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Updated: May 12, 2025
Indeed, the whole team seemed to have slumped, and the Berkeley line had hammered them down toward their own goal while precious seconds slipped by. Now the men lined up rapidly. Stanford tried an end play. No gain. Diemann stood back of the team at one side of the goal; he was struggling hard to be calm, but he did a strange thing.
Lyman would only think it a bit of ghastly humor that need not have been repeated. But the manager did not take it so, evidently. "That reminds me of something, Diemann," he said. "I haven't talked it over with anyone yet, because everybody is sour-balled enough as it is. It's about Ashley. I'm afraid he is going stale." "Yes?" said Diemann, with dull interest, "I've rather been afraid of it."
When Diemann, just home from Germany, came West to teach Psychology, he found young Blake the college hero. The new instructor had himself been a noted back; he still hovered somewhere between enthusiast and fiend. At Stanford he at once identified himself with the football men, and they welcomed him gladly as assistant coach.
Doc Jordan was here last Sunday to dinner, and Diemann drops in sometimes; last year he came a lot." "Oh, they come over all right," sighed Pellams from the piano. "I had a report to make one day. I didn't have it done, and I bribed Ted to go down and tell Engbee I was sick in bed. I was playing cards in here when Sniffles rushed in and told me the old boy was coming up the street.
The fullback falls across the line, the ball gripped in his convulsive hold, just as the linesman's whistle blows. Diemann is there almost as soon. He keeps back the frenzied men crowding about them, and bends over the unconscious player, calling him "Fred" irrationally, while the place catches fire with the cardinal and Stanford goes mad on the field. Ashley came to consciousness at the hotel.
Diemann pressed his face against the car window and stared out at the terraced produce gardens slipping dimly by in the early November dusk. Between him and the dead fullback there had been such companionship as comes now and then to an instructor under thirty and a man nearing the end of his college course.
Diemann of Stanford crouched on the side-lines with a heart of lead. The game was lost. What he had looked for, hoping against hope since play was called, had not happened. Ashley had played his usual hard, consistent game, straining every muscle, punting longer and higher than ever before, but missing stupidly some golden chances, the chances Blake would never have let slip by.
Diemann had talked to him between halves, a few eager words, urging him to quickness, reminding him of Fred. The substitute had only shaken his head, and muttered that he was doing his best. Toward the end of the second he had shown the severity of the strain. Playing his hardest, with despair in his soul, it had told on him. In the last scrimmages his work had been very ragged.
He didn't answer questions for a time, but lay quite still and looked at me, yet I don't think he saw me at all. He began to talk away, speaking of himself, in the third person, mind you, and about his poor play and all that. He was as clean nutty as any man you ever saw; as near as I could make out he thought he was Fred." Diemann faced the manager. "What time was this, Frank?"
Suddenly he realized that the football man was not answering questions, that the weight on his own shoulder was growing heavier. He glanced up into Ashley's face; there was an absent look in the man's eyes. "Fred!" whispered Diemann sharply in his ear. "Yes?" answered the fullback; then he shook himself and said: "It's chilly, Die, I'm wet. Let's get in."
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