Mack Hall
“The Credit Belongs to the Man…”
People of faith have long made pilgrimages to holy places: Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostella, Mariazell, Canterbury, and Kyle Field.
With high hopes we ascended to The City, College Station, last Friday, and after ritual ablutions walked slowly and with awe through the wide gates and into The Temple of the Twelfth Man, there to watch the Kirbyville Wildcats in ritual combat with some team from some burg nobody ever heard of. After all, the town now boasts four traffic lights, and the envious citizenry of lesser cities regard Kirbyville with awe.
Texas towns regard the Wildcats with even more awe, for their teams were home on this third week after the end of the regular seasons.
Thus, Kyle Field was perfect for the mighty, mighty Wildcats, whatever the questionable merits of That Other Team, May The Fleas of a Thousand Hamsters Infest Their Tents.
Named for a long-ago professor who bought the ground for a few hundred dollars, Kyle Field is home to many Texas A & M traditions such as The Twelfth Man, standing throughout a football game, Midnight Yell Practice, firing a cannon for every touchdown, and firing head coaches almost as often.
Don’t pity sacked A & M coaches (their name is Legion), though; they get to keep the taxpayers’ money promised them in the practice of polycoachery.
Another remarkable fact about Kyle Field that while an excessive demonstration of enthusiasm in the end zone is penalized, it’s okay to bury dogs there.
Y’r ‘umble scrivener was blessed with a sideline pass, which he will perhaps frame and display next to his St. Thomas Becket medal from Canterbury. However, the pass was unnecessary; Kyle Field is not sealed off from the bleachers (upon which no one is to sit anyway). Whatever eccentricities may be attributed to Aggies, they apparently behave themselves at football games and needn’t be penned up.
And the field itself – it’s just a regulation football field, though one with the best groundskeepers in all Christendom. What makes the place awesome is the masonry and ironmongery, rows and rows and rows of seats (upon which no one is ever to sit, remember) ascending high into the troposphere in decked layers, standing room for some 80,000 Aggies and fans, the cloud-bedecked aerial regions a tribute to the muscles, eyesight, and lung capacity of Fish.
There were never 80,000 Kirbyvillains in history, but those who were there on this historic Friday night betook themselves to the oldest part of the bleachers (upon which they seldom sat), and made enough merry noise to do credit to Kyle Field’s reputation for opponent-intimidating racket.
The best of seasons must close, and on Monday the Wildcats turned in their gear, cleaned out their lockers, and said farewell to an important part of their youth.
There can be no better ground than historic Kyle Field on which to end a football season. Whatever adventures the lads make for themselves in the future, they will be among the few men in the world who can say “When I played football on Kyle Field…”
And perhaps just a well, people will stand (for one must not sit) in Kyle Field and say, in awe, “Kirbyville played football here.”
“The Credit Belongs to the Man…”
People of faith have long made pilgrimages to holy places: Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostella, Mariazell, Canterbury, and Kyle Field.
With high hopes we ascended to The City, College Station, last Friday, and after ritual ablutions walked slowly and with awe through the wide gates and into The Temple of the Twelfth Man, there to watch the Kirbyville Wildcats in ritual combat with some team from some burg nobody ever heard of. After all, the town now boasts four traffic lights, and the envious citizenry of lesser cities regard Kirbyville with awe.
Texas towns regard the Wildcats with even more awe, for their teams were home on this third week after the end of the regular seasons.
Thus, Kyle Field was perfect for the mighty, mighty Wildcats, whatever the questionable merits of That Other Team, May The Fleas of a Thousand Hamsters Infest Their Tents.
Named for a long-ago professor who bought the ground for a few hundred dollars, Kyle Field is home to many Texas A & M traditions such as The Twelfth Man, standing throughout a football game, Midnight Yell Practice, firing a cannon for every touchdown, and firing head coaches almost as often.
Don’t pity sacked A & M coaches (their name is Legion), though; they get to keep the taxpayers’ money promised them in the practice of polycoachery.
Another remarkable fact about Kyle Field that while an excessive demonstration of enthusiasm in the end zone is penalized, it’s okay to bury dogs there.
Y’r ‘umble scrivener was blessed with a sideline pass, which he will perhaps frame and display next to his St. Thomas Becket medal from Canterbury. However, the pass was unnecessary; Kyle Field is not sealed off from the bleachers (upon which no one is to sit anyway). Whatever eccentricities may be attributed to Aggies, they apparently behave themselves at football games and needn’t be penned up.
And the field itself – it’s just a regulation football field, though one with the best groundskeepers in all Christendom. What makes the place awesome is the masonry and ironmongery, rows and rows and rows of seats (upon which no one is ever to sit, remember) ascending high into the troposphere in decked layers, standing room for some 80,000 Aggies and fans, the cloud-bedecked aerial regions a tribute to the muscles, eyesight, and lung capacity of Fish.
There were never 80,000 Kirbyvillains in history, but those who were there on this historic Friday night betook themselves to the oldest part of the bleachers (upon which they seldom sat), and made enough merry noise to do credit to Kyle Field’s reputation for opponent-intimidating racket.
The best of seasons must close, and on Monday the Wildcats turned in their gear, cleaned out their lockers, and said farewell to an important part of their youth.
There can be no better ground than historic Kyle Field on which to end a football season. Whatever adventures the lads make for themselves in the future, they will be among the few men in the world who can say “When I played football on Kyle Field…”
And perhaps just a well, people will stand (for one must not sit) in Kyle Field and say, in awe, “Kirbyville played football here.”
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
– Teddy Roosevelt
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