The story behind America's favorite sportsballs
Вставка
- Опубліковано 24 лип 2024
- Why do footballs look like that? Why do baseballs? We look at the history of the most popular American sportsballs, including tennis, golf, soccer, volleyball and more!
SUBSCRIBE: ua-cam.com/users/jjmccullough?...
FOLLOW ME:
🇨🇦Support me on Patreon! / jjmccullough
🤖Join my Discord! / discord
🇺🇸Follow me on Instagram! / jjmccullough
🇨🇦Read my latest Washington Post columns: www.washingtonpost.com/people...
🇨🇦Visit my Canada Website thecanadaguide.com
Some music by:
Craig Henderson- / @craighendersonmusic
ComradeF- / comradef
HASHTAGS: #shorts #football #history
I realize that JJ didn't make this list, but I do find it extremely odd that balls like the volleyball or kickball were given stamps and not a bowling ball. American 10-pin (the most common form of the game played on Earth today) was organized in the USA at the same time as many of these sports (ABC formed 1895) and bowling balls as they are today were designed in the USA and all the big manufacturers are uniquely American companies (Storm, Roto Grip, Motiv, Columbia 300). Even in the popular culture, mostly everyone has gone bowling at some point and the look of a bowling ball is an extremely recognizable item to basically anyone. Some two million Americans bowl USBC-sanctioned leagues each year and there is a wide spectrum of play-type, from purely recreational to professional-level competition. Very surprised it was not one of the stamps.
I was thinking the same thing!
I suppose the same thing could've been said about billiard balls. Considering they're quite well known for being able to tell the future.
I’d say it has to do something with what kids experience at schools. Kickball, volleyball, and the others are much more associated with gym class and high school sports, leading to a more American feel
While true, I don't think of bowling as a "ball sport". Dunno why.
@@themandan4000 Billiards has always had a bit of controversy around it from the pearl-clutching “think of the children” types though. A game traditionally associated with bars, often with betting on the games, and, as you mentioned association with the “magic 8 ball” fortune-telling toy, which more conservative parents see like the ouija board and sleight of hand tricks as gateway drugs to the occult. Bowling’s omission is more surprising as the only real bad negative press is the lingering remnant of its old association with the uncouth lower classes.
looking forward to hearing JJ's calm and logical argument for putting mushrooms in apple pie
wait frank why are you here what
Two words:
🙏 Glutamates 👐
@@stupidvarietyhour Well, J.J. is in one of Frank's videos. If you haven't seen it and are interested....
ua-cam.com/video/4wTVjZFCc54/v-deo.html
Why would you want an apple pie to be savoury? It completely changes the flavour profile, which is fine, but decidedly not apple pie.
Cheese and apple pie
I honestly had no idea the iconic black and white soccer ball was such a recent invention, even post dating the orange basketball. That’s wild! I feel like my perception of the world has been turned upside down.
Fun fact, not only was WC Mexico ‘70 the birthplace of the iconic black and white soccer/football but it was also the first time a “crowd wave” was ever broadcast on international television. That’s why to this day it is still known as a “Mexican wave” in much of the world since it was the first time many were introduced to that type of stadium cheer. And it also apparently looked pretty cool on TV.
@@SmokeyChipOatley You're off by at least 14 years. The Wave was invented in the US sometime in the late 70s/early 80s, and made its international TV debut during the Olympic soccer final in 1984 in LA. However it didn't catch the world's attention until the 1986 World Cup, which was being held again that year in Mexico, and thus its name outside the US.
@@gravityissues5210 Lol you know I actually started to second guess myself soon after I replied and I actually went back and was halfway through writing a correction but then I thought “meh, I’m sure nobody will fact-check me”… thanks for keeping me honest! You are right though… the wave was actually “born” during Mexico ‘86 not ‘70 as I had assumed originally.
@@andrina118 i bet americans would care about soccer if they kept those heavy balls lol
@@urbanumbra6170 We do care about Soccer when the Women's world cup comes about, because we usually win those…
This is hard hitting reporting. It takes a lot of balls to create content like this.
I was just watching the video and he keep saying balls with the smirk on his face
it was a homerun for me
His Thumbnail is Priceless
Somebody had to... thanks for not letting this joke hang in the air
JJ: "The Balls don't tend to get a lot of love"
Me: "PREACH, BROTHER"
Fun story about the golf ball: When my family or friends go camping, we have 2 rules: no electronics (electric ≠ electronic) and bring something interesting to burn (maybe a 3rd of it being *camping* - so RVs and cabins are no different from hotels in that regard). My uncle once brought golf balls, the old and cheap style. He was the only one smart enough to find cover when he threw one in the campfire. Not knowing of the rubber band interior the rest of us watched to see what would happen... Then the outer shell melted away. Suddenly blazing hot rubber bands shot out in all directions. I had the honor of not only taking several hits, but also having the core hit my shoulder. After laughing off the surprise we barred Uncle Mike from throwing any more into the campfire. I still abide by these rules which make all campouts wonderfully memorable
Amazing!!
kids these days won't ever know the fun of throwing a spun golf ball into a fire. Nowadays all we get is solid rubber and longer drives.
Thx for making something i most certainly read
Sounds like your uncle wanted to punish at least one of you at that campfire. 😱
I remember as a kid I cut open a golf ball and I was absolutely AMAZED to find that it contained another ball made of rubber bands.
Thanks for sharing your story, thanks for the memories too🙂🐿
Another excellent addition to the American Cultural Canon. I think a cultural canon of holidays would be interesting, how they or their symbols came to be, why Valentine's Day gets much more cultural space than Presidents' Day despite not being a federal holiday. It seems a lot of holidays with more symbols, like Easter and Halloween, aren't federal. August 15 was a national holiday to commemorate Victory over Japan day but was discontinued, I wonder if any other holidays were or will be.
This is a great idea
@@andrina118 Easter, nor Good Friday is a federal holiday. School children get Spring Break off around that time, and the stock market is closed on Good Friday, though nothing for Easter Monday. As an American I've never heard that term.
Malaysian sports canon:
1. Badminton (of course)
2. Football
I couldn't think of any others... I thought of sepak takraw but it isn't that popular....
Malaysian holiday canon
1. Chinese New Year
2. Hari Raya Aidilfitri
3. Independence Day
4. Deepavali
5. Christmas
These are the big 5 holidays in Malaysia. All of them get their shopping mall decorations and conglomerate video advertisements. However, there aren't really people making video advertisements for Christmas and There aren't really shopping malls doing Independence Day decorations. There are other East Malaysian holidays that aren't given as much attention because the cultural scene in Malaysia is dominated by the peninsula.
Its all corporate greed and federal laziness... in fact that actually sums up most of our culture.
@@andrina118 Winter Break and Spring Break always coincidently fall around Christmas and Easter. But our school couldn't call it as such because apparently it would violate the separation of church and state or something stupid like that 🤷
You mentioned visibility considerations for several of the balls, and to add to that, it's important in some sports for a ball's spin to be instantly discernable. I grew up playing soccer and always heard (although I can't cite a source) that soccer balls always have some sort of pattern so that players can easily see how the ball is spinning. Monochromatic soccer balls are extremely rare. I imagine that the patterns on volleyballs and basketballs could help in a similar way.
Great point
I think the reason baseballs are white isn't entirely because we're resistant to changing the ball in the most iconic sport, but that the place where visibility matters isn't when the ball is in the air on a pop fly -- it's being able to pick up a ball headed directly at you at speeds up to 100mph. Missing a pop fly might be embarrassing -- missing a pitched ball can and has been deadly. Look up Roy Chapman as the reason baseballs get changed out so often during an MLB game. The red stitching is to pick up how the ball is rotating on the pitch and give you a clue what's coming.
To know the spin of a football is totally useless. Most of the time a ball spins so fast you cannot detect the spin with your eyes. If you can detect it, the spin is so slow it just doesn't matters. And on the other hand, what will you do when knowing the correct spin? Will you run around it and hit it from the other side? Nah.
The ball then had a white undercoat because it is, like the volley ball, easier to spot. Same goes with the black markings on the ball. The contrast is much better and so the ball is easier to spot, especially on TV.
The design change from Telstar to Tango was mostly because the ball just looked rounder. And this design held up for many years. in 2002 then, tv cameras were this good, the design did not really matter anymore. Nevertheless they redesigned it to a more high-contrast one, in this case the Teamgeist.
The iconic two-colour-icon-design still remains because it is easyer to depict, even for very small, i.e. symbols with very few pixels.
@David Montgomery They can't. Only when the spin is too slow. They guess. And you can guess it quite good by watching how the ball was kicked and of course how it's flying.
@@qugart. I've played in our local league and I can tell you that spotting ball spin is very important in football (soccer for Americans). An outfield player needs to see the spin so as to judge how to apply touch to bring it under control. A goalkeeper also can make out the spin on the ball and make judgement on whether to pluck out of the air, kick it or knock it away using his/her hands. Attempting to pluck out of the air a spinning ball especially one travelling at high speed can be very tricky and most goalkeepers try to knock it away or over the crossbar
Hearing JJ talk about balls for 18 minutes is great
What’s ironic about volleyball being invented as a softer, less aggressive form of basketball is it’s one of the most intense sports I’ve ever seen, sometimes even more so than contact sports lol
True I've wrestled and played football in high school and currently do judo, bjj, boxing and occasionally mma but the scariest sport I ever saw was volleyball.
Yes, though its the high school and college version that’s quite intense. I grew up in Nebraska where volleyball is a actually quite popular and the college team, the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, has won a few national titles and is a powerhouse in college volleyball.
Yep I’ve gotten a lot of bruises in my day from playing volleyball
You can literally use your entire body to "catch" the ball lmao, and who can forget the man, the myth, the legend Scott Sterling
@@mosesracal6758 You can’t catch the ball. That’s a lift
As a British person, I love JJ's description of rounders as an 'old, obscure sport' Rounders is still played loads here in the UK. Particularly in school. When I was a pupil it was the sport the girls played while the boys played cricket.
So true, though the exact same thing.
When I was a kid the girls would play tetherball and the boys would play handball. Funny how we divide like that.
@@ct-p6004 Must've been nice to be a girl at your school. Teatherball's awesome
Same in Ireland , we played rounders too
our PE teachers in secondary school were always cover teachers, so we would play rounders EVERY SINGLE LESSON. once in a blue moon we would also play tag rugby or dodgeball
Next in the American cultural canon series could be board games. Some games, like Chess, Ludo and Snakes & Ladders are surprisingly ancient, while others, like Monopoly and The Game of Life are more modern. This mixing of old and new, Old World and New World, I find intriguing.
Seconded
Chess isn't particularly American, but I get what you mean
Note that Ludo is more British than American. The American version of that game is called Parcheesi. Hence why we don’t call Clue “Cluedo” like the Brits do. (No one would get the reference).
@@LARAUJO_0 Yeah, but it did really take off during the cold war during the Bobby Fischer saga as a symbol of American superiority over the Soviet chess machine
Backgammon doesn’t get enough love
I would love to see deli meats! How did we settle on ham, turkey, and roast beef as the core options? How did bologna/baloney get added? What about pastrami? Love this series!
That’s a fun idea
I've always wondered how turkey became the default white meat healthy deli meat/ground beef substitute instead of chicken. Even though chicken is available as a deli meat, it's used many other places, but turkey is not.
@@juliaz12345 Americans eat Turkey sometimes, Mainly on thanksgiving, christmas or easter. However some people do eat it more than that. Btw i mean like a whole roasted or sometimes deep fried turkey.
Yeah.
Lots of people have the illusion that, since "a cow is a cow is a cow", the cuts of meat are the same world-wide, when in fact they are cultural.
As a Brazilian, for instance, it confused me so much when I first learned that some of the most expensive cuts we eat in my country are bundled together with 3 different cuts in America...
Compare and contrast NY-style pastrami with Montreal smoked meat?
this was super fascinating. I never would have guessed that three, arguably four or even more, of the most common sports balls we use today in America we're all designed by the same guy over 100 years ago.
A true business genius and an inspiration!
Thumbnail with JJ's beautiful face and "History of balls!". Perfect.
JJ never neglects the balls and we really appreciate that.
1:02 😅😏😂
In Europe the image for a soccer ball is the same as in America and I assume its because most soccer balls for casual use look like the iconic ball.
Yes! I was about to comment the same thing. Any child's first football (okay... soccer ball) would have the iconic black and white design. I would even say that any football that is any other design as that one would give the impression of being either very cheap (like rubber balls for the pool) or an extra expensive commemorative ball matching the design of a current major competition.
I liked the original intro where you were trying to be more personable haha! Glad to see this video back up tho JJ, keep making videos you're proud of and enjoy :)
Yeah, that was a fun one. A nice segway.😁
I was a little bit worried I'd gone mad for a second. I'm rewatching this video for a second time after watching it last night, and I could of swore J.J. started off the video by asking me (the viewer) how I was. When he didn't do this time around, I was concerned... xD
I put it on my bluetooth speaker when I got in the shower and spent a solid minute or two thinking I somehow clicked the wrong video by accident 🤣 I'm going to assume people complained it was a bait and switch and that's why it was changed. I thought it was fun!
Sporting traditions are indeed extremely recent. In America the Superbowl is treated like a national holiday despite it being only in existence since the 1960s
I think I'd agree with your observation that the specific design of a black and white "football" (by which I mean soccer ball) is how most people would imagine a soccer ball, at least here in the UK. I'm really not a sports person though, and I'm definitely not a football fan.
I also wanted to say that I'm constantly impressed by your capacity to conjure books for any feasible quotidian thing you can think of (see 9:47) for these recent cultural canon videos. Makes me tempted to start buying books again, despite not having room for anymore. It also makes me appreciate how I've allowed myself to get stuck in a bubble of art/literary criticism and philosophy with my book purchasing habits. I should diversify my library a little.
Hi, JJ, thank you for your awesome videos! I'm from Russia. Here the standard pop culture soccer ball image (depiction) is identical to the North American one. Actually, although I'm a big soccer fan, I didn't know that this iconic design was so short-lived. Btw my local soccer club Fakel Voronezh has finally made it to the Russian Premier (top) League after a 21-year absence which makes us incredibly happy! It's sad that this awesome event happened the same year as this atrocious war started. Much love, JJ, stay awesome!
Hi there, it’s good to see that there are Russian citizens who don’t have the same warmongering attitude as the Russian government!
Вперёд Воронеж!
"The balls don't tend to get a lot of love,". No truer words have been said!
jj always amazes me with how he always manages to make any topic interesting no matter what it is
As a massive football (soccer) fan from the UK, I feel that the reason the Telstar ball has not stayed in use is because football is such a global game and therefore far more globalised from a marketing point of view as well. Most leagues and competitions like to use a ball design of their own choice and Adidas and Nike, who manufacture the balls for the World Cup and many of the most watched domestic leagues in the world, continually change the design to sell more stuff!
I think the reason the Telstar design (or Bucky ball) gained the most traction in America due to 'soccer' having a North American renaissance in the 1970s due to the NASL which used a version of that design too.
I was thinking : Am I crazy? I watched this yesterday! So here my comment again: amazing video and hugs from Montreal.
Well thank goodness for a moment I thought I was caught in a time loop
“but the balls don’t tend to get a lot of love”
100% agree
Thank you for telling us all about your favorite balls, JJ. :)
JJ, what about a video of why some ‘ethnic’ cucine made it in America ( Chinese, Mexican, Italian..) and others didn’t. Or, you could make a follow up to your fauxtentic video and talk about American food outside the US in greater detail
As a German, I can approve this is the stereotypical design of a football/soccer ball.
The American football might appear anachronistic, but it's undergone subtle but significant changes in shape to facilitate the forward pass. All the others, while changing more in outward appearance kept their spherical shape.
I’m glad JJ got to speak about his love of balls
Goldfish bowls and how goldfish became the iconic fish pet could be interesting to have a video on. Although as an aquarist I hate fish bowls, it would be interesting to see the history of them. I do know Asian countries kept them in bowls, but I wonder how they ended up in the U.S.
"But when they're held for pleasure
They're the balls that I like best"
Any day JJ uploads is a good day!
Edit: As an Indian, the cricket ball would definitely be part of the national ball canon, as well as the table tennis ball. While technically not balls, the shuttlecocks used in badminton would probably be included.
I feel like hockey pucks should have gotten an honorable mention. I realize it is not a ball, but it is iconic of a sport that has culturally united north America
Well the part that had winter anyways lol
@@mosesracal6758 The Southern US has some great teams
Canada would of put a hockey puck
This is definitely true, but also I think most Americans, even Americans who are very into hockey, view it as more of a Canadian thing than an American thing, so I can see why they wouldn't include it in a list focused on the US.
Fun fact about Spalding; they made one other very iconic American ball, the Spalding Hi-bounce ball, better known as the Spaldeen (Penn made a cheaper version called the Pensie Pinkie). It was used in a variety of urban street games like stickball, punchball, and Chinese handball in American cities, and is quite nostalgic for people who grew up in NYC from the 30s to the 70s. It was discontinued from 1979-1999 so you may be more familiar with the Sky Bounce ball, which is the same concept. There's a great documentary called New York Street Games that goes over the history and significance of the games to generations of city kids.
JJ you beat me to it. Ever since I became a fan of your videos, I've been wanting to make videos of my own in the similar curious - edutuber - sociological imagination- style as yours, and one of the topics I had in the pipeline was the shape of sports balls. Fantastic content ! keep it up
A cultural canon of Christmas songs would be interesting.. If you stop and think about it, it's kind of wierd that there are a group of 10 or so songs that are played ad nauseam for a specific time of year, and are never played outside of it.
What's interesting to me is how some of them weren't even written to be Christmas songs at all, but became associated with it anyway because "winter == Christmas" in a country where all movies and TV shows are made in a state that doesn't have seasons.
I don't even want to hear anything that's not a classic song. Silent Night being my favorite. Though I suppose Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is somewhat recent? Relatively that is. It's something we associate with the holiday and family gatherings, so they evoke good memories.
The generic black and white look of a soccer ball is definitely the same in Europe. It is also used (at least in some european countries including Germany) as a pictogram on street signs telling you which direction a soccer stadium/ground is
Ah, I see my coworkers will be getting some interesting ball facts at work this week. They will say that guy knows his balls.
This is just a guess on my part but I wonder if the reason why that became the "standard" idea of what a soccer ball looks like is because that coincides with the first moderate success for soccer in America. The NASL was founded in 1968 and had some success in the 70s before dissipating and folding in 1984. So the 1970 and 1974 world cups would have been during that first wave of popularity for soccer on this Continent.
But the Telstar design is also what is usually depicted when rendering Unicode. What does this one look like on your screen? ⚽ On mine it's the Telstar design. So either Unicode is being implemented with a North American slant (it probably is to some degree), or that's how people imagine the ball looks in other countries too.
An award winning video about balls. What a great way to start my Sunday.
The whole Victorian ethos of sport was bound up in 'muscular Christianity' of the public schools which is a complex topic that relates to fears of industralisation and the ennerviating effect of modernity on the population which seems to be in full swing again. In the US probably the most famous avatar of this line of thinking was Theodore Roosevelt. In that era the elite schools and colleges of the US consciously tried to imitate British public schools and universities in the way these days universities across the world try to imitate American colleges. It was tied to a particular class of East coast psuedo-aristocratic who actually were increasingly interconnected by business and marriage to the actual British aristocracy and had their own mores and accents. (FDR's way of speaking was a representative of this.) This ethos of sport emphasised amateurism and fair play which is where the roots of a lot of the aesthetics of things like the Olympics and other international sports competitions comes from. The shift towards increasing professionalism was the great story of sport the world over in the early 20th century, before it the second half it became a multinational industry.
In any case the British public schools all had their own rules and games and it was only in the late 19th century that many of these were codified. These days in Britain it is considered an American affectation to call football soccer, but actually this was pubic schoolboy slang for the Association Football, just as rugger was (and is) slang in the same way, and reflects how the sports that got imported and adapted in America were for the most part the sports of the higher social classes through colleges. It's interesting how football/soccer never took on in any of Britain's former colonies (Australians/New Zealanders/Indians/white South Africans are as indifferent to it as Americans and Canadians) but other sports did, at least in adapted form. I think this reflects that in those countries the sports that entered popular culture passed through elite institutions before becoming generally popular, whereas in Europe and South America it was generally passed along by working class British sailors teaching local people whilst on shore-leave.
And yes, the Telstar is an archetypal ball everywhere. In Britain signs to football stadiums use it (or a geometrically inaccurate symbol thereof), and a lot of balls you buy from shops use the design. The old style balls made from leather have a kind of nostalgia value, in England often associated with the 1966 world cup held there that England won (but ironically the last world cup to use it) though they were also kind of nasty as heading at full pelt could be a pretty nasty experience, another reason their design was changed.
About the eras that you mention, I am interested you exclude the early 20th century 1900-1940. It was also quite important I'd say in different ways. It was the era where a lot of transport technology we use now was set up (cars and motorbikes), an era where electrification grids were set up and also where our governmental structures largely reached their modern form to deal with the wars of the era that had knock on effects in terms of what happened later.
Very informative. Thank you!
It seems to be a distinctly British thing to add "-er" on the end when turning a word into a slang term, kind of like how Australians add "-o". Adding "-ie" is pretty universal, and if Americans have their own distinct variation it's probably just lopping off syllables and not adding anything.
@@stevethepocket Look at any university in the Middle East, China etc. and a great many of them are trying to copy the aesthetics of American colleges.
We are indifferent to soccer in Australia as well.
And rightly so!
"The balls don't seem to get enough love."
Truer words have never been spoken.
You’re definitely a one-of-a-kind content creator, your videos never fail to interest me and your demeanor has a lot of charm & wit to it. The videos are always well-put together with your insight + editing and I love seeing the expanding shelf collection in the background - overall enjoyable content that has entertained me for a long time and I applaud your great work 👏
J.J's history of balls 🤤
🤨📸
🤨📸📸📸📸📸
🤨📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸
🤨📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸
🤨📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸📸
I love how you always sneak in the "award winning video" bit. Always makes me smile
Almost 19 minutes of pure ball content. Such wonderful balls with incredible backstory. I wish i could have all these balls in my hands, and play with these balls all day long. Wonderful balls.
I have already seen the video, but i am a simple man. I see balls, i tap.
Exactly same here
JJ, you knew exactly what you were doing with that title and thumbnail and I find it amazing
Where has this weeks video just disappeared? I was watching it, a se one iceberg video, and it’s gone
Same I don’t know where it went
We love a JJ stache
What was wrong with the older version? I liked it quite a lot
The real iceberg mistery is why did J.J. delete the previous iceberg video? What are you trying to hide JJ?
Probably needs to make a correction. J.J. is a journalist, accuracy matters. He's not Alex Jones.
I was really just waiting for a Manscaped ad with all this Ball talk.
Love this series and how you really put into perspective how similar the origins of a lot of these sports came about.
"So... That's all ive got to say about balls" Classic J.J.!
Played 4 years of hs volleyball, the standard I’d say is the plain white for indoor and blue and yellow for outdoor but normally it changes. Also very popular for teams to have volleyballs in their colors (my high school was green and white so all of our volleyball were too)
Great video as usual. I learned a lot. This is my favorite series of yours.
great video! I love all your stuff it's really interesting. keep it up
Oh no what happened to the old video?
In regards to the color of a baseball…the white coloration is actually more important and plays really well with the being released from the pitchers hand and having a the backdrop of stands. The white along with the red stitching actually allows hitters to pick up the ball better and even perceive the type of pitch that is thrown. There may be a slight difficulty once it is airborne, but considering there’s 162 games each played by 30 teams in the professional league and no one has any issues with tracking and catching it, there’s no sense in changing the coloration in any way. I would say that is more of the reason for the color than just the fact that it’s a traditional thing. Great video as always though JJ!!
Another great video. One note is that the rounders game you mentioned is still very much played today in the UK particularly in high school PE lessons and at picnics. One interesting idea I have thought of was the history of mothers and fathers day and why different countries seem to have all chosen different days.
This is such a good vid! Loved it! So much research, and it’s so well conveyed!
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the muddying of baseballs for mlb games. It’s kinda crazy that the same family has a been supplying the same mud exclusively to the mlb for getting their balls a little bit dirty for 3 generations. I’m not a baseball fan, but that part of the sport is so funny to me.
It's even funnier that MLB hasn't just bought the property the mud comes from, to protect against the current owners deciding it's not worth the trouble for a few thousand dollars a year (which is all they're getting).
What happened to your new video on the canandian iceberg mystery? lol I was watching it an like 3 mins in it said the video was private. what a shame
Same......
Just came to this video after I saw your IG post. I have to say, you are my favorite channel and content-creator on UA-cam. Your videos are consistently interesting, well-scripted, and cover an eclectic mix of fascinating topics in the realm of culture. Somebody should give you a TV show where you explore certain cultural phenomena in-depth.
Great video! Love your indepth investigations into the origins of things in our cultures around the world that we take for granted. Exactly the kind of content I love. Keep up the good work !!
As an Ohio State Alum it was a fun surprise to see us pop up twice in this video! Football makes sense seeing the basketball team was a treat! Great video!
Many years ago I saw Ohio state play when I was in California and since then it’s always the first college I think to use as an example for anything
"The balls don't get a lot of love."
I'll take "Things I didn't expect J.J. to say in 2022 for $100, Alex." (RIP)
Love videos on this sort of stuff man - you never really think about the path that the most beloved and ubiquitous sports in the world took to actually achieve that stardom. I can imagine how much you needed to condense this video down though, I bet every sport covered here has an surprisingly extensive history.
Love your channel 🤩❣️ you are perfect for this format...always cheery ,always interesting ,and well researched .🇺🇸
Good video! Minor nitpick but I wish you would've spent a few seconds on the Kickball game, one of many the ball is used for and the name that was used for it on the stamps!
The "Two eras" thing captured me, and I got to wondering about if there were any eras that were known for a specific thing. I used to be really into interbellum jazz, and a ton of the slang we use - cool, hip/hep, "Fella," boogie, all wet, icky, humorous variations on "Absolutely," like "Absitively" and others, dogs (meaning feet), Goofy, Jiitter/jittery (Which originally referred to people with Delerium Tremens) - and just a ton of others all were basically black American slang from the time, which somehow hung on in general society, but is nevertheless relatively new. (Hence "Professor Calloway's Dictionary of Jive" which has to explain words like "Icky" and "Cool" to white people).
I've asked a bunch of people why that happened, when most '60s slang is gone, and '90s slang is dying fast, and the best answer I've ever gotten is "Those years were the beginning of mass-media in the US, where people anywhere could hear music in their homes, and 'urban' music was heard in the rural areas for the first time."
It's way off topic, but the video - well, one line from the video - got me thinking about that.
I really liked this week’s video JJ, I’m not from America so your videos really help me learn, keep up the good work.
Had that "Leo Decaprio pointing" moment when I saw Coquitlam Centre and Craig at the creek. Love it, and great video!
Adiddas teslstar is indeed the most iconic soccer ball. In Brazil It is common to see cheap balls made of rubber and they usually have this pattern painted on It. Btw, Brazil won the 1970 world cup, it was our 3rd victory 🥳
I wonder what kind of weird ball we've not thought of Spaulding would spin up in this century if he were alive? He may not have been the inventor all the time, but he seemed to read the writing on the wall pretty clearly most of the time.
He would've created a specific version of the table tennis ball for beer pong, probably.
@@kevwwong One that's easier to disinfect?
Best stamp video I've seen in a while! 10/10 would stamp again
Another great video John-Jamie! I always wondered why american cartoons depicted fútbol balls like that, down here in latam they always have different designs.
Btw, I feel like the highschool one deserves a sequel in the future, maybe going through the origins of cliques or why school has the subjects it has
On tennis, I still think of it as trending towards being a higher class sport in America. I worked for years in waitstaff at a country club, and the men did golf while the ladies did tennis. They’d show up in these highly homogenized outfits for each sport, have lunch together, then split for their respective sports. So when I personally think tennis, I’ve always pictured an upper class woman in matching sports tank top and skort telling me that her main dish isn’t getting to her fast enough. Lol.
I know people who took up tennis because it was something to do while on a standby list to play golf because they were too broke to pay the scheduled tee time rate. (Some courses have a cheaper option, if you're willing to wait for crowds to subside.) Just the fact that both sports took place at the same venue made it possible. I suspect if it had been a bowling alley attached instead, then their second sport would be bowling.
What an incredibly fun video! I have a question, you mentioned that utility balls were used in the games "foursquare, dodgeball, and bombardment". I grew up in the Midwest in the 1960s, and we played "bombardment", which was what I later learned most people knew as "dodgeball". Do you know of another sport called "bombardment" that is different than dodgeball, or did you mean to say "or" instead of "and"?
@@ItsDannyio That's truly interesting. I'd like to know more.
I'd never heard of "bombardment" until that Simpsons episode that was referenced in this video. I just figured it was some weird alternative regional name for dodgeball. Marge Simpson calling sprinkles "jimmies" was also the first time I had ever heard that term.
@@KasumiKenshirou Yeah, I had assumed it was a regional term as well, but maybe Dannyio knows more than you or me.
I live in Maryland and I've always called it bombardment as well though it's identical to the "dodgeball" played in like the movie dodgeball.
We had a game called dodgeball but it was pretty different. Bombardment was like a war between two teams with a dividing line in the middle. Dodgeball was an individual game where everyone was in a circle surrounded by ball throwers. If you got hit you joined the ball throwers. Last person to get hit wins.
How was it like for you.
@@ingobernoble2678 I don't actually remember the rules to the "dodgeball" we played in school (in WA). I thought I remember it being one person throwing a ball at all the other people against a wall, and when one of them was hit they became the ball thrower and the other kid would take his place along the wall. But the way I remember it, I don't know how anyone would actually "win", so I must be remembering something wrong.
Fantastic as always!
Thanks for tying balls from the stamp series! As a philatelist, I love it when stamps are promoted!
I wished bowling balls were included, the history of bowling in America is very interesting
I actually never knew that the all-white volley ball wasn’t standard!
I distinctly remember the all-white being the general go-to in cartoons, like in SpongeBob and such. Though I suppose this is just another chapter in my “disappointed that cartoons aren’t real life” arc.
I imagine that started that way when cartoons were hand colored...
This one was truly nostalgic. Each ball conjured memories of my participation in everyone of these sports. From general recreation to competitive organized leagues. The most nostalgic being the utility ball. Yes that sound is still awesome! These memories centered around elementary school. I loved playing hand-ball and butts-up on a large wooden wall. Four-square used a larger ball (so as to slow down the gameplay since we were very close together in the four-square court. For hand-ball used a smaller one (it was easier to throw with one hand or hit with clasped two-hands for more power). The one you showed was really for dodge-ball and prison-ball because it is the ideal size for little kids to catch. The kickball we used was yellow and was like a soccer ball (thicker rubber outside) but with the tread of a utility-ball. Does anyone remember that old yellow kickball? Is it still used today? I wonder who made that one too....maybe an offshoot of the utility-ball manufacturers to get into the kickball market, lol.
Great video as always JJ, would love to see a video on places in the cultural canon ie places like time square, Golden Gate Bridge, etc
Why did you private your Canadian iceberg video?
Local man discusses balls for several minutes
This was really interesting! Another great JJ video
Once again I learned a lot from your videos. I wonder How you can come up with the subject for your videos? Definitely stuff that many of us take for granted but are very interesting to know about. Love it!
While I absolutely understand the intent behind doing so, I'm glad I was able to see the previous draft of this award-winning video.
Why did he take it down in the first place?
@@sebastian-zi9yq my presumption was a cleaner presentation in the finished product. Something with more broad appeal, I suppose.
I don't want to speak on something that JJ decided to edit out, but a personal flair in the introduction was cut, and the overall video is tighter and to the point. Both great submissions, an excuse to watch it a second time, and perhaps a glimpse into part of his creative or editing process 😁
"History of Balls." Well, you've got my attention. Please proceed, JJ, with the history of "balls."
Hey JJ ended up using my video idea! Hell yeah, I was waiting for this one.
Loved this video and learned alot! Thanks for your research. One idea for this series would be a video on American breakfast cereal boxes or cereal box characters.
I agree that the balls don't tend to get a lot of love
It's back! yes
Love the video! Wondering if you'd ever consider doing one of these types of videos about sandwiches or soda flavors?
Would have been great to see also the table tennis balls and balls from billiards and pool get some love. Amazing video as always ❤️