Within a year or two, I was also playing touch football on the parkway. I was probably in the third grade, and here I was playing with illustrious older boys. One was president of the sophomore class at Amherst Central High School. Another played Captain Corcoran in the operetta, “HMS Pinafore,” and regaled me with all the songs he could sing. They taught me many things, such as how to catch a football: “Cradle it in your arms and bring it into your chest.”

 

My Uncle Jim, who had actually played football at the University of Michigan, came to town one time and we threw the ball around on the parkway. Our passes didn’t connect very often. One reason perhaps: Jim had played tackle, not quarterback. But it was a thrill just talking to him about football. His bit of advice: “When trying to catch a runner who is running at an angle from you, aim for a spot ahead of him, because if you run right at him, by the time you get there he will be gone.”

 

One day, an older guy joined our game on the parkway. He was probably 21 and had his own motorcycle. When he faded to pass I rushed in and tagged him. He hadn’t even seen me. He looked shocked and asked, “Is he playing?”

 

Yeah, I was playing. I wasn’t very good, but I loved sports. I was always carrying a ball around with me. When I was in fifth grade, the boys in my class started playing tackle football each day after school. We wore whatever equipment we could get our hands on. Some boys had shoulder pads but no helmet. Some had only pants.

 

I spent some of my hard-earned money on a helmet and shoulder pads. The helmet, which had hardly any padding, is considered to be a classic today. My son sold it a while back on eBay. Later, an older boy gave me his outgrown football pants. Fortunately, we weren’t big enough to seriously hurt each other.

 

We played in schoolyards, sometimes at our elementary school, sometimes the high school, sometimes at a local private school. We played wherever we could. If we played at the high schools we had to avoid the fields where the high school teams were practicing. There were two ways we could get to the games: ride our bicycles or walk. Our mothers didn’t consider themselves to be our chauffeurs and weren’t inclined to carry us around like sacks of groceries. Besides, they still had recent memories of gasoline rationing.

 

During my fifth grade year I showed up for most of the games, but I didn’t actually do anything. I was tolerated because I added to the body count. I was small and slow and I didn’t know how to tackle. Blocking was something none of us went in for very much. The other boys wouldn’t throw the ball to me or let me run with it. I mostly stood around and wished I had the guts to tackle somebody.

 

We played without adult supervision and most of the time we had no problems. Occasionally, we would argue over ground rules or the legality of a flying tackle. Two boys acted as captains and chose up sides to start a game. When we played a real game against another team, it was usually a team composed of players in our grade who had attended the other elementary school or, occasionally, boys from another grade. We were democratic in assigning positions for these games. We voted. I was usually voted to play tackle because that wasn’t a popular position.

 

There were some good natural athletes in our games. Smitty was not much bigger than I was, but his father had been a running back at the University of Rochester and Smitty had inherited his quickness. When he broke into the clear he was almost impossible to catch. Art was even faster. If he got past you, forget it. Thus, our games featured a lot of long runs, especially when we were playing three on three, which sometimes happened because no one else showed up.

 

Bobby, who later played varsity basketball, demonstrated his athleticism on a play I have never seen a professional wide receiver duplicate. He was running a long pass pattern and the ball was in the air, but he was looking over his right shoulder and the ball was thrown over his left shoulder. He took his eyes off the ball and smoothly rotated his head more than 180 degrees until he was looking over his left shoulder. He caught the ball without breaking stride.

 

The first day of school was the first day of football season for us. The season continued until the Buffalo weather became too cold for sandlot football. That happened before Thanksgiving. In sixth grade, I showed up for the first game, a little bigger and a little stronger than the previous year. Before we chose up sides several boys ran a practice play at the rest of us. Jimmy carried the ball through the line. Before I knew what I was doing I grabbed him and, miracle of miracles, I brought him down. After that, I wasn’t afraid to tackle any more.

 

As I said, blocking was not accorded a high priority in our games, so when my team was on offense and a pass play was called, even though I wasn’t officially part of the play, I usually ran some kind of a pattern. One day I was standing in the end zone all alone and yelling for the ball. Herby threw it to me because nobody else was open. My early training paid off and I caught it. Herby’s comment to me was, “If you had dropped it I would have killed you.” At least he smiled when he said it.

 

Not being the strong silent type, I clamored to run the ball. Finally, the day came when my teammates acquiesced. I took a direct hike from center and took off around right end. Our plays were not complicated. Freddie came through the line and hit me in the knees, but somehow I bounced off him and kept going. Nobody else touched me as I rambled for a touchdown. Those were the only two touchdowns I scored in sixth grade.

 

In seventh grade my play improved, both offensively and defensively. I tackled better, but my tackling was not always successful. One day we were playing three on three. I was the lone defensive back and the other team had the ball. On first down Smitty carried the ball straight ahead and ran right at me. I stood my ground and tackled him. On second down Jimmy carried the ball straight ahead and ran right at me. I tackled him, too. On third down Smitty carried the ball straight ahead and ran right at me. This was getting monotonous. I reached out to tackle him and got an armful of—air. He had made a nice head fake and left me sitting in the grass.

 

History repeated itself in eighth grade, after I had transferred to the Clarence school system. Smitty and I each made our respective junior high school basketball teams and they played each other. The game became a rout (Clarence was behind) and the eighth graders were put in. I was guarding Smitty when he gave me the old head fake and went around me for a layup.

 

During another football game, Smitty came racing down the sideline with the ball. I was the last player with a chance to stop him. I made a feeble attempt to knock him out of bounds and ended up with a grip on the collar of his sweatshirt. I tore the shirt right off his back. He went down in the process. I apologized to him for destroying his shirt. In those days, not long after World War II, most of our families were not loaded with money. Smitty had tears in his eyes, probably thinking about what his mother would say.

 

One day it was getting dark and so the next play was designated as the last play of the game. Dave and I were twin safeties, so far back from the line that we were standing on the edge of the tall grass beyond the playing field. We vowed to each other that nobody would get past us. Little Jimmy came racing out on a pass pattern, somehow got past Dave, twisted his body in mid-air and made a miracle over-the-shoulder catch. I didn’t tease Dave about it; that could have been me.

 

One time I overheard Smitty and Herby, who were on the other team, discussing the next play. It was to be a pass play, Smitty to Herby. Although I was playing on the defensive line I trailed Herby out and, sure enough, Smitty threw the ball to him. I tackled Herby from behind just as he caught the ball. He fumbled and I recovered the ball almost on the goal line. His comment this time was, “Where did you come from?”

 

My offensive abilities also improved dramatically in the seventh grade. I ran the ball and caught passes. Sometimes I even threw them, although I was never a great passer. Smitty liked to taunt other players about their speed—or lack thereof. One day I ran a pass pattern and got behind Archie, who was playing defensive safety. I had to wait for the ball, but I caught it and went in for the touchdown, outrunning Archie. Every few minutes for the rest of the game Smitty yelled, “Speedy Archie.” Another time I made a short run for a touchdown. Albert said, “Boy, that Cook is fast.” Smitty said, “He’s not fast; you’re just slow.”

 

One day, Herby was playing on my team and I was captain. He complained that he hadn’t scored and that he always scored at least one touchdown. We kept giving the ball to him, but it wasn’t to be. I scored four touchdowns that day. I scored 20 touchdowns in the seventh grade season. I was comparing notes with Smitty and found out that he had scored 56. We were big on statistics. And my father hadn’t been a running back for the University of Rochester.

 

Playing football kept us in excellent shape. My gym glass in seventh grade was composed of 50 or 60 boys, both seventh and eighth graders. Our gym teacher—we called him Coach—tested us at various kinds of athletic activity. One time he had us run all the way around the athletic field, which encompassed not only the football field, but a baseball diamond and a couple of other fields as well. Coach gave the fatties a handicap by starting them some distance in front of the rest of us. One of these was Dicky, an eighth grader who played football with the other eighth graders. They often played on a field next to us in the afternoons so I knew who they were. Well, Dicky was stocky but he was also very hard. When Coach blew the whistle to start us, Dicky took off like a rocket and disappeared. He went wire to wire in first place. And I? Unbelievably, I ran with the front of the main pack most of the way. I faltered at the end and finished eighteenth, but it was still probably my best performance as a runner.

 

I often arrived home late in the afternoon after these games, starving. Once when I got home nobody was there, an unusual situation since I have three younger brothers. A freshly made peach pie sat invitingly on the kitchen counter. My mother baked good pies. I ate most of that pie before anybody showed up. Since it was meant for all of us, I was in big trouble.

 

My eighth grade football season lasted only a month because after that my family moved from the Town of Amherst to a farm in the Town of Clarence. Some of the bigger boys had started wearing cleats, which scared me because I was afraid of getting stepped on. It was probably a good time to retire from tackle football.

 

On my first day at my new school in Clarence, I played touch football at lunch with some big, strong farm boys. I caught a pass and they marveled at how good this little guy was. But of course I had been playing for years.

 

I hadn’t quite retired from tackle football. I actually went out for the junior varsity football team when I was a sophomore in high school. I only lasted a month because I got sick. In those days I was prone to ear infections. I was still small and slow. The coach put players like me at running back, for some unknown reason. I requested to be made an end. I didn’t get into the only game we played while I was on the team. My moment of glory was one day in practice when I diagnosed a play during a scrimmage and tackled our halfback a mile behind the line. The coach told one of my friends that he wished all the players had my guts. Some guts. I came in last when we ran laps. Then I quit the team.

 

I continued to play touch football for a number of years. I played intramural football at the University of Michigan at my favorite position, receiver. Several plays stand out in my mind. We were playing at night on a muddy field. I was running a post pattern, dogged by two defenders. I made my fake in a slippery part of the field and cut toward the middle, leaving the defenders slipping and sliding behind me. The quarterback laid the ball right in my hands.

 

At another night game, with inadequate lights, I ran a long pattern and got behind the safety. When I reached the end zone I had to stop and wait for the ball. The safety caught me and grabbed my shirt with both hands. I instinctively gave him a big shove and then caught the ball. No foul was called, on either of us. I suspect that the lone referee, who was halfway up the field, couldn’t see what happened.

 

On the first play of another game, Dave, our quarterback, called a “Left end delay.” That meant that I, as left end, faked a block and counted to three, then shot to the right across the field, parallel to the line of scrimmage. Dave lobbed the ball to me and I headed toward the goal line. I never saw a defender. Our other receivers must have run great decoy patterns.

 

In my ill fated half-year at Stanford Law School, I spent my time catching touchdown passes on the field between the law school dorm and the graduate business school dorm, when I should have been studying. Fortunately, I finally figured out that I wasn’t meant to be a lawyer.

 

I joined the Army Reserve soon after I got out of college and spent the remainder of my six months of active duty after basic training at a rest home called Fort Benjamin Harrison, in Indianapolis. I was playing in an informal football game one afternoon when a reservist who had actually played college quarterback saw me reach up and pick a bullet pass out of the air for an interception. He recruited me and a bunch of other guys for a team that played another team the company commander had put together. We beat them easily and became the company entrant in the intramural flag football league. Unfortunately, I injured my foot in a practice soon thereafter and had to sit out most of the season.

 

My brother Mike played high school football and then played football at Swarthmore College. Okay, Swarthmore was not a great football power, but in the only game I saw them play they defeated Penn Military Academy. That was the weekend Mike fixed me up with three different girls in twenty-four hours.