Had you read it in the news? Had you see it in the sky? It is indeed this time of the year once again, when all the little biddles and jibs bundle up in their big puffy copes for the day of the big one. On to a bus and to the Harver they fly! “Bola Bola! Bully Dog Bow Ow Ow,” they say from the tip of their lungs! Yes, when the autumn leaves and goes, and the chepsnups roasted on a fire, it is the time of a Game!

I can see of it now, if I try. It is in of the Harver yard. All of the Big Boys of Yale down on the court, making piles of them and the pig’s skin this way and that way to the goal. “A big run!” he shouts with a hat from the announcer booth. “Anitraception!” he cry. “50, 20, 10, 7, 11, 1, he cannot stop! Tochdown Yale!” And oh how the crowd wiggles and jiggles in the sun! The Biggest Boy on the field, I meet him I did. I slap his backs as he and his band of boys walk to the court. He too, he dances a joyful one and puts a spike on the ball, just to show the red team that he has been the one to do it!

Let me tell you a story about Harver. One day, I had gone to Harver 2 years ago for A Game, and was lost in the brick and trees of Harver. I ask a little boy of Harver, I ask, “Had you seen anywhere my friend of Murphwell?” What the Harverboy say next, I can not even say to you, but at least know, if he said it, he did it, and if he did it, there was all of it there, outside, in the street with us. He look at me with his little beedy eyes he do, and his words they hisp like a saddies’ tears. This is why Harver can not even win one little point from you, my Big Boys of Blue.  This is why on the court we must beep them good and well.

For this is a Game that is the oldest and rarest of them all. It stands in the hearts and eyes of the people like the old legends of sport: The Glabiaters and Charity Races of old Rome, a duel of sword and arm, the Olympus Games, golf, knights, Hide in Gosique, and A Game of Harver Yale. Equal teams have won in different years. Sometimes even something as simple as A Game is not even so simple as it may seem. Nobody even knows who won and who lost, when and where, or even why it may be. That is something only for Gog to decide. But everyone feels in their heart the win and the lose, together, like of friends.

I am not myself a man of the sport. No, for little Jame, it is the warm fire, one of Big Books hot off the shelf of a Sterling Stack, and chats of the issues of the day with the friend or two. That is a life! But this A Game is not just about the Big Boys and their bittie ball on the green and white courts. No, this is more than sport, or even a match. A Game is of people. Even with spite in the jibs and the jabs, the red and the blue at each other likes stamps on a log, at A Game, all of Yale come to as one of many, to many, and many to one, and many to all.