Pittsburgh – Mark O’Mahoney was like a kid again, crouched on the floor with an aggie cocked in his thumb and aiming at one of 13 target marbles arranged in an “X” at the center of a 10-foot circle.
He’s 59 now and hadn’t played marbles since he was 13, when he won the National Marbles Tournament in 1962. But his shooting skills appeared not to have faded Saturday as he joined a reunion of marbles champions from the Pittsburgh area, home to more national champions – 31 since 1927 – than any other part of the country.
“It keeps the kid in you,” said O’Mahoney, a Pittsburgh native who came from his current home of Marietta, Ga., where he is a locksmith, to attend the reunion at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.
No one is sure why the Pittsburgh area has produced so many stellar “mibsters,” as marble players are known. Pennsylvania has produced 66 national champions, with more than a dozen coming from the Reading area since 1968.
Dick Ryabick won the 1943 tournament, held in Ohio, and was rewarded with a bike and baseball bats and gloves.
“When I won in ’43 – this is crazy – they had a parade (in downtown Pittsburgh). They had a band; they had police on horses,” said Ryabick, 77. “They gave me a key to the city. That was crazy.”
