JERRY TRIES HIS FOOT

It was two days later that Jerry, wandering over to the gridiron between recitations, found Don Sears and Billy Conger amusing themselves with a much-scarred football. Jerry watched for a few minutes. Don, who was trying for quarter back, managed to get off some pretty good punts, but Billy, who played right guard, was far less adept and his efforts usually went astray and occasioned laughter. Finally one of Billy’s punts came bounding over to where Jerry was standing and disappeared under the stand. Obligingly Jerry recovered it and was about to throw it across to Don Sears, as he had seen the players do in practice, when Don called:

“Kick it, Benson!”

Jerry viewed the battered ball doubtfully for an instant, hesitating to expose himself to ridicule. Then curiosity overcame caution and he poised the pigskin in one hand, dropped it and swung a sturdy foot. To his overwhelming surprise, foot and ball met perfectly and the former went hurtling off in the general direction of the smiling Sears and well over his head! Jerry watched it in amazement and with supreme delight. He couldn’t remember when anything had given him quite the satisfaction that kicking that football had! There had been something supremely gratifying in the sound of that impact of leather against leather, and his instep still tingled pleasurably with the blow. Don Sears, having recovered the ball, called across laughingly.

“You ought to be out trying for the team, Benson!” he shouted. “Looks as if you had as good a wallop in your leg as you have in your arms! Want to try another?”

Jerry shook his head. He did want to, but he thought he had better not. Something told him that if he once began kicking a football he would become an addict to the pastime! Much better stop now, he reflected, than form the habit. Tom didn’t want he should play the game, and, besides, he shrewdly suspected that football made large demands on a fellow’s time. So Jerry wandered off, not without several backward looks, pursued by the intoxicating sound of the thudding pigskin, and took himself out of temptation’s way.

But that afternoon he evaded Tom after the last recitation period and skulked across to the second team’s gridiron, where, since the second was not yet formed, a dozen or more younger fellows were disporting. Jerry looked on with assumed indifference and several times held himself in leash when a wandering football dribbled his way. But eventually he fell. A ball deliberately lodged at his feet. He might much better have tossed it back, but his right foot itched for it and so he followed his procedure of yesterday, or tried to. But this time something went wrong. The ball dropped and his foot swung, but that was all there was to it! They failed absolutely to connect! A small fourth class boy, standing near by, sniggered, and Jerry felt extremely silly as he picked the ball up and tossed it back. With supreme indifference he thrust his hands in his pockets and lounged away. It might seem that that fiasco would have dampened his enthusiasm, but as a matter of fact it did exactly the opposite. Jerry took himself off more firmly enslaved than before!

He went across to the first team gridiron and watched practice from a seat in the stand, and there Tom found him later and brought him abruptly to a realization of his duties as a baseball man. “You’re a wonder!” said Tom bitterly. “Not even in togs yet! And here it is after half-past and――and everything! Can’t you think about anything but football?”

“Golly, Tom, I clean forgot!” answered Jerry contritely. “I hadn’t any notion it was so late. It won’t take me five minutes to change.”

“It better not!” answered the other grimly. “You’ve got to coach that bunch of new chaps at the net, and they’re waiting. Get a hustle on!”

In a way it was strange for Jerry to teach the gentle art of smiting a baseball with a bat, for Jerry, while he had earned the title of “Three-Base” Benson the preceding spring, had a style all his own. Jerry at the plate looked for all the world like a determined pair of shears, for he spread his long legs as far apart as seemed possible and held his bat so far behind him that it was a wonder it ever connected with a ball! One acquainted with Jerry’s “stance” would have been amused this afternoon to listen to him directing and instructing the neophytes. “Feet together, Warner! That’s better. Hold your bat lower and not so far behind you. ’Twon’t do to chop your swing. Meet the ball on the nose. That’s the style! Good work! Next man!”

Tom, hustling over to watch proceedings, smiled a little as he listened and exchanged a grin with Bud Train, who was pitching straight balls to Crocker. But he didn’t let Jerry see his amusement, for Jerry, having closed his ears to the thuds of the footballs, was very much absorbed, very serious. Practice that day ended with the first game of the fall season, and during four innings some very remarkable baseball was played.

That evening Jerry went over to McCrea House, occupied entirely by first class students, and found Don Sears in Number 19. For several minutes Jerry talked of general topics, and Don, who had never before been honored by a call from the other, looked faintly puzzled. At last, though, Jerry broached the real object of his visit.

“I reckon it takes a good while to learn how to kick a football, don’t it?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, Benson. Of course the more practice you have the better you’re going to be at it. I’m not much good at punting, but I’m getting on. Had a good half hour at it this afternoon and my leg’s fairly lame to-night. Thinking of trying it?”

“Well, I’d sort of like to,” confessed Jerry. “I ain’t ever did――done any of it, Don.” It was a peculiarity of Jerry’s that he always addressed acquaintances by their first names, no matter how slightly he might know them, and that none resented it. For his part, he disliked being addressed as Benson, and sooner or later said so. “I was thinking,” he went on, “that maybe you wouldn’t mind my borrowing that ball you were playing with yesterday.”

“Not a bit,” declared Sears heartily. “I’ll get it. It isn’t much good, but you’re welcome to it.” He started toward the closet, but Jerry stopped him.

“I ain’t wanting it to-night,” he explained. “Maybe in the morning if you ain’t aiming to use it――――”

“Well, no, I reckon not. That is, what time would you want it? Look here, Benson, why don’t you come over to the field about half-past ten and we’ll both use it? You see, I sort of want to get in all the practice I can. Tub Keller’s a whole lot better at punting than I am and I mean to give Tub a fight if I can.”

“Half-past ten’s all right for me,” answered Jerry, “only I reckon it wouldn’t be much fun for you if I was to be there. I ain’t ever kicked any――――”

“That’s all right. You’ll learn soon enough. Maybe I can help you a bit, for there’s a lot in starting right.”

So it was arranged, and Jerry took himself off and, since Tom didn’t think to inquire where he had been, neglected to tell of his visit to McCrea. The next morning he was waiting when Don Sears came to the end of the gridiron and sent the battered football hurtling across to where Jerry stood. Jerry captured it and was studying it in a puzzled way when Don joined him. “Seems to me,” he said, “you could kick it better if it was round instead of being sort of like an egg.” He looked up inquiringly as Don laughed.

“You could, I reckon,” said the latter, “but it would be a lot different.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be a sight easier?”

“Sure! Don’t ask me why a football’s shaped the way it is, for I don’t know. Fact is, Benson, I never thought of it before. Footballs always have been this way, I suppose, this kind of footballs.”

“Are there other kinds?” asked Jerry interestedly.

“Yes, in soccer they use a round ball, but the game’s a lot different. Now suppose I show you something about locking your knee when you kick, Benson.”

“Much obliged, but I’d like for you not to call me Benson, please. Folks most usually call me just Jerry.”

“All right, Just Jerry,” laughed Don. “Now see. Here’s the stunt. Swing from the hip with your leg straight. Get it? Don’t bend the knee at all. Lock it tight. Try it a few times. That’s sort of like it, but you want to swing more――more careless. Get a good free swing. Watch me. See how I do it? Let your foot go right on up as high as you like. It’s like the ‘follow through’ in golf. After you’ve kicked, your toe ought to be pointing right square at the sky. Don’t ever try a half kick, Ben――I mean Jerry. If you want to kick a little ways, kick slower and put less punch into it, but always carry through. You’ll get the hang of it quick enough. It isn’t hard. Just takes a lot of practice. Now, about dropping the ball. Get it pointing where you want it to go first. Like this, right between your two hands. Cant the point up well, so’s your instep will strike it squarely under the other end. If you’re trying for a low, long kick you want to drop it so that your foot will meet it just as it starts from the ground. If you’re after height, you kick it a bit later. Whatever you do, don’t toss the ball. Just open your hands, like this, and let the ball drop through. That’s a hard trick to master at first. You’ll find you’re dropping it crooked, because you’ll be thinking of two or three things at once, and the ball will go flying off to the right or left or, maybe, not at all! The best way, I reckon, is just to forget about your leg and keep your eyes right on the football till you’ve dropped it. After that, watch it travel and carry your leg on up. Kicking a football’s a lot like throwing a baseball, Jerry. You’ve got to look where you’re wanting to send it and keep the target in mind. There’s a lot to learn about pointing the ball, but that’ll come later. First off, you want to learn to swing your leg right. Try one.”

Jerry’s attempt was a lamentable failure, for he dropped the ball too late and it merely dribbled across the turf for a dozen yards to the left. “You tried to think of too many things at once,” chuckled Don. “Look here. Your first step is just long enough to leave your right foot behind so you’ll get a good swing. Try it. That’s it, only you want to swing out more. You’re standing too square to the――the line of flight, or whatever you want to call it. You don’t really face it until you’ve kicked. Some fellows swing so wide that they meet the ball with the side of the instep and sort of pivot on the left foot, but that’s hard unless you’ve learned the knack, and I never have.”

Don had recovered the ball in the course of his speech and now he handed it to Jerry again.

“Suppose you keep your mind on the ball and forget your leg this time,” he suggested. “Step forward, drop and swing, only let the swing look after itself. Cant the ball a bit more. That’s it. Let her go!”

There was an encouraging _thump_ this time and the pigskin went arching away, fairly straight ahead, for a good thirty yards, and Don applauded. “A bit too high because you dropped it too late, Jerry,” he said, “but not half bad for a beginner. You go on down there to about the thirty-five yards and we’ll punt to each other. I reckon the quickest way to learn to punt is to punt, Jerry. Don’t mind if the ball doesn’t go just where you want it to at first. I’ll chase it. I reckon you’ll have plenty of mine to chase, too. Can you catch?”

Jerry shook his head. “I ain’t ever tried,” he answered.

“Well, here’s a good chance to,” Don laughed. “Get under them if you can and freeze on.” They got the ball and started exchanging punts. Possibly Don Sears wouldn’t have ranked very high in a list of the world’s famous punters, but to Jerry his work seemed miraculous. Of course, Don didn’t always put them where they were supposed to go, but Jerry seldom had to chase them further than half the width of the field! And not infrequently they came hurtling down fairly on top of him and he made brave efforts to catch them. Usually they went right through his hands or bounced away from his chest, but on three occasions he caught the erratic ball firmly and held it and felt a fine glow of pride. When it came to punting, Jerry’s efforts were not very successful. It just seemed that when he gave his mind to poising and dropping the ball his leg went astray, and when he thought about swinging his leg he dropped the ball wrong. Yet now and then he had luck, and once he propelled the pigskin so far that Don had to chase away back near the further goal line for it, although the last twenty yards or so of its travel was done along the ground.

Running around after the ball, combined with the desperate attempts to remember all Don’s instructions while kicking, soon had Jerry in a condition of perspiration, and just when it seemed that his last gasp of breath was about to be called on, the bell in the tower of the Hall rang and they had to hurry away to recitations.

That afternoon Tom noted a limp in Jerry’s progress from Baldwin to the gymnasium and asked the reason for it. Jerry was evasive and Tom had other things to think of, and so the truth didn’t come out. Jerry felt somewhat guilty afterwards and almost determined to break his engagement with Don Sears for the next morning. But when the time came he was there, albeit decidedly stiff in the joints, and there was another half hour of punting and catching and chasing. That program continued for the rest of the week, and Jerry began to get the hang of punting and his right leg forgot to feel lame after the sessions. By Saturday the football bacillus was firmly established in his blood and the indications all pointed toward a serious case of the malady!