My Baseball Substitute—Jelle’s Marble Runs
If you haven’t seen this—and you probably haven’t because almost nobody has—you have to check out Jelle’s Marble Runs on YouTube. This incredible sport was brought to my attention on John Oliver’s recent Last Week Tonight episode on sports. Most of Oliver’s episode is about the major sports around the world being cancelled because of the coronavirus and how difficult it will be to get these sports playing again because of the precautions that will be necessary.
One example is Major League Baseball, which recently released a 67-page outline of the health protocols that could be implemented to allow the sport to be played safely. This included social distancing for the players in the dugout, multiple temperature checks, and copious amounts of hand sanitizer. More importantly, players would be prohibited from any skin-on-skin celebrations, thus eliminating high-fives, fist-bumps, and hugs. Also forbidden: chewing tobacco, sunflower seeds, and spitting in general.
Which brings us to Jelle’s Marble Runs. This is a sport that can thrive during a pandemic because the contestants are immune to the virus. In the long, much-storied history of the league, no competitors in Jelle’s Marble Runs have ever engaged in high-fives, first-bumps, or hugs, and spitting is not even a possibility.
The sport is based in the Netherlands. I realize this is instantly confusing to Americans. If you do a word association with Americans and throw out the word “Netherlands,” they’ll come up with “Holland” or “Amsterdam” or “The Dutch” or, possibly, “Denmark.” They might even throw “Belgium” into the mix. They picture tulips, windmills, and wooden shoes, which is fine, but they should really be picturing bicycles because no country in the world has more bicycles per capita than the Netherlands.
To clear things up, we turn to tripsavvy.com:
- The Netherlands is the term for the country as a whole (12 provinces).
- Holland refers to just the two provinces of North and South Holland, where most of the country’s major cities are concentrated, which is why “Holland” has become a convenient short-hand for “the Netherlands.”
- Dutch is used to express “of or from the Netherlands.”
- Denmark and Belgium are totally separate countries, you ignorant American.
Another thing that is “of or from the Netherlands” is Jelle’s Marble Runs. This is a highly competitive league with hotly-contested marble races. Yep, marble races. If you’re a baseball fan like me, you probably never imagined that marble races could be a suitable replacement for baseball during the shutdown, but it is. In this video of the 2019 Sand Marble Rally (Race 1), we first see a lineup of the 20 contestants, which includes the marble in the pole position (Pollo Loco), a marble that looks like a soccer ball (Superball), a light blue marble (Summer Sky) and the awesomely-named Marbly McMarbleface.
As the marbles settle into place, like thoroughbreds at Churchill Downs, the announcer goes over the course conditions (hot and dry, should be a fast track). Presumably, all over the world, bets are being made by avid marble racing fans and eager gamblers looking for something to bet on.
Then they’re off! The marbles race down the course, which very quickly divides into two lanes. It appears the bottom lane is the faster lane, but a tragedy occurs early when Cool Moody jumps off the track. We’ll have to check the replay to see if there were any shenanigans involved in the Cool Moody disqualification.
As the race continues, we see a figure-eight arrangement that results in some marble-on-marble collisions (“trading paint” in car racing terms). Somewhere in the midst of it all, Dragon’s Egg comes to a complete stop, as if it just ran out of gas, which is impossible because marbles don’t need gas to fly down the track. They use nature’s gas, also known as gravity. Meanwhile, Crazy Cat’s Eye establishes itself at the front of the pack, then is overtaken briefly by Blizzard Blaster before once again surging ahead.
By the three-quarter mark, two more marbles have been launched off the course. It’s good there are no trackside spectators because the injuries would add up. The final stretch is anticlimactic, as Crazy Cat’s Eye could not be caught, beating Blizzard Blaster by 1.29 seconds, with Quicksilver third, 2.27 seconds back. Crazy Cat’s Eye, known for its breakneck speed and above average defense skills, would finish in the top three twice more during the 2019 season, including another victory in Race 7.
The races are incredible. The announcing is superb. Each marble has a backstory and fans around the world rooting for their victory. When you watch the races, you can see the incredible strategy these marbles use, much like their real-life counterparts. My favorite race so far is from the 2018 Sand Marble Rally. My favorite contestant, Marbly McMarbleface, took a lead right out of the gate, then led a tightly-packed group of marbles down the course. First Superball, then Red Number 3 made valiant efforts to pass, but Marbly McMarbleface did an incredible job of blocking every move they tried to make, much like the leader in a NASCAR race blocking the cars behind him, and ultimately won by 1.3 seconds. It was exhilarating to watch.
The creator of Jelle’s Marble Runs is Jelle Bakker, a 37-year-old from Wervershoof, Netherlands who started making marble machines as a hobby. From what I can tell, a marble machine is basically a machine in which you drop a marble at the top and the marble runs through a bunch of twists and turns and obstacles as it makes its way to the bottom. In 2009, Bakker set the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest marble run, which has since been broken.
The YouTube site, Jelle’s Marble Runs was created in 2006, but really took off in 2015. There’s something very endearing about a guy keeping his YouTube channel going for years with little attention and no discernible fanbase. You have to admire the passion and commitment. Somewhere along the way, another YouTube content creator, Greg Woods, became the announcer for the races and he’s terrific at calling the action, the British Bob Costas of Marble Run announcing.
An article at Vice in 2016 helped expand the fanbase for Jelle’s Marble Runs, but tragedy struck in 2018 when Bakker accidentally deleted his original YouTube channel that had 620,000 subscribers at that point. He was forced to relaunch and has since surpassed his previous number of subscribers (currently at 1.06 million).
The channel received another healthy dose of recognition when John Oliver (mentioned above) announced that his show would be the head sponsor for the 2020 Marble League, which was previously known as MarbleLympics but re-named Marble League due to trademark issues.
Apparently, the ending “lympics” is trademarked by the International Olympic Committee, which is just another reason to hate them with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. Just for spite, from this point forward, I plan to add “lympics” to every competition I personally engage in. When I go bowling, my friends and I will be participating in the Bowlympics. When we play cards, it will be the Pokerlympics. Just try and stop us, IOC!
The 2020 Marble League is set to begin on June 1, with the “Last Marble Standing” race. It’s being called “the sporting event of the summer.” Of course, the way things are going right now, it might be the only sporting event of the summer. On June 18, be sure to tune in for the Marble League 2020 qualifiers. The season officially starts on June 21 and will feature 16 events, including: 10-meter sprint, hurdles, and the long jump.
My personal favorite part of Jelle’s Marble Runs is the Marble Rally, which is a series of off-road marble races on sand or dirt courses, with terrain that can flip a marble off the course without a moment’s notice. The favorite this year has to be two-time defending champion Red Number 3, although its current reign is not without controversy. According to the Jelle’s Marble Runs Wiki:
“Red Number 3 has also garnered controversy for his lightweight, plastic physique, for which critics accuse him of having an unfair genetic advantage. Despite this, Red Number 3 has a great fan following, and remains the most popular Marble Rally contestant among the fans, as stated among many others, in the wiki poll.”
Red Number 3 may be the favorite, but you can’t count out Ghost Plasma, the 2016 winner and 2nd-place finisher in 2019, or Dragon’s Egg, who won the Rally in 2017 and finished 3rd in 2016. Ghost Plasma is known to be an intelligent racer, with an impressive ability to defend his track position. Dragon’s Egg is a veteran racer who holds the record for most total career points and most consecutive finishes in Sand Marble Rally history and is the only marble with a victory in each of the four SMR seasons.
My personal favorite, Marbly McMarbleface, has had an inconsistent career. After finishing 6th in its debut season of 2016, Marbly failed to qualify in 2017, then finished 12th and 17th in 2018 and 2019, respectively. In 28 career races, Marbly has just two victories and four top-three finishes. Despite Marbly’s unimpressive history, I’m staying loyal and hoping for a championship.
-Bobby Mueller
