Yale Loses the All-Yalie Harvard-Yale Game

In November 1991, a Look Japan colleague who had attended Yale told me that her friends were organizing a Harvard-Yale touch football game that Saturday in Yoyogi Park, in central Tokyo, in honor of the actual Harvard-Yale football game back in the US later that day. Thinking I might run into someone I knew, I decided to go.

Upon arriving, I found 25 people in Yale gear, one guy wearing a Harvard sweatshirt, and one guy from some other school. Seeing no one I knew, I introduced myself to the guy wearing the Harvard sweatshirt. His name was Dave S., and he was from the class of '90, one year ahead of me. We hadn't known each other at school. We threw a ball around a bit to warm up and then, with the third non-Yalie, formed the nucleus of the "Harvard" side when we divided up into teams. Our side won.

Afterwards, I remarked on the fact that so few Harvard people had shown up and asked him how he had learned about the game.

"You're shittin' me. This was a Harvard-Yale game?" he asked.

"Yeah, you didn't know?"

"No."

"You played this whole game without knowing?"

"I didn't know. Seriously."

"Then what were you doing here?" I asked him.

"I was just walking through Yoyogi Park, and I saw a bunch of gaijin playing football. I just decided I would join them." (Not ask if he could join, decided he would join. This, as I would later learn, was classic Dave S.)

"What about the Harvard sweatshirt?" I asked.

"This? I always wear this sweatshirt."

"You really didn't know?" I persisted.

"Really. I didn't know."

So, that was their plan! The Yalies had tried to win the Harvard-Yale touch football game by not inviting anyone from Harvard! And, yet, they still lost, their plot foiled by one of their own who spilled the beans about the game to a colleague from Harvard and a Harvard grad who decided to barge into a gaijin football game without invitation.

Afterwards, Dave and I decided to grab a drink. He suggested that he call his girlfriend, Chieko, and that we meet her at a nearby bar called "Oh, God!," off Omote-Sando street in Harajuku, where they had cheap food, a pool table, and American movies on the projection TV. Perfect for a couple of guys in their early 20s. Over the next year or so, Dave and Chieko became my close friends, and "Oh, God!" became one of our regular hangouts -- all because Dave had decided to insert himself into a football game he just happened to be passing by.