The Ball by John Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

which means “to seize” or “to snatch.” The vague descriptions available suggest an elaborate, rough-and-tumble form of monkey-in-the-middle with a player in the center of a circle attempting to snatch a ball passed back and forth between two lines of players.
    One of the biggest fans of harpastum was Galen, a former physician to gladiators who rose through the ranks to be court doctor to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Regarded as “first among physicians, unique among philosophers,” Galen went on to pioneer the science of anatomy, dissecting pigs and apes and Barbary macaques to study their bodily systems. He was forced to draw inferences about human anatomy from these studies since, despite finding entertainment in watching people torn limb from limb, the Romans prohibited the “barbarous” practice of human autopsy. In AD 180, Galen turned his scientific eye to ball games in a treatise entitled On Exercise with the Small Ball , where he made the first scientific case for the benefits of ball play to exercise and physical education. Waxing philosophical as well as scientific, Galen in that early age spoke more eloquently to the boundless joys and practical merits of ball play than any writer over the next millennium and a half.
    â€œI believe that the best of all exercises is the one which not only exercises the body, but also refreshes the spirit,” he wrote. “The men who invented hunting were wise and well acquainted with the nature of man, for they mixed its exertions with pleasure, delight, and rivalry.” Galen celebrated the potential of ball games to unite people across class and status lines, noting that “even the poorest man can play ball, for it requires no nets nor weapons nor horses nor hunting dogs, but only a ball. . . . And what could be more convenient than a game in which everyone, no matter his status or career, can participate.”
    Beyond its social leveling qualities, Galen also declared ball play to be the “best all-around exercise” because it worked out all the body parts at once.
    When the players line up on opposite sides and exert themselves to keep the one in the middle from getting the ball, then it is a violent exercise with many neck-holds mixed with wrestling holds. Thus the head and neck are exercised by the neck-holds, and the sides and chest and stomach are exercised by the hugs and shoves and tugs and the other wrestling holds.
    Despite the popularity of harpastum , Galen apparently felt the need to defend ball games against a critique that would be heard again and again in the centuries to follow: rather than preparing and training men for battle as archery or wrestling did, it did the opposite—distracting and diverting them in so-called frivolous play. Galen, presaging Vince Lombardi, argued that in fact “ball playing trains for the two most important maneuvers which a state entrusts to its generals: to attack at the proper time and to defend the booty already amassed. There is no other exercise so suited to the training in the guarding of gains, the retrieval of losses, and the foresight of the plan of the enemy.”
    Galen was way ahead of his time. He was among the first accomplished surgeons to advance scientifically substantiated theories of human anatomy, the circulation system, and even neuroscience. The systems and methods he developed held sway for centuries, dominating medical science until the 17th century. As both scientific observer and, it appears, fanatical player and lover of harpastum , he saw early what we now know so well: that ball games are uniquely capable of exercising and challenging both body and mind, sharpening the senses, and inspiring the human spirit.

Chapter Two
    From Skirmish to Scrum
    Bruised muscles and broken bones
    Discordant strife and futile blows
    Lamed in old age, then crippled withal
    These are the beauties of football.
    Anonymous, 16th century, translated from Old