Meadow Brook's Moment

Polo's Big Moment comes once every three years, when a squat silver mug with little horses and men springing out of its base stands gleaming on a table in front of the bright blue West Stand at Meadow Brook, gleaming as the emblem of victory for the International teams galloping up and down the broad stretch of turf, and as the central sparkle in one of the country's finest sporting panoramas. Custom dictates that the cup shall be at the field after one team has won one game. The score of the first game (10 to 5 for the U. S.) had made the second game seem a foregone conclusion. Largest score in international history, 14 to 9,* hung on the hooks when Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock Sr., matriarch of U. S. polo (almost run down by an importunate newsreel truck), watched Mrs. Charles H. Tremayne, wife of the non-playing English captain, hand back the cup to stalwart Thomas Hitchcock Jr.

Captain Hitchcock raised the chalice to his lips, passed it to his teammates, then to the vanquished, and the work of three years of selecting men and mounts from both shores of the Atlantic and the expenditure of elaborate sums of money was finished. Not until 1933 will another Big Moment occur.

The crowd of 45,000 people and personages had been treated to what Hitchcock again described as the "hardest" game he had ever participated in (TIME, Sept. 15). Even if you were unable to understand the strategy of a game that to the layman appears a game of imperfection, of constant trying and missing, two events of the afternoon afforded the sort of thrill that brings most people out to watch auto races.

In the fifth period, long-legged Winston Guest, U. S. back, was ridden down by Captain Roark, pitched off his white-booted pony, thrown breathless on his back. His brother Raymond hurried out on the field, saw that the injury was not serious, ran back to stop his frantic mother who had come down from the stands to rush to her fallen son. Twice she crossed the planked boundaries, twice Raymond shushed her back. Meantime Son Winston got up, the crowd roared, he got another pony and the game was on again.

In the previous period Captain Roark's little brown mare Joy Bells suddenly went lame. Helped off the field, Joy Bells was found to have a broken pastern in her right foreleg. Spectators were happy to hear that although she will never play polo again, she will not be destroyed. "For sentimental reasons" she will be carefully nursed until the leg mends, then she will pass the rest of her useful life foaling.

As in the first game, the outcome of the second game was decided in the sixth period. Then it was that the Americans, trailing 6--7, climbed on their best mounts with a grim purposefulness and rode hell-for-leather through the Britons, scoring four goals.

*In 1924 the U. S. beat England 16 to 5.

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