“Bean

In the shadow of Ada’s Wilson Plant, the Myers family was engaged in a robust game of cornhole, using official NFL (Packers and Giants) bean bags. (Herald / Joe Schriner)

Cornhole.

While it’s not an Olympic sport, yet, it is, indeed, enthusiastically played all over the village, by year-round-residents, by ONU students, and by the, well: Myers extended family. (*Pictured here.)

They were playing on a recent weekend late afternoon, in the shadows of the Wilson Plant on the east end of Ada. And appropriate for the location, they were playing with official NFL bean bags.

In this particular case, the bags represented the Green Bay Packers vs. the New York Giants. No Ohio team anywhere in sight!

Browns bean bags.

Bengals bean bags.

While great consonance sounding, again: nowhere in sight.

Now, as virtually everyone knows, this game was first described in Heyligr de Windt’s 1833 patent for “Parlor Quotis.” This game, of course, displayed most of the features of modern Cornhole.

Except, this game revolved around throwing steel discs at a metal spike.

After a good number of people were injured by this game, de Windt’s changed the lethal steel discs to the much milder “bean bags,” which were to be thrown, not at a steel spike (too many people had already been impaled), but rather slanted boards with a hole in them.

They were “square holes” at the time, but apparently, the bean bags were square in shape as well. Lending credence to: “You can’t fit a round peg, ‘er bean bag, into a square hole.”

Or something like that.

Bluffton Postmaster Jared Caprella is as close to a “professional cornhole player” as they come. He regularly competes at area tournaments, and has won a good deal, or at least a modicum, of prize money at these. He said, as an example, many of the local festivals now include Cornhole competition.

So how did “Parlor Quoits” make the complete jump to modern “Cornhole”?

Apparently, de Windt’s sold the rights to his game to a Massachusetts toy manufacturer who marketed it under the name “Faba Baga.” The Faba Baga boards, unlike modern ones, had two different sized holes, worth different points. And there was one extra-large bag, with which the thrower could score double points.

Eventually, and interestingly enough (given we’re in Ohio), the modern version of Cornhole is said to have caught on first in Cincinnati in the 1980’s, then spread to Indiana and Kentucky.

This form, according to some unsubstantiated reports (but maybe, huh), was called “Bean Bag Bullseye.” Whew, yet more consonance!

Then, when the game got to Indiana, um, there was A LOT of corn, and…

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