the Fugitive from Green Bay
Serwer, Arnold
the Fugitive from Green Bay by ARNOLD SERWER Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary over the late, late movie on television, hark, there came a tapping, a tapping, and a...
...If enough people around the country rally to the cause and offer their homes as underground stations, football slavery will be finished within a few years...
...Bloody Kansas...
...Meanwhile, I am accepting applications from abolitionists and other lovers of freedom who would like to offer their homes as stations on the Underground Railway...
...I know," Raven mourned...
...You're going to be free, Raven...
...I said...
...He'll pass you on, southwest, to another friend, and so on...
...Do you think anyone saw me...
...John Brown, why must you lie there a moulderin' in the grave...
...Last time Lombardi whupped me, he said if I don't do better he'll sell me up north in Canada...
...hates football...
...After that, I suppose, some other coach will rush into print with the news that he employs thumbscrews on ends who drop passes and fires live ammunition at halfbacks to teach them how to dodge tacklers...
...From tonight on, this place will be the first stop on the Green Bay division of the Underground Railway...
...You can trust me...
...I could feel my blood boil...
...Don't worry, Raven," I said after I had cooled down, "we'll get Billy Joe Sol Tom to Mexico...
...In it he described how he had struck a player to get him to "hate...
...The notion had struck me, when I read the Lombardi article, that maybe the Simon Legrees of professional football were going too far, even in the blood sport they profit from...
...I opened the door and there stood the Raven...
...the Fugitive from Green Bay by ARNOLD SERWER Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary over the late, late movie on television, hark, there came a tapping, a tapping, and a rapping at my dwelling door in Madison, Wisconsin...
...His coach makes him blow up the footballs and next year most likely he'll be a tackling dummy...
...I rubbed my eyes, then looked around at the familiar things in the hallway and living room...
...I'll drive you down to his place tomorrow night...
...he pleaded...
...As I stumbled, half asleep, to the front of the house, the caller rang the doorbell again and again...
...That's not likely unless, after I free the football slaves, I do the same for those held in bondage by major league baseball...
...Dred Scott, no...
...I know some Green Bay fans," I said, "who would turn you over to the Packers, and throw in their grandmother, too, for a couple of tickets to one of the games...
...Some day there's gonna be a statue of you in Washington," he said...
...Get up and do something...
...Now things began to fall into place...
...Raven looked at me humbly, then asked hesitantly, "Could you help my cousin, Billy Joe Sol Tom Fergus, run away from the Kansas City Chiefs...
...Seems like Mexico is the closest free soil...
...Of course, we can't pass you players north to Canada, as they did with the escaping slaves before the Civil War, because Canada has professional football, too...
...The Raven, whose full name is Raven Nevermore and whom sports fans will recognize as a veteran lineman for the Green Bay Packers, slipped past me into the hallway...
...Where did you run away from...
...You should be in Mexico in a few weeks...
...The fugitive from Green Bay regarded me with awe...
...An Underground Railway leading away from every home city of a major football club, with stations dotted along the route all the way to Mexico...
...I shouted...
...Think of it, man," I said, excitement overcoming me...
...Or at the very least, they might run away from the plantation...
...From Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers...
...I believe he exaggerated...
...He used to be a mighty fine roll-out quarterback, but now he's past thirty and slowed down a lot...
...A Look blurb promised that in the next installment Lombardi would regale readers with an account of the time he banged a player's head against the wall...
...Some day the generally underpaid serfs of most of the teams, finding their player associations economically too feeble to deal with the powerful club owners and high-riding managers and coaches, might launch a violent insurrection against their masters...
...Shook off the sheriff and his dogs...
...I ran through the woods for miles...
...Cut out the tapping, the rapping, and the tintinnabulation," I said angrily...
...You wouldn't do that, Mister...
...I have a friend in Davenport, Iowa," I said...
...He's a rugby player...
...I told him it was the hand of Providence that had led him to my door (130 miles south of Green Bay), especially when I was so stirred up by the Look article...
...Come in and sit down," I said, bewildered...
...Raven had chosen to run away...
...Maybe this is still the late, late movie and we're both in it...
...Like the one of Abe Lincoln...
...he asked anxiously...
...As the coach explained it, the player, a lineman, was too friendly, too mild, and unless aroused to "hate" would not tackle Green Bay's opponents with the degree of savagery which Lombardi wants displayed in every game...
...Only the week before I had read the first installment of an article by Lombardi, the Packers' coach, in Look magazine...
...I can't run another step...
Vol. 31 • October 1967 • No. 10
