That's Just Juggling

[00:00] Next up, we're moving into the under-googlables.
[00:04] Should we do an under-googlables?
[00:11] That was the play of it.
[00:12] I'm super excited.
[00:13] I told us we had to.
[00:15] So we signed up for it.
[00:20] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:24] There's a lot of things we don't know in this world, John.
[00:28] What are we going to tell you about this time that we don't know anything about?
[00:32] Nice job last week with the St. Patrick's Day.
[00:36] We always do a nice job on the holidays,
[00:40] but one of my favorite things we do is trying to figure out the history of phrases
[00:44] and idioms and what they mean and where they came from.
[00:49] This one came up this week, and I thought immediately of Joey and Jason,
[00:55] so I thought I'd put it out there.
[00:57] Keep the ball rolling.
[01:02] I was wondering if this was a soccer reference.
[01:05] I don't know where this comes from.
[01:07] I guess we need to figure out what it means first,
[01:09] but that's what I'm going with.
[01:12] Keep the ball rolling.
[01:14] It's so funny how these phrases are so just natural to hear,
[01:21] and you never think about where the hell they come from.
[01:25] Because it seems obvious you hear,
[01:27] keep the ball rolling, you know exactly what it means.
[01:30] Is it a reference to, maybe not soccer,
[01:35] but a different game that people played?
[01:38] There was the stick and hoop game,
[01:41] where you just make the hoop keep going,
[01:44] but maybe there was a predecessor that was just a ball to you.
[01:47] The phrase means to keep the momentum going, right?
[01:53] Yeah.
[01:55] How do you play stick and hoop?
[01:57] The rules of stick and hoop.
[01:59] I think you just roll that sucker and go as far as you can, man.
[02:03] There's no like, you can't win, right?
[02:06] You just do it. It's just for fun.
[02:08] I think you just do it, but you could probably,
[02:10] whoever can make it go the farthest wins.
[02:13] I mean, you win when you get to the end of the earth,
[02:15] and you and Kyrie tip some beers.
[02:19] Sure.
[02:21] Do you think there were like, in tennis,
[02:24] people that specialize in grass courts or clay courts?
[02:28] Probably in stick and hoop, there were people that specialize
[02:31] on cobblestone streets versus feet meadows.
[02:36] Sure.
[02:38] He's never been defeated on dirt roads.
[02:42] Yeah.
[02:43] Or maybe even specifically like 10th Street or something
[02:46] was just like, you can't stop me here.
[02:49] Home street advantage?
[02:51] Yeah.
[02:55] So this goes back to a game in which you have
[02:58] to keep the ball rolling.
[03:00] Are we going uphill?
[03:01] Are we going downhill?
[03:02] Are we just going straight?
[03:05] So it's an old phrase.
[03:06] It's not soccer.
[03:08] I mean, I don't know.
[03:10] Soccer's pretty old.
[03:12] Would keeping the ball rolling in soccer be useful?
[03:14] This is why I thought of you guys.
[03:15] I was like, I don't know.
[03:16] Is that something that would be useful?
[03:19] Well, yeah.
[03:20] I mean, it's similar to basketball.
[03:21] You want to create the angles, ball movement,
[03:24] player movement kind of thing.
[03:26] You don't do a whole lot of ISOs in soccer.
[03:29] Some, but yeah, not a ton.
[03:32] But you don't really refer to the ball moving around
[03:35] as rolling it in soccer.
[03:37] OK.
[03:38] See, so it's probably not that.
[03:40] I was thinking that it might be connected to I
[03:43] have a lot of balls in the air, but maybe not.
[03:46] Well, that's just juggling.
[03:49] Yeah.
[03:50] Another phrase entirely.
[03:52] Different phrase.
[03:53] OK.
[03:54] Bowling is a sport that the ball has to be rolling.
[03:57] If it stops, that's no good.
[03:59] Yeah.
[04:00] I don't know a lot about what happens.
[04:02] Have the ball ever stopped?
[04:03] Yeah.
[04:04] That would be interesting.
[04:06] You've got your lawn bowling, too.
[04:08] I don't know a lot about what happens
[04:10] in like the rugby scrum, but don't you
[04:13] are supposed to like roll it back to your guys
[04:15] or something?
[04:17] Is that a thing?
[04:18] I think you just beat each other up.
[04:19] I think you kind of like roll over the ball
[04:21] to like protect it from the other guys
[04:23] to let your guys grab it.
[04:24] But yeah, again, I don't know much about rugby.
[04:27] I think we see people kind of rolling it backwards
[04:29] to their guys a little bit.
[04:33] And if it stops, then someone's going to jump on you
[04:35] and probably smash your face.
[04:37] Murder you?
[04:38] So you'd want to keep the ball rolling in that case?
[04:40] I mean, that would be, yeah.
[04:42] It doesn't roll a whole lot in that game in general,
[04:44] but I think in the scrum is like the only place it would.
[04:48] I just can't think of that many games
[04:50] where the ball has to continue to roll
[04:52] to gain momentum.
[04:56] You know, like basketball, football,
[04:58] baseball, they're just all, they're not...
[05:01] What about cricket?
[05:03] You're throwing, you're hitting the ball.
[05:05] With water polo, you know?
[05:07] Like none of these are really about rolling the ball.
[05:10] So weirdly, when you say that phrase,
[05:12] the first thing that comes to mind
[05:14] is like a snowball rolling down the hill.
[05:16] Yeah, I was thinking of like Sisyphus.
[05:18] Keep the ball rolling the wrong way.
[05:20] You don't want that ball rolling.
[05:22] Yeah.
[05:24] But yeah, for like a snowball, similarly,
[05:26] you wouldn't want it to keep getting bigger and bigger
[05:28] and bigger and like crushing the town.
[05:30] Unless you were like trying to invade that town.
[05:37] Are we bound to sports thing,
[05:39] or you think maybe some...
[05:41] It could be military.
[05:43] A military ball?
[05:46] A military ball, that makes sense.
[05:48] I mean, they used to...
[05:50] It's like the Indiana Jones trap,
[05:52] where you got the big boulder and...
[05:54] Oh yeah.
[05:55] Roll it down on the old enemies.
[05:57] Oh yeah, if you're a bad guy,
[05:58] you'd want to keep the ball rolling
[06:00] to run over Indiana Jones.
[06:02] Or maybe it's, you said military ball there, Joey,
[06:05] which made me think of like a dance.
[06:07] Maybe it's like an early version of
[06:09] Keep the Party Going.
[06:10] Oh yeah, keep the ball rolling.
[06:11] Let's keep this ball rolling.
[06:14] This is, I think, our best guest so far.
[06:17] So it's like you got to keep the dance going.
[06:19] Yeah, it was an early Schlitz motto.
[06:28] Schlitz.
[06:29] When you want to keep the ball rolling.
[06:34] They were marketing specifically to dead becomes.
[06:39] I'm sure they decided that was their market for sure.
[06:42] Yeah, totally.
[06:43] So we're thinking Southern ball or a European ball?
[06:47] Do you feel like this is a European phrase, Joey?
[06:50] Well, if it's old, the U.S. is not that old, so...
[06:57] Yeah, so I'm thinking, I don't know, Vienna probably.
[07:02] Very specific.
[07:04] Yeah.
[07:05] Very specific.
[07:06] I just imagine Vienna mostly, you know,
[07:09] the weekend evenings is lots of balls and lots of dancing.
[07:15] And apparently Schlitz too.
[07:19] All right, so the Vienna balls have to keep going on after dark.
[07:26] Keep them rolling.
[07:27] Yep.
[07:29] Yeah, you don't want the party to stop.
[07:30] We're terrible at this.
[07:31] That can't be what it's about.
[07:34] All right, so is it time to Google this thing?
[07:36] I don't know.
[07:37] We just gave you better than what...
[07:39] Oh, no way.
[07:40] You know, Google will give you.
[07:42] If it was Strasburg, I'm going to be pissed.
[07:44] No, I think Coalson might have been right.
[07:47] Which one?
[07:50] So according to phrases.org.uk,
[07:55] the American expression, keep the ball rolling,
[08:00] was preceded by the similar and now archaic British phrase,
[08:04] keep the ball up.
[08:05] Oh, yeah, no, I didn't mean that.
[08:07] They had much the same meaning.
[08:11] The earlier one leads to keeping a ball in the air,
[08:14] that is conveying the notion of keeping an activity going,
[08:18] which probably has to do with juggling, I'm guessing, right?
[08:21] You're keeping all the balls in the air.
[08:24] Okay, keep the ball rolling.
[08:28] Phrase owes its origin and popularity to the US presidential election of July 1840.
[08:35] 1840?
[08:36] Yeah, that election is widely regarded as introducing
[08:39] all the paraphernalia of present-day elections,
[08:42] that is campaign songs, advertising slogans,
[08:44] and publicity stunts of all kinds.
[08:47] It was Martin Van Viren versus William Harrison,
[08:52] and it was a war hero who had fought against the Shawnee Indians
[09:01] at Tippecanoe.
[09:03] The Whig candidate revealed his folksy cider-drinking log cabin,
[09:06] men of the people image, and adopted the first known political slogan,
[09:09] Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.
[09:12] The song of the same name was considered to have sung Harrison into presidency.
[09:18] Don't you hear from every quarter, quarter, quarter, good news and true
[09:22] that swift the ball is rolling on for Tippecanoe and Tyler, too?
[09:27] So Benjamin Harrison was 1888,
[09:30] but apparently they rolled a huge ball covered with campaign slogans
[09:35] halfway across the country, which seems like a weird thing.
[09:40] So instead of Trump flying around from campaign to campaign,
[09:44] you would just roll a ball to the next spot?
[09:47] Just roll a ball to the next rally.
[09:49] That is not what I thought.
[10:00] But it's one of two things.
[10:02] It's the magic of the game.
[10:03] The European version is you've got a lot of activities
[10:06] and you've got to keep it going.
[10:08] And then the American version is a huge ball for a presidential campaign.
[10:13] Shout out to Harrison, by the way.
[10:15] Shout out.
[10:17] Well, there you go.
[10:19] The more stuff you don't know.
[10:21] I'm intrigued by this ball that gets rolled across the country.
[10:25] I am, too.
[10:26] I'm really excited for it to come back.
[10:29] It was a steel ribbed and canvas-covered sphere
[10:33] and rolled at approximately 5,000 miles in several states
[10:36] to Benjamin Harrison's home state, of course, of Indiana.
[10:41] Yeah, this guy was big.
[10:43] I mean, this is like twice the height of a human.
[10:46] Like 10-foot gigantic ball.
[10:50] So that's crazy.
[10:52] Were like just random people rolling this thing,
[10:56] or was this like his aides and pages?
[10:59] Was he rolling it himself?
[11:03] I don't know.
[11:04] I don't think so.
[11:06] I think I would know if a president had rolled a ball 5,000 miles by himself
[11:11] at any point in American history.
[11:14] Well, if I know anything about presidential information,
[11:17] we just jiggle to Twitter to check that out, right?
[11:19] Sure.
[11:20] So you keep the momentum going by rolling the ball to the next rally.
[11:24] Yeah.
[11:25] Okay.
[11:26] Yeah, we've got a picture of it here.
[11:31] There's a big campaign ball.
[11:33] Or it's like juggling.
[11:35] Yep.