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Letter: Throwing a Hooverball with one hand
Op-Ed · August 13, 2015
Great to see that Hoover Ball is alive and well in West Branch, with 30-plus teams participating in this year’s national championships.
Hooverball is a “sport” that I rescued from the attic of Hoover history over 25 years ago, when I worked for the Hoover Presidential Library Association. In fact, I had to move to Down East Maine 11 years ago to get my wife Beth to stop playing on a weekly basis with a group of Iowa City women who still do play.
Two memories in my top 10 include persuading Herbert Hoover’s grandson, the late “Pete” Hoover, to play on a day when temps were hovering at about 100 degrees. When Pete’s team won the first round, thereby advancing to the second, Pete opted out. “You people are slow learners,” he told his teammates as he went off in search of a cold Foster’s Lager.
The other memory involves Marv Cook, the West Branch native who went on from Hawkeye fame to become a Pro Bowler as an all-star tight end for the New England Patriots. When a CBS Sunday Morning crew came to West Branch to do a feature on Hoover Ball, I recruited Marv to play in a demonstration game. His team played a team that included CBSMN anchor Bill Geist, who was 5-8 and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet, whereas Marv was probably 6-3, 275. Marv was the only player I knew who could throw a four-pound Hoover ball with one hand, as if it was a baseball. With the cameras rolling, Marv threw one of his “fastballs” at Geist, which knocked the CBS anchor over like a bowling pin. A Pro Bowler, indeed. It was Geist who later reported that throwing a Hoover ball akin to “pitching a frozen turkey over your garage.”
Tom Walsh
Gouldsboro, Maine
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