MOBILE, Alabama. It's half-time of the final game of the season for the Winn-Dixie Pee-Wee Falcons, and the long faces on the eight year-old players reflect the fact that they're down 12-0 to their opponents, the Continental Motors GMC-Pontiac Jets. As parents bring plastic bottles of sports drinks to their children, Rob McGurt, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama, tries to put together an inspirational talk to motivate his team.
Go Falcons!
"I'm kinda new at this," he confesses to a reporter. "One of the coaches has an out-of-state Thanksgiving dinner to go to, and the other went into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy this morning."
McGurt has a son--Robbie--who loves football, but the bespectacled academic has no interest in contact sports himself and so has limited his previous volunteer activities on behalf of the team to minivan driver. About to make what is probably the most important speech in young Robbie's life, he finds himself ill-prepared for the role of extemporaneous Knute Rockne.
"Win one for the Gipper, or at least your hamster."
All McGurt has to go on is a newspaper clipping he tore out of the Mobile Press-Register in which Alabama head coach Nick Saban is quoted as saying that his team's loss to small-time Louisiana-Monroe was a "catastrophe" comparable to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Nick Saban: Master of Football Metaphors.
"He's the top coach in the state, so I guess he would know how to get his players fired up," McGurt says, as he takes several 3 by 5 inch cards out of his back pocket, clears his throat, and begins to speak.
"Fellas," he begins. "We're down twelve to nothing right now. I hope you realize what that means."
"We have to score twice and make an extra point," says Derrick MacClary, a speedy half-back who returns punts and kick-offs for the Falcons.
"It's a little bit bigger than that," McGurt says with a bit of an edge in his voice.
The kids are quiet except for Rodney Taylor, Jr., the "monster man" in the Falcons' defense, who burps loudly as a result of guzzling his sports drink.
"You guys have probably heard of the Crusades, where the Christians tried to take Jerusalem away from the . . . uh . . . Turks--or somebody. Well, it's like that."
"We learned about Jerusalem at Vacation Bible School," says Joe Markey, an undersized boy who has been pressed into service at guard and defensive tackle because he's not fast enough to be a back. "And we made stuff out of gimp."
Gimp
Joe shows off his cool bracelet to the other kids, distracting them from the stirring lecture McGurt has begun.
"Kids, I need to you to focus," the coach-for-a-day continues. "We're down twelve points, so it's a two-score game," he says, holding up his index and middle fingers. "Anybody ever heard of World War II?
The Gap Band, of "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" fame.
"Is that the one where we dropped the bomb on the Japs?" Robbie asks his dad.
Tyrone Beasley begins to sing The Gap Band hit "You Dropped a Bomb on Me", and the other kids laugh at his disco-era dance moves.
"Tyrone, cut it out," McGurt snaps, and the boys become silent again. "What those guys"--McGurt points across the field at the Jets--"did to you in the first half was a tragedy of the sort we haven't seen since--the Spanish Inquisition."
Spanish Inquisition: "Let me know if this hurts."
Hector Ramirez, a pudgy boy of Mexican heritage, raises his hand.
"Yes, Hector?"
"If you have a question in Spanish I can answer it, Coach McGurt."
"Thanks, Hector, but I'm pretty good at slinging the como estas's around myself."
McGurt flips to his final note card, and resumes. "Anyway--you kids have got to put this game in perspective. You've got to understand that it's on a scale with the D-Day Invasion, the polio epidemic, and the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle."
The kids soak in McGurt's inspiring historical precendents as the referee approaches and directs the Falcons to line up for the second-half kick-off.
"Okay--you guys ready?" McGurt fairly screams, the veins visible on his forehead.
"I'm not," says Joe Markey.
"Why not?" McGurt asks, his voice as stern as a Marine drill sergeant's.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
