THE WAY WE PLAYED THE GAME: A True Story of One Team and the Dawning of American Football

Armstrong deserves full marks for creative effort in his attempt at telling the story of the Benton Harbor (Mich.) High School football team's 1903 season and at evoking the spirit of American football in its nascent form. In the prologue, he stages the book as an ostensible manuscript by the team's quarterback, Fletcher Van Horn, whose memoir about the team, written in his old age, was discovered after moldering in a church basement for three decades. Unfortunately, this construction, like so much of the story that follows, seems a little too transparent and contrived. The action centers on Benton Harbor's quest to exact revenge on a bunch of fast, physical players from a northern Michigan high school who beat them for the state title—perhaps unfairly—the year before. Enter disciplined, strategizing Coach Clayton Teetzel, who is hired to help the team on its mission, and the stage is set for a clash between the "thinking man's game" and superior skill. Added to the mix is Van Horne, the scrawny, unlikely hero with a lot of moxie, who takes over as Benton Harbor's quarterback. The problem for Armstrong (an architect and contributor to Michigan History Magazine), in his first book, is that his premise presents many of the issues of a novel, yet the drama is flat and predictable, and several characters, like the hawker Colonel Eastman or the antifootball crusader Miss Fitzgerald, are obvious catchalls for certain period details. The book does, however, give readers a sense of a changing game whose brutality put it in serious danger of being outlawed. (Sept.)