Edward Payson Weston became famous in 1861, after he made a bet that he would walk from Boston to Washington D.C. if Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election—for the next five decades “The Pedestrian” became well-known for his endurance walking feats, and for popularizing competitive walking.
Grantland Rice—sportswriter and poet–of The New York Tribune, paid tribute to Weston in one of his baseball poems in 1916:

Grantland Rice
The Science of Batting
There are more than many ways
To teach a bloke to bat;
To teach a bloke the way to swing
And make his average fat
But of the many styles
That bring a thrill or throb,
One always plays it fairly safe
To hit the ball like Cobb
Cobb
The Science of Pitching
There are also many ways
To pitch a baseball right;
To hold the hits to three or four
And bag a winning fight.
And yet the safest is.
Bereft of any fuzz,
To put the same stuff on the ball
That Walter Johnson Does
Walter Johnson
The Record
Weston has walked for many a mile
Giving all records a wrench;
But he never struck out and had to walk
From the home plate back to the bench.
Weston
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