We have American football here in the good old U.S. of A. with Australians and other English-speaking countries playing a football-ish sport called rugby while most of the world engages in what they call football but what we call soccer. Until recently, I had never heard of a sport called Calcio Storico, Italian for "historic football."
This sport began in the 1500s not long after Columbus made his voyage to the new world. I watched part of a match on the internet between two teams in northern Italy. This is a sport that could possibly catch on in, say, Baltimore or Ferguson, but probably nowhere else.
This game is an hour long with 27 players on each side. The game mostly consists of the players trying to beat the snot out of each other by any means necessary. Bare knuckled players punch, kick and head butt each other with wild abandon in a sport that doesn't allow substitutes.
When the referee starts the contest, nearly all the players line up in the middle of a rectangular, sand-covered stadium and start duking it out. I assume the sand is for all the blood that will be spilled. Meanwhile, two to three players with a football-ish game ball kind of saunter back and forth behind the mayhem, watching while talking to each other. It is no surprise that there are 20 ambulances usually available for all games.
When enough opposing players get bludgeoned to the ground, the ball carrier may then make a run to the opponent's goal where he can throw it to make a score. As you can imagine, the ball carriers are attacked most viciously by everybody on the opposing side still ambulatory. In case the ball gets bogged down in a pile of bodies somewhere, the referee comes in grabs the ball then flings it high in the air.
During the Renaissance, King Henry II attended one of the matches but was not particularly impressed. He remarked that the sport was "too cruel to be a sport and too small to be a war."
Understandably, the sport declined in popularity over the passage of time, until the 1930s when Il Duce, Italian Benito Musssolini, insisted it be brought back into popularity. Mussolini had a thing for violence, hence his alliance with Hitler during World War II. The game survived both Mussolini and the war and is even televised on Italian cable.
Care to run in Pamplona?
Not to be outdone by Italian mindless violence, the Spanish have their sport to produce lots of casualties, that being the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
In seems that back in the 1400s, the Spanish sport of bullfighting was already immensely popular, and remains so to this day. The bullfighting stadiums were in the city with the bulls being stabled in the countryside until needed on bullfight day.
On the morning of the bullfight, six bulls were usually herded from the country into the city through the streets until reaching their destination. In Pamplona during the 1400s, it got to be a practice of the young men of the city to jump in front of the bulls while they were being driven to the stadium, I suppose in an effort to prove their manhood and impress the girls. I think what it really proved was that there was nothing much going on in Pamplona for young men to do.
Present day bull running in Pamplona has the race starting with thousands of runners, most of whom where white outfits with a red sash around their middle. Most carry a rolled up copy of the day's newspaper for protection. That, I don't get. Maybe if you can get the bull interested in the comics then maybe he won't gore you. The race starts when a rocket gets fired into the air which means the bulls have been released.
Between 200 and 300 people get injured every year in the event, only 15 actually dying in the past 100 years. One of them was an American, Matt Tassio, who was gored to death in 1995.
The Pamplona event has spawned similar events involving other animals with middle easterners having the running of goats, and the Irish having the running of the pigs. We here in America, not to miss out on all the fun, have our own kind of bull running annually in New Orleans.
Instead of actual bulls, the Big Easy has roller derby women dress up as bulls to chase runners through the city. Last year 14,000 runners scampered about being pursued by bad tempered women with plastic horns. Before the race there is a big party involving alcoholic beverages which leads to a lot of drunken people careening around New Orleans streets. It's probably hard to tell if there is a race going on or if it's just a normal day in the city, having spent some time in the city myself.
Baseball news
The St. Louis Cardinals continue to be the class of major league baseball this season with the best record by far of any team in the majors. Injuries keep happening but the Cards just keep on dealing. The same thing is happening with the Kansas City Royals.
With the health problems besetting the elderly gentleman that lives with us, I have been home a lot more than I usually am in the summer which has allowed me to catch a lot of Cardinal games on TV.
It's been kind of an odd season with the Baltimore Orioles playing a game back in April with no fans allowed to watch. That was due to the riots and violence in the city. During that game, Orioles players often waved to the empty seats, and some even stood by the railing to sign pretend autographs.
The Dodger's Zach Greinke had a streak of 45 innings pitched without allowing a run. It was broken by, of all teams, the New York Mets. The Mets have the worst batting average in the majors with their clean-up hitter hitting under .200. The team average is .236. Usually, if a player has a .236 average he will either get benched or sent back to the minors.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports on 07/29/2015