To have a Black American win so many medals, plus an American game added to the Olympiad, created major hoopla in the States. It was terrific propaganda material to use against the Nazis!

Mmmmmmmm, I have an idea, but not sure. For some reason Tom Selleck (such a hunk) is coming to mind :). I need some hints.

Annette

Lorna - exactly!! they had planned this so well, to show their superiority, and it blew up in their faces!!!

Annette - Tom Selleck? A pleasant thought, but I don't think so. The inventor, sitting in the stands, was a Canadian by birth (born just up the road from here, actually), educated at Montreal's McGill University, though he was already an American citizen at this point - no dual citizenship in those days. The gold medal game was a show down between Canada and the US!!

Does this help?? I think Lorna has it already!!

Nancy.

We were just talking about those games last week-something in the news, I guess.

Hmmm...was it a North American game? American Indian?? I have a thought...both I and my son played it when we were young.

I will check back later-ooh, if I am right, there could be a clue in that statement. Let me know if I am going in the totally wrong direction.

Cynthia

I was thinking of the team sport T.S. participated in, guess I was clutching at straws once again. I'll be lurking looking for clues :).

Annette

Actually, Annette - I did a little more research. I'm not sure where you connection for TS came from, but there is one, back there!

Nancy.

I think that early players of the game made use of something related to peaches.
TM

Nancy, I was thinking it might be this sport but was also mulling over another, right or wrong I'm kind of partial to TS so I'll stick with this one, the one he played while filming Magnum P.I :).

Annette

Good one, TM!!

I've read your post several times, and the only NA Indian connection I can come up with is our national sport - no really, it's not hockey!!! lol. And that's not where we are going!!

Nancy.

Oh, oh,oh...smacking my head...what did he play??

DH has a guess because he knows what was invented in Massachusetts just before the turn of the century. Dang, he never ceases to amaze me...so much info bouncing around in there...TM quit reading now...why can he remember stuff like that and not something I mentioned two days earlier...me thinks he hears "blah, blah, blah." ;)

I guess you have to have to be a globe trotter for this one. GEEZ.............

Cyn, IMO all DH's are the same unless you happen to be thinking out loud of what might work or you MIGHT do and as far as your DH is concerned you've written it in stone. The sport I'm thinking of is quite often played on something that rhymes with peaches, but that's not to say I'm right :).

Annette

Ah yes, Frogview, but no travelling allowed!! lol. Annette, I am not reading you today....rhymes with peaches?? Bleeches??!! lol, not sure.

Nancy.

Aha, me thinks I am wrong, over thinking again, if Frogview is right, it's the other sport TS played and it's not volleyball :(. Nancy beaches rhymes with peaches, volleyball is quite often played on beaches, see where I was going, even if it was in the wrong direction LOL.

Annette

lol, it was an interesting trip, Annette. TS got a scholarship for real in this sport!!

Nancy.

DS thinks basketball. I had started with lacrosse and then thought volleyball along with Annette, I think, both of which are obviously wrong! :)

Our dinner guests stayed later than I expected, so glad you haven't ended this yet! Happy Monday (?) all.

Cynthia

There is a hint in my comment. :-)

In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian-born physical education professor and instructor at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School (YMCA) (today, Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, was trying to keep his gym class active on a rainy day. He sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, and balls had to be retrieved manually after each "basket" or point scored; this proved inefficient, however, so the bottom of the basket was removed, allowing the balls to be poked out with a long dowel each time.

A soccer ball was used to shoot baskets. The first balls made specifically for basketball were brown, and it was only in the late 1950s that Tony Hinkle, searching for a ball that would be more visible to players and spectators alike, introduced the orange ball that is now in common use. Dribbling was not part of the original game except for the "bounce pass" to teammates. Passing the ball was the primary means of ball movement. Dribbling was eventually introduced but limited by the asymmetric shape of early balls. Dribbling only became a major part of the game around the 1950s, as manufacturing improved the ball shape.

The peach baskets were used until 1906 when they were finally replaced by metal hoops with backboards. A further change was soon made, so the ball merely passed through. Whenever a person got the ball in the basket, his team would gain a point. Whichever team got the most points won the game. The baskets were originally nailed to the mezzanine balcony of the playing court, but this proved impractical when spectators on the balcony began to interfere with shots. The backboard was introduced to prevent this interference; it had the additional effect of allowing rebound shots. Naismith's handwritten diaries, discovered by his granddaughter in early 2006, indicate that he was nervous about the new game he had invented, which incorporated rules from a children's game called "Duck on a Rock", as many had failed before it. Naismith called the new game "Basket Ball". The first official game was played in a YMCA gymnasium on January 20, 1892 with nine players. The game ended at 1-0; the shot was made from 25 feet (7.6 m), on a court just half the size of a present-day Streetball or National Basketball Association (NBA) court. By 1897-1898 teams of five became standard.

This trivia question is a long way from where I started this week - not even close to the original question, but: There was an article in the Saturday Observer section of the Ottawa citizen newspaper. Now, I don't usually read 3 1/2 pages of newsprint, but this story was interesting. It was not so much about the game, or its debut, as the young men playing it! You see, most of the Canadian team that was fielded was from Windsor, Ontario, and several of the players were Jewish. As were many of the athletes from the other countries competing. The US almost boycotted the games, after the American Jewish Congress argued that attending and participating would give tacit support to the racist policies of the Nazis. To appease the US, a German half-Jewish female fencer was declared an 'honorary' Aryan for the length of the games. It worked - the US didn't boycott the games. This athlete won a silver medal, losing the gold to another half-Jewish fencer!!
Now, as to Jesse Owens: He and another black athlete, Ralph Metcalfe, were added to the 4x100 metre relay, over 2 Jewish American runners(Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller). These machinations were made by the head coach of the American track team, Lawson Robertson, at the urgings of US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage, apparently a Nazi sympathizer. In 1998, the USOC all but admitted this fact and awarded Glickman it first Douglas MacArthur award for life-time achievement. As Stoller was already dead, he received no such vindication.

Sorry, I can go on and on, but stories like this get me all excited - I do love a good history story!!

for Lorna, Jim, TM and Cyn's DH!!

Thanks for playing: I will try to control myself in the future!!!!

Nancy. - oh, yeah - the US won, 19-8.

Here is a link that might be useful: Breakthrough in Berlin

Annette - I just realized you deserve 4 stars, too!!!

Nancy.

LOL Nancy, no stars for me this time, I really don't deserve them.

Annette

Good question and answer, Nancy. Verrrrrry interesting. Thanks for the keeping us busy and entertained.

TM