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Friday, June 21, 2002

By Dan Majors, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

We Pennsylvanians pretty much got the ball rolling on this whole marbles championship thing when the first title matches were held in Philadelphia in 1922.

But it wasn't long before we lost our marbles to New Jersey, which has hosted the tournament along its seashore almost every June since before World War II.

Yesterday, the 79th annual National Marbles Tournament, pitting players younger than 15 against each other, was held in Wildwood, N.J. And, once again, Pittsburghers performed admirably.

That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows a cat's eye from a corkscrew. A player from Pittsburgh -- or the Allegheny County champion -- has claimed the national title more than two dozen times.

The competitive game is pure and simple, not much different from that which you might have played yourself. A 10-foot circle on a concrete surface. Thirteen marbles set in a cross pattern inside. The object: Use your marbles to shoot the other marbles out of the ring.

The current kings and queens of local marbling are members of the Miller family. Larin won the tournament in 2000 and was subsequently inducted into the National Marbles Hall of Fame. But now she's too old to compete, so she has to root for her relatives.

Her cousins, Carly and Chelsea, of the South Side, not only qualified for the New Jersey tournament but advanced to yesterday's championship rounds. Carly, 10, reached the girls' final but was defeated, 8-3, by Morgan Kellman, 13, of Middletown, Md.

Larin's brothers, Christopher and Jamie, also compete. Christopher, 13, likewise reached the final, but he lost, 8-6, to Jonathan Hulse, 13, of Washington County, Md.

You can pretty much bet that the Miller kids will be back next year.

The championship is worth winning. Not only do the champions get the mibster bragging rights -- and you know how important bragging rights are when you're on the playground -- but they also receive $2,000 college scholarships. (Where they can study ways to turn marble championships into lucrative professional dollars.)

The tournament also hands out two $500 good sportsmanship awards. But who wants those? Those are insulting little consolation prizes that are hardly worth accepting. Why, if anyone ever gave me a good sportsmanship award, I'd tear up the check and throw it in his face!

Anyway, it's good to know that Allegheny County's champions once again represented us so well in this historic competition.

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, World Cup soccer has nothing on marbles.

It's just a stage that most young playwrights go through

The 50 Beaver County youngsters attending the Young Writers Institute aren't too interested in marbles. With them, the play's the thing. They were in the Benedum Center plotting their plots.

Sparklers are neat to see. Injured kids, however, are not

The nice thing about marbles is that they're usually pretty safe. As opposed to the sparklers that too often are handed to kids as part of Fourth of July celebrations.

It's a cock-and-bull story without the bull

You know, I don't usually use this space to mention Lawrence Walsh's super-popular consumer column because he's already so visible as that floating disembodied head up at the top of the page. But today's "Post Your Problems" involves a rooster that is running loose in Brookline. And if I let you miss that story, I'd never forgive myself.

No Tony Norman column today

But he's not on vacation. I don't know why we don't have his column today. I'm as confused as you are.