Jefferson: Guns better than playing ball

[snopes]

Comment: Did Thomas Jefferson really write that ball-playing was too
violent and it was better to carry a gun for recreation?

[ASL]

What type of ball playing would he have been talking about? Maybe Charlie Brown really did invent basketball while tending horses outside the Constitutional Convention, and this later prompted the 2nd Ammendment...

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by ASL

What type of ball playing would he have been talking about? . . .

Did you catch Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis? (Quite a nice movie.) In one scene, he's playing a variant of Lacrosse with a bunch of Indians. I wondered if that was anachronistic, did some research, and found it wasn't.

Then there was tennis, for the upper class, and good old-fashioned dodge ball, which never goes out of style, variants of croquet, and even "rounders," the direct ancestor of baseball.

I don't imagine that anyone of the era would condemn such sports for being "dangerous." This was a time that knew damn well what "danger" really meant. Hurting yourself while playing wasn't even in the top twenty! But they might condemn such sports for being a waste of time; hunting puts meat on the table, and ball-playing doesn't.

Silas ("All work and no play makes Jack a socialist workers revolutionary.")

[charlie23]

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks."

-- --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. ME 5:85, Papers 8:407
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/...s/jeff1500.htm