Ball

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from Ballgame)
For other uses, see Ball (disambiguation).

A ball is a round or spherical object that is used most often in sports and games. In most games using balls, the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked, or thrown by players. Balls are often used in ball dropping functions such as in the famous Times Square New Year's Eve ceremony.

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History

Balls are made from many different materials, but leather, rubber, and synthetics are the most common in modern times. However, balls made from indigenous materials, particularly from animal parts, were once the norm. For instance, among the Yahgan (or Yámana) of South America a ball called a kalaka was made from an albatross web (foot) that was blown up and stuffed with goose feathers and sewn. The Yahgan also used an inflated seal stomach as a ball. Among the Navajo of North America, balls were made from buckskin bags filled with seeds and held together by a drawstring.

Some form of ball game is portrayed on early Egyptian monuments. Each spring two large groups of people, each representing one of their gods, acted out a contest that used a round, wooden ball and crooked sticks. The object was to drive the ball through the opposing goal. The side that knocked the ball past the defenders won. Even among the Romans, who disliked participatory sports, ball play was extremely popular. The Roman baths set aside apartments for ball play, and many gentlemen had ball courts in their private villas. The ancient Roman ball was usually made of leather strips sewn together and filled with various materials. The smallest, the harpastum, was a hard ball stuffed with feathers. The largest, the follis, contained an air-filled bladder, similar to a modern football (soccer ball) or basketball. In many early games the ball was simply thrown back and forth among individuals in a group, but there were also genuine team games and competitions among the ancient Greeks. Ball games were especially popular at Sparta. One early Greek game known as episkyros involved two teams of equal numbers. Between them a white line was laid out, and, at some distance behind each team, another line was marked. The play consisted in throwing the ball back and forth until one team in the exchange was finally forced back over its rear line. Ball playing also is of great antiquity in western Europe. The ball also served other functions in Greece as well. The ballot is named after the Italian ballotta ("little ball"), from the ancient Greek custom of casting votes with small balls. Often, white and black balls were used--white to vote yes and black to vote no. The word "blackball," meaning to exclude someone from membership by casting a negative vote, goes back to this practice. When polo was created in Persia around 550bc the ball was used for the 'game of the kings', in Polo the ball is hit with malets carried by men on teamed horses, this is yet again another early use for the ball.

An early form of lacrosse was well established among the American Indians in pre-Columbian times. Ball games such as lacrosse were mainly of a religious nature, dedicated to the gods and played to ensure the well-being of the community. Among Native American children, kickball was encouraged by the adults. A Mayan clay figurine from the 8th century AD depicting a ball player wearing protective gloves and hip padding was found in Jaina, Mexico. Ball games were important to the ancient Mayans and other Middle American peoples, and almost all Mayan cities had ball courts—rectangular areas enclosed by tiers of seats for spectators. At heights of 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 metres), a stone ring through which the ball was to be thrown was set into the wall, in a game known as pok-a-tok or tlachtli. The ball was made of rubber and was approximately 6 inches (15.2 cm) in diameter. It is said that Columbus found the Indians of Central America playing with solid, black balls made of vegetable gum and took some of these rubber balls back to Europe. Long ball, a traditional ball game still played among the Onondaga peoples of the Iroquois in upstate New York, is a form of tag employing a bat and a ball. Among the Igbo of Nigeria, boys play okpasa, a game in which three boys, with one in back and two in front, must avoid being touched by the ball. In villages in Vietnam, a traditional ball and chopstick game is played by children. Japanese children played with balls of tightly wadded tissue paper wrapped with string.

As skills required in games using the ball alone, and more particularly in games involving the use of various implements for striking it, were developed and refined, balls became specialized and were made in a multiplicity of types. The weight and circumference of balls have changed over the years as the other equipment and rules of the individual sports have changed in order to increase the interest of spectators. An example of this is the change made in the American football with the popularization of the forward pass, from the egg-shaped rugby ball to a more elongated shape that was easier to throw with accuracy. This variation changed the sport from a running game to one in which the forward pass played an exciting role.

The first known use of the word ball in English in the sense of a globular body that is played with was in 1205 in Laȝamon's Brut, or Chronicle of Britain in the phrase, "Summe heo driuen balles wide ȝeond Þa feldes." The word came from the Middle English bal (inflected as ball-e, -es in turn from Old Norse böllr (pronounced [bɔllr]; compare Old Swedish baller, and Swedish båll) from Old Teutonic ballu-z, (whence probably Middle High German bal, ball-es, Middle Dutch bal), a cognate with Old High German ballo, pallo, Middle High German balle from Old Teutonic ballon (weak masculine), and Old High German ballâ, pallâ, Middle High German balle, Old Teutonic ballôn (weak feminine). No Old English representative of any of these is known. (The answering forms in Old English would have been beallu, -a, -e -- compare bealluc, ballock.) If ball- was native in Teutonic, it may have been a cognate with the Latin foll-is in sense of a "thing blown up or inflated." In the later Middle English spelling balle the word coincided graphically with the French balle "ball" and "bale", which has hence been erroneously assumed to be its source.

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Popular ball games

These games can be grouped by the general objective of the game, sometimes indicating a common origin either of a game itself or of its basic idea:

  • Bat-and-ball games, such as cricket and baseball.
  • Trillion-goal games, such as basketball and most forms of football and hockey.
  • Volleying games, such as volleyball and tennis.
  • "Target" games, such as bowling, and golf.
  • and so on

Popular ball games around the world include:

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Unrounded balls

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Phrases

  • The purpose of playing with a ball or ball substitute such as the shuttlecock is that the focus of the game is the ball and not the opposing players. The phrase play the ball not the man comes to mind.
  • behind the eight ball, at a disadvantage or in a baffling situation
  • ball and chain, a. something that severely restricts one's activity usually oppressively (sometimes used to refer to marriage). b. slang: wife
  • ball hawk, one skillful in taking the ball away from opponents (as in basketball or football)
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See also

cs:Míč de:Ball el:Μπάλα es:Pelota eo:Pilko fa:توپ he:כדור משחק it:Palla nl:Bal (voorwerp) ja:ボール pl:Piłka pt:Bola ru:Мяч simple:Ball fi:Pallo (peliväline) sv:Boll

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