the fact that T.J. stood right in the midst of them, snarling and cutting some short sweet ones. But it might have been.

  I understand that even on slow motion instant replay nobody could tell whether I scored or not before the fumble, but we got to count it, anyhow. That's the main thing.

  It was twenty-one to ten, after Hose made the conversion, and we were back in the ball game.

  Barbara Jane said that up in the stands, some of our friends, for the first time, had started to sense a glimmer of hope for a miracle.

  She said Big Ed was furious at Shoat Cooper's goal-line calls but the touchdown calmed him down.

  Barb said that Big Ed said, "We're almost back in the goddamn contest. I just don't know how much character our niggers have got."

  I know there'll probably always be an argument about whether I scored on fourth down at their one-foot line but I truly believe I got over before Dreamer and the others knocked me and Puddin back to the five, and the ball back to the ten.

  It was surely that drive to start the second half which made us a lot more eager to do battle. In pro football, being down by twenty-one to ten is not nearly so bad as it seems, particularly when there's still a quarter and a half to go and you've suddenly got some momentum.

  Of course, it took a little of the juice out of us when they came right back and drove eighty yards to our one-inch line and had a first down. And I'll never know how T.J. Lambert got back there and took the ball away from Boyce Cayce just as he was handing it to Gruver Allgood without being called for offsides.

  That was certainly one of the biggest plays of the game, even though Sports Illustrated failed to mention it. If the dog-ass Jets had scored then, it would have been twenty-eight to ten and we might have been deader than a Jew at River Crest.

  When T.J. came off the field you might have noticed that he brought the football with him and refused to give it back to the referee because he wanted it as a keepsake.

  "I sucked this sumbitch up from them tootie fruities and I'm gone keep it," he sneered.

  Of course, in so far as big plays go, you can't say enough about Jimmy Keith Joy redeeming himself by recovering the punt they fumbled on the following play. Hose Manning really got into a good punt and it didn't hurt any that the ball took a crazy bounce past their twin safeties and rolled damn near the length of the field, or all the way to their twelve-yard line.

  Old Jimmy Keith Joy was chasing that sumbitch all the way, you might remember, as if a carload of red necks were after him. And even though Jimmy Keith and Jessie Luker sort of wound up in a tie for the ball, I think the referee made a good decision when he awarded it to us on their fifteen.

  I knew with two successive breaks like that we would score quick.

  In the huddle Hose Manning called for Shake Tiller to split out by Dreamer Tatum, fake a hook and then beat him to the flag.

  "Drill it on the break," said Shake, "and my numbers'll be there."

  It was really a pretty play. Shake put his move on Dreamer and left him hollering, "Aaaaah, shit!" and Hose blew it right in there at Shake's numbers and we had us another six.

  When the fourth quarter started and it was some kind of a ball game, twenty-one to seventeen, Barbara Jane said that some of our Giant fans were bordering on insanity.

  She said Burt Danby had run over a couple of box seats away and was hugging Strooby McMackin and slapping people on the back and shaking his fist at the whole stadium behind him.

  She said Burt was shouting, "Guts! Courage! Class! Never say die! Giants forever! God, I love our city!"

  Barbara Jane said that Big Ed said, "We've got 'em now. They're on the ropes. You can see it. It's all over. The moment of stress has come and their goddamn niggers'll quit. Watch what I'm telling you."

  She said it was just about then that Dreamer Tatum intercepted Hose's screen pass and went fifty-five yards for his second touchdown of the game.

  I don't mind saying that this gave us a sick feeling, to be on the verge of catching up, and then to have something like that happen. To pull up to within four points of somebody and then suddenly to have something terrible like that occur and fall back by eleven was almost enough to make us want to vomit.

  We probably would have, too. We probably would have just sat down and thrown up and cried pretty soon if Randy Juan Llanez hadn't
taken that kickoff and run it right up their ears.

  Some things I've read say television clearly showed he stepped out of bounds twice, at our forty and at their twenty-two, but all I know is that Randy Juan Llanez got credit for going ninety-eight steps to their alumni stripe, and it was six more for our side.

  And if he's not the greatest little spook-spick I've ever known then you can go browse through your taco huts and find one to top him.

  I'm embarrassed that I made such a spectacle of myself when Randy crossed the goal line. I was running right behind him all the way. And I was so happy when he scored that I guess I must have looked like a dress designer the way I wrestled him down to the ground and hugged on him, celebrating.

  All I remember is that I was overcome with joy and Randy Juan was squirming and squealing underneath me. He said his ankle was pinching.

  Barbara Jane said that Big Ed was in some kind of shock by what Randy Juan Llanez had done.

  She said Big Ed just shook his head and said, "Goddamn if you'd have asked me about it, I'd have said the little spick wasn't good at anything but driving the team bus."

  Barb said that Elroy Blunt looked at the scoreboard and then looked up at God and said:

  "Twenty-eight to twenty-four, Skipper, and you know I'm a sinner. What kind of fuckin' is it gonna be?"

  Barb said Burt Danby was screaming tears, standing up on his seat, purple in the face, shouting back at the stadium behind him:

  "It's class! It's guts! It's courage! It's Manhattan, by Christ!"

  I really wish I could tell you that we knew what we were doing there at the last.

  I'd like to be able to divulge that we said a lot of dramatic things to each other in the huddle. I wish I could say that every time we went in the huddle on that eighty-five yard drive, which was against both the dog-ass Jets and the dog-ass clock, that we were fresh enough to be witty or clear-thinking or exceptionally heroic in one way or another.

  I've thought about it a lot over here on Lihililo Beach, where I can look out at the old Pacific or up at the rain clouds and the high waterfalls on the mountains, or at the fairly distracting sight of Barbara Jane in a bikini over on the lava rocks.