The National Pastimes Double (Races That Didn't Make the Cut)

The Baseball Marathon

The Football Marathon

The Doubleday Challenge

Winner's Awards:

(1) An Apple Pie

(2) A Wheaties Box with your Name and Photo Glued or Taped to it.

Baseball gained popularity during the Civil War, and it became the National Pastime as a result of the surge in patriotism that eventually came with the Reconstruction Era.

Football's popularity growth is generally marked by the 1958 NFL Championship Game, and many believe that it overtook baseball as the National Pastime sometime during the 1960s.

Both sports are derived from British sports (rounders and rugby). A.G. Spalding's America's National Game (1911) attempts to establish baseball as purely American in origin, and it created one of the most widely-believed myths in the history of American sports.

Fans of either sport will argue why their game should be the National Pastime, so we'll make a compromise here at the Boone Marathon Series. Since running is at least encouraged in each sport, and often used as a punishment, we'll put our National Pastime stamp on Running. If you disagree, try imagining either sport without running... Yup, that's what I thought.