Rat City Sports

I know not many of you watch hockey, and even fewer of you would be watching hockey in Florida, but let me tell you something, you’re missing out. The Florida Panthers announcer Randy Moller, who is a former NHL player, has taken announcing to new heights.

How so? Well, you know how guys like Stuart Scott say “Booyah!” on goals, which is pretty random. Well, Moller embraces randomness like to no before him. He will quite literally say the first thing that pops into his head after a goal. See, Moller doesn’t stick with one call (like Scott has for 15 years), so he never gets boring. Instead, it’s fun to just try and figure out how his brain works.

Many questions surrounding the exact origins of baseball have been the main subject of controversy and debate for longer than a century. Baseball as well as softball, just as any other modern ball, bats and running games, rounders and cricket, have all developed from the earlier forms of folk games. Despite the fact that baseball’s roots are English, there are similar games that have been played in several other areas of the world. There is a Romanian ball sport known as Oina, that is similar is several ways to the sport of baseball.

Since the thirteen hundreds, Russia has had a game of bat and ball known as Lapta. The Germans are known for playing a game known as Schlagball, which is very similar to the game of rounders. In this game however, the bowler would throw a ball to the striker, who would hit it with the club and then try to run around the circuit of bases without even get hit with the defender’s ball.

In the early eighteen hundreds, Americans played a version of Rounders, the English game, and they referred to the game as “Town Ball”. In fact, these early forms of the sport of baseball had several different names, which include “Goal Ball”, “Base Ball”, “Round Ball” and just “Base”. There was at least one particular version of the game where the teams would pitch to themselves, and the runners would run the bases in a totally opposite direction from that of today’s game, in this game, the players were able to be put out by being hit by the ball just like in Schlagball. However, like today, it was a total of three strikes and then you were out.

There are very few details surrounding how the modern games were able to develop from the earlier folk games that are known. Some may assume that several folk games resulted within the game referred to as town ball, which was where baseball was born eventually. Whereas, there are others that believe that town ball was totally independent from baseball.

Some of the ancient sports that were similar with baseball include Oina which is a Romania sport. All of its origins seem to be related to a pastoral game that was played among the shepherds of ancient times.

The Origins of Stoolball
Within stoolball, which was developed by the eleventh century, one player would throw the ball at the set target while the other player would defend the target. Stow-ball and Stob-ball were the regional games that were similar to stoolball. In stow-ball and stob-ball the actual target was more than likely a tree stump, since both terms “stow” and “stob” mean stump when used within some dialects. The original target that was used in stoolball isn’t certain. It may have been a stump, who knows?

Based on one legend, the milkmaids would play stoolball while they were waiting for their husbands to come home from the fields. One of the other theories is that stoolball was developed as a game and it was played after attending regular church services, in which case, a church stool was probably the target.

Even though we all have a tendency to assume that bowling is a fairly modern sport, the truth of the matter is, that the history bowling reveals is varied a lot and it appears to have independently developed in different places around the globe. Even though the people that were participating in bowling didn’t always speak our modern language or wear the same clothes that we did, when it all boiled down to the actual use of a ball that was being rolled in order to knock over the pins that were standing upright, now that is something that many of them would definitely be able to recognize.

Among the very first places that bowling can be traced back to is ancient Egypt. There was a version of the bowling ball and pins that were all sized for a child that was found that was very primitive, that were discovered along with a couple of artifacts that could actually be dated back to thirty two hundred BC deliberately, something that will make all of them well over five thousand years old.

However, this isn’t the only suggestion that have been made referring to the fact that bowling could be quiet ancient. There were some individuals that claimed that the ball and the pins represented a totally different game completely and stated that bowling originated within Germany only about two thousand years ago.

Among the very first mentions of bowling from what we can tell is known to involve one of the English King’s outlawing it because of the fact that all of his troops were bowling instead of participating in their archery practice. So, this would place bowling in England during the thirteen hundreds. However, because of its depictions in literature and art, we can tell that it was legal and popular once again just a very short time later. But this time around, there were some different variations of bowling, which from one country to the next, varied in the number of pins and the size of the balls that were used.

At the time that the very first European settlers came into America, bowling was brought along with them. In America, the very first mention of the term bowling is related to Rip Van Winkle, a very famous story in the Washington Carver that was published during eighteen twelve.

This story reflects the main character meeting men that are strangely dressed which are enjoying the game known as ninepins. As you can tell, this differs a little from the modern game we have, which is known to consist of ten pins, and the story hiding behind the addition of the tenth pin is a very interesting one.

Due to bowling being very popular among gamblers and criminals, bowling as a game suffered from a shady reputation and in several places there were laws passed which actually forbidden the owning of any bowling establishments. In order to get around all of this, there were many establishments that simply decide to add another pin to the bowling set and claimed that they were actually playing a totally different game.

From the outside looking in, you can easily see that the history behind association football, normally known as simple football, is able to be traced all the way back to the traditional football games that were played within Europe in ancient times, specifically Medieval Spain. Whereas on the other hand, the modern game of football has buried its roots within the overall formation of the FA or The Football Association, that took place in England during eighteen sixty three.

There were several different clubs that met within London in order to create some type of universal code, which would allow all of the clubs to have the ability to play one another without the worry about a dispute. It was at this time, that all of the football clubs were played by some of their very own individual rule codes, and the rules for game-day had to all be agreed upon by both teams before they could ever play one another.

Because football as a sport was still thought of as an amateur activity, the football association code was immediate. After some of the working class people started taking part in the sport, the very first professional clubs were then formed, and all of the entrepreneurs saw a very great opportunity to earn money from all of the spectators that were coming to see all of the star players. Once the time came and professionalism took hold, football’s popularity became very immense and it was soon spread by British expatriates throughout the entire world.

A Look into the Football Association

In England, within the early part of the eighteen sixties, there was an increase in the attempts that were made in order to reconcile and unify several football games that were being played within England’s public school. Then in eighteen sixty two, one of several driving forces in place behind the original set of Cambridge Rules, J.C. Thring, also a master at the Uppingham School, took the time to issue his very own set of rules that he referred to as “The Simplest Game”. Later in the early part of the month of October, eighteen sixty three, there was another new revised version that surfaced of the Cambridge Rules which was drawn up by a committee of seven members that represented the former pupils from Shrewsbury, Harrow, Rugby, Eton, Westminster, and Marlborough.

One of the solicitors from Hull, Ebenezer Morley, wrote in the eighteen sixty three newspaper by Bell’s Life, proposing that there should be a governing body in place for the sport of football. It wasn’t long before Morley was able to become the football association’s first secretary which he held the position from eighteen sixty three until eighteen sixty six and then he was moved up to second president from eighteen sixty seven to eighteen seventy four, however he is especially remembered for being the one that drafted the very first Laws of the Game, which took place at his home within Barnes, London, which are played today all over the world.

It is for this reason, that he is not only considered the football association’s father but of association football altogether.