[legendsport]

October 3, 1920: Chicago, IL:

"It's a bit ironic, eh?" Carl Boon said to Joe Barrell as they walked out of the locker room at North Side Park.

Joe gave his friend and partner a sidelong glance. "What's ironic?"

Carl waved his hand around as they walked up a slight ramp and into what was typically the home dugout of the Chicago Cougars.

"This... you playing here," Carl said with a smirk.

"I don't get where you're going with this, Carl..." Joe replied.

Carl chuckled and said, "Well... it's ironic that you come from a family with a baseball background... have a kid brother who played professionally and yet you're the first one to actually play on a big league field."

He punched Joe in the shoulder and added, "Of course, we're not playing baseball here."

Joe shrugged and said, "My Pop played at the Bigsby Oval... once."

Carl stopped on the top step of the dugout and put his hand on Joe's chest, stopping him in his tracks. Carl frowned and said, "Yeah, I know. Tough break, that was. But look... now you're here about to step onto a FABL field yourself. So... it's ironic."

"If you say so," Joe said, and stepped up onto the field. He did have to admit... ironic or not, it was definitely exciting.

Carl wasn't done giving him a hard time: "Now that I think about it... I remember you sleeping through English class back at Nobel Jones... maybe that explains it."

Joe gave Carl a playful push and gazed around the ballpark.

Carl had handled the details of the negotiations with Ben Hunter, who owned the Cougars and the North Side Grounds. They got a "good deal" according to Carl. It sure was a step up from Wheels Park back in Akron.

Joe gazed at the gigantic Lifebouy sign on the outfield wall and thought about the long road to get here - the first game in the history of the American Football Association.

There had been a second meeting, again at "Bubby's" in Fort Wayne. Their small group of five had grown to ten. The first surprise - and one not particularly well-handled by Rollie Barrell - was that Alfred Trumaine had backed out. He had been hired as the football coach at St. Matthew's College. In his place was another Centerville College star: Jack Oxendine. Like Trumaine, Oxendine was a Native American and a superb athlete. Unlike Trumaine, Oxendine wanted nothing to do with a business partner. He would run the Pittsburgh Pros - and as he put it, "Do it my way."

Rollie, flustered, had openly wondered to Joe if all his wheedling of Francine had been for naught. It turned out it wasn't. One of the others in attendance, a fellow named Bennie Guilder, was hoping to get in on the new league. He owned, coached and played for a club in Rochester, New York and claimed he had a deal worked out with the minor league Rochester Rooks to play at their ballpark. But, as he put it, "I'm a little under-funded and not much of a businessman." Rollie, skeptical at first, ended up buying a 50% interest in the team for $2,500.

There were representatives from fourteen football clubs at the second meeting - only ten of them would agree to the stipulations posited by the first five: no signing of college players before graduation, no stealing of other teams players and most of all, a stringent agreement to play 10 league contests - for the barnstormers, this was a tough pill to swallow. Still, Carl pointed out that the AFA season would run from the first week of October to the first week of December - "which leaves plenty of time to do a little barnstorming."

The ten clubs who signed on for the flagship 1920 AFA season were the Akron Triangles (Joe's old team), the Buffalo Nickels, Chicago Wildcats (the name chosen to reflect their shared home with baseball's Cougars), the Cleveland Finches (named for their owner), Columbus Buckeyes, Dayton Dusters, Fort Wayne Titans, Pittsburgh Pros, Rochester Maroons and Youngstown Reapers.

The Maroons got their nickname because Guilder had somehow either begged or pilfered red uniforms from Western State University's team who had switched to wearing green jerseys. Rollie when he caught wind of this, rolled his eyes, but stayed quiet.

The Wildcats first game was to be versus Dayton. The Dusters had only one player who really concerned Joe - Roland "Whiskey" Bullock, a 27-year-old vet of the barnstorming years who was both fast and tough running out of the Dusters single-wing.

Ultimately, Joe shouldn't have been concerned. Carl Boon had put together a strong club. To complement Joe - who Boon knew was the team's best player - Carl signed a trio of speedy, multi-talented backs to give the Wildcats a lot of options. Foremost was Homer Case, the best passer on the team, who was also a great runner. Then there was Joe MacDonald, who was a bruiser and finally, Al Harrison, who like Case, was capable of passing and running.

Joe had the strongest kicking leg on the team and he opened the scoring by booting a 42-yard field goal to give the Wildcats a 3-0 lead after the first quarter. When a shorter, 13-yard opportunity came up, Carl elected to have Homer Case kick - and he converted to make it 6-0 at the start of the second quarter. The Dusters cut the lead in half with a field goal of their own and the clubs went into halftime with Chicago up by a 6-3 margin.

In the locker room, Carl kept it short - things were going well and the plan would remain the same: keep running it down their throats. Dayton had not been able to muster much offensively and that trend continued in the third quarter. A safety made it 8-3 in favor of the Wildcats and on the ensuing possession, Chicago ran the ball repeatedly, with small but steady gains until Joe broke around left end and rumbled 29 yards into the end zone for the first touchdown in team history. He also kicked the extra point for good measure.

There wasn't much of a contest after that as the Wildcats put up two more touchdowns on big plays: a 33-yard pass from Case to Russell Odom and a 39-yard TD run by Joe MacDonald (with Joe wiping out Whiskey Bullock on a block) to salt it away. The final was 29-3.

Joe was battered and tired after the game. By his own reckoning he had carried the ball 15 times for 71 yards and the one touchdown. He'd also starred defensively - as a team the Wildcats had five interceptions as the increasingly desperate Dusters were forced to attempt risky passing plays - and Joe, playing safety, had two of them. With two extra points and a field goal, he finished with 11 of the team's 29 points. All things considered, a good day for the Wildcats and Joe in particular.

He later found that Rollie's team, the Rochester Maroons, had managed a 6-6 tie in Cleveland, playing at the Foresters Stadium nestled in a bend of the Cuyahoga River. Rollie wasn't playing of course, but Joe still figured it was safe to root for his brother's team when they were not actually playing his team.