"Here’s a late tack-on to Rick Hertzberg’s nice post about that epic 29–29 Harvard-Yale tie back in 1968. I’ve not yet seen the new documentary about The Game, but I was at Harvard Stadium that afternoon and don’t need much reminding. It’s not often you’re aware that a sports event that you’re at is trying to connect itself to current history, even while it’s in progress, but, as Rick said, 1968 was a terrible year—the worst any of us in this country had known since 1940, when Europe fell to the Wehrmacht.
"Yale was ahead by 29–13 very late in the last quarter, and while early darkness spread itself across the striped, chewed-up turf below, a succession of untidy, untoward football events—a scooped-up fumble that turned into a huge gain, a lucky bounce on an onside kick, two killer Yale penalties—turned into sixteen Harvard points in the final forty-two seconds, and the shared conviction on our churning, screaming, steeply packed side of Harvard Stadium that this jumbled concatenation was a gift from somewhere: a chance to yell and hug and jump around, and, for that wintry moment, to empty out the back closets of our minds. The unlikely tie (on a two-point conversion pass, with no time left on the clock) preserved undefeated records for both teams, and now somehow we had put defeat aside as well.
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