Hall of Fame a little slow with this choice

By James Werrell - jwerrell@heraldonline.com

The ball.

That is the latest honoree in the National Toy Hall of Fame in New York. I would be cheering except that the Toy Hall of Fame is 11 years old.

It took 11 years to conclude that the ball deserved a spot in the Toy Hall of Fame? How is it that Mr. Potato Head found a spot in the Hall of Fame's lineup of immortal toys before the ball?

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Potato Head is a great toy. As a kid, I played with one of the original models with metal parts that I could stick into an actual potato. That was before the goody-goody consumer advocates got involved and turned Mr. Potato Head into a harmless plastic toy.

I liked it better as an assortment of pointy objects that could just as easily be used to pierce an eardrum as put a smile on the face of Mr. Potato Head. A little hazard is a natural part of growing up.

I noticed that the stick already has been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame. I'm not sure exactly how to interpret that. Has the hall simply displayed an ordinary stick in a glass case?

“Stick: Commonly used in games of fetch with one's dog.”

Perhaps they mean more evolved sticks, such as pool cues, baseball bats, spears or even sticks as stand-ins for guns or swords. Maybe they mean sticks, as in the sawed-off broomsticks used in the urban game of stick ball.

Then again, stick ball isn't much fun without the ball. Other games — basketball, billiards, tennis, football, soccer and golf to name a few — would be similarly boring without a ball. Basketball, for example, instead of being a fun sport requiring intricate ball-handling skills, would more closely resemble calisthenics, with lots of tall people running pointlessly, back and forth.

I wonder why, for more than a decade, this never occurred to the curators at the Toy Hall of Fame. To their credit, however, they appear to have made a valiant effort to make up for the omission.

With this year's induction of the ball, the Hall of Fame will display 25 balls of all sizes and materials, including those from the aforementioned sports as well as bowling balls, beach balls, Nerf balls and even what officials there describe as hyper-bouncing balls, better known to many of us as Super Balls. I hope they also have included Whiffle Balls, bocce balls, paddle balls and, although this might be a stretch, meatballs.

I'm not sure that meatballs would qualify as an all-star toy, but I like them. Some I have eaten were similar in taste and texture to paddle balls.

I can't quibble with many of the 41 classics that make up the collection at the National Toy Hall of Fame. The folks there got it right when they chose the bicycle, the kite, the jump rope and marbles as exemplary toys.

All those toys share the trait of being simple, self-contained and people-powered. The bicycle is the most complicated of the group, but even it must be pedaled to work.

That's why it surprises me that, in addition to the ball, one of this year's inductees was the Game Boy video unit. Does that really qualify as a toy?

I think of it more as an electronic device than a toy. You don't tell your kids, “Go play with your TV set.”

Marooned on a deserted island, one could amuse one's self with a jump rope, marbles, a kite, even a bicycle if the island is big enough. But fun with the Game Boy would cease when the batteries wore out.

If I were marooned on a deserted island and given the choice between a Game Boy and a ball, I would take the ball every time. Along with a dog to play fetch with.

And Mr. Potato Head for company.