Contemplating Games and The Game

See how the bleachers blue turn pale with fright

Send a cheer across to bleach 'em nice and white

Oh, look at the way we smash and rib them through

While the blue bulldog yells, "Boola, boola, boo." --Veritas

For me, The Game didn't start with my cramming into a rented subcompact full of friends or with hopping onto a bus chartered by a Harvard undergraduate organization.

The Game actually started with about 13 minutes left in the third period of the Harvard-Princeton hockey game. We were down 3-0 to the Tigers, and I didn't feel like watching Harvard's lost weekend.

So at about that time, I turned to a neighbor and said "Help me." I clapped. Once. Then again. Then again.

Like it had many times before, the synchronized clapping spread all the way around the student section. I had tested the crowd. They were into it.

The Harvard team showed that it was into the game by responding with three goals in less than ten minutes, then netting the game-winner in over-time. The crowd, so dejected in the first 50 minutes of play, went crazy. It's as if we had beaten Montreal.

I got five hours of sleep.

Then I showered and put on a stocking cap, a sweater, a pair of tights and some sweatpants. I took one step outside and said, "This isn't going to be enough."

So I donned enough warm items to make me feel like a mummy.

The last extended bit of warmth I was to receive for much of the day was the train ride to New Haven. I stepped out of the station into a wind chill that would make the most rabid Green Bay Packer-Backer wither.

And then I was at Yale Bowl. The place looked like a circus. With The Game as the event under the Big Top, there were many side shows. I saw some Harvard-Yale soccer, bumped into many friends, ate a UC-sponsored hamburger, bought a large load of peanuts and a half pint of Puerto Rican rum made by the company my great-grandfather used to own.

I entered the stadium, with the "Y" flag and the "H" flag flapping over our rooting sections. I couldn't understand how this place could seat more people than Giants' Stadium; the place looked so, well,small.

And then I saw the blue seats--70,000 of them. All made out of wood. Then I made my own words to the Harvard fight song Veritas:

See how the bleachers blue turn blue with cold

Send the wind across to turn them less than bold.

After all, the wind was blowing. Hard. And I was near the top of the stadium, exposing myself to the elements all in the name of tradition.

I thought back to the 1981 AFC championship game between Cincinnati and San Diego, played in wind chill close to 50 below zero. San Diego, the warm weather team, lost its passing game. And the Bengals could run the football, and went to the Super Bowl as a result.

So, there were some things against Yale right there. It was cold, the Elis would throw the ball too much, we could stop the run, and we also could rush like nobody's business. And Yale was used to playing warm weather. And losing in warm weather. Like in Hawaii.

But then The Game started.

Soon, I started to hear chanting. But it wasn't the normal kind of chanting with clapping interspersed. The fans had tried that at the soccen game and it sounded like a large pillow fight.

I got into it, too. I was determined not to see a lost Harvard weekend.

My section loved the way the Harvard defense played. But I decided it lacked a name, like the No-Names, the Purple People Eaters, the Doghouse Defense, or the "46."

So I decided on the "Pit Bull" defense. Like pit bulls, the Harvard defenders gave it their all. Like pit bulls, they struck fear into the hearts of the Yale offense, making it burn timeouts. Like pit bulls, they beat up on the Bulldogs.

Some of us cheered "Pit Bull, Pit Bull" along with the "One in Four, One in Four" cheer.

It was great. We could move the ball and they couldn't. But when they did, it was deadly. It was getting to be crunch time, and the enemy was moving the ball again. And about the time Harvard's male cheerleaders did their last "caterpillar," Yale made a turnover, and The Game was ours.

I was so happy. And so lightheaded, thanks to my great-grandfather's rum. I ran onto the field and hugged everyone in sight.

I sang songs with the band and congratulated every white jersey I could find. It was a wild scene of music, grass, wind, love, cold, trumbones, joy, and the littlest sousaphone player turned drum major.

Ivy League champions. Wow. And it wasn't a lost weekend after all.