The west end kids always beat us in sandlot football except for one time — thanks to this truly miraculous, admittedly crappy trick play.

Our south end team played our home games on the front lawn of the old Knox Gelatin Factory on Chestnut Street. The side boundaries were enforced by a high curb and asphalt driveway on one side, and a stretch of woods on the other.

The prior year, one of our players, Charlie “Clunk” Knolls, who later in life had a try out with the Baltimore Colts, sustained a compound spiral fracture of his right femur when he was gang tackled onto the asphalt. I had stood over Clunk urging him to shake it off, until Malcolm came over and pointed out that Clunk’s foot was on backwards. The doctors put a bolt through his cast and slung his leg up in the air with cables until Thanksgiving. Sixth-grade fractions, multiplication tables and world geography passed him by forever. But Clunk was back on the field this year as we warmed up in our flimsy helmets and shoulder pads from Woolworth’s.

We heard the pack of west end kids whooping and hollering before they even turned the corner onto Chestnut Street. As they approached, they were in constant motion, as if they had already started the game. Their quarterback, who was called Beanie, launched long, flat spirals to Weasel, Tuna, Sandman, and Tombstone. We tried not to stare. Malcolm sent me out for a pass and twice waved me deeper. The ball wobbled end over end and fell at least ten yards shy. One of the west end kids they called Junior slapped his thighs with both hands and, pointing in the direction of the pass, said, “What do ya call that? A wounded duck?” Another kid they called Soda started making quacking noises.

“What’s that Mambo kid doing here?” Dondi whispered to me.

I stole a glance at the other team. “Is that Dom Schialdone?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s Mambo,” Dondi repeated. “They’ve never brought him along before.”

“Maybe he’s their manager or something,” I suggested. He carried a black metal lunch box with adhesive tape crosses at each end, suggesting it contained their first aid kit. “He doesn’t even have a helmet,” I noted.

Mambo had arrived from Italy two years earlier. With his thick glasses and white short-sleeved dress shirts, he normally looked like a portly middle-aged man. But on this day, stripped of his glasses and dressed in a gold jersey, he looked as solid as a bowling ball, outweighing any of us by at least fifty pounds.

After the third play from scrimmage, Malcolm pointed at the bright red strawberry on the inside of his forearm. “That Mambo fella is a bit testosteroney. He has whiskers like sandpaper,” he said.

When Mambo carried the ball, it took three or four of us to ride him to the ground.

At halftime, Mambo lifted his first aid kit for me to see as he brushed past me. “For emergency use only,” he said with a grin. I peered over his shoulder as he knelt down and unhinged the top of the box to reveal a pack of unfiltered Camels and a can of Budweiser.

While our team retreated to the shade of the trees to plan our second half strategy, the west end kids never stopped moving. They ran pass patterns and made leaping catches. Only Mambo paused long enough to lounge on the grass, enjoying his beer and smokes.

Miraculously, toward the end of the game, our team trailed the west end by less than a touchdown, thanks largely to Mambo leaving early to go work at his uncle’s liquor store and to a totally unlikely touchdown pass in the third quarter. Malcolm called for a deep pass to me down the right sideline along the trees. Seeing that I had slipped behind the defense, Malcolm uncorked a pass that was well beyond his range. The extra effort produced an unnatural hook in his throwing motion that caused the ball to veer unexpectedly to the left instead, hitting Clunk mid-stride for a touchdown as he streaked down the left sideline.

Malcolm walked up to Junior, the kid who had laughed at his warm-up passes, and asked, “How do you like that wounded duck?”

“Yeah, right! Ya wasn’t even throwin’ to him,” Junior said, bumping Malcolm with his chest.

“Right on the numbers, ya scruffy knobhead!”

Sensing from Malcolm’s tone that he had just been insulted, Junior bumped Malcolm again. “Your ass. You were looking at your other receiver the whole time.”

“Does Johnny Unitas look to Raymond Berry the whole time?” Malcolm shot back. “He looks to Jimmy Orr, then hits Ray Berry for the TD.”

The argument might have evolved into a fight if the west end players hadn’t been so anxious to get the ball back to pad their small lead. Several teammates grabbed Junior and dragged him to their side of the field. The two teams traded the ball back and forth several times without scoring. Then, with one-minute left, Woody, whose usual role was distracting opponents with his sarcasm, pounced on a fumble near our end zone.

In the huddle Malcolm said, “Don’t look now mates, but we’ve got some admirers from the Future Cheerleaders of America.” He loved creating odd spin-offs like that of real clubs like The Future Farmers of America. He nodded his helmet up toward Chestnut Street where half a dozen girls stood in a tight circle, feigning disinterest in our game.

Normally Malcolm called for either a running play up the middle with Dondi taking the hand-off or a pass to me. But at this moment, with time running out, Malcolm called for our ultra-secret, often discussed but never practiced, end-around Statue of Liberty play. At the snap, Malcolm would drop back to pass and pump-fake to Clunk, who was going deep on the left side along the driveway. Then he would transfer the ball to his non-throwing hand and I would snatch it from him as I ran around behind him.

I lined up next to Clunk, forcing the defense to shift to that side. The pump-fake froze the defense long enough for me to circle around behind Malcolm, take the handoff and sprint around the right end toward the trees. I was within ten yards of the goal line when the kid they called Tombstone knocked my legs out from under me with a cross-body tackle. Diving forward for extra yardage, I landed on my belly and slid into the woods.

“Lawn sausage,” Tombstone screamed as he back-pedaled away from the scene, frantically checking his clothes. All the west end kids in the vicinity hopped on one foot, then the other, inspecting the bottoms of their sneakers. As I scrambled to my feet, the one called Tuna pointed at me, then threw his head back and barked. Soon the entire west end team joined in, laughing and howling like a pack of wild dogs. The air was thick with a smell way worse than the Cayadutta. I glanced down at my jersey and jeans and gagged. I had belly-flopped on a dog pile and slid through it.

Meanwhile Clunk’s older brother Billy, who was officiating, had marked the ball on the two-yard line. My teammates were jumping up and down, screaming for me to hurry back to the huddle. The west end kids stopped barking and starting complaining, “Come on ref! Time’s up!” Billy studied his watch and shook his head no. There was still time.

Malcolm called what would surely be the last play of the game. “Dondi through the middle on two,” he whispered hoarsely. It’s not that he needed to whisper; the west end team would surely be keying on Dondi anyway.

When we broke from the huddle I stepped between my team and the line of scrimmage and said, “Same call, but let me run the ball.” When Malcolm protested, I spread my arms and took a step toward him. Malcolm’s eyes opened wide with alarm before flashing a look of understanding. “Brilliant,” he said, “Lucas through the middle on two.”

I nearly fumbled the handoff when Malcolm tossed the ball in the air to avoid any contact with my fouled jersey. The west end defenders allowed me to waltz into the end zone untouched. Almost immediately after the winning score, Billy called time. Our south end team had won our first game ever against the west end kids.

Despite their aloofness, the Future Cheerleaders of America had to have noticed who had scored the winning touchdown, but it had come at a price. As Dondi, Woody, and Malcolm walked back up Maple Avenue with some of the girls — I straggled along at least a half block behind the group, earning a totally undeserved but no less fatal reputation for being shy when it came to girls.