labor. and so the ncaa is one group everybody is focusing on. they have this money machine. and to keep it this way, the labor force has to be free or very low wages. that's why you look at a lot of the great companies in this country, and they pay their labor -- they can't afford to go to the place where they work. i know when i was a rookie 100

years ago, the average salary in the nba was $5,000. that's not even meal money now. in the middle '60s, we struck the all-star game, the 20 top players in the league got together and struck an all-star game to form the union. the owners said, no way. we are not going to do that. so we said, okay. there will be no all-star game. abc television said that if you want us to televise, you get your players on the floor. they said, let's talk to them. so they said, we don't want to

lose face. what we will do is if you will play the all-star game, at the end of the year, we will recognize the union. so they vote 11-9 to play. and we played the all-star game. so at the end of the year we went in to talk to the commissioner. he said, i recognize the players association. but we do not have anything to talk about. i'm not going to talk to you about anything. so our lawyer said, i will see you in september. that's the beginning of the next season. the commissioner said, the playoffs start next week. oh, no. we're not going to play the playoffs. what we knew then was our contract was for the regular

season games only, not preseason, all-stars or playoffs. so, well, we will see you next september. the playoffs is where everybody got well. you almost doubled the price of tickets and you sold out every game. they saw the revenue going out the window. so they said, okay, we will talk to you. what do you want to talk about? so we had a list of things that we had to change. one of the things that we knew was baseball was the only sport that had antitrust exemption. the rest of us had -- the rest of sports had to go through antitrust laws. so all the grievance with the

nba now are based on collective bargaining agreements. >> will that work at college? is that a model for college? is that something that these young athletes should be looking at? >> i'm going to simplify it. i'm totally against a union in college. i don't like the ncaa. i think it's a greedy organization, dictatorial organization, an organization unfit to the players. players can't even get enough money to bring their parents to a game. on the other hand, i think that we have all gotten away from the value of education. so i'm an advocate of, let's go back to four years of college.

let's graduate, and then let's choose to play basketball, football, whatever or not. as you know, there's a very low percentage of individuals that make the professional teams. but everybody can get that scholarship can get a college education. so we have to re-emphasize education and the value of it. because that's going to really be the ingredient that's going to make the change. it's not going to be a struggle between the ncaa and the union and all that. that's strictly money. >> yeah. >> as we know with these players today that we have, millionaires, over two-thirds of them go bankrupt within three years. so it can't be the money. so we put the value back on education and making that dedication to your college and let the ncaa support that with giving the players a right

amount of money so they can live a decent life while they get a great education. [ applause ] >> we are running short here. i do want to ask you about one other thing. how close are we in athletics in this country to really measuring people, evaluating people based upon a content of their character and the caliber of their competence as opposed to what they are and who they are? we have a situation now where we have active athletes saying, i'm gay. jason collins, harris, used to be with the 49ers, certainly mike sams, brittany granier. there's another -- a young man

who played a championship game, the first active division i athlete to say i'm gay. how close are we to putting this madness behind us about evaluating people based upon these -- all of these secondary how close are we to putting this madness behind us about evaluating people based upon these -- all of these secondary inconsequential things as opposed to the content of their character and the caliber of their confidence? how close are we to accepting this in the nfl or -- >> are you looking at me, ywm do you want that one? >> what i will say about it is, the first athlete you heard about coming out as gay, someone asked me, how would you feel about playing with a gay player? and i had one question. can he play? [ applause ] >> the caliber of his competence? >> right. that's all.

>> jim -- >> i can't add to that. i cannot add to that. >> okay. >> we'll leave it alone. >> jim was a professional in the most macho of all american sports. it seems to me -- it may not be a good correlation but a lot of questions they asked about gay athletes were essentially the same questions they used to ask about us, the black athletes. >> absolutely. absolutely. >> you know? >> isn't it a simple situation? we have laws in this country. we try to abide by laws. we have different denominations. we have different races, et cetera, gender.

and if you are a law abiding citizen and trying to do the right thing, then how can anyone else judge you? i mean, i think it's that simple. i can't get into the religious aspect of it or to the sexual aspect of it. i look for, as you said earlier, the character of a person. and that's good enough for me because i have my own things i have got to deal with. i can't always handle everything. >> we are getting pretty close to the he said here. typically at this time, you know, is when the moderator will ask how do you want to be remembered, and one thing and another. i have researched that and i looked at 31 people who said how they wanted to be remembered. then when i actually read the follow up, not one was

remembered the way they said they wanted to be remembered, so we won't waste our time with that bit of morbid wishful thinking. but i do have a couple of last questions for you. we've gotten pretty serious here. i think she deserves a little chocolate shake with her broccoli. let me ask first, bill, you. question i've been wanting to ask you for the last 45 years, just between you and me. i mean, 11 nba championships. in 13 seasons. i mean, i looked at this thing where lebron james came out and said when he put his mt. rushmore players up, he left you off and i didn't have any problem with that because it's really not mt. rushmore, it's mount russell.

the person he hangs up there, he can put anybody he wants to up there. but i do have a question. 11 championships in 13 years, 13 seasons. it's mind boggling. the question i've had for you for the last 45 years is what happened with them other two? >> well -- >> can i do one thing? twelve times. one year i had a severe sprained ankle and i wasn't able to play, and we lost. >> okay. >> but i very rarely bring that up. i'll tell you why. it's a team game, and my team lost.

because it's been a team game, i always go the other way and say my team won. so i give them credit for beating us. >> okay, so them last two, you just lost. >> yeah. >> okay, all right. >> it's hard to talk about yourself, but i can talk about you. you know, the 11 championships were proceeded by two college championships. two of them. the common denominator in a team sport was you. team sport means that you are a team. everyone has a responsibility, and you win together. not michael jordan being acrobatic or any of lebron james being a freak of nature, but bill, your contribution -- >> made the difference.

>> -- to the success of the team, it is your contribution. we don't have to feel you're the greatest and all that. we know you're the greatest contributor, and the objective of a team is to win. >> that should be a picture of bill russell next to the word winning. winner, in the dictionary. >> absolutely. that's my man. >> in the two minutes -- >> there's never been a greater contributor in any sport. >> in the two minutes i've got left, let me ask you -- >> that's a friend of mine. >> i know. >> what bill is is essentially telling you, you don't have to pay him that money you owe him. you're in good shape. let me, i have a question here. jim, you're an actor. you have produced a number of successful musical groups. of course, you understand the politics of the entertainment industry and how much mileage

you can get out of the form of such as football and so forth, so i have a question for you. just in the end here. i really value your judgment on this. president barack obama leading up to his first campaign famously went to the university of north carolina and played basketball. they had it all over the tv with the basketball team, championship basketball team. he leading up to his second election, he famously channelled al green's "i'm so in love with you." i mean, it became the number one phone ringer across the country after that. i have a question you. do you think you will have projected the same cachet charisma and cool, say, if he had been into bowling and had

channeled glen campbell's "the wichita lineman?" just as a guy who understands the entertainment part of this thing. >> i'm speechless. >> everybody else would have been, too, if he would have stood up there and sung the "wichita lineman." >> i don't know how to answer that. i almost don't know what you're talking about. >> all right. okay. >> well, we're down to the last 15 seconds. okay. >> i want to say something, please. >> obviously, lifetime best friends and a guy that i've known 50 years, i've got no business being here. but i thought it was such an honor for me to be invited. because all i've ever tried to

do in my adult life is to make my father proud of me. and we were, my father died a few years ago, but he was 75. he says to me, you know, i love you. it was the first time he had ever said that. and he says and i'm proud of you. that was the first time he ever said that. he said i'm proud that you're my son. and i'm proud -- just as proud that i'm your father. and that was my hero. you know, i'm going to tell you

a quick story. >> we've got zeros on the clock, it's got to be quick. >> i got my first $100,000 contract and called my father and said, you don't have to work anymore. i make enough for both of us. and his reaction was, i don't want your damn money. he -- i got my own money. and he's working the foundry. and i said, that's a terrible job. why won't you give it up? he says, listen, i've given these people 35 of the best years of my life. now, i'm going to give them a few of the bad ones. >> it has been a tremendous honor for me to share this stage

with two of the greatest men. i won't say basketball player, football player, those are things you just happen to be, the best in the world at doing, but two of the greatest men, two of the greatest citizens of this country that i've ever had the pleasure of being associated with. let me thank you, thank you very much. tonight, american history tv normally airs on the weekend. with congress in recess throughout august, we're featuring highlights during the week. coming up, a look at the history of competitive walking and its popularity in the late 19th century. then the kansas city monarchs of negro baseball league and a discussion on race in sports. tonight american history team explores the overland campaign.

a series of battle in 1864, union forces under ulysses grant and confederate rats by robert e. lee. watch the commemoration ceremonies marking the beginning and conclusion of the overland campaign as well as the look at the battle of cold harbor, the campaign's final major conflict. that'sal tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span3. next on american history tv, author matthew algeo, popularity of pedestrianism in 19th century in america. competitive walking became the most popular sport in many cities including new york and philadelphia. mr. algeo talks about how the sport came to be, some of its most famous athletes and its sudden decline. the new york public library hosted this hour long event.

>> it's a pleasure and an honor to be here at the new york public library. also nice to have c-span here recording the event. as christine mentioned, i live in mongolia. is there anybody else here from mongolia tonight? a couple. i wrote most of this book while living in mongolia. just to dwif give you a little just by way of background, give you a little background about myself and how the book came about. i went to college in philadelphia. i'm originally from philadelphia. i went to university of pennsylvania and majored in english for a semester. i found out i didn't really like to read fiction. i've always preferred nonfiction, so since i didn't like to read it, i wouldn't read

it, and i got a d in freshman english and decided maybe that's a sign i should try another field and so i switched my major to folklore. any other folklore majors here today? folklore actually was great training for writing books. it really involves research and interviewing and paying attention basically, but when i graduated in 1988, may surprise you, but back then, there weren't nearly as many folklore jobs as there are today. and so i ended up going out to seattle. i moved to seattle and that's where i kind of drifted into public radio. back then, it was more like a welfare program for people with folklore degrees, and it was very helpful as well in teaching

me how to write and how to research and how to write clearly and concisely. so i bounced around a concisely, so i bounced around a bunch of different public radio stations. i worked in minnesota, st. louis. i met my wife there. we were married and moved to maine. we lived there five years. in 2003 i moved to los angeles to work for a public radio station called marketplace, a business program. coincidentally, 2003 was also the year thatx$0fakú>7 took th foreign service exam to attempt to alabama a foreign service officer and passed. so she was put on the hiring list. you can be on the hiring list for up to two years. it was almost two years that we were in los angeles when alison got an e-mail saying, if you would like to join the foreign service, you need to move to washington in two weeks. so we had a decision to make

rather quickly at that time. i had a good job at marketplace. allison was still looking for work. so if we took the job, she would have a job, and then i wouldn't. this didn't bother me in the least, and so we took a vote and it was 1-1 about whether i should quit my job. eventually, she came around and it enabled me to start writing these books. i tend to write books about very obscure events in american history. somebody recently told me you wrote the definitive book on pedestrianism. i guess that's my niche. i write books about things that don't need to have definitive books written about them, but it's been a lot of fun.

it's been extremely nonlucrative and has given me something to do as we've traveled about. usually, i'm able to do the research in washington. we're based in washington between our foreign assignments, so i can get all the research done at the library of congress and elsewhere. when we get to post, i can concentrate on writing the books. it's a very portable nonlucrative profession, at least. the first boo i wrote, which i actually wrote mostly in bomoco, which is the capital of mali, in west africa, a book about the 1943 merger of the steelers and eagles. during world war ii, the national football league was so short of players because so many had gone off to war, that they

had to merge the steelers and eagles. they became the steegles. they were sort of a mismatched bunch. the receiver was blind in one eye, that sort of thing, yet against all odds they had a successful season. you can buy the book. it's in paper back. it's while i was researching the steegles book, i looked at spectator sports in the united states. i was always sort of interested in that, how did we get to this point where sports are really kind of a cultural -- it's like the sports industrial complex today. multibillion dollar business. cities build million dollar stadiums often funded by taxpayers just to keep these teams in town. i knew it hadn't always been like that, and i was curious how

it got to be like that. that was when i first learned about this peculiar sport because pedestrianism, which was really popular. it really was the most popular spectator sport in the united states for a very brief period of time in the 1870s and 1880s and it really began in 1860. there was a guy named edward weston, and he was a door to door book salesman in boston. he made a bet with a friend in the autumn of 1860 on the outcome of that year's presidential election. westen bet lincoln would lose. spoiler alert. lincoln wins. so weston, to fulfill the terms of the bet, it was an unusual bet, the loser had to walk from boston to washington in ten days and arrive in time to see the inauguration. now, this was a really arduous

undertaking in 1861. the inauguration was in march of 1861. i'm sure it's no walk in the park today either. i wouldn't recommend taking the interstate. he walked from boston. set out february 21st. of course, the roads were terrible. it was the middle of winter. outside the major cities, there were no paved roads at all. in some places you barely had no more than a dirt path to tell you where to go. there were no reliable maps to speak of. basically, when he got to a town, he would have to ask how do i get to the next town. this attempt to walk from boston to washington really captured the public's imagination. it fascinated people and i think for a couple of reasons. one, winter of 1860, 1861, not a lot of good news in the papers. southern states were seceding,

the civil war was imminent. and so his walk was really kind of a feel good human interest story. as he progressed, made his way south, huge crowds would turn out in new york, trenton, philadelphia, just to watch him walk through town. people would wait for hours in the cold to see westin on the horizon slowing making his way to town and bands would come out and play and accompany him. he was a pretty shrewd business man, too. he made an agreement with a sewing machine company from new york to hand out advertising flyers, circulars along the way. and he got them to sponsor his trip. and so he would hand out these fliers and go on his merry way. the unfortunate end of the story is he didn't make it in time. he was four hours late for the

inauguration. nonetheless, he had become very famous. he was kind of a schemer. he finagled invitation to one of lincoln's inaugural balls and met lincoln. although he bet on lincoln to lose, he har berd no ill will and offered to pay his train fair back to boston. civil war intervened. it wasn't until 1867 he attempted another walk. this time it was a walk from portland, maine to chicago. he made a $10,000 wager he could walk from portland to chicago in 30 days. again, this was considered practically impossible. he succeeded, won the bet. again, along the way, huge crowds in buffalo,eeie, when he got to chicago, an

estimated 25% of the population of the city was waiting to meet him. this really solidified his reputation as a celebrity, sent athlete. est westin the walker. the name westin became synonymous with walking. he was a clever guy. after this, his fame at a peak, he decided to take his act indoors. '6 in the early 1870s, roller skating became a very popular sport. general sherman was a big fan. towns and cities began building roller rinks, places where you could go roller skate. nice, flat space. he would stage walking exhibitions inside roller rinks. he would attempt to walk 10 miles in 24 hours.

he would pull into town, hire a band and do these walks and tows of people would come and pay ten cents apiece just to walk him walk in circles on the floor of these roller rinks. sometimes, the lap was so small, it was 50 laps to a mile. but he just walkeded continuously. he had amazing endurance and also an ability to function with very little sleep. this proved very lucrative. these exhibitions. soon competitors spraining up. the most famous was an irish immigrant from chicago, a guy name daniel o'leary. coincidentally he had been a door to door book salesman until the great fire of 1871 in chicago. that really reduced the demand for guilt edged versions of the bible or dictionaries. to make money he had to walk great distance out to the suburbs to sell books and developed a reputation for endurance himself.

when he heard about what he was doing, o'leary thought, i can do that. he rented a rink in chicago and walked 100 miles in 23 hours. then westin walked in 22 hours. pretty soon, these were the two leading pedestrians in the united states. soon it was time for showdown. i call them the frasier and ali of their age. westin liked to perform wearing ruffled shirts, played coronet when he walked. he understood the event was more about athletics, it was about entertainment. o'leary would have none of that. he just wore a traditional tight cotton pants and a cotton shirt

and just looked straight down at the track. wouldn't even acknowledge the crowd. he was always focused, i guess they would say. he was kind of the joe frasier in the comparison. in november 1875, it was decided we needed to have a competition to determine the world champion pedestrian. never mind it was between two americans but we still call it the world series. that's never stopped us from deciding we had the world champion. it took place in chicago. interesting venue, chicago exposition building. it was erected right after the great fire. it was the largest venue in the united states at the time. the ground covered five football fields. you could fit five football fields inside the expo in chicago. since it was so big, it was decided this was the obvious place to hold the great walking

match. the rules were simple. six days was as long as any could take. at the time there were blue laws that prevented public amusement on the sabbath. you couldn't walk competitively on sunday. i don't know whether this was a good thing or not but that's the way it was. they would again after midnight sunday morning and continue pretty much nonstop right up until midnight the following saturday night, 144 hours. sometimes they began a little late but generally it was six full days. in this match in 1875 between o'leary and westin, o'leary won. he was not gracious in defeat, claimed o'leary had a home field

advantage because it took place in chicago where o'leary was from, said he had been threatened, somebody threatened to shoot him. none of these panned out. he was chagrinned, decided to take his act to london where he started staging his walks again time. british were fascinated by westin the walker and would come out and watch him walk for hours or days at a time. eventually the format of six-day race kind of was formalized. there would be large kpmpgss staged. the entry fee was $10. later raised to $100, to discourage speculators, people who thought they could walk 500 miles in six days but couldn't. you would have 15, 20

competitors taking part in a six-day race. again, same rules after midnight, sunday night, monday morning, they would take off. dirt track would be laid on the floor of the arena, a seventh or eighth of a mile. a team of judges would keep track of the laps. the rules were strict. one foot had to be on the ground at all times. this was walking. some of the most famous matches took place close to here at madison square garden, located at 23rd and 4th, 5th, maybe. this was built by p&l .t. barna. he named it grand roman hy

hypodrome. it was neither grand nor roman. it was open air. 10,000 feet totalled but wasn't covered. sometimes barnam would cover it with one of the big tops from his circus. it was 1877, i believe, that one of the vanderbilts who owned the property took it over. he decided to name it after the park, hence,w'"ájz square garden. this the first madison square garden, the one that opened in 1968 is the fourth madison square garden. they keep calling it that even though it keeps moving farther and farther away from madison square, which must confuse some tourists anyway. the races in madison square garden were the most popular six-day. the golden age of pedestrianism.

1880, 1881, madison square garden seated about 10,000 people and it would sell out every night. since the races were continuous, people would come and go throughout the day. we don't know how many people in total would watch one of these races, but it's possible they would have 20 or 30,000 people come through the turnstile every day because people were coming and going. that was one of the appeals of the sport, actually. it was continuous. at the time, you had millions of people moving into the cities. industrialization, new factories, migration of people from the country side. immigrants, especially irish and german immigrants all pouring into the city, especially new york, but there wasn't much for them to do. there was an entertainment deficit in the united states in the 1870s and 1880s, if you can imagine that.

i would say we probably have an entertainment surplus now. but back then, there was a entertainment deficit. especially for working people. most entertainment was live entertainment, a musical performance or a play. that might cost a dollar or two and average working person was very lucky to make as much as a dollar a day. maybe 50 cents would be more likely. there wasn't a lot for working people to do. a ticket to one of the walking matches might cost 10 cents or a quarter and not only that, because it was continuous, if you worked a shift and got off at 11:00 p.m. or 7:00 a.m., you could stop by the great walking match, have a couple of beers and watch it for a couple of hours. there was no restriction. if you wanted to, you could buy a ticket on monday and stay all six days and a sandwich costs about 10 cents and so, basically, for a dollar, you would have a warm place to stay

for a week and at least one meal a day. they also sold a lot of beer. walking match, too, everybody says it must have been so boring. must have been so boring just watching people walk. in circles for days at a time. the only thing i can think that would be more boring would be listening to somebody talk about people walking in circles for days at a time. but i will not talk for six days, i do assure you that. but these events and look, we have had some really boring super bowls. i think we can all agree on that. we have had some really boring super bowls, but everybody watches. you don't always watch for the footballs. you watch for the commercials. the you know, halftime show. and when something unusual will

happen. that sort of thing and pedestrianism really pioneered this. there were brass bands at each end of the arena that would be playing songs. there were vendors selling everything from roasted chestnuts to pickled eggs. raw oysters. wouldn't recommend buying those, but you know, there was all kinds of things to do apart from just watching the guys walk. it was a spectacle. and for working people especially, it was a rare opportunity to take part in something that was this spectacular and that was this famous. that was on the front page of every newspaper the next day. there were other things to do at the great walking match. i went to a phillies game last week with my sister at the new stadium in philadelphia and it occurred to me that these new stadiums are really kind of designed to give you something to do besides watching the baseball game. they have like arcades for the kids and there's restaurants and bars and it's basically they've admitted it's a boring sport, but you're paying $28.

we'll give you something to do. and that was a little bit the case with pedestrianism. it also had a lot of fans from the upper class. and you might see celebrities at a great walking match. james blaine attended walking matches. he was a big fan. chester arthur, huge fan. stop me if you recognize any of these names. tom thumb. was a big pedestrianism fan, not literally, but he enjoyed it a lot and i guess was fairly easy to spot in a crowd. i don't know how. but word would get around that tom thumb was in the arena and at one point, there were riots. people rioted to get in, so there was a great riot in new york in 1888. they oversold tickets to the match and people were still gathered outside trying to get

in at midnight sunday night and they heard the roar of the crowd inside and began storming madison square garden and there was an infamous police captain, alexander williams, his anymore -- his nickname was clubber. so you can deduce from that what you want, but clubber decided that he had to beat back these people who were trying to invade the garden and it turned into a riot and a lot of people say it was the worst riot in new york since the civil war draft riots about ten years before, so it enflamed passions deeply. the pedestrians themselves became the first celebrity athletes in the united states. their pictures appeared on the early trading cards. daniel o'leary, the irish immigrant from chicago, he was

the spokesman for a brand of salt. don't know what the connection was, but apparently, he liked that salt. there were corporate sponsorships. i mentioned westin would sell ads as he walked. there were many, many pedestrians were sponsored by newspapers and would compete with the logo of the newspaper across their shirt. an early example of advertising on a uniform. a tradition that i have to say so far major league baseball to its credit has resisted. though for how long, i don't know. it also had a struck a chord with people not just because there wasn't anything else to do. that was a big part of the appeal. there was so little entertainment, but the idea of walking to the average american in the 1870s and 1880s is very different than it is today. everybody walked. a good horse might cost 100 or $150.

this is one of the things that surprised me. i just always imagined everybody had horses. nobody had horses. the 1% had horses. the 99% walked and walked everywhere. there was some public transportation, especially in new york and philadelphia. but by and large, people walked and they always -- people had to walk long distances in the middle of the night to fetch a doctor or maybe on a snowy sunday morning to get to church. so i think people really related to the competitors, the pedestrians. there was a kind of empathy. they were doing this ordinary activity in a very extraordinary way. and also, they were admired for their endurance. in a typical race, pedestrian might be on the track walking for 21 out of 24 hours. they would sleep about three hours. usually in 15 to 30 minute increments. there would be small tents placed inside the track and

there would be a cot in there. and that's where they would rest. a lot of them had trainers, but these trainers were really just there to make sure they didn't sleep too much and would throw cold water on them or even beat them with sticks to try to get them up and back on the track. a lot of times, the trainers were financed by gamblers who wanted to make sure their guy stayed on the track, and so it really was an exercise in sleep deprivation as well as athletics. i have a theory that i go into in the book, glorious and amusing detail, about how sleep patterns affect athletes. affect all of us. most of us are mono phasic sleepers, just sleep once a day.

some are biphasic sleepers, who sleep four or five, then take a nap. when ever you hear somebody say i forget was it margaret thatcher, i only slept four hours a day, but yeah, then you took a two hour nap every afternoon. it all evened out. some of you who are asleep right now are probably biphasic sleepers, but the pedestrians were mostly poly phasic sleepers. this is a real thing. you can actually train yourself to sleep in 45 minute increments throughout the day. if you're able to fall into recommend sleep quickly, you're as rested as if you slept six to eight hours a night. so i think it was a physiological quirk that some of these guys had that they were able to function on very little sleep. every time you laid down to take a nap, everybody else on the

track was making more laps. and either catching up with you or extending their lead, so you didn't want to sleep very much. in the fifth or sixth day, that's when attendance was big. they were sleepy, dirty. they didn't have the modern sports medicine. diet consisted generally of mutton, which i've had a lot of in mongolia now that i think about it. raw beef steak. one guy's favorite was greasy eel broth. i asked allison if she would try to make this and she said no. also, they thought champagne was a stimulant that would help them. so they were drunk, dehydrated, suffering from sleep

deprivation. you get tunnel vision, apparently, when you don't have enough sleep. late in the race they would take chalk dust and mark a line along the middle of the track. everybody could just look at that line, stay on that line, don't go anywhere else. oftentimes competitors could collapse. their bodies could not endure what they were asking their bodies to do. at the end of the race, and dan o'leary was one, he would be so exhausted, he was unable to walk. they would carry him back to his hotel. weston, on the other hand, when he ended a race, he would in pretty good shape. the races ended on saturday night and he usually went to church the next morning. it affected different racers in different ways. the sport also opened doors for women and african-americans in ways that had never been done

before. african-americans could compete with the white competitors on an equal field. it was very democratic enterprise. whoever walked the farthest was the winner. the rules were simple. if you were able to do it, you were given a chance to do it. frank hart was a very famous black pedestrian. won a major race in 1881 and for a time, was the most famous black athlete in the united states. women raced, too. there were six-day women's races. the women, though, they had a special problem because the victorian guilded age conventions of the time demanded they wear a full length skirts or dresses usually of kind of a heavy velvet. you know, god forbid we see their shapely calves. seems to be the reason for that. so while they did race, and the

women's races were quite popular as well, they were at a disadvantage, let's just put it that way. in 1880, it looked like the history of pedestrian, that pedestrianism would last forever. it really was de facto america's national past time. but several things happened that led to its demise. one, there were gambling scandals. as it became more popular with the public, pedestrianism also became more popular with gamblers. there were all kinds of ways to gamble on a match. you could wager on who would be the first one to drop out. who would be the first one to drop out. who would finish last. some of the lesser pedestrians would collude with gamblers and fix races. agree to be the first one to drop out. bookie takes the bets on it and then splits the winnings with the pedestrian.

this began to erode public confidence. there were also drug scandals. performance enhancing drugs. you know, it's just so good that we've eradicated that. from modern sports. but in 1876, edward westin, the famous pedestrian, was caught chewing coca leaves while walking on the track as a stimulant to apparently keep him awake. he said only did it on his doctor's orders. which is a pretty standard i didn't know what i was taking. basically was excuse. but the biggest downfall, two things, really, contributed to the downfall of pedestrianism and one was in 1885, there was an englishman named john starly and he invented a machine he

called the rover, which is the modern safety bicycle. before that, bicycles were the penny farthing with that ginormous front wheel and that tiny little back wheel, and these were not very nimble machines. they were hard to operate. weren't very fast, but the safety bicycle, which is the bicycle we have today with the two same sized wheels, these were fast and these were nimble and they were a lot more fun to watch race for six days than people walking. and it was almost instantaneous that bicycle racing replaced competitive walking as the most popular spectator sport. it also had the advantage of crashes. the bicycles, especially at the end of the six days, when they were all out of it, they'd be crashing into each other and this was very spectacular. a lot of fun. nobody goes to races to see crashes anymore either.

so, a lot of this, a lot of these innovations were really kind of pioneered what we have now in modern sports, the corporate sponsorship, the spokespeople. it was monotized almost instantly, as soon as people saw there was some interest in it, promoters jumped, owners of the venues jumped in and really turned it into a money making money. -- moneymaking machine. at its height, 1879, 1880, a pedestrian could win and usually, they got a percentage of the gate receipts. there was a guy named charles row who won $20,000 for winning race at madison square garden, which would be about $400,000 today. it was not bad for six days work. it was very lucrative for a very brief period of time. unfortunately, many of the pedestrians died pennyless. again, you don't see that anymore with professional

athletes squandering their wealth, so pedestrianism set a lot of standards, both good and bad. and really, by 1890, pedestrianism was all but dead. it was also killed by baseball. the national league was founded in 1876. it was a really ragtag operation. teams would quit the season halfway through if they knew they weren't going to win the pennant. why take the road trip to st. louis. let's just go home. that sort of thing. so in 1880s, the baseball owners got together and decided we need to, we really need to organize this thing and so, the first thing they did in their infinite wisdom was impose a salary cap of $2500 a season and also, the reserve clause, that clause that bound him to his team in perpetuity.

you could never be a free agent, only traded or released. this persisted until about 1975, the reserve clause. it was a very controversial thing, but it really solidified baseball. and by 1890, the national league had eight teams, and only one of those eight teams is not still with us. the cleveland spiders, unfortunately. would be nice to have the spiders, but the other teams and i have to write them down, braves, cubs, dodgers, pirates, phillies and reds, of course, many of those franchises have moved around a lot over the years, but they were all in the national league in 1890 and they're all still in the national league now. so baseball really replaced pedestrianism as a popular spectator sport. big, new, wooden baseball stadiums were built and baseball suddenly became a fad and

eventually, engraineded in the american consciousness as a national past time, as they like to call it. i talked a little bit about the empathy that people had with walkers. i did a little research. it was on the internet, so it has to be true. but recently, there was a study that the average american takes 5,117 steps a day. mostly i assume going to the copy machine. that's about two and a half miles, about half what's recommended. it's recommended 10,000 steps a day, about five miles for good health. we really don't know how many steps the average american took in the 1870s or 1880s, but i did find one study that said in north carolina a housewife would walk half a mile a day just fetching water. so it gives you some idea about how much people walked and why they had to walk. walking was essential. it was the only way to get around and it was the only way

to fulfill your basic needs. food and water and employment. and so, we're not a walking nation anymore. i doubt that competitive walking will make a grand comeback, although it still exists in the olympics. we have race walking matches. 30,000, is it 30 -- 30 kilometers and 10 kilometer, i think. but it's funny. the modern race walking, the rule is that one foot must be in contact with the ground at all times. as observed by the human eye. so, just like the old walking matches of the 1870s, 1880s, they have a team of judges looking at everybody's feet, making sure that one of them is in contact with the ground. if you do it in really slow motion, you can see that almost all of the best competitors actually have two feet off the

ground for an instant. but the idea is to not be caught. and to not have it be visible to one of the judges. and so, in that way, it's very much like old pedestrianism was. i think competitive race walking was in the very first modern olympics in 1896, was it? 1896. and it's one of the few sports, it may be the only sport, that has been in every single olympics since then. there has been race walking. and so you really can see a direct line from the old time pedestrianism to modern race walking, but in a larger sense, you can see the direct line from the idea of sport as entertainment and sport as spectacle to today, with the super bowl i mentioned, and baseball. the idea that people attend a sporting event not just to watch the vent but to see the fireworks and watch the score

board and hear the music between plays. the music all the time, it is so loud. i don't know why it's so loud in stadiums today. you can't even talk. but that's just my thing. but you really do see kind of a direct line between pedestrianism and modern professional sports and most of the pedestrians tried to switch to bicycles, but they weren't very good at it. but two of the pedestrians, edward westin and daniel o'leary continued staging walking exhibitions well into their 80s. edward walked from new york to san francisco in about 1907. and again, sold one of these pamphlets along the way. did another walk from new york to minneapolis and sold a pamphlet, the major sponsor was