And The Curious Facts About Another 'the Game'

Mayberry Fitzgerald was a member of the 1970 Yale University football team, a sophomore, listed in the program as No. 68. He continues to live in a sparsely decorated room in Trumbull College, and his future plans are nebulous, though he feels he will eventually stumble into business administration. His build is hefty, and he is strong, particularly in the arms and shoulders. He sports a very minor mustache that is a source of embarrassment because it refuses to luxuriate. He plays, by his own account, a fair tuba (he gravitated to tubas early, largely as the result of a passing remark of his high school bandmaster to the effect that his build was just right for "holding the thing up"), and his choice as the summer of 1970 drew to a close was whether to perform in the tuba section of the Yale band or to try out for the football team. He was persuaded by a serious-minded friend to essay the latter, on the grounds that three years of football might stand him in better stead for a business career than the equivalent time spent tootling a tuba.

Fitzgerald never quite believed the logic of his friend's argument—that a tuba was less of a success symbol than a football—but it was enough to tip him into a decision: he tried out for the football team and made it, though just barely. There were times, standing on the sidelines during games, when he would turn and look up with a certain longing at the big array of tubas at the back of the band; at least the tuba players were enjoying some activity. His own activity, up to the Harvard game, had been limited during the season to a total of three minutes of football against Brown. By the time of the Harvard game, Fitzgerald's hope to gain more playing time rested largely in Yale's running up a big score so the reserves would be sent in. Yale was favored, but as soon as the game began at Cambridge it was evident that Harvard was inspired.

Fitzgerald remembers only a few things about the game itself. He recalls a Harvard cheerleader dressed as a Puritan tangling with some Yale counterparts just up the bench from him, and he remembers grinning broadly as one of the Yale coed cheerleaders hit the Puritan with her megaphone. "It made a big thank sound. Very satisfactory," said Fitzgerald.

However, with four minutes to go, even his attention was directed to the game. Harvard was ahead 14-10, but Yale had the ball on its 20-yard line, from which point it moved briskly for 60 yards to the Harvard 20. Here Yale stalled. Passes on third and fourth downs failed, and possession of the ball went to Harvard, with only one minute and 16 seconds left. The handkerchiefs began to come out on the Harvard side, and Fitzgerald, looking across at the derisive display, felt such a wave of impotent anger that his hands began to shake.

Just then he was startled to hear the Yale defensive coach, Bill Narduzzi, shouting at him—ordering him to go in at left tackle for Tom Neville. "It took a while for it to register," Fitzgerald recalled. "I stared at him. He kept shouting at me. Then I felt this tremendous exhilaration. The fact that Yale was losing disappeared from my mind. I ran onto the field."

Thus Mayberry Fitzgerald was involved in the extraordinary last play of the game, and indeed, being on the scene, was in a perfect position to see what actually happened. With 10 seconds to go, the Harvard quarterback, Eric Crone, had simply to take the center's snap and fall on the ball, protecting it; he would hear the distant 4-3-2-1 countdown from the Harvard crowd, and the game would be over.

What Crone did stunned everyone in the stadium, including himself. Later, quizzed by newsmen, he said he wasn't quite sure what had crossed his mind. At the snap he had taken the ball and run backwards into his own end zone, holding the ball aloft, somewhat in the style of an Olympic runner carrying the lighted torch. He then stopped in the midst of a considerable crowd that had materialized in the end zone, people pouring down from the stands, and it was here, standing amongst them, that Crone realized his strange tactic had left him open to two possibilities—being tackled by Yale players for a safety (two points for Yale, but still a 14-12 Harvard victory) or, if he fumbled in the course of the tackle and Yale recovered, a touchdown and an abrupt Yale victory.

What officially happened was that the Yale roverback, Ron Kell, No. 40, pushed his way through the crowd, reached for Crone and upended him in the hope the ball would squirt free. Crone lay briefly in a fetal position. Two officials were standing close by. One of them made the signal for the safety, facing the press box up on the rim of Harvard Stadium, to indicate that Yale had scored two points and the final score had changed to 14-12.

Mayberry Fitzgerald was standing in the end zone right next to Crone, and he saw something quite different. He had not been particularly pleased with his own performance on that last play. In fact, when the play started he had discovered his chin strap was dangling loose, and as Crone got the ball Fitzgerald was still trying to snap the strap tight, his hands fumbling about his helmet. "The Harvard man took me out of the play pretty easily," Fitzgerald recalled. "I mean, with my hands up, trying to find that little button snap on the side of the helmet, I just wasn't ready for him."

Still, Fitzgerald managed to slide off the block with fair success, and he was only a yard or so behind his teammate Kell, in pursuit of Crone into the end zone. When Crone was upended, he happened to have a clear lane of sight through the crowd that allowed him to see a youngster wearing a denim jacket with the words WALTHAM BLUE BUNNIES stenciled on the back reach in and snitch the ball.