29 Early Sports Rules - mental_floss List Show (Ep.223)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

Did you know that in the early days of baseball there were no innings? Instead, teams played to a certain number of counts, or as we know them today, runs

They usually played until one team reached 21. And that's the first of many facts and one lie about original sports rules

I'm going to share with you today in this video presented by Geico. Baseball was different in a few other ways, too

Like in the 19th century, pitchers didn't intend to strike out batters. Instead, they were supposed to throw the ball in a way that made it easy to be hit

Plus, in those days, there had to be nine bad pitches for the batter to get a walk

Because you know what they say, baseball games just don't last long enough

As is the case today, batters were out if a fielder caught their fly ball

But they were also out if fielders caught the ball after one bounce

We're not going to bounce this one because it's signed by the entire roster of the 1991

Cincinnati Reds. Original basketball rules included a jump ball after every single basket

There were also 18 players on the court and no foul shots. Nor was there dribbling in basketball

Rather than being able to move the ball that way, when a player caught it, they would have

to throw it from the spot where it was caught. It was essentially the same game as Ultimate Frisbee

Anyway, Wilt Chamberlain, who played in the NBA from 1959 to 1973, is responsible for

a lot of basketball rule changes because he was, like, too good

Wilt is responsible for the offensive goaltending rule, for instance. Also he used to inbound the ball over the backboard, which is no longer allowed

But arguably more interesting, when he was playing in college, Chamberlain used to dunk

his free throws. According to Chamberlain I would step back to just inside the top of the circle take off from behind the line and dunk This is why there is now a rule that you can cross the free throw line until the ball goes through the basket or touches the rim

In the 1870s, field hockey was played with a cricket ball. Billiards originated outdoors

In fact, it evolved from the same outdoor games that croquet and golf emerged from

By the way, did you know that croquet is pronounced croquette in England? I mean it. Next time you're in England, call it croquette. See how it goes

In 1470, King Louis XI of France owned the first indoor billiard table

Well it looked a lot like croquet on a table with like one hole in the middle and the balls

were moved around with sticks that resembled croquet mallets rather than the pool cues

that we know today. Darts also has its roots in the outdoors. The original dartboard was the cross section of a tree

See, that's why we said it had its roots, because it's the cross section of a tree

By the way, a dartboard used to be called a butt. I know that's not technically a sports rule, but I just felt like I couldn't even know

American football was pretty dangerous in its early days. For instance, in 1905, around 20 people died while playing

The next year, the forward pass became legal and the game became somewhat safer

Although, you know, not that safe. Football helmets weren't required until 1939 for college football

They became required in the NFL in 1943. The first professional football player was William, aka Pudge, Heffelfinger, who perhaps

had the greatest name in the history of the world. In 1892, Heffelfinger received $500 to play for the Allegheny Athletic Association in

in one game. In today's terms, that's around $13.1 thousand dollars. Now, I know that's not technically a rule, but it's definitely a significant difference in pay

As for non-American football, that is, real football, it has a much older history

Like, in the Middle Ages, Europeans played something called mob football, which had very few rules

as many people who wanted to participate could And you could use whatever means possible including your hands to move a ball from one place to another And those two places could span like streets or fields or even villages It was kind of like Calvin Ball

Back in the day, soccer balls were made out of different materials, like animal bladders

Often, they would be covered in leather. The football that we use today emerged in 1941

Moving forward in time, in 2011, Sheffield Football Club auctioned off a rulebook from

1858. It contained rules like, the ball may be pushed or hit with the hand, but holding

the ball, except in the case of a fair kick, is altogether disallowed

But if I may briefly return to Animal Organ's early water polo games used a pig's stomach

as a ball. Wait, did somebody say pig's stomach? Time to put a quarter in the staff pork chop party fund

But to return to water polo, it looked a lot like water rugby in the 1800s, like players

would even wrestle underwater, which of course turned out to be rather dangerous. If these rules are making your favorite sports sound chaotic, imagine playing volleyball in

the 1890s when there were an unlimited number of players on each side and an unlimited number

of times the ball could be hit before it went over the net. In the Middle Ages, Germans bowled as a religious symbol. Like, during church, a pin was set

up to represent pagans and if a person could knock down a pin with a ball, it was considered

indicative of their godliness. Speaking of bowling, there's an unconfirmed rumor that King Henry VIII bowled using a cannonball

I came in like a ca... Shut up, I know how to sing. Tennis was originally played with a wooden or leather ball and people's hands

Eventually, a paddle was introduced, and then in the 1500s, players started using a cork

ball and a racket with sheep guts, where we now have strings

Man, a lot of 16th century leisure was dependent upon animal innards

Ping pong also started out with a cork ball and many of the first paddles were made out of cigar box leaves In the early days of boxing ancient Romans used leather strips in place of boxing gloves and boxers also often fought to the death The boxer Jack Broughton introduced rules to the sport in 1743 but fights were done

gloveless back then, and there were still an unlimited number of rounds

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that the rules of golf actually haven't

changed much over the years. The 1744 Articles and Laws of Playing at Golf contained 13 rules

Now, this one still applies, but it's a bit outdated. If a ball be stopped by any person, horse, dog, or anything else, the ball so stopped

must be played where it lies. Watch out for those horses and dogs, my friends, and play it where it lies

Thank you for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people, and with the support of our friends at Geico

Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week's question comes from the Entity of Darkness, who asks

Where did the rumor that Disney was cryogenically frozen come from? While the legend says that Disney was frozen and his corpse now resides beneath the Pirates

of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, in fact he was cremated and his ashes were interred

at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The first known human cryonic freezing didn't even happen until a month after Disney's death

Now there were two biographies published, one in 1986 and one in 1993, suggesting that

Disney was fascinated with cryonics, but both of those biographies have been widely discredited

It's thought that the rumor came from Disney Studio Animators. However, that was told to us by a Disney Studio publicist

So who knows what actually happened. I'm just kidding. He's definitely not frozen