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That Time America Fell In Love With Competitive Walking · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History as a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. I have a question to start off today's show.
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Speaker 1: It's it's for my my esteemed co host er, super producer.
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Speaker 1: Oh my name is Ben uh No. Do you did
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Speaker 1: you ever play sports as a kid. Yeah, I was
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Speaker 1: not very good at it. I was in the outfield
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Speaker 1: in baseball, and I think I played soccer for like
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Speaker 1: a couple of months or something that I was. I
0:58
Speaker 1: was a very sluggish child, and you've grown into a
1:01
Speaker 1: very sluggish adult. Don't be too hard on yourself. What
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Speaker 1: about our super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, did you play
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Speaker 1: any sports as a as a we Tyke, I was
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Speaker 1: a perpetual left fielder in baseball. Uh, if anything was
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Speaker 1: hit in my direction, I was not catching it. And
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Speaker 1: if I was at that the only way I was
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Speaker 1: getting on base was if I got walked. But once
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Speaker 1: I was on base, I was pretty good at running.
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Speaker 1: But you know, other than that, no, just getting on
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Speaker 1: the base. Yeah, that's the thing that was. That was
1:30
Speaker 1: the rub. And maybe that's why in this country it's
1:33
Speaker 1: so popular to refer to stages of intimacy as different
1:37
Speaker 1: bases on a fields. Right, Yeah, I am still confused.
1:41
Speaker 1: I think everybody has a different opinion about what third
1:45
Speaker 1: bases or as we said when I was growing up,
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Speaker 1: what shortstop. You know, it's always interested in that. Well,
1:51
Speaker 1: but then you know, some people refer to the act
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Speaker 1: of lovemaking as scoring, right, right, dad. Conception sometimes can
2:00
Speaker 1: be getting one past the goalie or sliding into home right.
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Speaker 1: And we always we always think of baseball as the
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Speaker 1: national pastime in the US, and that's why there are
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Speaker 1: so many metaphors or or figures of speech and idioms
2:20
Speaker 1: that refer to the sport of baseball. But this wasn't
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Speaker 1: always the case. In today's episode, we're looking at another
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Speaker 1: strange craze it did. It was not as long lived
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Speaker 1: as baseball, but in its heyday it was as popular.
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Speaker 1: And that, my friends, is the sport known as competitive walking.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like the laziest sport, the dullest as well.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like a timid eric sketch. You know, it's
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Speaker 1: like professional paint watching. Yeah, yeah, right there with you.
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Speaker 1: It's strange because it was also a spectator sport. According
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Speaker 1: to Matthew Algaeo in his book Pedestrianism. In the decades
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Speaker 1: after the Civil War, from the eighteen seventies to the
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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, millions of people were moving into the city
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Speaker 1: and there wasn't much for them to do in their
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Speaker 1: free time, so pedestrianism competitive walking matches became really popular.
3:23
Speaker 1: They were they were a social event for people to
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Speaker 1: go to. They were a sport for people to watch.
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Speaker 1: And when we first found out about this, it reminded
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Speaker 1: me of uh, trying to do that not quite run,
3:37
Speaker 1: not quite walk that a lot of kids do in
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Speaker 1: elementary school, Like you're in a library and you're chasing someone,
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Speaker 1: or you're running down the hall and a teacher shows up,
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Speaker 1: so you still kind of you're skittering, but you're you're
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Speaker 1: trying not to move your body as though you're running.
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Speaker 1: That's what a lot of this stuff looked like. Alice
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Speaker 1: Oskara reported uh in an article called the hot nineteenth
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Speaker 1: century sport that launched modern sports betting. Pedestrianism actually got
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Speaker 1: its start in the English aristocracy. As we know, servants,
4:10
Speaker 1: at least a particular flavor of servant were known as footmen,
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Speaker 1: and that was largely because their job was to carry
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Speaker 1: things on foot and you know, as the super rich
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Speaker 1: or sometimes want to do, they turned it into a
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Speaker 1: cruel game wherein they pitted footmen against each other first
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Speaker 1: for their own amusements, and it became a hot betting situation.
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Speaker 1: And at that time, a lot of the emphasis for
4:37
Speaker 1: for this sport was going to be on the endurance
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Speaker 1: of the participants. And it was always, as you said,
4:45
Speaker 1: I'm glad you raised this point, it was always sort
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Speaker 1: of this rich person's game. They would consider themselves sportsmen,
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Speaker 1: but they were really just sending their servants in as
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Speaker 1: their proxies, embedding on them. When we go to the US,
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Speaker 1: what we see is, uh, three things had changed post
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Speaker 1: Civil War. Uh the nation was industrializing people on more
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Speaker 1: spare time than they did a grarian economies. They also
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Speaker 1: had a little more disposable income infrastructure and infrastructure exactly.
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Speaker 1: And the country overall had recovered from or fallen from
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Speaker 1: this stern work ethic, this antebellum work ethic. And now
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Speaker 1: people said, you know, it's okay to unwind. I want
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Speaker 1: to have a little fun. I got a spare couple
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Speaker 1: of sawbucks or whatever, so let's uh, let's let's go
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Speaker 1: watch the competitive walk and it had some advantages over
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Speaker 1: other sports. First, it needed no special equipment. The people
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Speaker 1: were the equipment. And second, it didn't really cost much
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Speaker 1: to set it up. You didn't have to make a
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Speaker 1: purpose built field or anything like that. And wouldn't you
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Speaker 1: know it, by the eighteen seventies, the nation was a
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Speaker 1: wash in what the Chicago Tribune called walking fever, and
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Speaker 1: even even newspapers that covered it were a little bit
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Speaker 1: confused by it. Right, this reminds me of like a Mr.
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Speaker 1: Show sketch or something. It's like coupon the movie. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's like America's got walk in fever. You know, it's
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Speaker 1: like the dullest sounding type of fever that America could
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Speaker 1: ever possibly catch. And the reason I say they were
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Speaker 1: confused is because papers of the note would would say
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Speaker 1: stuff like, well, let's take the Chicago Tribune example, which
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Speaker 1: we found via mental flaws. The Chicago Tribune said walking
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Speaker 1: is at best not an absorbably entrancing sport. But according
6:46
Speaker 1: to mental flaws, the Tribune was neglecting a very specific fact.
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Speaker 1: People have more free time, which meant that a large
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Speaker 1: segment of the population was bored. People were desperate for entertainment,
6:57
Speaker 1: not everybody had easily accessible droves of knowledge the way
7:03
Speaker 1: that we have with cell phones. Right, and even like
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Speaker 1: catching a play or like a concert or something outside
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Speaker 1: of you know, a home situation would have been available,
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Speaker 1: but too expensive to to do like on the regular.
7:16
Speaker 1: You know, it would be a special occasion for sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So a ticket to a theatrical show, to a play
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Speaker 1: in Chicago at the time would cost you one dollar,
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Speaker 1: and that was about twice the price of a ticket
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Speaker 1: to a week long world class walking match. They really
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Speaker 1: were bored, weren't they. These people were walking in circles,
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Speaker 1: by the way, in this particular match. The Mental Flaws
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Speaker 1: article that just mentioned, also written by Matthew Algio, the
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Speaker 1: author of Pedestrianism, has the headline the insane six day,
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Speaker 1: five hundred mile race that riveted America. That's right, six days,
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Speaker 1: five miles. They were walking in a circle. It reminds
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Speaker 1: me of questions people have asked me about racing before,
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Speaker 1: when when they say, you know, why do people watch
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Speaker 1: things like NASCAR? Right, at least with NASCAR, they're going
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Speaker 1: quite fast. It's a little more there's puts a lot
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Speaker 1: of potential for fiery crashes there that the stakes are
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Speaker 1: a lot higher. Yeah, I think that's part of why
8:21
Speaker 1: people watch it. I do appreciate al Geo's characterization. He
8:25
Speaker 1: is he's giving this much more credit than I think
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Speaker 1: it deserves. Uh and and really tries to really sex
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Speaker 1: up this whole walking idea. And he's describing the countdown
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Speaker 1: that would have led to the beginning of this race one, two,
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Speaker 1: on three they were off with hips swiveling and arms pumping.
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Speaker 1: The Great Walking Match for the Championship of the World
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Speaker 1: had begun hips swiveling and arms pumping. So this implies
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Speaker 1: that their power walking then, right, and power walking or
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Speaker 1: race walking as it's called officially, is in Olympic sport today. Uh.
8:59
Speaker 1: And it's more them worth watching a couple of clips
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Speaker 1: on YouTube if if you'd like a chuckle. Now, I'm
9:04
Speaker 1: not saying these people are serious athletes. I'm saying that
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Speaker 1: when you're outside of the world of their world, that
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Speaker 1: type of walking looks odd. So we know that in
9:14
Speaker 1: this endurance match, the six hundred miles and six days. Uh,
9:18
Speaker 1: we know, thanks to al Geo's research a little bit
9:21
Speaker 1: about the day to day of the race, the racers
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Speaker 1: were on the track continuously. They'd have these cots set
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Speaker 1: up inside the track and they could nap maybe three
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Speaker 1: hours a day, but other than that, for about twenty
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Speaker 1: one hours a day, they were power walking around this
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Speaker 1: track and the rules were simple. They would just map
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Speaker 1: out a dirt track on the floor of an arena.
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Speaker 1: A lot of these matches took place at the first
9:44
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden in New York, and the lap was
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Speaker 1: about a seventh or an eighth of a mile. You
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Speaker 1: could only walk. The only reason, by the way, that
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Speaker 1: this was six days was because at the time, public
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Speaker 1: amusements were banned on Sunday. Otherwise it probably would have
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Speaker 1: went longer seven days at least. So they started right
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Speaker 1: after midnight twelve oh one Sunday night Monday morning, and
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Speaker 1: that's when they had that countdown that you were talking about. No,
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Speaker 1: and then they just kept walking until midnight the next Saturday. There, wait,
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Speaker 1: what about pea breaks? They took pea breaks, and you know,
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Speaker 1: like I just said, they had the cots where they
10:23
Speaker 1: slept for three hours a day. But but but what
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Speaker 1: what they have like porta porta potties, rudimentary like the
10:29
Speaker 1: outhouses they had to Yeah, they weren't horses, they didn't
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Speaker 1: just go while they were walking. You didn't think they
10:34
Speaker 1: maybe wore special you know, absorbent pants or something. I
10:38
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't believe, so, I don't believe. So, Uh,
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Speaker 1: there is there there is one thing. Uh. The pedestrians
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Speaker 1: and those were the participants in these uh did drink
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Speaker 1: a lot, not necessarily a lot of water. They drink
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Speaker 1: a lot of champagne during the race. Was considered a stimulants.
11:00
Speaker 1: Their trainers told them to drink champagne because they were
11:03
Speaker 1: under the impression for some reason that this would give
11:05
Speaker 1: them an advantage. The problem was that a lot of
11:08
Speaker 1: these dudes would just slug it by the bottle. So
11:11
Speaker 1: that's not a stimulant. That's the opposite now, and it
11:14
Speaker 1: wouldn't It gets you kind of dehydrated if you're just
11:16
Speaker 1: drinking lots of alcohol and sweating and not drinking water,
11:20
Speaker 1: right right, I guess depends on how fast you're walking
11:23
Speaker 1: and what time of year would this have been? November? Right,
11:27
Speaker 1: so Chili, Yeah, Yeah, it's getting there, especially if we're
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Speaker 1: talking northeast, right and New York and November. It's not
11:34
Speaker 1: exactly sweltering. Also, I want to say that this was
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Speaker 1: a big social event. People weren't just in silence holding
11:48
Speaker 1: their you know, their betting tokens. There were brass bands
11:52
Speaker 1: were playing songs. There are people selling snacks that were
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Speaker 1: popular at the time, like roasted chestnuts and pickled eggs.
11:58
Speaker 1: I think the ladder is gross. That's just me. You
12:01
Speaker 1: had a roast a chestnut? I have Yeah, yeah, I've
12:03
Speaker 1: made roasted chestnue. I've never had one, but they always
12:06
Speaker 1: make them in New York around the holidays on the
12:09
Speaker 1: little you know, the street carts, and they really smell good.
12:13
Speaker 1: They're they're great. I would say, also, you should be
12:16
Speaker 1: able to get some year round at h Mart at
12:18
Speaker 1: least chestnuts roast and he's put them in like on
12:21
Speaker 1: a sheet pan and like put them in the oven
12:23
Speaker 1: with I'll send you this thing, please do. Yeah. So
12:27
Speaker 1: this was also a scene and be seen kind of gathering.
12:31
Speaker 1: But there were a lot of big hats. Future President
12:35
Speaker 1: Chester Arthur, not Chestnut Arthur, but Chester Arthur was at
12:40
Speaker 1: this one. James Blaine, a senator from Maine, was a
12:44
Speaker 1: big fan of pedestrianism. James Blaine, a senator from main Yes,
12:48
Speaker 1: and leaning into the sketch comedy aspect of this. So
12:51
Speaker 1: sometimes people in the crowd would be there to see
12:54
Speaker 1: the famous spectators as much as they were to actually
12:57
Speaker 1: be at the power wall. So it's kind of like golf, Yeah,
13:03
Speaker 1: very much so, and a lot of standing around, you think,
13:05
Speaker 1: because they were they were going in a fixed track situation. Ye,
13:08
Speaker 1: so they would be in stands. I would imagine like bandstands,
13:11
Speaker 1: or you would kind of see how long was a lap?
13:14
Speaker 1: Did it say? It's a seventh or n eighth of
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Speaker 1: a mile? Okay, so it wouldn't take a whole heck
13:18
Speaker 1: of a long time for them to get back around. Note,
13:20
Speaker 1: so you'd be but it would take you a long
13:22
Speaker 1: time to track the progress of your your person. They
13:26
Speaker 1: had people assigned right to watch each I guess. So
13:29
Speaker 1: I just wonder, like with the whole sleeping cot situation,
13:32
Speaker 1: how would they keep track, Like it would be like
13:35
Speaker 1: you know, like in terms of like who is ahead. Yeah,
13:38
Speaker 1: they would keep a they would keep a clock, and
13:39
Speaker 1: they would add your total times. But also because this
13:43
Speaker 1: started as a sport that was centered on gambling, there
13:47
Speaker 1: were multiple ways for uh for the gamblers, the true
13:52
Speaker 1: players here to win. You could gamble on who was
13:56
Speaker 1: going to be the first person to drop out, or
13:58
Speaker 1: who would be the first person to achieve a given
14:00
Speaker 1: number of miles? Got it? Got it? So you could
14:04
Speaker 1: go any number of directions with this. There were so
14:08
Speaker 1: many ways you could gamble. Also, and this comes to
14:11
Speaker 1: us from the NPR statements. Also the pedestrians themselves, we're
14:18
Speaker 1: not necessarily wealthy people, so it was pretty easy to
14:22
Speaker 1: rig the odds. Yeah, you could pay someone to drop
14:26
Speaker 1: out first take a dive where yeah no. And also
14:30
Speaker 1: that kind of goes hand in hand back to the
14:32
Speaker 1: roots of the sport, with the aristocrats being the ones,
14:36
Speaker 1: you know, watching for theirn amusement and potentially you know, prospering,
14:40
Speaker 1: and then the lower classes being the one that actually
14:42
Speaker 1: had to do the work. And yeah, that's okay, that's
14:46
Speaker 1: a great segue to talking about the people were actually
14:49
Speaker 1: doing the work. Because like any other sport, this sport
14:54
Speaker 1: had its Lebron's, you know, had its uh Larry Birds.
14:59
Speaker 1: It's uh, what are some andre Agassi Hale I'm just
15:04
Speaker 1: naming was a soccer guy. Yeah, I'm just naming different
15:06
Speaker 1: sp is tennis. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite tennis star name
15:12
Speaker 1: it was from when I was a kid growing up
15:13
Speaker 1: a journey was Boris Becker. That's not bad. I've never
15:17
Speaker 1: heard of it. Yeah, he was big and like when
15:19
Speaker 1: I was a child, and he was he was an
15:23
Speaker 1: adult tennis player, right, he was an adultnis like your
15:26
Speaker 1: shady passed as a child tennis player. I was a
15:28
Speaker 1: child tennis prodigy. Actually, well you were a prodigy. I
15:31
Speaker 1: gave it up, though. I just gave it up for
15:33
Speaker 1: for for outfield being an outfield turd. Yeah, which your
15:38
Speaker 1: conversion of almost religious proportions, so comparitive walking is no different.
15:43
Speaker 1: They have these icons at the time. Did you tell
15:47
Speaker 1: us a little bit about the guy was like the
15:50
Speaker 1: the the protagonist, the main character of competitive walking. You
15:54
Speaker 1: mean Edward Paston Weston, the very same the household name. Yeah,
16:00
Speaker 1: Edward Payson Weston was. He was absurdly famous because again
16:04
Speaker 1: we have to remember that nation had walk in fever
16:08
Speaker 1: and you know, uh, it was hot um. As ridiculous
16:12
Speaker 1: as it sounds that he was, he was, he was.
16:15
Speaker 1: He was bringing the heat um in the nineteenth century.
16:19
Speaker 1: He was originally a bookseller, a door to door salesman
16:24
Speaker 1: of books. He lived in Providence, Rhode Island, and then Um.
16:28
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty he and a friend made a gentlemanly
16:35
Speaker 1: wager on the outcome of the election, and he actually
16:40
Speaker 1: bet against Abraham Lincoln and lost, uh, in spectacular form.
16:46
Speaker 1: And his punishment was that he had to walk from Boston, Massachusetts,
16:52
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. In ten days. Wow, that is
16:56
Speaker 1: a crazy bet. He really thought Lincoln was gonna look
17:00
Speaker 1: it was obviously yeah, um, and he had to go
17:03
Speaker 1: see the inauguration in person um. And it became kind
17:07
Speaker 1: of almost like a I don't know how the media
17:09
Speaker 1: caught wind of it, or if he he made a
17:11
Speaker 1: big deal about it, but whatever the circumstances where it
17:14
Speaker 1: became kind of a media blitz. It went, as we
17:17
Speaker 1: would say today, viral, because this was walking in the
17:20
Speaker 1: Northeast in the middle of winter, the roads were not
17:23
Speaker 1: that great, and all along the way people who had
17:26
Speaker 1: heard about the story would come watch him. You know,
17:29
Speaker 1: many of them, no doubt, expect him to fail or falter.
17:33
Speaker 1: But he made it in time. And then after the
17:37
Speaker 1: Civil War he was still famous and he said, you
17:40
Speaker 1: know what, it's worked so well, I'm just gonna keep
17:43
Speaker 1: doing it. Right. But instead of being the dead of winter, uh,
17:47
Speaker 1: walking in the horrible conditions, you know, um alone, he
17:51
Speaker 1: did in front of crowds indoors uh you know where
17:55
Speaker 1: he would go to like roller skating rinks or different
17:57
Speaker 1: places like that, community centers, and would walk like a
18:01
Speaker 1: hundred miles or something like that, like in a day,
18:04
Speaker 1: and people would again I can't get over how bored
18:07
Speaker 1: people must have been to find this, you know guy,
18:10
Speaker 1: I really look at his gate, look at his form,
18:13
Speaker 1: like like I really gotta gotta walk to him. Um. Yeah.
18:16
Speaker 1: They would watch him again in circles, walk around in
18:18
Speaker 1: circles like all day, and they'd pay, you know, a
18:21
Speaker 1: dime or something to to see this happen. I guess
18:25
Speaker 1: it was also like you know, it was it brought
18:28
Speaker 1: people out, so people, you know, that was part of
18:30
Speaker 1: the entertainment too. I don't imagine everyone was just eyes
18:34
Speaker 1: on him, you know for a day. Yeah, it was
18:37
Speaker 1: more like let's do something different, let's get some culture. Also,
18:41
Speaker 1: he became a national symbol in some ways of classism.
18:47
Speaker 1: He he was like a figure skater, and that he
18:50
Speaker 1: would dress in very garish, flashy outfits, and he was
18:55
Speaker 1: I guess for another sports analogy, he was like the
18:57
Speaker 1: Yankees or the Patriots, because people knew that he would
19:02
Speaker 1: often win these things, and as as you said, sometimes
19:05
Speaker 1: he would just pay. He would just hold exhibitions and
19:08
Speaker 1: people would see him not necessarily competing against someone, they
19:12
Speaker 1: would just pay to watch him walk in a circle.
19:14
Speaker 1: I mean, that's good work if you can get it.
19:16
Speaker 1: And we for Pete's Sacred podcasters. So he also made
19:21
Speaker 1: his name when he walked. At one point he walked
19:24
Speaker 1: twelve hundred miles from Maine to Chicago Portland, Maine and
19:28
Speaker 1: under a month, and he won ten thousand dollars in
19:31
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven dollars in the process. So people thought
19:34
Speaker 1: he resembled old money, old America. And we know how
19:39
Speaker 1: these kind of competitive sports work. So of course he
19:43
Speaker 1: had a rival and nemesis who represented the working class,
19:47
Speaker 1: you know, the blue collar and immigrants. He was an
19:51
Speaker 1: Irish immigrant from County Cork, Ireland who had come to
19:56
Speaker 1: the States about ten years prior to the the walking
20:00
Speaker 1: craze being a thing, and he had no money, no job,
20:05
Speaker 1: and just was a scrappy kind of personality and found
20:09
Speaker 1: his way into this kind of upstart um pastime, right,
20:14
Speaker 1: and he was no slouch of his own. He had uh,
20:17
Speaker 1: he walked a hundred in sixteen miles and under twenty
20:19
Speaker 1: four hours. He was very much seen as the upstart,
20:23
Speaker 1: the working man's hero. Uh. The public was going gaga
20:28
Speaker 1: for the hype about these two having a match. He
20:32
Speaker 1: also represented hope for Chicago's Irish community because his last
20:39
Speaker 1: name was O'Leary, and you know, in the eighteen hundreds,
20:42
Speaker 1: of course, Catherine O'Leary no relation, had been blamed for
20:47
Speaker 1: being responsible the Great Fire of eighteen seventy one. You know,
20:50
Speaker 1: she's the one Mrs O'Leary's cow who allegedly knocked over
20:55
Speaker 1: a lantern. So she was a scapegoat, and this kind
20:58
Speaker 1: of discriminated Asian against her bled out into the rest
21:03
Speaker 1: of the city's Irish immigrant population. So Dan O'Leary was
21:08
Speaker 1: seen as like the Irish hope and was proving that
21:12
Speaker 1: Irish people in Chicago weren't all bad. This is why
21:16
Speaker 1: Algo calls them Weston and O'Leary the Muhammad Ali and
21:20
Speaker 1: Joe Fraser of their generation. Weston's flashy, he's moneyed. He
21:25
Speaker 1: wears capes when he walks, which I think has some hotzpah.
21:29
Speaker 1: He is more, I would say, the businessman of the two,
21:32
Speaker 1: because he understands if you entertain people. Uh, you can
21:36
Speaker 1: make as much money off the entertainment as you can
21:38
Speaker 1: off the athleticism, whereas Dan O'Leary is much more on
21:43
Speaker 1: the athletic side. Right right, You got what you get.
21:46
Speaker 1: He's in it to walk. Yeah, it's about the walking.
21:49
Speaker 1: Gand you know, did you mention that, Uh dude also
21:52
Speaker 1: carried a cane and Weston like, yeah, likely. I just
21:57
Speaker 1: imagine him wearing a monocle, you know, and top hat
22:00
Speaker 1: and a cane and a cape and really really thought
22:03
Speaker 1: pretty highly of himself. It would seem yep, there's the
22:06
Speaker 1: cock of the walk, as they say, there we go,
22:10
Speaker 1: or the cane of the lane. Yeah, he said he
22:13
Speaker 1: definitely tried to stay in his lane. Uh, you know,
22:16
Speaker 1: cape of the scrape, this cape of the pave, and
22:21
Speaker 1: they're not all gonna work. No, So this this becomes
22:24
Speaker 1: in many ways an analog for cultural tensions that are brewing.
22:29
Speaker 1: Don't feel too bad for a Leary because over the
22:33
Speaker 1: course of his career as a pedestrian, he made the
22:36
Speaker 1: equivalent of a million dollars or so just walking again.
22:42
Speaker 1: Can un emphasize this enough in circles. Now at this point,
22:46
Speaker 1: you maybe saying Casey nol Ben. It sounds like a
22:50
Speaker 1: heck of a time. But why why can't I pay
22:54
Speaker 1: to watch people walk in circles nowadays? Why is the
22:57
Speaker 1: only thing left to me, you know, stump ling around
23:00
Speaker 1: at Chelsea Market and watching people who patently do not
23:04
Speaker 1: know how to walk? While we have an answer for you,
23:08
Speaker 1: America's craze. The walking craze face some stiff competition in
23:14
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, primarily because of something that emerged called
23:19
Speaker 1: the safety bicycle. Unlike earlier models of the bicycle, like
23:24
Speaker 1: the Penny Farthing and so on, the safety bicycle had
23:27
Speaker 1: patently unsafe which aparently unsafe. The safety bicycle had two
23:31
Speaker 1: similar size wheels. Crazy. Who to thunk it? I feel
23:36
Speaker 1: like that's the one you should have thought. Who came
23:38
Speaker 1: up with the big wheel in front of the tiny
23:40
Speaker 1: wheel and back? It makes absolutely no sense. You're riding
23:42
Speaker 1: up so high. I guess innovation happens in you know,
23:45
Speaker 1: spurts or whatever, but like it just seemed like it
23:48
Speaker 1: would have been a no brainer to have two wheels
23:50
Speaker 1: the same size. Knowing how a car works, you know,
23:54
Speaker 1: like it's like half a car, right, and the Penny
23:59
Speaker 1: Farthings and trying to think of a more articulate way
24:03
Speaker 1: to say this. They sucked. They were they were just terrible.
24:07
Speaker 1: They had vacuum. But the safety bicycle was nimble, it
24:11
Speaker 1: was faster, they were more interesting to watch when they
24:15
Speaker 1: were in a race. It was cooler to see people
24:18
Speaker 1: on a bicycle racing or bicycles racing than it was
24:21
Speaker 1: to see people just sort of walking around, even if
24:24
Speaker 1: they did have capes. Also, this is the thing, if
24:29
Speaker 1: somebody messes up in a bicycle race, it's a way
24:33
Speaker 1: better crash right back to the NASCAR thing. Faster, more
24:36
Speaker 1: potential for havoc, you know, more potential for schaden freud,
24:41
Speaker 1: all the stuff that that makes a good spectators board.
24:49
Speaker 1: Did we mention that a lot of these big walking
24:50
Speaker 1: matches took place of the original Madison Square garden. That's
24:53
Speaker 1: the first one. Yeah, that's how big this this craze was.
24:57
Speaker 1: But all good things are incredibly weird, and dolphings must
25:01
Speaker 1: come to an end. And you know, the bicycle racing,
25:04
Speaker 1: combined with a few other factors, really put a nail
25:07
Speaker 1: on the coffin of of America's pastime, the walking craze,
25:13
Speaker 1: and and and one of them was what we talked
25:14
Speaker 1: about the top of the show. Baseball. Yeah, the National
25:18
Speaker 1: League have been founded in eighteen seventy six. It became
25:21
Speaker 1: a profitable business when the team owners reorganized. People who
25:26
Speaker 1: once had watched walking matches now wanted to watch baseball.
25:30
Speaker 1: And this meant by rounds the middle of the eighteen nineties,
25:35
Speaker 1: pedestrianism was on its way down. It was being beset
25:39
Speaker 1: with charges of race fixing, of corruption that have been
25:44
Speaker 1: there since the beginning, and doping, right, performance enhancing drugs.
25:49
Speaker 1: No way, not from a place where where participants guzzled champagne,
25:53
Speaker 1: right exactly. And I'm guessing you know you just needed
25:56
Speaker 1: something that would give you a little more pep, a
25:58
Speaker 1: little more zip in your staff up. Uh. And that
26:01
Speaker 1: would have been like chewing uh, coca leaves. Yeah, that's
26:05
Speaker 1: how Western went down. That's his armstrong moment exactly. Um,
26:08
Speaker 1: they certainly wouldn't have had anything like the modern doping
26:11
Speaker 1: techniques that we see today with the steroids and the
26:14
Speaker 1: like or you know, human growth hormones or whatever. They
26:16
Speaker 1: just have the good old chewing a coca leave. And
26:18
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, chewing a cocoa leave would be
26:21
Speaker 1: a stimulant buzz equivalent to doing cocaine. I could I mean,
26:26
Speaker 1: I could see like I could see that because people
26:28
Speaker 1: did consider it unsportsmanlike. Well, Western was caught chewing cocoa leaves.
26:32
Speaker 1: I think at the time it wasn't illegal. I guess
26:37
Speaker 1: it's illegal to chew those today. I guess it's like
26:39
Speaker 1: doing cocaine. It would be a tantamount to possession of
26:42
Speaker 1: a controlled substance. Okay, I see. Uh And Weston when
26:46
Speaker 1: he was caught said his doctor told him to do it,
26:49
Speaker 1: but people said, you know this is this is a
26:54
Speaker 1: bad sign. Have you guys heard of baseball? Let's go
26:57
Speaker 1: watch that. The six day races are a little more
27:01
Speaker 1: like freak shows than they are like feats of athletic prowess.
27:05
Speaker 1: So this all culminated, uh in the the extinction the
27:10
Speaker 1: downfall of competitive walking and pedestrianism in the eight nineties.
27:15
Speaker 1: But make no mistake, folks, pedestrianism created a legacy that
27:21
Speaker 1: remains today. One of the biggest legacies it's left us
27:26
Speaker 1: with is the idea of corporate sponsorship. Talk about that, right,
27:33
Speaker 1: so uh So. Dan O'Leary, the Workingman's Hero, was a
27:37
Speaker 1: spokesman for a brand of Salt. A guy named John
27:41
Speaker 1: Hughes was sponsored by the National Police Gazette that was
27:45
Speaker 1: a newspaper at the time, and he raced with a
27:48
Speaker 1: shirt that had the papers logo on it because you know,
27:50
Speaker 1: his body is the race car and this sort of
27:52
Speaker 1: this sort of deal. My little league baseball team was
27:55
Speaker 1: sponsored by a local plumbing company. Cool. Do you remember
27:58
Speaker 1: their name? Nope? Remember they were those plumbing Let's see,
28:02
Speaker 1: in my we had some we had some different in
28:05
Speaker 1: some different corporate sponsors. I think a lot of Little
28:08
Speaker 1: League places are like that. I was in a teamo
28:11
Speaker 1: sponsored by the Church of Starry Wisdom. I thought you
28:14
Speaker 1: were going to say the Church of Satan. That would
28:15
Speaker 1: have been cool. Oh, the Church or Starry Wisdom is
28:18
Speaker 1: as a whole different. Well, it's not that different. It's
28:21
Speaker 1: a good reference. This is a cult. I've never heard
28:23
Speaker 1: of this. It sounds cool. Google and check it out later,
28:28
Speaker 1: but don't don't reveal that there. We want to want
28:30
Speaker 1: to keep that that reference for for folks who already
28:34
Speaker 1: caught it. So these guys also were immortalized on some
28:39
Speaker 1: of the first precursors to baseball cards, cigarette trading cards.
28:44
Speaker 1: Back in the eighteen hundreds, you buy a pack of
28:47
Speaker 1: cigarettes and you might get a trading card with one
28:50
Speaker 1: of your favorite athletes, and one of your favorite athletes
28:52
Speaker 1: might have been someone like Dan oh Leary. So one
28:57
Speaker 1: thing we do have to say to the pedestrians. You know,
29:01
Speaker 1: it's easy for us to crack on them a little
29:03
Speaker 1: bit and say walking, how hard is that? But if
29:06
Speaker 1: you're familiar with uh, the Richard Bachman story, The Running Man,
29:11
Speaker 1: and the fantastic film adaptation thereofs starting Arnold Schwarzenegger, then
29:17
Speaker 1: you know that walking for a long period can be uh,
29:21
Speaker 1: can be some real exercise. And those pedestrians put modern
29:25
Speaker 1: running backs to shame. During a football game that might last,
29:30
Speaker 1: you know, three plus hours, players only really run about
29:33
Speaker 1: one point to five miles, much less than the pedestrians
29:37
Speaker 1: with the eighteen hundreds. Also, Running Man, huh do you
29:42
Speaker 1: guys remember that film? Yeah? I still don't understand why
29:45
Speaker 1: I have one guy saying opera did he did he remember?
29:48
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like one of the one of
29:50
Speaker 1: the plans they're like they're like they're like gladiators almost yeaheah, yeah, yeah,
29:54
Speaker 1: I just wanted to take a second to uh to
29:57
Speaker 1: plug the career of Arnold Schwartzeneager believe is the protagonist
30:01
Speaker 1: and the film adaptation of The Running Man. Right absolutely, Um,
30:05
Speaker 1: let's see, I'm trying to get a list of the
30:07
Speaker 1: different gladiators, and the gosh one of him is Jesse
30:10
Speaker 1: the body Ventura. Remember that. Yeah, yeah, unless I'm mistaken.
30:14
Speaker 1: Hang on, We've got buzz Saw, who kills the runners
30:18
Speaker 1: with his chainsaw and even cuts hard metal. Okay, that's
30:21
Speaker 1: that's helpful. This is from a Wicki fandom. Wicki. We've
30:24
Speaker 1: got Dynamo. He's glad. He just played by Arolyn van Litt,
30:29
Speaker 1: who uses electricity. I believe that's the that's the opera guy.
30:32
Speaker 1: He does look very operatic. He's got like a like
30:35
Speaker 1: a right of the Valkyrie. He's kind of outfit on
30:38
Speaker 1: and Jesse ventures Captain Freedom. He Isn't it cool? I
30:41
Speaker 1: wasn't making that out. That We've got Fireball, whose power
30:44
Speaker 1: surprise surprises. He should just fireballs. And then we've got
30:47
Speaker 1: my favorite, who really just looks like an embarrassing hockey player.
30:52
Speaker 1: He's like goalie. He's got all this padding on. His
30:54
Speaker 1: name is sub zero uh, and he's he's got a
30:57
Speaker 1: sharp stick and a hockey puck that has explosives. I
31:02
Speaker 1: think it was Dynamo who had a little kind of
31:04
Speaker 1: go kart thing, got it, And and right, you are
31:07
Speaker 1: a Captain Freedom baby. Um, he is a he's described
31:11
Speaker 1: here as a pensioned gladiator. He is the best. I
31:14
Speaker 1: think that this is a British site. I think it
31:17
Speaker 1: means he's like the retired, he's retired, or he's he's
31:21
Speaker 1: a veteran gladiator emeritus. Perhaps he's pensioned. So by the
31:26
Speaker 1: way he kills, he kills people with his bare hands,
31:28
Speaker 1: he doesn't need a weapon. No, no, he considers that
31:30
Speaker 1: on sportsman like. That's not what Captain Freedom is about.
31:33
Speaker 1: So let's let's go back to Weston and O'Leary because
31:37
Speaker 1: you may have noticed, folks, we didn't tell you what
31:40
Speaker 1: happened to them. So no, what what happened to Western
31:44
Speaker 1: O'Leary after pedestrianism was no longer the national craze. Well,
31:49
Speaker 1: you know, you can take the pensioned walksman out of
31:55
Speaker 1: the walking race, but you can't take the walking race
31:57
Speaker 1: out of the pensioned walksman. He got there. Yeah, that
32:02
Speaker 1: was made me sweat a little bit. So, um, you
32:05
Speaker 1: know he kept on walking. He was seventy three years old.
32:08
Speaker 1: He walked from New York to Minneapolis, UM and he
32:12
Speaker 1: is a little sad actually on en route would sell
32:16
Speaker 1: ten cents souvenir programs. But I don't think he had
32:19
Speaker 1: the didn't have the following that he once did. I
32:22
Speaker 1: think he was largely just kind of selling them, sort
32:24
Speaker 1: of like a Harry Krishna at an airport. You know. Yeah,
32:28
Speaker 1: and oh Leary decided that he would hitch his walking
32:33
Speaker 1: wagon to the rising craze of baseball. He became a
32:37
Speaker 1: baseball pedestrian self described, he would stage walking exhibitions before
32:42
Speaker 1: games in ballparks around the US, and then he would
32:47
Speaker 1: sometimes challenge one of the players on a team to
32:50
Speaker 1: run around the bases twice while he walked around them
32:53
Speaker 1: once and he often won, which was good pr for them.
32:58
Speaker 1: And then this is another set part. After he did
33:01
Speaker 1: all that, he will walk through the stands literally with
33:04
Speaker 1: his hat in his hand, getting nickels and dimes to
33:07
Speaker 1: take care of him so he could so we could
33:10
Speaker 1: have money to live off of h during the off
33:13
Speaker 1: seasons when he when he would spend time in California.
33:16
Speaker 1: You know, I actually think this could be at the
33:20
Speaker 1: very least like an episode of television or something. You know,
33:24
Speaker 1: I would love to see this as a short film perhaps, Yeah,
33:26
Speaker 1: I would watch it. I would watch as a full
33:28
Speaker 1: length kind of league at their own thing. Yeah, But
33:30
Speaker 1: it's also like it's it's the end of an era
33:33
Speaker 1: and you had someone who kind of rose to the
33:35
Speaker 1: top of this very odd fad, this kind of flash
33:38
Speaker 1: in the pan thing, and then gets replaced by something
33:41
Speaker 1: almost overnight that has a lot more staying power and
33:44
Speaker 1: to like be you know, established as like the leader
33:47
Speaker 1: in your field, and then your field just starts to
33:49
Speaker 1: disappear and you have to scrap for nickels and dimes
33:53
Speaker 1: and you know, challenge the people who literally replaced you too,
33:56
Speaker 1: foot races. You know. It's it's a sad kind of feeling,
34:00
Speaker 1: you know, you really if you really do again. It
34:02
Speaker 1: reminds me of a Mr. Show sketch where they're talking
34:05
Speaker 1: about megaphone, like the megaphone tour Um has like counterfeit
34:11
Speaker 1: money machine. But the whole idea is that these guys
34:15
Speaker 1: are megaphone crooners, and then something came along and replaced
34:19
Speaker 1: megaphone crooning, and then people were megaphoned out I don't
34:23
Speaker 1: want to lose the threat though with O'Leary, because he
34:26
Speaker 1: is an interesting contrast. He wasn't he wasn't caught doping.
34:32
Speaker 1: It makes sense. Yeah, And he gave health advice based
34:37
Speaker 1: on walking. And he would say what people would ask
34:41
Speaker 1: him for exercise suggestions, especially for people who were too
34:44
Speaker 1: physically weak, were impaired to play baseball or more demanding sport,
34:49
Speaker 1: and he would say, do not take strolls. Vigorous breathing
34:52
Speaker 1: is what builds up a healthy life. So he wanted
34:55
Speaker 1: you to walk like a machine, walk like him. And
34:58
Speaker 1: he lived well into his eighties and people who saw
35:02
Speaker 1: him said, even when he was old, he's still walked
35:04
Speaker 1: that way, Ramrod straight. Uh. And and no coco leaves,
35:09
Speaker 1: you would casey off air you had said that there's
35:13
Speaker 1: something about coca leaves that might be of interest. Yeah.
35:15
Speaker 1: So it's not equivalent to actually doing cocaine if you
35:19
Speaker 1: chew a coca leaf, but it is a mild stimulant.
35:21
Speaker 1: This is coming from an Associated Press article. Uh. Suppresses hunger, thirst, pain,
35:26
Speaker 1: and fatigue, and it's also used to mask altitude sickness.
35:31
Speaker 1: So in Bolivia, for instance, you know the people who
35:34
Speaker 1: live like up in the mountains, are you know, fond
35:36
Speaker 1: of chewing it just to kind of keep their energy up.
35:39
Speaker 1: This became kind of a political issue because if a Morales,
35:42
Speaker 1: previous president of Olivia was very much in favor of
35:46
Speaker 1: legalizing coca leaves and and allowing farmers to grow them
35:50
Speaker 1: and chew them and so on, and the United States
35:52
Speaker 1: was not a favor of that. And you see how
35:54
Speaker 1: that all ended. Casey on the case and the speaking
35:59
Speaker 1: of deans, I believe we have reached one. We should
36:03
Speaker 1: also say that there were many other people who broke through.
36:08
Speaker 1: Were focusing on O'Leary and Weston, but it would be
36:11
Speaker 1: remiss if we did not shout out Frank Heart, an
36:15
Speaker 1: immigrant from Haiti who entered a six day race in Boston,
36:19
Speaker 1: performed so well that he moved up to the quote
36:22
Speaker 1: unquote major leagues of pedestrianism, and he was taking part
36:27
Speaker 1: in what was uh He was a breakout what was
36:30
Speaker 1: largely considered a white dominated sport. This sport also open
36:35
Speaker 1: doors for other men and women of color. We saw
36:39
Speaker 1: people like Aida Anderson, who proved that pedestrianism could help
36:43
Speaker 1: women achieved new status levels as well. And Frank Hart
36:48
Speaker 1: by the way once he won uh prestigious race in
36:52
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty, headlines published his name from Coast to Coast.
36:56
Speaker 1: And this was at a time when because of the
36:59
Speaker 1: color of their in people weren't afforded full citizenship. So pedestrianism,
37:05
Speaker 1: in a very real way helped break down some of
37:09
Speaker 1: the disgusting barriers of race that existed in this country.
37:12
Speaker 1: Which is weird because when before we did this episode,
37:17
Speaker 1: had any of us heard of pedestrianism other than like
37:20
Speaker 1: people walking on sidewalks. No, And I think we're gonna
37:23
Speaker 1: get to this in a later episode. But when I
37:25
Speaker 1: think of pedestrian I think of the time when the
37:29
Speaker 1: auto industry essentially wanted to malign pedestrians by inventing the
37:33
Speaker 1: abusive term jaywalkers. That's correct. I did an episode of
37:38
Speaker 1: car Stuff about a few years back, but no one
37:40
Speaker 1: listened to that because we're doing it on this totally
37:42
Speaker 1: doing it. And pedestrian itself as a word usually means
37:45
Speaker 1: something's very hum drum and run of the mill and
37:48
Speaker 1: kind of basic, right, Like vanilla ice cream is the
37:50
Speaker 1: pedestrian choice of ice cream. But you know what is
37:54
Speaker 1: absolutely not pedestrian The eggnog that we are about to
37:58
Speaker 1: crack open. Made are good pal Alex Williams. Thank you
38:02
Speaker 1: so much, Alex for composing this track and for making
38:05
Speaker 1: some eggnog for us based on the recipe of one
38:08
Speaker 1: George Washington. It's true, I can't wait to sip that
38:12
Speaker 1: knog as always big. Thanks to Casey super producer Casey
38:16
Speaker 1: pegram Our Eachard associate Gabe Christopher hasiotis here in spirit
38:22
Speaker 1: thanks to of course Eve's Jeff Cote, our colleague who
38:26
Speaker 1: has her own history podcasts. I'm popular in this state
38:29
Speaker 1: and history class. And of course thank you pedestrians the
38:34
Speaker 1: world over. We've all been We've all been pedestrians at
38:38
Speaker 1: some point or another. And of course thanks to you
38:42
Speaker 1: know right back at you Ben, See you next time. Books.
38:53
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
38:55
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
38:58
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.