Best seats in the house.

I couldn't tell if it was football or rugby or tag-team wrestling they were playing down there. The people around me didn't seem to care. They were passing around a bottle of whiskey.

They offered me a swig. I refused. They offered the man next to me a swig. He refused. We watched The Game intently.

Harvard was the big favorite in The Game. And the Crimson fell behind. But the people around me didn't care. The passed around the bottle. "Go, Harvard," I yelled at one point. My words fluttered down to row XX and got smothered on some woman's hat. After that, I remained quiet.

The bottle came around again. I refused. The man next to me took a swig.

Excited

Harvard had pulled off a few miracle comebacks that year. The team scored three touchdowns in 41 seconds against Holy Cross to win, 28-20. But with the Crimson falling behind, I still had faith.

The bottle came around again. I resisted.

By the middle of the fourth quarter, the people in my section were singing. The man sitting next to me was singing. There was no more whiskey. There was nothing but little men in bright-colored clothing on a field way down below. We were up in the clouds and the angels were singing.

And then The Game was over. It got dark fast. I forgot where I was supposed to meet the bus. It was cold and I had no gloves. I was hungry, too, but there were no concessions stands, just old folks wearing Yale blue next to rows and rows of cars with oceans of ham and cheese and roast beef flowing out the back. But whenever I approached, they'd look at me dubiously. A guy would say, "May I help you?" and I'd say, "No, just looking, thanks." Oceans of ham and cheese and roast beef. And I couldn't swim.

There were bonfires on the fields where I walked. I marched from bonfire to bonfire, warming my hands, looking in the distance for the bus. Wind wrapped around me like a blanket. I began to shiver. There were still chants, worn-over remnants of a sad Game. "Har-vard sucks. Har-vard sucks."

Right. And you won't even feed me.

The bus was stuck in a patch of mud on the far end of the hundredth field I had traversed that day. On the ride back to Cambridge, I kept seeing flashes of The Game. Tiny dots of blue and crimson moving on a field of green. The blue dots were just better that day. Then I thought about the girl at B.U. and the goldfish.

I was a freshman. There would be other Games.

The Series (The Last 25 Years)