Now where was I....?
Oh yeah... One of my favorite war movies growing up was Pork
Chop Hill, a 1959 film starring Gregory Peck and a young George
Peppard and a very young Robert Blake, among others. Set in the
closing months of the Korean War, it tells the true story of fierce
battle between the U.S. Army and the Chinese for control of Pork Chop
Hill, a desolate hill along Korea's 38th parallel.
Each side attacks and counter-attacks and the fighting rages day and
night, often devolving into ferocious hand-to-hand combat in and
among the trenches that honeycomb the hill. Incredibly, all
of this is happening even as armistice negotiations between the
United Nations, China and North Korea drag on in Panmunjom, less
than 20 miles away.
In one of many memorable scenes in the film, two frustrated
American officers at the Panmunjom talks angrily wonder aloud why
the Chinese are fighting so hard for terrain that is of no
tactical or strategic value to anyone, especially with the war
obviously drawing to a close. Finally, one officer looks at the
other and says, "Maybe that's the point. Pork Chop's
value is that it has no military value. The Chinese
want to see if we're as willing to fight and die for that worthless
hill as they are."
Some of the people who read this Xavier Alumni newsletters and
e-blasts are actually over in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, and they
would be the first to tell you that only a fool would seriously
compare football to war, and I am not going to do so here. The
point I'm taking entirely too long to make is that Xavier's hard-fought 21-14
loss to AAA Division Mount St. Michael in last Sunday's AA
Division quarter-finals has knocked the Knights out of the
playoffs, while Stepinac's defeat at the hands of AAA Division St.
Francis Prep has forced their departure from the tournament as
well. This afternoon's game is, with regard to the league
standings anyway, completely meaningless.
Both teams play against traditional rivals on Thanksgiving
morning— the Crusaders take on White Plains High School—
and normally both teams would now be idle until then. This year,
however, the Catholic High School Football League has all the schools that
lost in the first round playing each other in an extra round of games.
So this afternoon
at 1:00 PM, The
Team Formerly Known as the Kaydets...and then the Bruins... will be
playing the Crusaders of Stepinac in something the CHSFL is
calling a "Bowl Game". Naturally, the 16th Street Road Warriors
are being required to travel to Stepinac's campus in White Plains.
Business as usual.
One of the alumni attending last Sunday's playoff game, when he
heard of today's contest, questioned the point of playing a game
in which absolutely nothing is at stake. "It's like kissing
your sister," he said. "Why bother?"
"Hey, Bub," I was about to say, "all three of my
sisters are married! Put up your dukes!" Then I
realized he was speaking metaphorically. (My degree was a
bachelor of science in marine transportation. I don't do
metaphors. And is that even a metaphor? I digress...)
But metaphorically or otherwise, I disagree. Here's why:
FIRST, 17 days is too
long a time for our guys to endure the drudgery of practice
without playing, especially when we will be hosting a strong AAA
Division Fordham Prep squad at Aviator Field on Thanksgiving
morning. A sports media person whom I won't identify told me
recently that the AAA Division teams are a bit miffed at Stepinac for
seeking out a demotion to the AA Division this season. They
believe that the Crusaders are a legitimate AAA team who deliberately
took a step down in class this fall so that they could bat the AA
schools around while picking up an easy title. (Thank you, St.
Francis Prep.) What better way for our kids to prepare for the
AAA Rams than to take on another AAA team in AA clothing?
SECOND, we lost to
Stepinac in Week Two this season, and did so in especially unsatisfactory
fashion, losing 22-7 after training by just 3-0 early in the fourth
quarter. I won't recap that first meeting except to say that an
inexperienced offense was still finding its way, while the
defense was beginning to show signs of the brilliance that would
be its hallmark the rest of the season but was undone in the
end by turnovers. The 16th Street Kids know that this is their chance
to avenge that early loss.
THIRD, Xavier's season
record now stands at 5-4. Victories against Stepinac today and Bronx
Jesuit on Thanksgiving would allow the Knights to finish at 7-4,
a respectable season by anyone's standards and one that would put this
bunch in a fairly exclusive club of 7+ game winners among the
Xavier teams who have gone before them over the past 127 years.
(I'll give you the actual stats next time— I have to finish up
here and get up to Stepinac.)
FOURTH, and finally,
since when does a trophy or championship have to be at stake for
Chris, the kids and their coaches to fire up The Amazing Fantastic
Gridiron Way Back Machine one more time and take it out for a
spin— even if it's all the way up to White Plains?
Did you guys want to stop playing when you walked off the field for
the last time on that Thanksgiving morning long ago?
Forever is a long time, kids. If we have someone to play, let's
play them. Their place or ours. (Weather be damned.)
Once the whistle blows, all that other stuff goes out the window,
anyway. Both teams took it on the chin last weekend— we'll see
who comes up off the mat today and knocks the other team around just because
they're in their way. We'll see who plays hard when there's
"nothing to play for."
It says here that our kids take Pork Chop Hill this
afternoon.
I'm off to White Plains.
Stand by...
Tom O'Hara '69
Please mark your calendars: this
year's Turkey Bowl will take place at Brooklyn's Aviator Field,
just a few hurley whacks away from The Mystical Irish Riviera
. Kickoff, as always, will be at 10:00 AM.
