Citation Needed - Forgotten Sports

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

This week, Tom explores a series of forgotten sports, many of which should never have been lost. And the rest of which are cruelty to animals with a scoring system. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

You're gonna steal the Harry Potter game. Yeah, man, I'm not gonna give that lady money and I wanna do Wizard Shit. She's not allowed to take my Wizard Shit. What Wizard Shit? Can I just say your morals are weird? I get that a lot. I got a lot of magic you do.

Wee! So much. Dude, it's my turn! Come on! Really, Tom! Mid! Wee! Mid! Wee, I was weeing. Yeah, I'm gonna pop you. That's what turn. Come on. Really, Tom, mid, we mid, we I was weeing. Yeah, I'm gonna pop you.

That's what I'm gonna do. Really, you lie. You're not in on the shenanigans this week? Nah, sports stuff. It's not really my fault. It's not really my fault. Sports stuff. Tom's essay this week is on Forgotten Sports.

So we're talking about all kinds of fun and crazy stuff. Baby boxing, balloon, something with a balloon. Which it also, it has been my turn for a while now. So a while. Yeah, okay, we did in a second. There's a time for football even. Dude, what? Football isn't forgotten.

What are you talking about? It's like, it's like one of the biggest sports in the world. Oh, we were counting head injury in the category of forgotten. Oh, okay, you know, that makes sense. Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna pop them. I'm gonna pop them. It's my turn.

Don't, don't though. Respect the time. I mean, Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject to read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. This is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Noah, and I'm going to be quarterback in this team, but to do that, I'll need to help with my offensive line first up to guys who's brought up the reps, we'll constantly have to make up new penalties for Heats and Ceaseless.

Okay, Noah, I've told you many times, there's no rule against shitting yourself. I've checked many times. It's implied, it's implied. I think it's weird. 15 yards for off-putting, that's really egregious. I just think that's egregious. That's egregious. And also joining us, two men who refuse to believe a half back

isn't two quarterbacks in a trench coat. Tom and Eve. All right, jokes on you Noah. I refuse to believe that most of those were actual words. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure it's drug terminology. So I'll take it to you.

And obviously we can't get the show started without thanking our lovely patrons unless we're heathen. We're not. We're Noah. So thank you, patrons. I love you. What? Wow, then heathen.

I love you too. And Adrian's come to me. If you Adrian's come to me. And Adrian come to me. Don't go to the door. No, go towards me. Just learn. You love me more. I'm closer.

I'm bacon. I bacon. I smell like better bacon. What? Be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way,

tell us see. So what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event? We'll be talking about today. We are going to be talking about forgotten sports today, Noah, forgotten sports. Awesome. Well, if anybody is qualified to discuss sports, it's obviously Tom. Tom, are you just still mad that I did the essay about beer? You know, I'm as bitter as the double IPA that your dead palate can't appreciate. So yes. Yes, I am. All right, so what are some forgotten,

well, sorry, that would be way too short-winded. Oh, what philosophically, just a slower version of our favorite past time, say about the current state of national on the screen. Oh, okay. All right, hey, it's a rough this episode. Yikes. I at least believe that our listeners appreciate my little contextualizing

of our vignettes into the larger framework of my personal integration. No, fair. Okay, no, that's fair. Look, it is no great surprise, obviously, to anyone that I'm not a sports guy. I know most people love sports in some form or format and there's a great deal of interest and who has the ball or who hit the ball or where the ball is now located. But just balls have never held that kind of interest for me.

And I want to keep realizing, but never more so than now is that I was just born in the wrong time. I am an acronistic. I am a misanthrope of time. But I think I understand better the appeal of sports after buying the genuinely amazing book, which I knew from the moment I heard the title was destined to become content for the show, box tossing, octopus wrestling and other forgotten sports by one Edward Brookes. What?

What? Amazing. I haven't read it and I want to be buried hugging it now. It's a delight and it will make many reappearances, by the way. This is not, this is just the prequel, I promise. Because within its beautiful, glorious pages, I discovered my love of sport, which, of course, dovetails perfectly with my infatuation with the absurd.

And I'm going to be doing a lot of just quoting directly from the book as we go on. Not only because I am deeply lazy, and then I just had a type with someone else said, but because sometimes when you find something quoting directly from the book as we go on, not only because I am deeply lazy and then I just had to type with someone else said, but because sometimes when you find something this beautiful, the only thing you can do is show it to the world.

Aw, let's begin then with baby boxing. No, what? Baby yes, baby, this is where we're starting guys. It gets weird. Is it what it sounds like? Baby boxing is not boxing babies and is not putting babies in boxes. That would be child abuse. Is it wearing babies as gloves?

It should be. This is also child abuse, but this is different and somehow kind of weirdly adorable. I couldn't include it because it's a text. 10 ounce gloves. Healthy gloves. There is a picture by the way, guys, in the book of two, like six year olds with their shirts off in a ring boxing with these huge gloves and they're both crying. And this is kind of everything this story will tell you.

In the early part of the 20th century, think late 19 teens early 1920s, a well respected boxer and former army sergeant by the name of Spike Webb, took on the role of associate professor and boxing coach for the US Naval Academy. And this dude was just straight on a mission. Spike thought that everyone, just everybody needed a good toughening up,

likely sensing the softness of strength and character from the whims who had just fought in the meat grinder of World War One. Spike took on the task of making men more manly and we're best to begin then with the kids. Billy, I told you crayons were for paper, not the wall. Now go to your trench without dinner. No. Yes. Yeah, this does not seem destined for weirdly adorable.

That's what I'm gonna do. That's gonna make a hard ride for hard lettuce there. Yeah, that's their buddy. Yeah. All right, I've got kids, you don't have kids, you don't know how funny it is to watch them cry. She's basically, spikes first official act upon taking his new role was to establish the Navy Junior Boxing program.

I've ever watched boxing and then you thought to yourself, why are we reserving all of that deep brain trauma and those concussions just for adults? Well, then you're pretty much the same headspace as Spike. The Navy Junior Boxing program was a full contact boxing league for little kids, for real. This was open. Kids as young as five and up to 11. The program trained a little kids out of box wearing four ounce gloves and culminated

in the Navy junior boxing finals. And again, this was full contact. They were multiple, although shorter rounds of just little kids pummeling the shit out of each other. And a lot of times, according to the stories, after the little kids were get hit, the kids would just turn around and run into the crowd to find their moms, because little kids

actually really hate getting punched in the face. Uh huh. Yeah. Okay, but you know how kids are always saying, like, my dad could beat up your dad. Here's the thing. What if we I know. I know.

Unless you think this is just some weird fetish program started by a guy who thought a good slap was all that was needed to cure shell shock this program. Persisted for more than 50 years. It only was discontinued in the late 1970s. What? Yeah. Oh yeah. This wasn't just spikes thing, man. This went for five fucking decades. In that case, I need to quote from a letter written in 1962 by then junior Navy boxing coach, something, something, Rebino doesn't matter. He said, dear boys, the Navy Boxing program of which you are now a part offers you many

chances to become a better young man. In boxing, the spirit of give and take is part of the game. Life has always demanded the courage to take it and the ability to come back fighting. More Letter At the conclusion of the finals, youngsters will be awarded the Navy End, the Navy Medal, and a copy of the official program After which gallons of ice cream milk and cookies will be served by the mothers moms are just so versatile back then she could be the party planner, but also the cup man. It was awesome man What are we sure where they say the mothers that's just not like a derogatory term for the kids who lost

they say the mother's that's just not like a derogatory term for the kids who lost those mothers over there. I got to serve you ice cream. Okay, feels weird to mention this, you know, like focus in on this. Maybe it's just the ambiguous wording. It says like gallons of ice cream, milk, and cookies. But now I want a gallon of cookies. Here you want that. Yes, container. Yes. A podcast listener. Heath says that every episode, but today it's relevant. So I think we should need it in here. So I think you know, and it would be bigger than a gallon. I mean, like gallon of cookies, not like a gallon of liquid. And then you put cookies into that.

Because that's not the same amount. Just like a gallon of cookies. That's how we should measure cookies is by the gallon somehow. Right. So now we need to move on as something called balloon jumping. Wait, move on to something. It's a wait. So kids punching each other.

That's just weirdly adorable all on its own. Do you? There's no turn. No, you guys find it in deer's. I found it. Were you not listening to tons of explanation about the adorability of all that? Just maybe maybe I should go back and reread it. I thought it was. Okay.ability of all that. Just maybe I should go back and reread it. I thought it was, okay, all right.

Again, it's the roaring 20s, the first edition. And I for one, I'm deeply disappointed that this one did not stay a thing. So what I'm gonna describe for you is admittedly unspeakably dangerous, but I now also know how I wanna die and learning is important. The jumping balloon or hopper balloon was invented by three guys without first or middle names, I guess, MQ Corbett, W E Hoffman

and CF Adams. And here is the invention, guys. All right. So picture balloon, it's giant, about 18 feet in diameter. It is attached to a small wooden bench. That is the invention. That's the invention. All right. So anyway, all right. You fill the huge fucking balloon with either hydrogen or helium. And then I have a very very carefully. So do I. So do I. At a point in a, because the goal here was to create an amount of lift a few pounds less than the amount of weight of the rider sitting on the bench. Once filled the rider with then just push off the ground with a leap and the balloon would allow them to take

to the sky. Sometimes as much as a thousand feet. Wow. What is happening? It a great parabolic leap before drifting gently down to the ground hundreds of yards for these things look amazing. You need to check the video out. Think of it like a Johnny jump up for infants, but it's attached to like a Chinese weather balloon like something like that. There's an ad from a 1923 edition of popular science advertising. The idea that read, quote,

how would you like to own your own hand, power, jitney balloon, spend your Saturday after noon's joy riding in the sky up a thousand feet or so, swing in beneath the round belly of a small gas-filled bag and traveling anywhere you can inducecass of threes is to take you. And, quote, is just listing fears of mine in an hour. Maybe you fly to your middle school homecoming and you become magically naked somehow. I don't know. And then everybody's like, dance. Heath, dance right now for us. And you dance for them.

And then you ask out Clara and she says, no. And now you're emotionally terrified it 841 so Enjoy that let's say balloon though Well you can still experience that I know what it's like to fly next to a Smelly bag of gas because I travel intentionally with Eli all time. Oh Beans make me gas you know, but you know don't bring a fucking can on every flight then. No. No.

No. No, it's canned. What do you think the couple is for? What do you think it's for? What do you think it's for? What do I wear best fucking threads? Beans. Couple are so shallow, you're only getting a couple of beans in there.

Well, right there in that ad was, of course, one of the many rubs. Sometimes the breezes weren't particularly playful, so much as, you know, terrifying. Like imagine instead of the playful fancy of bounding joyfully about in the sky, you instead left high into the air and found yourself buffeted by bitterly cold winds, throwing about two in throw at the mercy of the capricious sky held aloft by ropes and hoping that your calculations meant you would in fact float down and not just... oh, way. But like lawn darts, these things had their day. They became popular ways for workers to bound high into the air to inspect structures. What's now? Come on.

Letters. Yeah, man. That is no. No. Absolutely not. You've got to picture too. It's like how's it look good? There's one guy with like a ruler or like a gauge of some kind trying to measure. He's like god damn it again I'm gonna do it again. I gotta do it again. There's like a wrench there and they've got like three or four guys going one after the other each I get some half a turn as he comes by, you know, what was the measurement 15 16? All right, now we are going to have someone washing the windows outside. And then we notice fucking notice, I noticed that someone's outside doing that. So they also use these crazy ass things to inspect the tops of other lighter than aircraft, such as hot air balloons and airships. And soon other uses for this great leap forward were being suggested.

This is from Missouri's Joplin NewsHerald. Quote, we could strip the spring cherry tree without endangering our legs. I love this so much. Great line now. We can do this now. It's like the best thing for ever. I just, I feel like legs are at risk there Deeply so but this next one you've got his picture this whole thing we could dispense with elevators and enter our offices on the

What by merely leaping to the window and crawling in Everybody's parking their balloon outside of the window. For later on during their smoke break, they're hydrogen balloon during their smoke break. They're like, I don't know. You need to get too many of them tidy and they're the building just exploding on. No, I took a city balloon, it's fine.

Just leave it in the front, thanks. Yeah, it's been pretty cheap. It's fine. We've been doing it for a day. It's great. It's great, pretty cheap. We can do a thousand of one things easily that we now do a difficulty. It was even suggested that balloon jumping become an alternative way for people to commute to and from work. Rather than driving or what? Come on.

And you know, and you know there's that one hipster guy that won't take the balloon to work. And instead it swears by those bouncy, still things. He's like, no, I mean, it's a word better. They're way better fixed gear. You're still. Yeah. I don't know.

So even if people were splatting against office windows and, you know, giant park benches attached to balloons, I think I'd still hate bicyclists. You have a bike lane going your lane that we made for you on your bike on the road. You know, but the real marketing for this thing was not for industrial use, but just for fun. Marketing, Portrait, these balloons is simple and requiring little training. Probably because once you've jumped, there's really nothing left to do, but try not to reduce ballast by shitting yourself as you ascend like Icarus to the sun. It should be noted here also that popular versions of this scheme did abandon Hydrogen in favor of helium because people like to smoke while leaping about

Safe Good. Yeah. Yeah. No, keep it safe. That's important. Oh, yeah. Yep. But now we can cross promote with the neuron cleansing power of all balls. That's a very great. What the fuck is happening? Oh, guys, for a second, I forgot this was an episode about sports and

that I remembered and now I'm so god damn excited. Is there going to be a sport with this? Soon the idea of using this blo as vehicles and bouncy races was flowing. Yes, I know. I love this so much. As reported by the 1927 issue of science and invention, quote, racist with balloons of this sort would be undoubtedly great fun

and the danger would be very slight. Oh, I don't know what that obstacle races, of course, would be the most fun because you then bring the full advantages of the balloons into play, end quote. I don't know what obstacles could possibly be created that wouldn't potentially damage the balloon and cause the writer to plummet or what obstacles wouldn't be unimaginably silly for a man to do 18 feet of helium to try to traverse. But I do know and I know this the bottom of my heart that if this were on ESPN I would quit my

goddamn job to watch this every day of my life. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100% right. Tom, for obstacles you're gonna want obviously lots of lightning. You're gonna want sword face birds and you're gonna want crack ins that jump out of the water. Have you not played balloon fight for any us? Obviously, I see you. He I see you. Thank you. Of course, unfortunately, this is not yes, because balloon jumping was in fact, not at all.

Say if I already mentioned the difficulty of making sure you didn't just blow away, but there is also of course the problem of leaping into shit or onto shit that you didn't intend to leap into or land onto. Maybe, maybe. If you were in this a huge open field and there were no obstructions and there was no wind, this could be like safe adjacent.

But that is not how the world is. In a 1927 some guy and I'm going to quote here so you do not think I'm making this up. He decided to screw around balloon jumping near some high tension wires. And this is the quote for God's sake. Take care. Those are live wires shouted in nearby friend. I'll risk it said the balloon jumper. He did.

And this is now why we have all those GI Joe PSAs about live wires and nobody bounces to work in their balloon chair. Well, it's I'm glowing is half the battle. So share. Well, it's I'm glowing is half the battle. So. Sorry. Okay. How did that, quote, get recorded. Like, other guy remembers that forever. Right. Necessity in sports is, of course, the mother of invention. But like the balloon bench, most of the inventions

were terrible and scary. Take for instance the baseball cannon. Evidently pitching a baseball, I guess I learned this is really bad for the shoulder of the picture and lots of pictures get hurt just hurtling the ball at the batter. In an effort to save the arms of young athletic men Charles Hinton invented the baseball cannon. Oh man, I was really hoping we were about to hear about like four months where baseball was T ball, but not even 10 birds months ago. Okay, I actually got hurt really bad with a baseball cannon.

I was a kid. Yeah, you're a really bad pitching machine just like went wrong and fired one right at my face. And I got to go to action park. You lucky mother. Was that a ride? Was that a ride in action park? It's a base. I shut myself and vomited for both. It's not. That's your reaction to too many things. Can I give you that feedback? That's your reaction to too many things. Although he actually reacted that way to a lot of things. I think we can agree. We're about tied. Though, Hint didn't actually begin with the candid. What Hint invented first was a kind of like baseball cap. While the catapult was

undoubtedly a fine tool for hurling rocks over Castle walls. The design of the catapult leaves much to be desired in terms of the needed accuracy for a game of baseball and hinting naturally abandoned a prototype in favor of building a cannon to shoot the balls at players. The catcher stops flashing signs and starts telegraphing artillery coordinates to the pitch areas. So I got to be really clear here that what I'm talking about is a cannon cannon, not an air cannon. Like a gunpowder.

It's like a bug spout. Like you like a few. Yeah. There's a lot of guys. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We are not talking about air.

I did not get hurt by that. I got hurt by something a little bit more modern But still that's okay really a cannon The adventure was to make a cannon that used actual gunpowder and fire and the whole nine yards to blast a baseball at the better I so that's exactly what hit and made though So that's exactly what hit and made though. Cannons are still not baseball pitchers. A baseball thrown by the meat catapult of the human arm can be hurled in like lots of different ways

by making minor adjustments in technique and that causes the ball to spin or juk or do whatever it does in here. I don't know the details. Side to right. That's actually, yeah. It's like sort of, yeah. Well, canon just bang, and then the boss

used fourth, right? So, Hinton solved this problem by building like rubber French tickler kind of things on the end of his spurting ball failures to achieve various spinny facts. Kelly up to it. Once that was done, all that was left was to try out this masterpiece.

Okay, fantastic. First of all, I love this. I wish I had this exact thing with the actual canon when I was a kid. But they were trying to make a mechanical arm. You literally said the word had a pulp earlier, which was invented in like BC. And nobody thought about anything arm-based,

like an arm to throw the way an arm does as an arm. It's probably my fault. He, I said the only thing that would make baseball interesting would be live artillery on the field. And I feel like I'm right. Right. But like they took it too literally. So here I'm just gonna crib right from the book

because I was crying with laughter when I read this to my wife. So obviously this has to go right in. Quote, several inherent problems soon became obvious, the predominant being that most people didn't enjoy being repeatedly shot at, that can't even terrified the better, the terrific bang and velocity of the projectile invariably caused them to instinctively dive out of the way. In an attempt to solve this, the trigger man was instructed to signal to the

hitter the impending cannon fire by raising his hand. And that means guys that up until that second piece of the invention, the batter was not only being shot at, but he was being surprised at shot at. She got a cigarette and a blindfold. Here's the batting cage for you. Oh, man. You've been drafted by the Topeka misfires. Here's your uniform. It's a bright orange best in hat. Go stand over there. Still quoting later a wire was hooked up from the batter's plate to the guns trigger giving the batter control over the firing by stepping on the plate when he was ready. And quote nice. Yeah. And that sounds like the difference between a landmine blowing up beneath you and a landmine clicking first before blowing up beneath. If the batter refuses to fire the ball

for blowing up beneath. If the batter refuses to fire the ball at himself, is he out or is it delayed? What? It's both. Yeah, it's both. I say it's both. And final quote, the gunpowder blast had a tendency to cook and harden the leather surface

of the ball until after a couple of pitches, it had all the elasticity of a flying brick. And quote, no. So the ball, when it was struck by a bad, it didn't spring forth with the ball's usual vim and veer, but just kind of like clunked. Ah, it's the dead ball era. Yeah, that makes it, that's all different.

So the machine also took a super long time to prime and prep Jesus who made it. And this might be the least believable part of the story, but it actually made baseball more boring. Ha ha ha ha. Yes. Well, I'll tell you what, if anybody knows about taking a big

old home run, swinging at something and just getting a clunk, it's me. So while I recover emotionally from that description, we're going to take a quick break for some apropos of nothing. It's a beautiful day here in Pull of a City, Nick. Don Wright, Jerry, first game with the new baseball cannon, and it's gonna be a scorcher. Here's the first pitch. And it looks like a strike, Jerry. Sure does, Nick also appears to have killed the catch.

Indeed, it has. We heard rumors of dead catches in the preseason and it certainly looks like they were true. How could they not be in deep? Here's the next batter. Looks like they've got to have to drag him out to the plate. Don't love to see that. It's the nature of the sport if you ask me. All right. Well, he seems to have calmed down, though he is still crying. I'd hit the ball if you cry, and Jerry, I'd hit the ball if you're crying.

Oh, that there's the ball tearing his head, and Jerry, I'd hit the ball if you're crying. Oh, that there's the ball tearing his head off of his torso at the neck. Wow, that'll give you something to cry about, Jerry. That's for sure. Indeed it will, Nick. Indeed it will. And we're back and somehow Tom has something left on the list that's so fucking good. The baseball cannon wasn't last so Tom I'm dying to know what's next. I was now we got to move on to boxing on horseback. Oh, fuck, which is this one's just pretty much. Sounds amazing. Sounds amazing.

I would watch this all day and into the night. Gentlemen, if you've ever thought that the sport of boxing didn't involve enough being trampled upon, this might be your sport. Another venture from the early 1900s, horseback boxing evolved to pugilists wearing two boxing gloves boxing from horseback. Yeah, we picked that part up Tom. We got that. So the boxing gloves are important.

Yeah. All right. I hate you. Imagine then trying to wear a big ass goddamn boxing glove and control the horse's reins and try to steer the horses so they will cooperate while you angle for position so that you can like, leo over the horse and lash out at your opponents. That is boxing on horseback. So now the match was lost if someone was knocked off of their horse and was unable to regain position on their mount after 10 seconds.

Most of the time in the ring itself, and yes, they did this in a specially designed ring space. All right. We'll see. Like really big. I did fairly big size ropes. Yeah, they had ropes. They had, it was a ring.

They constructed a boxing ring for horseback men. All right. So most of the time what they all they did is they fucked around trying to control the horses So that these thousand-pound animals didn't panic as their writers were like squirming and leaning and clumsily handling the rains wearing their stupid fucking punching mittens and Sometimes people would just fall off the horse and get stepped on because Sometimes people would just fall off the horse and then get stepped on because it's horses. And ultimately, as many as 369 men would sign up and were part of the horseback boxing association, although the sport didn't really catch on outside of Berlin.

Hey, Germany, can I give you guys a note? You fall for too many bad ideas. Okay, you know what the problem is with jousting the lamp. Right. Yeah. So, okay, I'm trying to picture this. I feel like it's just a whole bunch of bad horse riding with mittens on and then like a half a second of slap fighting with the passenger there. And then try it. I get you in like 10 minutes when we both circle around at the same angle. Without putting both guys on the same horse, I don't think you can make this work.

Now, I would be remiss. Not to end this essay with the forgotten sports named when I referenced the books title, the first of them being fox tossing a trigger warning. This will not be nice to foxes. Ah, damn it. I was really rooting for Fox and Alinguist. I'm so pissed. I'm so pissed, right?

Eli, I am sick of telling you this, but once again, but they love it is not an adequate excuse for Fox and Alinguist, okay? Also, Eli says that every episode, it finally made some sense. I guess we keep it. He's always rooting for Fox and Alinguist. But it's really, it's really always rooting for Fox. See, no, it's real. Fox. See, no, it's he can't tell you. 9-11 Memorial this year. I tried to start that shit. Oh boy, did I get arrested? Okay, but like a few people got in with you.

And I was like, yeah, he had to work. This sport was a favorite in royal courts and gardens in Germany in the 17th century. The game, if you can call it, that was this. There's a strip of netting or fabric. It's laid across the ground. This was known as the bouncing cloth and standing 20 or so feet apart to players held the cloth so that it was slack in the middle and it lay flat across the ground. Then captive foxes were released onto the pitch and they were scared into running all over the damn place until one of them ran for and onto the bouncing cloth.

The players were then simultaneously pulled the netting taught and if they timed it just right, the hapless fox would be flowing high into the sky. Oh Jesus. What? I have to say Tom, I was expecting something way cooler and way less loony tunesy. And he's for you for a second. Yeah. Yeah.

Within the pitch, there were many teams of these tossers. So the animals were certain to at some point get tossed. And the play pitch was covered in sawdust to both cause erratic. And at the time, I guess, very comical landings and to cushion the landings of the foxes who recover, run again, and then again be tossed into the air by blood versus grubber. Oh, okay, no, it's too man. They have to. Yeah, I don't know why people get upset. But named Fox tossing the game was also played with hairs, badgers, wild cats, and vermin that were kept for just such games of medieval sport. Pretty sure that's code for juice, guys.

I don't know if I was going to say it. Shit. It's medieval. It's like 50, 50. And since this was medieval times, once the game was over, the party goers concluded the ceremonies by clubbing the remaining animals. Tom, why did you have to add the clubbing part until then I was pictured a fox coming home and tell this wife you just had the weirdest fucking day.

So I'm walking right across this cloth because obviously the cloth was there. You wouldn't believe these fucking German guys. I just kept picturing like a cow that wanders onto the cloth and then gets thrown over the moon. Just brilliant. Now this wasn't some weird nothing game. King Leopold I was a huge fan of this cruelty and the game spread beyond Germany. Over the course of 1747, Augustus III, a lector of Saxony and King of Poland, was responsible himself for the tossing and killing of 414 foxes, 281 hairs, 30 nice badgers, and one wildcat.

It's weird that we know his scores from there. I feel like he was doing P or something. There's an actress. The one wildcat feels like a lie, right? This is of course reprehensible, but it was nothing compared to the Fox tossing prowess of his father Augustus the second. Now obviously most of history is replete with a bunch of big fat dumb lies, but it seems from all accounts that Augustus II was a physically powerful man. He would give

demonstrations of his various feats of strength, including snapping horseshoes in half with his bare hands. And when he would Fox Toss, he was fond of holding his end of the net alone, gripping the net with a single finger while two of his subjects held the corner's opposite of his bouncing cloth. At his tosses, he introduced the bouncing of wild boars and even wolves. Wow. You have to imagine it was pretty wild when a king visits you and he's like, hey, you guys throw wild animals around with a big slingshot. I love that shit. And you have to be like, Oh, yeah, no, we totally love that thing. You just described.

Sorry. Love it. Yeah. We can we can set that up. Yeah. Of course. Also, okay. I know this is a weird thing to focus on again.

Who wins? Yes. Like how does the scoring like who versus what do you bounce at the end? Like what if I bounce him from like my net to your net do you get the point why get in a sense? It's like it's like skimpin' a thorn. It's how many times it bounces.

That's how you decide. It's oh it's bouncing. Yeah. Spell this out though. I'm just saying. Like it feels like heath. It feels like when you were a kid and had whiffleball rules.

You know where you're just like, okay, the fat goes through over there, that's a whole run, because nobody writes it on the corner of the shed. It's the shadow of the driveway. It feels like one of those gets. Do you have to call it like it's pool, like, okay, bore, corner shed.

Okay, see, now we're working out a good game that I don't have a problem. It's weird that you said when you were a kid and not last summer when I saw Heath and Noah do this, see, so can I? The court of Brunswick, masquerade tossing, briefly became a thing. This is where men would wear costumes of heroes and goblins or mythical creatures. And then the ladies would dress as nymphs or sexy nurses or sexy witches or sexy something else.

Then the animals themselves were decked out. They were covered in costumes or masks to resemble italeticians that nobody liked or Justin Bieber or other unpopular social pariahs before they were to be tossed. Okay. I don't want them to get tossed, but now I get it, right? I mean, I want,

like if they could do it to just, like actual Justin Bieber than yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do this shit. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. Does he, you mean there's Sanderson? Yes. Yeah, he's gonna be for like 11 years.

If you put a Trump mask on a fox and give me a fucking sling. I'm sorry, but I do it. What a Trump mask on a fox and give me a fucking sling. I'm sorry, but I do it. I wouldn't club him. I'm sorry. All right. So if you stuck it out this far, should at least be noted that very often people here were seriously injured.

Nice. The wild cats in particular would mall people's faces and legs and the wild boars didn't go gently into the good night air either. Life in medieval times wasn't all dinner and tournaments, but it was spectacularly cheap. Onward, finally to octopus wrestling, which seems to have peaked in its popularity in the US in the 1960s, and this is rather more prosaic if no less cruel. So this one, the game, if you can call it that, involved diving down to the ocean floor, and then teasing an octopus until it attacked you, whereupon the diver, or in some insane cases, a snorkeler would commence a wrestling match with the cephalopod until the animal was rested from the ocean and dragged either a shore or onto a waiting boat.

The whole thing does seem dumb and cruel and pointless, but again, luckily sometimes people would drown or become seriously injured in the process, so some good did clearly come out of it. All right, so if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? Sports used to be much more interesting than they are now. Yeah, like, man, why didn't they have ESPN and the Twenties? So are you ready for the quiz? Indeed I am. All right, Tom, which of the following was my favorite game invented by me and my friends

back in the day? A, the game in the dark. And the way this worked, one person had to like leave the room and we'd make it completely dark, black out all the windows and everything. And then that person would have to come back in and peg one of the other people with a ball without getting brutally involved

by all the hiding people. What do you mean by peg, kid? What's the peg, kid? What's the peg, kid? What's the peg, kid? Like, what's the, what's the peg, kid? Whatever works for you. So I just, I'm saying people would get, we'd set it up so like somebody would have like an entire mattress over their head

and ready to just like throw it into the face to the face of the game. It's not so dangerous. So dangerous. It was really, really dangerous. Yep. So that was A or was it B a game called tapioca which was a combination of volleyball, soccer, basketball and football. That's just awesome. It's just awesome. Okay. Yeah, I was played on a volleyball court kind of like combinations of

all those things. There was one version where you could like run to the other side and like smash through people had a little bit of rugby or football or see a game called Throw the hammer So I'll explain what that is. It's just like it sounds Especially if somebody would like immediately walk into a room You'd have a hammer and you'd like lob it up right next to them. The moment they walked through the rooms, it was like on them to save the hammer, either smashing into them or into the couch or into like the table or whatever. Yeah. And you had to catch it. This was a

house full of people that were like, their job was to catch things and throw things, but still it was probably not the smartest. That sounds. I, is secret answer D you should have not invented any of those games. What? That is correct. That is correct. In it though. All right, Tom, I was there for the hammer thing. A, they threw it so much harder at each other than your picturing.

So, so much harder. each other than your picturing so so much harder. B, no, of course, nobody ever tried to throw me the hammer. You can tell because I'm alive. See, one time a person who may or may not have been he had a guy we called bones in the chest really hard and we were all like, hey, did you just break your sternum bones? And he was like, no, I'm fine, but I think he broke his sternum. And I've always wanted to talk about it. He might have. He's not even close to the craziest thing that happened in that house while I was visiting. I knew I was living there.

I didn't even live. I wasn't even a person. So they couldn't even take a break from throw the hammer for guests. No, you don't get a timeout and throw the hammer. Jesus Christ. What a house full of serial killers. He saved my life because once a member of their team tried to throw the hammer to me and he's like, no, no, no, he doesn't go here. Oh, yeah.

No, Whitney Houston started singing and I dove across the room and slow motion. And I explained that he let us go here. Wow. Well, clearly it is D, just that D absolutely 100% D top. Fortunately, thank you. Yes. Tom, here's a totally non trueshrew whimsical pun for you. Okay, we go.

Uh, what was the name of the highest flying tossed animal? A, Patrick U-ing, U-ing, She- B, Chiquillo O'Vill, C, Kauai Leopard, or D. Bear Jordan. Oh, bear, bear Jordan. As a Chicagoan, it's bear Jordan. You gotta be bear Jordan. Sadly, it turns out it's actually Patrick U.

It's a next thing. I thought Shaquille O'Vill would have been my second. All right. You should have been sitting for me. Big mispronement. All right, well obviously that's gonna nice thing. I think he'll reveal what it would be my set. Damn it. Alright. He's too skinny for me. Big miss for me. Alright, well obviously that's going to make Cecil our winner, so he gets to decide who's the ass ass neck.

Okay. Definitely Noah. Definitely Noah. Lucky me. Alright. Well for Cecil Eli, he did Tom. I have no one thank you for hanging out with us today. We're going to be back next week, and by then I'll be an expert on something else.

I do know, and then be sure to check out variable numbers of us on cognitive dissonance, discating a theus, the sketchcraft, God awful movies, D&D, minus, and D-Roll dads. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation to patreon.com slash citation pod or leave a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes, be sure to check out citation pod dot com. Croscio, come on, Croscio! You stole the wizard game? Yeah, no, I actually stole a bunch, you want one?

Nah, man, I'm good. You sure? It hurts the mean lady. Yeah, fine, if it hurts the mean lady, I'll take one. Nice. Is it any good? Eh? the mean lady I'll take one of them.

Nice. Is it any good? Eh.