Early table hockey evolved from pinball. It was really a form of two-player pinball, and was played with a marble instead of a puck. This photo shows a modern reproduction of a 1920s design.
By the early 1950s, table hockey had shed the pinball flippers, which evolved into painted metal men. But they remained rooted to their posts, and still had to play with a marble.
This vintage Eagle model was Lou’s first table hockey board. He started at age 5, and grew up playing table hockey with his kid brother Sid.
Here are Sid and Lou in the late 1950s. By this time they are playing the Eagle game above. They used to dump a whole bag of marbles onto the board, and play until every single marble was in one net or the other. Then they counted them up.
Playing with so many marbles (and not losing too many!) got Lou and Sid accustomed to scoring a lot of goals. Later in life they would both develop high-octane offenses. (Here you can jump to the future: MTHL stats from 1979-80.)
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Media coverage: even in this era, table hockey was a popular game and sport for boys and girls alike, in both Canada and the USA, as the following newspaper clippings reveal:
The Arkansas Hope Star, 1938
The Winnipeg Tribune, 1941
The Berkshire Eagle, 1944
Lebanon Daily News, 1946
The Ottawa Journal, 1947
Forest Park Review, 1950
The Ottawa Journal, 1953
The Ludington Daily News, 1954
The Evening Review, 1955
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