There’s this hobby called “having fun” I’ve had since I was a little kid. You wouldn’t think having fun is an official hobby — you’d think it just happens. My parents thought of it as a hobby. They were ace fun-havers — I got it from them.
One of my favorite places to have fun was Cambridge in the 1960s. I moved there from New York in ’62 when I was working at Little, Brown and had this incredible garden apartment with a fireplace on Story Street, right behind the Casablanca, right off Harvard Square.
My wife-to-be Nancy and I had many a romantic Broadcast corned beef hash dinner there. Editor and good buddy Herman Gollob stopped by for a fun couple of scotches and cheese and crackers before teaching Writing & Publishing at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education right around the corner next to the Brattle Theater several a winter’s Wednesday evening.
It was just a brisk 14-minute walk on a fall Saturday afternoon to Harvard Stadium to see that lightning bolt halfback from Everett, Bobby Leo, slither the lines and jump cut to paydirt time and again. A couple hours watching that fun Harvard offense and the cockamamie antics of the Harvard cheering brigade and then afterward smart stepping home across the bridge to Hahvahd Squayah with the band and a couple hundred fun-having football fans was more fun than you could shake a martini at. Which I usually made a duet of on return to 8 Story.
In 1965, Nancy, son Rich and I moved to Marblehead, where many people have been known to have fun upon all kinds of occasions. In 1968, my fun-tennae picked up signals that one of the all-time classic football clashes would be taking place at Harvard Stadium on the 23rd of November.
That year’s rendition of “The Game,” as the Harvard-Yale game has been known since forever, would feature two undefeated teams — the 8-0 defense-oriented Harvards versus the equally 8-0 killer offense Yalies, with the likes of quarterback Brian Dowling, who had never ever ever (that’s e-v-e-r!) lost a football game, teamed up with Calvin Hill, the demon running back who would be named NFL Rookie of the Year after his inaugural season with the Dallas Cowboys the following year. (After one record-shattering game Dowling had, the Yale Daily News headlined its front page: “God plays quarterback for Yale.”)
This would be a must-see. Friend and Front Street resident Bert Caldwell knew the ticket drill, so I paid him, and he lined up our ducats. On the day of all days, Nancy and I met Bert and his wife Anne and the other couple (whose name I forget) outside the stadium. When we handed over our tickets at the gate and went inside, we proceeded to our seats … which were at the … absolutely worst place imaginable … to watch a football game … unless it was played … right in front of you … the stands directly b-e-h-i-n-d the goal posts in the way-far arch of the stadium!
For 99-plus% of the game, it wouldn’t have mattered if we were sitting in Outer Mongolia. Harvard was getting slaughtered. It was so bad, Harvard coach John Yovicsin pulled his starting quarterback in the second quarter! He substituted Frank Champi, who was known to have a good arm but was vastly inexperienced. Champi was not only nervous as hell, his Boston accent was so thick that for the first couple of plays, several of his teammates couldn’t understand a word he said in the huddle.
Needless to say, things did not continue well for Harvard. Midway through the fourth quarter, toilet paper streamers streaked the Yale stands, accompanied by guttural chant of “You’re number two! You’re number two!”
At a couple minutes left in the game, Bert taps me on the shoulder: “Bob, Anne and I and the Whatchamacallits are outta here! This game is over. We’re going to beat the mob to the cocktail bash at the B School. This game is over… Come with us, beat the mob.”
“Nah, I’ll stick it out, Bert. Nancy, you can go with them. I’ll meet y’all there.”
Nancy graciously said she’d hold the fort with me.
Less than a minute after they all left, the cauldron came to a boil: Yale suddenly caved; Harvard could do no wrong. But there was one factor decidedly not in the Crimson’s favor … time. With Yale leading 29-13, and Harvard in Yale territory, there were only 42 seconds showing on the clock.
Down 16 points, with only 42 seconds to go. The worst, most impossibly god-awful seats for 99.whatever% of “The Game,” and all I’m going to tell you is that in that flea’s eye window of opportunity Frank Champi threw two touchdown passes (one with three seconds left) and a pair of two-pointers, the tieing deuce to Pete Varney causing a sonic boom of elation so loud it was said to have startled Pope Paul VI while eating a chocolate bar at the Vatican.
The headline in the Harvard Crimson the next day had my kind of fun with what was a fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime experience: “HARVARD BEATS YALE, 29-29.”
Bob Baker is an award-winning marketing advertising guy specializing in branding and creative services. He went out on his own 50 years ago in 1974 as Baker Advertising on the simple premise that we’re put here to play “The Game of Life,” not work “The Job of Life.”
Bob Baker
Bob Baker is a creative resource in Marblehead whose memoir-in-progress is “Outlucking Gatsby: From Greenwich to The Green Light.”
