Found an old painting, inspired by LC Lyendecker and whipped this out:
Football at The O.K. Corral
George Parson's of Tombstone wrote this in his diary on January 12, 1882: “Grand foot ball racket this afternoon on Fremont Street near Fourth. All hands joined in, all kinds of conditions and we had much joy. Result about $10 worth of glass broken in Epitaph and Nugget and some sore toes.” So, Wyatt Earp may have played football at the O.K. Corral rear entrance? Amazing.
Daily Whip Out: "Wyatt Earp Breaks A Window at The O.K. Corral"
"I hate the Cowboys."
—Every Arizona Cardinals fan who ever lived
Footballs in the 1880's didn't look like modern footballs; they were either spherical (round), or almost so, maybe slightly flattened due to not being fully inlated. (Deflate gate in the 19th Century?) In the early 20th Century they took on the eliptical, blimp like shape familiar to us.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it, or not, I actually knew that, and tried to cheat towards an spherical shape, but didn't want to get it so far away that people would say, "that's not a football!"
ReplyDelete"Foot-Ball"--Tombstone Weekly Epitaph (This page is from the Daily of Friday, Jan. 13)--published Jan 16, 1882--Column 5 (PDF)
ReplyDeletehttp://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84021939/1882-01-16/ed-1/seq-5.pdf
Excerpt only:
"Among the amusements indulged in by the boys of the public school is the game of foot-ball and the leather-covered sphere they use for that recreation is of goodly bulk and rotund proportions."