Category: Sports! We’re#1

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R is for Rubber

Aztec ballplayers playing “hip ball” in a typical state of undress, as depicted by Christopher Weiditz (1528) in a book on Mesoamerican customs.

Rubber isn’t an Ancient Invention, is it? Wasn’t rubber invented by Charles Goodrich (or was it Goodyear?) Or the Michelin Man? Historians seem to think so. A 2021 textbook on material culture history starts: “Rubber began its global bouncing career in the late 15th century.” Another says : “Columbus discovered rubber!” (Columbus discovered a prison cell is what Columbus discovered. ) Or: “Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber!” (Goodyear.com seems to think so.)

Some encyclopedias rightly credit the Mesoamerican cultures with discovering the properties of rubber, though usually they get two sentences, while Anglo-Europeans like Joseph Priestley, Charles Condamine, and Goodyear get several paragraphs. Let’s be clear. The Olmecs , Mayans, and Aztecs, starting as far back as 1600 BCE, cultivated and used rubber. They understand how to use it, what to use it for, and how to improve it. They were proficient with polymer chemistry–vulcanization–to extend its functionality They also invented sports in ways that would seem eerily familiar to us.

Given that we use rubber every darned day, I thought the Mesoamericans deserved a little more credit than always being the fifth oh, and... culture that I include. I thought they deserved their own post.

This post, therefore, deserves its own three questions:

  1. What are the origins of Rubber?
  2. How did the ancient civilizations with access to Rubber use it?
  3. How are these early practices echoed in modern-day Rubber use?
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G is for Games

Ancient Egyptian marbles, @2500 BCE. Similar, small polished rocks (marbles) have been found in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, i.e. wherever children existed. Photo by Rob Koopman at Leiden Museum.

Play is instinctive. Even without Nerf guns, Xboxes, or Hungry, Hungry Hippos, children will play. Young creatures from every species know how to splash their sister at the watering hole; every little brother will pounce on the older one to start a game of chase. Peek-a-boo must be universal. Although what about amoebas? Do amoeba children play peek–a-boo?

Before I go too far down the rabbit hole of biology, let’s just stick to play, specifically ancient toys and games. Strangely enough, academics hadn’t given much thought to play until a few years ago, especially in archaeological digs. Hstorian Philippe Arles actually put forth the theory that in the past children didn’t play, that they were effectively “mini-adults,” because there was too much to do and high infant mortality rates made their parents unwilling to invest in their childhoods–Arles sounds like a guy without children to me. For a long time, though, when archaeologists found a Stone Age figurine or a bit of broken pottery, even in a child’s burial site, they called the former a religious fetish and the latter trash. But those could have been dolls and action figures; they could have been game pieces.

The idea of childhood play wasn’t invented in the 20th century. Plenty of classical Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artwork includes children playing. We can let the academic journal papers debate whether the tiny horse with wheels was for a religious ceremony or a giggling child. For this purposes, let’s call them toys.

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Elegy for the Oakland A’s

…no one wants to hear from the murderer at the funeral…

Sportswriter Ann Killion, on owner John Fisher’s sham letter of regret.
Some of my lifetime of A’s paraphernalia.

Sports is not really about demigods performing super human feats, even if it sometimes is. It’s not about honoring divine beings, extolling the virtues of gentlemen athletes, or bringing about world peace, even if some claimed that was its purpose. Sports is not even about winning. Sports is about storytelling, stories which become inseparably woven into the fabric of our own lives.

There have been a lot of tears shed this past week at the funeral for the Oakland Athletics, my hometown baseball team. The final games were played last week by Oakland’s quirky, over-achieving players in its aging, industrial monolith of a stadium. Fans and players wept openly, and we’re still crying. I went to a lot of games there, by myself and with friends, wife, kids, in-laws. The A’s Bay Area tenure roughly paralleled mine, and, although I’m not going anywhere, they’re headed off to West Sacramento, to wear jerseys that have no place name on them. The team owners are dreaming of going to Vegas, but all they have so far is an architectural drawing and a hope for public funding.

I was going to write a rant, full of fury at A’s owner John Fisher, who publicly throttled this team as we were all suffered to watch. Like many of the other fans, though, I end up just thinking about my long string of experiences. Forgive me for such a long, maudlin post. Like a good wake, it goes on longer than it should because I just don’t want to tell the deceased goodbye.

The Oakland A’s have always had to play things a little differently, under weird circumstances and not always with poise or polish. They took pride in eccentricity and in showing up to contend with those who had more to begin with.

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