Chapter 5 SPORTS This is not going to be a typical chapter about sports. No ordinary sports statistics will be found here. Who cares how many home runs Wilt Chamberlin hit, whether Billie Jean King was banned from the National Football League, or if Mark Spitz can still punch Mohammed Ali's lights out. These are the things that interested me, the author. I think you will find them interesting too. When volleyball was first invented in 1895, it was called mintonette. There is a non-competitive game called Pepper that some volleyball players use to warm up. Two players face each other about ten feet apart. One sets the ball to the other, who spikes it. The first person bumps the ball (a two-handed underhand move) to the second who then sets it for the first to spike. This three-move game can theoretically go on forever if both players have sufficient skill. You have a greater chance of injury playing volleyball than football. This is because in volleyball it is easy to accidentally smash into your opponent through the net. In Europe, football means soccer. You probably think American football is a rough sport. It is. But it is nothing like it was before 1906. In the year 1905, eighteen players died on the gridiron. 159 more suffered permanent disabilities. President Theodore Roosevelt made sure some of the rules were changed that year. Modern football has one danger left, the possibility of a torn knee. This could be virtually eliminated if players did not used spiked shoes. Most tennis injuries actually happen after the game when the winner tries to jump over the net. When tennis was first invented in 1874, it was called sphairistike. The guy who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1915 had to get out and push his broken car for more than the last mile of the race. Sometimes boxers apply live leeches to their black eyes. This sucks out the blood from the crushed tissue, evidently lessening the blackness, or promoting healing. Some unique research discovered that four out of every five boxers have sustained brain damage. The ancient American Indian game of lacrosse involved teams of up to 1,000 players. A spectator sport in Rome 2300 years ago was called Cestus. Slaves were given gloves covered with spikes and told to fight each other. The winner's reward: life. I saw this in the newspaper one day: "DEAR ANN LANDERS: My son is 6-foot-6 and never played basketball. His answer to those tiresome questions is a message on his T-shirt that reads: NO. DO YOU PLAY MINIATURE GOLF? - R.W., Cleveland Bowling used to be done with nine pins. A law was passed in colonial Connecticut making "bowling at nine pins" illegal. The potential offenders just switched to using ten pins, thereby keeping their game legal. The best matadors in Peru used to be women. The early golf balls were not made from zillions of rubber bands. They were feather-stuffed leather balls. Contrary to popular belief, the original olympians did wear clothing. Then, one runner's loincloth fell off during a race in the year 720 B.C. He kept right on going, and won the race handily. Like athletes of any era, the losers copied the techniques of the winner and subsequent competitions were held without clothes. One guy ran the 100-yard dash in 14 seconds, not a spectacular time, but he did it running backwards. For those who consider jogging a boring exercise, you might consider the relatively new sport of joggling. This is running while juggling. This gives your upper body exercise as well as your lower body. It may sound difficult, but is really quite easy to do. All you have to do is learn to juggle. How to juggle: Anyone can juggle. Coordination and panther-like control of your body is not required. All you need is patience, lots of patience. Do you have this? OK, read on. First, find a place where no one is watching. They will laugh at you and make you want to quit before you feel silly. Warm up by throwing a single ball, apple or rock in a sideways figure eight (infinity sign-shape) from hand to hand using underhand tosses. The ball should go about two feet high with each throw. Hold one ball in your left (or less dominant) hand and two balls in your right hand. Starting with the hand that is holding two balls, throw one of these balls to the other hand. Wait! Read the rest of the instructions first. Ok, while this first ball is in the air, just before it is going to land in your left hand, throw the ball that is in your left hand so that your left hand is free to catch the incoming ball. Now you have one ball in the air approaching your right hand. Throw the ball that is in that right to the left so you can catch the ball that is coming in. And so on. As you can see (if you try it a few times), you are really juggling only one ball at a time. If you have trouble, try slowing down, and throwing each ball higher, up to five feet up if necessary. Practice for a hundred years, then show your friends how coordinated you are and make them feel ridiculous by trying to teach them how to do it. For more information, write to the International Juggler's Association, P.O. Box 29, Kenmore, NY, 14217. With one pitch, Babe Ruth could throw two balls simultaneously, which would stay parallel all the way to the catcher. In the early days of baseball, there were four bases plus a home plate. The bases were not sand bags, they were stakes driven into the ground. There was no such thing as a foul ball and fielders had to hit a runner with the ball in order to tag him 'out.' The umpire sat in a rocking chair. The batter would tell the pitcher where he wanted the ball, and that's where the pitcher would try to throw it. The game ended when one team scored 21 runs. A research study found that out of 40 typical umpires tested, 12 needed new glasses. In 1962 The New York Mets had two pitchers named Robert Miller. The one they called Righty was Robert G. Miller and Lefty was Robert L. Miller. When you hit a baseball real hard, it momentarily changes shape by as much as 25 percent. It costs $66 per minute for the electricity to light a large baseball stadium. That's $3,960 per hour. If you lined up all the mountain bikes in America, tire-to-tire, and then rode a bike along that line, it would take you 18 weeks, (riding 40 hours per week, 15 miles per hour) to get to the end of the line. The longest tandem or "bicycle built for two" ever made was actually for thirty-five. It is almost 67 feet long and weighs about as much as a Volkswagen. The smallest bicycle that an adult can ride has wheels made from silver dollars. Steve McPeak built and rode a unicycle that was ten stories tall. The greatest skill was not in riding the machine, but in building it so that the chains would not fall off the sprockets. Next time you are waiting at a red light, you may want to begin practicing a technique called track stand. As you come to a stop, but before putting a foot on the ground, turn your front wheel about 70 or 80 degrees to the right or left. If your bike is not facing uphill, turn the front wheel facing uphill. This means that your wheel will probably be turned to the left, since most often, the road curves uphill toward the centerline, so that rainwater will run off. Keep steady pressure on one of the pedals, but balance the tendency to roll backward, downhill. With practice, you will find that you can come to a stop and never have to put a foot on the ground. You will be able to rock slightly back and forth, balancing between rolling back and pushing forward. This trick is used extensively by road racers who want their toe clips so tight that removing a foot would be difficult. For the mountain biker, it helps develop fine control of the bike at slow speeds, such as when riding along a narrow cliff. The longest bicycle skid on level ground: 374 feet. The tire went flat 20' before the end of the skid. The bike was equipped with 27" tires containing 110 pounds pressure. The technique was simply a long start to get up to full speed, then the rider leaned way over the front of the bike, reducing the weight on the back wheel to almost nothing. The feat was accomplished by the author of this book, who could have gone slightly further, but he was laughing so hard that he fell off the bike. Don't try this trick at home unless you have a really long living room.