Wonders at Stamford Field, and the Great Home-Run Chase of Two Sides in Blue and White

Friends, I have this day witnessed a battle so strange, so loud, and so entirely beyond my learning, that I set it down only because it is my charge to do so, and not because I understand one whit of it. The reeve did not send me to this place — no man sent me anywhere, for I stepped wrong by a hedgerow some months back and have not found my way home since — but I am given honest work watching these great contests, and a serf does his work, understanding or no.

The field itself is called Stamford Bridge, though by my troth I saw no bridge upon it, nor any stamford, only a great green sward shorn flatter and finer than any lord's bowling green, ringed about by towers of wood and iron packed with more souls than I have seen gathered in my life, saving only the one time the whole shire turned out to watch a witch swum in the millpond, and she floated, God rest her, which settled that argument for good.

Two sides took the field, one liveried all in blue after the fashion of a summer sky, the other in white as a shroud, and I understood at once — for a serf knows a contest of arms when he sees one, even a strange one — that this was Chelsea against the men of Fulham, though what a Fulham is I cannot say, whether a village, a guild, or a beast. They did not fight with spear nor bill nor longbow as God and good sense intend, but kicked a round white ball between them with great violence of the foot, which struck me as a poor way to settle any matter, there being no blood in it that I could see, though much falling down and clutching of the shins as if the ball itself had bit them.

I confess I lost the thread of the scoring early, for a man in black — the whistle-man, I call him, for he carries a little silver pipe and blows it whenever he takes a fancy, and the whole field must stop and abide his pleasure like villagers before the reeve — kept halting the play for reasons no serf could divine. But by the tolling of some great glowing tapestry hung above the far end of the field, worked by unseen hands and lit up bright as any cathedral window, I came to understand that the blue men struck three home runs against the white men's two, and that this settled the whole affair in blue Chelsea's favor, same as at the joust when the man still ahorse at the third pass is declared the victor and everyone goes home to their supper.

I do not pretend to know how a home run is struck with the foot rather than a bat, nor why the field bore no bases that I could find for the runners to touch, but the men in blue seemed mightily pleased with themselves each time it happened, running about with their arms flung wide as if newly freed from the stocks, and their fellows in the great wooden towers roared fit to bring down the roof beams, so I set it down as fact and trust the reader to sort the wheat from my chaff, for that is a sorting I have never once in my life been equal to.

Now I will own, friends, that the contest proper held my eye but poorly, for there was so very much else upon that field to marvel at, and a serf's eye goes where the wonder is thickest, and there was a fellow, not two paces from where I stood pressed against the fence, selling from a little wheeled and smoking cart what he called a hot dog, though I peered close and it was no dog at all but some manner of sausage laid in a soft white trencher-bread and dressed with yellow mustard-seed paste, and I watched that man work his cart through the whole first half of the battle with more fascination than I gave the ball, for here at last was honest labor I understood — a man selling meat to hungry folk is a trade as old as the world, and I near wept to see something familiar in this loud bright country.

There was also, at the changing of the halves, a great parade of dancing and tumbling before the crowd, and a painted beast came out upon the sward — a lion, I believe, though sewn of blue cloth and stitched all wrong about the face — and it capered and shook the hands of small children and tended no flock and herded no sheep that I could see, doing nothing useful whatsoever, and yet the crowd loved it best of anything all afternoon, more even than the home runs, which I confess I find the strangest wonder of the whole day, that a false lion who labors not at all should be so beloved in a field full of laboring men.

And there was a groundsman too, in the pauses, who came out with a little cart and brushed the torn earth back smooth where the fighting had scarred it, patient as any ox at the plow, and nobody cheered for him at all, though he alone that day did work I recognized as work, and it grieved my heart a little, being as I am a man who understands the tending of ground and nothing else upon that field.

The whistle-man, at the very last, blew his pipe once more and long, and all the men in blue fell to embracing one another and rolling upon the grass in their joy, while the white-liveried men of Fulham stood about with their hands upon their hips and their heads hung low, as beaten men do after any battle, joust, or harvest wager lost. I am told — for a man beside me with a paper of numbers explained it, not unkindly, to a serf who was plainly lost — that this was called a "post-match reaction," and that certain men would afterward be given marks and letters for how well they had fought, same as a bishop might grade a disputation, though I saw no bishop present, only the whistle-man, the false lion, and the sausage-cart, which seems to me government enough for any field.

I do not know why the ball must be kicked and not thrown, nor why three home runs beat two when no man crossed a base, nor why a false lion earns more love than an honest groundsman, and I have long since stopped asking myself these things, for the asking brings no bread and the sun is already low and red over those great iron towers, and there is work waiting for me somewhere, in some field, that only I remember planting. I set down what I saw, true as I could make it, and leave the understanding to wiser heads than mine.

The light goes, and I am called back to the furrow.

— Hodge o' the Field, who saw a false lion and three home runs and understood neither