Tough to Tackle

by Matt Christopher

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1972 by Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

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  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Matt Christopher® is a registered trademark of Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09454-2

  For Ernie, Judy and Ginger

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Matt Christopher®

  THE #1 SPORTS SERIES FOR KIDS: MATT CHRISTOPHER®

  1

  Boots Raymond stood on the porch, the September wind whipping his unzippered jacket and toying with his hair. He was thinking.

  “Well, are you going to stand there all day or are you coming?” asked Bud Davis, one of the two boys looking up at him from the sidewalk.

  Boots flashed a grin, shrugged, and rattled down the steps. He wrapped an arm around Bud’s head and gave him a gentle poke in the ribs.

  “I was thinking,” he said.

  Duck Farrell sniffed the air and nodded. “Yep, you were,” he agreed. “I smell rubber burning.”

  Boots’s fist lashed out and Duck dodged it. He lost his balance and fell on his bottom, a look of pain coming over his freckled face.

  “You nut,” said Boots. “I was only faking. I wasn’t going to hit you.”

  Boots grabbed the redhead’s arm and helped him to his feet.

  The look of pain disappeared as Duck smiled. “Oh, thank you,” he said in a singsong voice.

  Boots picked up Duck’s blue hat and plopped it on the patch of unruly red hair.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” said Duck, dusting off his pants. “But you sure have a funny way of faking.”

  Boots was four inches taller than Duck and twenty pounds heavier, although both were the same age. He had been thinking about playing quarterback on the Apollos football team. He had played quarterback last year on a pickup team and had discovered that he could throw forward passes a mile and carry the ball almost every time with a good, substantial gain. He was a natural quarterback.

  “What position you guys shooting for?” he asked.

  “Quarterback,” said Bud.

  “Halfback,” answered Duck, straightening his hat. “What position you shooting for? Guard?”

  “Guard, my eye. I’m shooting for quarterback, too.”

  “Quarterback?” Duck stared, then looked at Bud. Bud was a year older than the boys, but he was Duck’s size. Boots had seen Bud play quarterback. Bud was good. But Boots, being bigger, was sure that he could gain yardage better than Bud.

  “Yes, quarterback,” Boots said. “That’s where the action is. Who hasn’t heard of Steve Young, Brett Favre, and John Elway?”

  “Okay, who hasn’t? They’re quarterbacks on professional teams.”

  “See that? Everybody knows who they are. But name one guard.”

  Duck’s forehead knitted.

  “You can’t,” said Boots promptly. “That goes to show you. It’s a quarterback people remember. Not a guard. Not a tackle. You have to have time to think about who guards are. But quarterbacks’ names pop into your head like one, two, three.”

  “That’s only because you’re interested in quarterbacks instead of guards and tackles,” replied Duck. “Without guards and tackles, what good is a quarterback?”

  “No good.”

  “So what are you arguing about?”

  “Come on,” Bud interrupted. “Let’s go or we won’t be playing any position!”

  They headed for the field.

  Boots was glad football season had come around. His sister Gail wasn’t enough to fill the gap that their brother Tom had left. Tom and he used to wrestle. Tom was bigger and had pinned Boots as often as Boots had pinned him. Boots knew Tom would let him win just so he wouldn’t get discouraged and not wrestle anymore. But it was fun just the same.

  They had also played basketball and pitch and catch. Boots had hoped that all the exercise would keep him from gaining too much weight. He was pretty big as it was.

  Then Tom had enlisted in the Marines and was sent overseas. That was only a few months ago, but it seemed like years to Boots.

  When they reached the football field, at least twenty guys were already there. They were throwing and catching footballs and making more noise than a jungle full of animals. No one was in uniform. Coach Bo Higgins had promised he’d pass them out after today’s workout.

  Boots saw the coach with another man on a bench in front of the third-base bleachers. The field was used for baseball in summer. In another week or so it would be marked with white lines every five yards and the goal posts would be put up.

  “There’s a hefty man for us, Bo,” said the man sitting with the coach. “Hi, son! What’s your name?”

  “Boots Raymond,” said Boots shyly. He shrugged. “It’s Theodore, but everybody calls me Boots.”

  Bo Higgins smiled. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and wore a red baseball cap. “Hi, Boots,” he greeted. “This is Coach Dekay. He’s my assistant this year.”

  Mr. Dekay was still smiling. He was taller than Bo, but thinner around the shoulders. “A few more boys like you, Boots, and we’d have a real strong line.”

  Boots’s jaw dropped. “Do I have to play on the line?” he asked disappointedly. “Can’t I play in the backfield? Like … quarterback?”

  Mr. Dekay chuckled and exchanged a look with Coach Higgins.

  Bo met Boots’s eyes squarely. “What do you weigh, Boots?”

  “A hundred and thirty-nine pounds.”

  Bo Higgins shook his head. “Sorry, Boots. A hundred and twenty-five is the limit for backfield players, and a hundred and forty for linemen. We have to have that ruling, otherwise a heavy boy like yourself wouldn’t have much trouble tearing through a line that could be made up of players pretty light in weight. Didn’t you read the form your parents signed?”

  The coach’s reply struck Boots like a bell of doom.

  “I — I guess I didn’t,” he said dismally.

  2

  One … two! One … two! Spread those legs, Boots! Raise those elbows, Vic! One … two! One … two!”

  Coach Bo Higgins was leading the team in calisthenics, jumping with his legs spread apart, then together, and his arms moving straight up and down in graceful form.

  “Down on your backs! Hands behind your heads and your feet together! Now … without bending your knees, lift your legs a foot off the ground and hold them there!”

  Boots grunted and groaned as he felt the ache come to his legs. He kept his lips pressed tightly and strained to hold u
p his limbs until the coach gave the word to drop them.

  “Okay! Down! Rest a minute!”

  The minute seemed the shortest in history.

  “Everybody on his feet for the Dead Body drill! All right! Down on your bellies! Side by side with about two feet between you and the next man! Eddie Baker, you’re first in line! Get up, jump over each body, and fall flat after you reach the last one! Leo Conway, you’re next in line! Follow Eddie! Get the idea?”

  “Got it,” several guys answered in unison.

  After each boy went through the routine at least twice, Coach Higgins let them play catch with footballs for a while. Then he called the boys together and handed each of them a football uniform. The jerseys were red and the pants blue, with the team’s name, APOLLOS, on the front of the jerseys. On the backs were the numbers. Boots’s was 77.

  Coach Higgins knew all the time that he was going to play me on the line, Boots reflected discouragingly. But what position? I suppose I’ll have to wait till next practice to find out.

  The Apollos had calisthenics the next day and the next. On the third day the coach showed some mercy: He cut the calisthenics time in half. Practice wasn’t over, though. Bo Higgins read off a list of names from a clipboard and after each name a position. Boots’s name was right on top of the list. And his position: right tackle.

  The next players named were:

  Richie Powell right guard

  Pete Ellis right end

  Ralph Patone center

  Vic Walker left tackle

  Neil Dekay left guard

  Eddie Baker left end

  Leo Conway fullback

  Jackie Preston right halfback

  Duck Farrell left halfback

  Bud Davis quarterback

  “That’s the offensive team,” said the coach. “Most of the guys will play defensive, too. We’re not loaded with enough players to have fresh units go in each time the football changes hands. Leo, you’ll play fullback on offense and middle linebacker on defense, for example. Don’t worry. We have enough subs so that no one will get so tired he can’t walk. Neither Coach Dekay nor I will be that cruel with you.”

  A chuckle rippled from some of the boys.

  “But we want a good team,” the coach went on emphatically. “We want players who want to play. If any of you think you’re here just to get out of doing chores at home you might as well quit right now. I don’t want to waste time with that kind of player. There are a lot of kids who are anxious to play but won’t go out for football because they fear they won’t have a chance. So drill this into your heads: Be serious about playing football, or hand in your uniform right now.”

  Boots felt that the coach was talking directly to him, for he wasn’t really sure now whether he could be serious about playing football or not. He wanted to play quarterback. That was the position he was set on. That was the position in which he felt he could put his best effort.

  Limiting a quarterback’s weight to one hundred and twenty-five pounds was a crazy rule, Boots reflected. That was okay for the other backs because they usually ran with the ball. A quarterback seldom ran with it. A quarterback was boss. He called the plays. He handed the ball off to the backs or threw forward passes.

  What did a tackle or guard do? Nothing but ram his shoulders against the guy in front of him, or throw a block on somebody. You didn’t need brains to play tackle or guard. Just broad shoulders.

  Well — weight, too.

  And guts. Yeah, you really had to have guts. You could get a lot of pounding from the other guy. A helmet and shoulder pads weren’t all you needed to be able to take that pounding.

  “Well, I’m through with my speech,” said Bo Higgins. “Are there any among you who want to throw in the towel now?”

  His eyes wandered slowly over the boys. They met Boots’s eyes and Boots didn’t flinch. He wasn’t going to admit to Bo that he didn’t have his heart one hundred percent in playing just because he couldn’t play quarterback. He couldn’t. Not in front of all the guys.

  He didn’t know what he’d do. Maybe he’d tell the coach tomorrow. Or the day after.

  The coach wasn’t giving a guy a chance asking him to decide this very minute.

  3

  The Apollos had intrasquad scrimmage on Thursday and Friday, and Boots Raymond was with the team both days.

  He tried to tell himself that he hadn’t made up his mind yet what to do, but he knew that the truth was he didn’t have the nerve to tell Coach Bo Higgins he wanted to quit.

  The coach wouldn’t just stand there and take back the uniform without saying something. “Why?” he’d say. “Why are you quitting?”

  “Because I don’t want to play tackle,” Boots would have to answer. “I want to play quarterback.”

  If his life depended on it he couldn’t see himself looking into the coach’s eyes and admitting that.

  Coach Higgins worked with the offense and Coach Dekay with the defense. It had taken almost all week for the boys to call Mr. Dekay “Coach.” A lot of the boys had known him a long time and had always called him “Mr. Dekay.”

  Boots played both on the offensive and defensive squads. Opposite him was Tony Alo, who alternated positions with him. Tony was tall and wiry and much stronger than he looked. He bucked with his head and his shoulders, and it took all of-Boots’s strength to push Tony back, to control him. Once Tony caught him off balance and shoved him back on his rear, at which Tony smiled proudly and said, “Thought you were tough, fat stuff.”

  The remark rattled Boots. He didn’t like to be called “fat stuff,” “fatso,” or any other name referring to his build. But he laughed it off. He knew as well as Tony did that he could lick Tony any day of the week. He had done it.

  Forty-three. Twenty-two. Thirty-four.

  Forty-three meant that number four, the right halfback, was carrying the ball through the three hole, the hole between left tackle and left guard. Twenty-two meant that the left halfback was carrying the ball through the two hole, the hole between the center and the right guard. Thirty-four meant that the fullback was carrying the ball through the four hole, the hole between the right tackle and the right guard. Those were only a few of the plays Bo Higgins was teaching the team.

  They worked on the plays and it seemed to Boots that most of them were on his side of the line. One of the backs was running either through the hole at his left side or through the hole at his right. Some were pass plays to either the right or left ends, but the blocking and the pushing didn’t let up on the line. Boots saw no fun in it at all.

  Suddenly he thought of something simple he could do without getting banged up. He could do it only when his side had the ball, but even then he’d save a lot of wear and tear on his body. It seemed so simple and great he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  The next time his squad got the ball, he faced Tony Alo with fierce determination in his eyes. They stood face to face. Boots had discovered by now that Tony didn’t fear him one bit. Most of the time Boots would roll over him like a bulldozer, but Tony would come back strong as ever. Sometimes stronger.

  “Down!” barked quarterback Bud Davis. “Set! Hut! Hut! Hut!”

  Just as Tony started to charge, Boots fell flat on his stomach and curled his arm up over his face. He felt Tony fall on him, and he smiled against the grass that tickled his chin.

  The coach’s whistle shrilled and Boots got up. He saw that Duck was lying on the ground two yards behind the line of scrimmage, with Tony Alo’s arms around his waist.

  “Boots,” said Bo, staring at him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “Okay, offense. Huddle.”

  Quickly the offensive team formed a U-shaped huddle with Coach Higgins and quarterback Bud Davis crouched at the mouth of the U. “Try forty-three,” advised the coach. “Know what that one is, Jackie?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied right halfback Jackie Preston. “I take the handoff from Bud and break th
rough the three hole.”

  “Right.” The coach slapped his hands once hard. “Let’s go!”

  This time Boots didn’t fall on his stomach. He stood on his feet, ready to block Tony Alo. Suddenly Tony dodged past him and broke through the line. Boots then turned to block an oncoming linebacker. He stumbled and felt the guy’s knees strike him in the ribs.

  The whistle blew and Boots saw that Jackie had made a gain of four yards.

  “Okay. That’s it for today,” said the coach.

  It was the best announcement Boots had heard all day. Both his shoulders ached, and his ribs where he had been kicked.

  “Man, what a stupid position,” he said as he and Bud and Duck headed for home and a hot shower. “Every bone in my body aches.”

  Duck laughed. “Quit complaining. Look what that poor guy playing opposite you went through.”

  Boots grinned through the sweat drying on his dirt-smudged face. “Yeah,” he said, thinking about Tony Alo. “Guess I did shake him up a little.”

  He’d give it one more day, he thought. One more day and then he’d tell Coach Bo Higgins he was finished. Football wasn’t for him.

  When he arrived home from school on Friday Mom told him that there was a letter from Tom.

  “Read it,” she said, her green eyes sparkling as she smiled at him. She was barely an inch taller than he.

  I miss my drums. One of my buddies had a radio which we’d listen to, but the batteries wore out and we haven’t been able to get new ones. It gets very lonesome at times. I miss the fights I had with Gail and wrestling with Boots. I suppose by the time I get back home he’ll be able to pin me in nothing flat.

  I’m happy to hear he went out for football. It’s a good contact sport and should prepare him in many ways for the future.

  What position is he playing? Tell him to drop me a letter and tell me all about it. I was a flanker for good old Warren High. Remember?

  I’ll write again soon.

  Love,

  Tom

  4