On Saturday the 22nd I went to my first Big Game. Big Game is the ongoing rivalry between Stanford and our “evil” arch-nemesis, UC Berkeley (though it’s admittedly hard to care when their most obvious failing is being too socially adept to get into Stanford), manifested in the form of a football game. Traditionally, it happens in the Autumn, when more college football seems to be played, and is the equivalent in this area of the world what the UT/A&M game is on the day after Thanksgiving in Texas.
At any rate somehow I’ve avoided going to this game for the first, second, and third years of my college career. Maybe I was out of town, didn’t feel like going, or (what’s more likely), didn’t feel like shelling out the $50 for the tickets. Such was also the case this year, though I was a bit more remorseful for having not put any effort into going, since it’s a major Stanford tradition, and since it’s my senior year.
Now enter Beefeaters’ Autumn 2003 Special Dinner, put on in the eating club by yours truly, together with the two other managers (if words like “Beefeaters” and phrases like “eating club” are unfamiliar, see this entry), on Friday the 21st. After the dinner, where there was much good food and much cheap wine, I retired with a flock of mostly-sober friends, among whom was my date for the evening Marie, to Marx, where we watched two and a half hours of mXc. If you ever get the chance to do this, by the way, grab that opportunity by the balls! (Or whichever body part is most painful to have grabbed while being less offensive to talk about).
While engaging in this very worthwhile mindless activity, I told the general populace of my desire to go to Big Game, and that I have not been able to go in previous years (I made it sound like it wasn’t my fault, I must admit). Marie, who is head yell-leader and captain of this year’s school-spirit-inducing crazies, came up with a devious suggestion: why not have me don a Cardinal jumpsuit and enter the stadium with the yell-leaders, posing as one of them and thus avoiding the necessity of paying $50 to get in? Our friend Steve also “jumped” at the opportunity, and since there was a veritable bounty of jumpsuits, we made a pact (in blood, if you like) to go through with the daring plan.
The next morning I woke up, ready to brave the cold in my red Dickies jumpsuit, only to find out that things had gotten a little more adventurous than previous plans predicted. Steve, who was good friends with a number of important officials in both the LSJU [Stanford] Marching Band and the Tree Protection Services (to be explained later), was made privy to recent news concerning the Stanford Tree. Most people think the Tree is Stanford’s mascot, but to my knowledge this is not so. Instead, the Tree is the Band’s mascot, and the official mascot of the University is the color Cardinal. Needless to say, it is hard to dress up as a color, and so the Tree has taken on the role that a general mascot has at most other universities (running around, fighting other mascots, etc…).
Anyway, I learned from Steve that earlier in the week, just prior to Big Game, Cal (as we call UC Berkeley) had stolen the Tree costume, no doubt to see if it was smokable. The person who is this year’s Tree, anxious to have a Tree costume for Big Game, spent many hours making a new mascot, when he and the Tree Protection Services, which is a group consisting of Trees of previous years, and the purpose of which is to protect the Tree from mobbing and overzealous policewomen, got an anonymous tip that the stolen Tree was in a dumpster in a shopping center in the East Bay. They retreived this tree, battered and torn though it was (and missing an eye!), and resolved to one-up Cal somehow with it.
And that is where I and Steve enter the picture. Since it was known that we were to enter the stadium sneakily anyhow, and that we had no other obligations, we were given the following task: we were to pick up the old Tree from the Band Shak, wrap it in a burial shroud (i.e., a large tarp), and carry it somberly in front of the Band and Tree/TPS as they made their classic music-filled entrance into the stadium. This was, no doubt, supposed to elicit a general curiosity (questions, you know, like, “What’s in the tarp?”, and so on). Steve and I performed marvelously in our red jumpsuits, and were even searched in a delightfully friendly manner by the Stanford police at the gate, who nevertheless seemed certain that the mass of PVC, cloth, and foam bundled in the nylon tarp was was worthy of suspicion.
But the mission did not end when we made it (successfully and without paying a cent, I might add) onto the field. We had to arrange for the delivery of an industrial-strength wood-chipper to the field at half-time. You see, the TPS wanted to have a ceremonial destruction of the old Tree, indicating that it had been soiled or made unworthy of existence insofar as it was stolen by Cal. When said wood-chipper did arrive, it was big and yellow and easily the most dangerous piece of machinery I have ever seen. It had upwards of 20 warning labels on it, including warning labels about the danger of not reading warning labels. My favorite one had a heading to the effect of, “READ THIS WARNING AND BELIEVE IT: YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT”.
At any rate we were able to get the wood-chipper on the field (more accurately, the sidelines) at half-time, and then Steve and I led a respectfully dirgeful procession, carrying the “dead” body of the old Tree in its burial shroud towards the TPS, who were waiting. After we stepped politely aside the fun began, and there was much shoving and jumping on the dangerous machine, and then many showers of brightly colored materials flying around, followed up with much insane dancing in the “ashes” of the deceased. All the while I stood there, probably being looked at by more people simultaneously than has ever happened in my life, and tried to be awesome. I think I can safely say that I was awesome, in my jumpsuit and Oakley sunglasses.
The rest of the game was spent on the sidelines, talking to the Band, getting expensive pizza from concessions, and talking about how best to protect the Tree if the Cal fans swarmed the field after the game (which happened last year, to the utter decimation of the goal posts and the injury of many people, and, fortunately or unfortunately, did not happen this year). Many of those around me also spent their time being breathalyzed by the hordes of police officers (one of whom had a go-cart with a large sign that read “MASCOT CONTROL”). Somehow I escaped this fate, though I would have preferred to have been breathalyzed, since everytime someone passed, he or she was given a loud hurrah by those present. (I guess for this to have been a rational preference I would have needed to be sure of my sobriety, which, luckily, I was).
In the end, Stanford lost the game, but I feel that my Big Game experience was not significantly dimmed by this fact, particularly in light of the price of admission. More importantly, I met a good number of current Stanford personages whom I otherwise would probably never have talked to, and had a central and exciting (if small) role in the proceedings of the day. The adventure, unfortunately, seems the less adventurous now that it has been a week, now that I am writing it in a weblog, and now that I have used about twice as many words as necessary to tell the tale. Then again, what secret-agent, getting-into-stadiums-for-free-wearing-a-jumpsuit escapades have you pulled off lately?
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