I think it was around the second week of quarantine here in New York that I discovered marble racing. I was on Twitter, naturally, and I saw a video start up from someone or some account, I don’t remember, but I do remember thinking, “Wow, it mustbe bad if I can’t stop watching this.” It was a marble racing video from something called Marbula 1, and yes, it is just as good as it sounds. Marble racing got some pickup on Twitter as a result of some popular accounts reposting their videos, even earning air time on ESPN The Ocho, and with the quarantine putting a stop to most sports’ seasons, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise. We have something of a history of reviving sport and competition even when the future seems bleak.
Take the Great Depression, for example. I think when Americans think of “bleak,” the Great Depression is one of their first thoughts. I mean obviously, look at the name! But the Great Depression also happens to be a part of the time frame that baseball would call its heyday. Starting off the 20’s and nearly flickering out during the Depression, baseball’s prime featured the likes of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, as well as the first All-Star baseball game. In fact, one of baseball’s best years during that time was in 1930, just after the stock market infamously crashed, when game attendance hit over 10 million.
Still, as we know today during our own crisis, not even sports are immune to the curveballs life will throw. Eventually, ticket sales plummeted and players themselves had to take a pay cut. If you could afford a ticket, it was likely only a bleacher seat worth 50 cents. In 1932, only two teams, the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs, made a profit.
“Babe Ruth’s Called Shot” by Ed Sherman
Yet, in that same year, Babe Ruth did something baseball fans hadn’t seen before: he called his own homerun. Well, maybe. The exact meaning of the gesture is still debated, thanks to some misleading journalism (but that’s another story), but the repercussion, the sheer effect that that gesture and subsequent homerun had on baseball, is not. Also a first: the All-Star Game, which was held a year later in 1933.
Baseball did a lot to try to revamp the game and spurn attendance and interest. Radio shows offered live coverage of the games, games featured grocery giveaways and free attendance for women, and this is also when we start to see the first night games. Ballparks even repurposed themselves for events like beauty pageants and chicken races. It was a trying time, but people still loved to see competition—any competition, it seems. But nothing was perhaps as successful as the idea proposed by the sports editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune: the All-Star Game, or the “Game of the Century”.
The game featured a mashup of the American and National Leagues’ best players pitted against each other where the public could vote for which players they want to see on the teams via newspaper ballots. It was originally meant to be held in conjunction with the World Fair, also held in Chicago that same year, 1933. Tickets sold out rapidly, and for good reason, as these were the stars of baseball all in one game, making history by just participating in the game itself but also during. The All-Star Game did so well, it became a repeated event every summer, barring 1945 for wartime travel restrictions.
Americans were struggling during what could arguably be noted as the hardest years of their lives and yet, they still found some kind of escape in hearing about Babe Ruth’s latest home run, or, for 50 cents, seeing it themselves. Now, with many of the athletic world’s greatest hits canceled for the rest of their seasons or postponed, we may look back on those historic moments with nostalgia or longing for just something exciting to watch. But never fear, we’ve had to deal with that in the past before, too.
Old Number Seven, winner of the first official Soup Box Derby in 1934.
Enter the soapbox races of the Depression Era. Not everyone had a radio, or 50 cents to spare. So what they did do with what they had to spare was create something called a soapbox car. This too started in 1933, but not to revamp a sputtering industry—instead, a couple of kids from Dayton, Ohio took some crates that used to hold soap, attached some roller-skate wheels, and raced their way down a hill. In that small act of childhood boredom and ingenuity, the Soapbox Derby was born. Once the newspapers got a hold of it, it was only a matter of time (about a year, actually) for GM Chevrolet to sponsor the program. Essentially, these soapbox races went viral. And that’s kind of inspirational, because look at it now. After moving the center of operations to Akron, Ohio (more hills), these little powerless cars really gained speed, and suddenly, everyone was making their own soapbox car (and they still are today, by the way—the championships are held in June every year). And why not? It was a great way to get involved with the community, spend your time without spending what little money you had, and it was a great experiment in education and creativity. If I had the extra materials, I would probably make my own right now and go rolling down some hills with my friends, too (6 feet apart, of course).
Yes, these days are bleak, and boring, and all sorts of adjectives I have a feeling many of the people listening to baseball or participating in soapbox derbies may have already used to describe their dark days as well. But we also have something else in common: a love for competition, a need for speed, and a lot of fellow people who are just as lost as we are. So go ahead, get invested in marble racing like I did (seriously, do it: @marbulaone on Twitter), and just think, you’re participating in one of the world’s greatest pastimes.
Further Reading
Apples for a Nickel, and Plenty of Empty Seats
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/sports/baseball/07depression.html
Baseball’s First All-Star Game
https://www.history.com/news/baseballs-first-all-star-game
Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era https://books.google.com/books/about/Breaking_the_Slump.html?id=WIxmBou5qyAC
The Soap Box Derby: From American Tradition to Global Sensation
https://www.themanual.com/culture/soap-box-derby/
From Fishing Wire to Fiberglass
https://www.akronlife.com/arts-and-entertainment/from-fishing-wire-to-fiberglass/
July 5, 2022 at 2:36 AM
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