The National Sporting Goods Association – the folks who sell helmets, pads, basketballs and jerseys – like to know who’s playing what, and where.

Back in 2001 they compared state-to-state sports participation. So, with a wide array of 38 sporting categories that included skateboarding, billiards, target shooting, scooter riding and bowling, what was Maine doing?

Ice/figure skating. That sport came in first.

Rounding out the top five: soccer, baseball, horseshoe pitching and power boating.

A few other state firsts:

In Georgia, people played lots of tennis. In Arizona, lots of backpacking. In Kentucky, they played table tennis, all the time.

And in Iowa, they roller skated. Not in-line skating, mind you. Acid-wash jeans, disco ball, neon laces, “do-the-hokey-pokey” roller skating.

Guess figure skating doesn’t look so bad.

– Kathryn Skelton

Unearthing the county’s history

Among the discoveries in a just-published history of Androscoggin County is the invention by a Lewiston man of a circular slide rule, used by baseball fans to calculate batting averages.

It was called the “Baseball Percentage Solver” and was invented by Albert D. Ehrenfried, who still lives here in Lewiston. During the Red Sox age of Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams, Ehrenfried sold his slide rules outside Boston’s Fenway Park.

A picture of the now-rare slide rule is among the hundreds of photos in the 208-page volume titled, “Androscoggin County, Maine 150th, a Pictorial Sesquicentennial History, 1854 – 2004.” The book and a companion volume, “Alnobak: A Story of Indigenous People in Androscoggin County” were published last month.

Authors from the two volumes are scheduled to hold a book signing party Sunday, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the the Book Burrow in Auburn.

– Daniel Hartill