All of our major sports involve balls.

Think about it. From the smallest, marbles and then the golf ball and the pingpong ball, to the largest, the basketball, it's all balls all the time when it comes to modern sports.

What did the ancients do for sport before the ball was invented? I guess you could go back to the Greeks, who started the first Olympics -- when men competed naked and women were not allowed to watch -- and I'm thinking it was all foot races and feats of strength. Running fast or long. Lifting something or throwing something heavy. Think the hundred meter dash. Or the marathon. The shot put or the discus.

Somewhere along the way, the ball was invented, and it changed the face of sports. With an object in play -- the ball -- we developed teams. A group of men -- later women -- could conspire to move that object, the ball, past another group and toward a goal. The same athletic abilities -- speed, strength, agility -- were still in play, but now there was something to watch.
Teams formed, crowds gathered. Modern sport was born.

Soccer is likely one of the first world sports involving a ball, and for good reason. All you have to do is have one team trying to kick it past another team's defenses into a specified goal. Not a lot of equipment. Ole!

Rugby is another. One team competing to move a ball past another team, albeit with more physical contact -- and no pads!. I'm not sure about the rules, but I think the ball is run more than it's kicked (if it's kicked at all.)

Enter America. We introduced basketball, where you throw a round ball through a hoop, while bouncing the ball down the court -- called dribbling -- while trying not to be fouled, which means touched inappropriately.

Football in America added an unexpected dimension. It took the round ball and made it oblong, sort of a squashed version. It's possible that kind of ball is used in rugby -- I don't know -- but when you start throwing it and kicking it instead of just running, the ball takes unexpected hops and turns that add suspense to the game.

Sports is all about athletic ability, but to get people to watch, it has to have a team aspect. If we identify with our home team, it's because they have the ability to maneuver the ball, shoot the ball, carry the ball, pass the ball -- and they represent us, our school, our town, our state, our country. It's not about pure athletic ability. Who cares if our star quarterback can run the hundred in under ten seconds? Who cares if he can lift this or that much? It's all about how he performs with that ball and how well his team supports him -- and us.

The world cup of soccer is a big deal in most of the world -- country against country -- and the Super Bowl is the same, to a more local (i.e., American) extent. So is the World Series of baseball, which leaves out most of the baseball-playing countries of the world but still attracts fans by the millions around the globe. The point is that we love sports that involve teams and balls. Usually round balls -- soccer, baseball, basketball -- but also the odd football. We, the fans, love balls and love seeing teams competing to move them past another's goal.

So, back to a previous question. What did we do before we had balls? Bullfighting? Wrestling?
Foot-racing for sure, which we still do, but not even the fastest man in the world earns anything like what a second-rate pro football or basketball player makes. Winners of marathons get a few thousand dollars and a trophy -- and who remembers their names? Somebody from Kenya, no?

It's all about balls, folks. And balls are a great way to channel male testosterone into games. And everyone benefits. Better that than war, no?

So here is a trivia question: Who invented the first ball?

Someone did, maybe made of mud or clay or, later, stone. Who was it? And what did he, or she, do with it? We're not talking about the wheel -- another subject of speculation -- but the ball. An object so familiar to us now but not always. I'm guessing that the first one was something like our modern bowling ball, a spherical object maybe stumbled on by accident, a rock so formed,
that he or she rolled it along a surface to the amazement of his/her friends and relatives. Did it take off right away? Was it a Eureka moment? Or was it kind of dismissed as another early crackpot invention?

I think a eureka moment was achieved with the first pneumatic ball: the one we could pump up.
From that discovery all our modern ball sports evolved. And someone probably knows who invented it. (Google it, anyone?) The round inflatable ball, and the oval one, have transformed sports as we know them. Together, they gave rise to teams and to goals and to fans and to ESPN.

The only hold-outs? Baseball, with its tightly woven enigma of strands inside a rawhide cover;
golf with the same kind of secret innards, condensed; bowling, which harks back to the first ball ever invented or discovered, minus the thumb and finger holes.

And then there's marbles. Anyone got a good shooter?

Long live the ball!