Lambert was still shouting and doing acrobatics in the mud. Steeler Coach Chuck Knoll, used to wild Jack’s fierce shenanigans, at first ignored him. Finally, though, he marched onto the field to calm him down. A moment later it dawned on Knoll that Lambert wasn’t horsing around and that the Whittier Stonewall quarterback was actually a female. Immediately Knoll started yelling for a referee so that he might lodge an official protest.
The two line judges reached the scene first. Considering the circumstances. Knoll was pretty calm in voicing his objections. He repeated them for the back judge and the downfield judges. When the umpire, whose authority was over-riding, joined them and Coach Knoll started in all over again, Coach Newtrokni decided it was time for him to join the fracas.
In the stands, still being pelted by raindrops, the fans had little appreciation of what the disturbance was all about. Used to Lambert’s tumulting, they had given little credence to his shouts about a woman. Now they waited for the last quarter, which was half over, to resume.
“Is it true?” The umpire confronted Coach Newtrokni directly. “Is your quarterback Niemath of the female gender?”
“Yeah. So what?” Coach Newtrokni brazened it out.
“Women can’t play professional football,” the umpire told him.
“She’s already playing.”
“I mean, they’re not allowed.”
“Sez who?”
“Sez me!”
“How come?”
“It’s against the rules!”
It was the statement Coach had been hoping would be made. “Uh, yeah?” He pulled a copy of the rulebook out of his hip pocket and handed it to the umpire. “Show me where in the rules it says any such thing.”
The umpire leafed through the book. Chuck Knoll peered over his shoulder. Coach Newtrokni stood and tapped his foot. “Well?” he said finally.
“I can’t find it,” the umpire admitted.
“Cause it isn’t there.”
“Well, it would be if they’da thought it would ever come up.”
“That’s not good enough. There’s nothing there stops my quarterback from playing. Let’s get on with the game.” He turned on his heel and headed back for the sidelines.
The umpire scratched his head. The line judges scratched their heads. The downfield judges scratched their heads. The back judge scratched his head. Finally, still scratching, they walked to their respective positions and signaled for the game to proceed.
For a moment it seemed as if Steeler Coach Chuck Knoll might refuse to let his team continue play against a woman. But then he shrugged his shoulders and went back to his side of the field. The shrug seemed to say that with the game almost over anyway and Pittsburgh ahead by fourteen points, there was no point in making an issue of it.
“Jeez! Look at Lambert.” Beside me on the bench, defensive linebacker Freck Foley was worried. “He’s got rabies! If the rest of their defense feel that way, they’ll tear off Terry’s tits.”
“Not Mean Joe Greene.” Grinder Meade spoke from Freck’s other side. “He respects womanhood, little kids, and Coca Cola.”
Aware of how rattled the Steeler defense must be, Coach sent in a play for Terry. Following it, she got off another long one to tight end Craig Cramp, who ran a post-hook pattern to the right. Loose as a goose since I’d guided him into water sports, Craig beat out cornerback Mel Blount and came up with the sphere for the Stonewalls’ second TD. A couple of minutes later, Horseshoe Cohen kicked the extra point to make the score Steelers twenty-one, Whittier fourteen.
It was fantastic for the Stonewalls, of course, but time was running out in the last quarter, and it was Pittsburgh that was lining up to receive. Running back Sidney Thornton gathered in the pigskin on the Steeler seventeen, lowered his head like an angry bull, and started upfield through the mud as if his orders came straight from General Patton and the Whittier goal-line were the River Rhine. Skill, luck, mud, and a driving downpour were all on his side. A fake here, a quick move there, three successive straightarms, and he was leaving Whittier defense players behind him in the mire like croquet wickets on a rained-out lawn. By the time he crossed the fifty, more than half the Whittier defense was sprawled out on their face in his wake.
Blockers took out Freck Foley and Simon Sabbath, and Thornton crossed the forty and then the thirty. The only thing between him and a touchdown now was Whittier tackle Grinder Meade. Coming in from the side, Grinder committed himself at the twenty. Thornton twisted away and his lethal arm shot out. Grinder instinctively ducked the straight-arm, managing to bump Thornton, but not getting a grip on him. The jolt, however, was enough to make the mud-slick ball pop out of Thornton’s clutch. It shot up behind him, Grinder got under it, and grabbed it just long enough to insure possession before Thornton reversed their positions and brought him down with a tackle. Through the rain I saw one of the referees signal that it was Whittier’s ball on their own seventeen.
“What a break! What a break!” The s.a.c. was pounding the f.a.c. on the back.
The f.a.c. dampened his enthusiasm somewhat by pointing to the clock. The two-minute warning had gone by while the play was in progress. There was now a minute fifty-one left in the game.
Two plays later, there was a minute four left and Terry had not managed to budge them from their seventeen. Both long passes she had thrown had been batted down. The Steeler defense wasn’t taking any chances. They were playing her deep and concentrating on the possible receivers.
So now, it was third and ten on the Whittier seventeen, and the clock was ticking. No matter that the defense was onto her. Terry had no choice but to call an option play which gave her two down-field receivers to choose between.
Her blocking held, and she had plenty of time to throw, but it was obvious that the defense was all over the wide receivers. She could throw the ball away, in which case the next play would be fourth and ten and they’d have to kick, or she could run with it. Terry chose to run.
She twisted away from the three-man rush, doubled back to avoid Mean Joe Greene coming up the other side, and found a hole that left her in the open for a sure first down. It would have been no more than that had not Jack Lambert become the latest player to fall victim to the mud. His tackle turned from a fait accompli to a pratfall, and Terry was once again in the clear. Her next serious challenge came at the Steeler twenty from Mel Blount and, when he hesitated for a fraction of a second (later, Mel told reporters it was because he’d never before tackled a woman during a game), she twisted away from him. She was too fast for Mike Wagner to reach her before she crossed the goal line for the Stonewalls’ third TD.
With thirty-two seconds left to play, Horseshoe Cohen fell into position with the team to kick the extra point. I noticed the cheerleader he’d been practicing with before drifting over to the fence behind the end zone. She positioned herself dead center between the goal posts, although well behind them. She raised her skirt. Raindrops glistened on her lush blue-black bush.
Horseshoe kicked. The ball landed right between her widespread legs. The kick was good. The score was twenty-one to twenty-one, and we were into sudden-death overtime.
“Wow, Coach! I’m speechless!” It was the only thing I could think of to say to congratulate him. “Nothing to it.” He winked. “We just got there Faustest with the mostest.”
If our atheist coach had made a deal with the devil, however, old Beelzebub must not have been paying attention when the coin was tossed before the start of the overtime period. Bradshaw won the toss and, naturally, elected to receive. A disappointed sigh swept over the Whittier bench.
Despite the rain, the kick was a beauty. Thornton took it in his own end zone. The mud had slowed down the defense considerably, and so he had almost half a clear field in front of him. He elected to run with the ball.