There are professional wiffle ball leagues of all things, even a World Series, but last weekend it was three generations united by our love of a plastic ball, friendly competition, and beer, don’t forget the beer.
Last weekend, I got together with about fifteen friends, their rapidly growing children, and more general acquaintances for an unofficial wiffle ball tournament. The group was divided into teams of two, one pitcher, one fielder. The yard and the street in front of a friend’s house was divided into two fields, one on grass, one on concrete. The rules were debated and agreed upon in advance: Three outs, three strikes, five balls, ground balls were outs, home runs either over a makeshift fence or on the lawn from the street, and both players on the team were supposed to pitch for a minimum of two outs. That rule was fortunately not adhered to strictly because, as they said in Bull Durham, I couldn’t hit water if I fell out of a fucking boat. I managed two outs total across four games. Perhaps needless to say, a wide variety of coolers were stocked with an even wider variety of beer before the tournament commenced. Corona, Landshark, Coors Light, craft beers, and two old Bud Lights jokingly reserved for the losers. The day itself was pleasant enough in the low 80s, but humid, typical of a Central New Jersey summer when the best you can hope for is avoiding a late afternoon or early evening deluge. It was the sort of day that makes you realize how challenging it actually is to be a professional baseball player, playing in the heat of summer for three hours, day in and day out. We were, of course, not professionals by any stretch of the imagination, either at baseball, wiffle ball, or any other sport, but we had the aforementioned beer and a pool in the backyard when needed. There was a feeling of excitement before the games even began, mounting as more players arrived, organized into teams, and promptly began the requisite trash talking, some more so than others. The age range between players was significant. Most were comfortably middle aged or rapidly approaching it like your humble author, but the youngest was twelve and the oldest over 70, representing three generations. Several teams represented two in and of themselves, father and son playing together. A few from the younger generation I had known since they were babies. Seeing them take the field with a beer was both gratifying and a reminder that time ultimately leaves everyone behind, destroying some dreams but revealing others you weren’t aware existed in your younger years – such as participating in a wiffle ball tournament less than three years shy of fifty.
Speaking of dreams, there are actually professional wiffle ball players, making it a sport that one can aspire to play for money. Major League Wiffle Ball (MLW) was founded in 2009. Based out of Brighton, Michigan the league features eight teams and a tournament circuit, boasting some 375,000 subscribers and 45 million views on YouTube. They play their games in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, and Arizona, and have been featured on SportsCenter, TBS, MLB Network, Bleacher Report, Barstool Sports, Yahoo Sports, Whistle Sports, and other outlets. The founder, Kyle Shultz, was ten years old at the time. As he described it, “Me and my two brothers partnered up with our two neighborhood friends to form a 5-person, 2-team league. We would play wiffle ball every chance we could in the summer and it’s safe to say we were hooked from the start. The oldest player of our league at the time was 12 while the youngest was 7.” The 2020 “World Series” was so high profile it was played at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. “You talk about moments where you thought you made it,” Mr. Schultz told MLB.com. “That one was crazy. We essentially had this whole stadium to film at. It was a mind-blowing experience, not just for me, but for all the guys who had been in the league for 10-plus years.” He views the league as primarily media driven and has filmed every game since it was officially formed, posting the outcome to social media. You can watch them play the first world series on YouTube right now. Today, the rules are simple – eight teams, a May through September season, five game days per team with three inning games, and 3-4 players per team, but the competition is fiercer than one might expect. The maximum pitching speed is 73 miles per hour. Keep in mind this is for a plastic ball known to take odd turns thrown from barely 35 feet away, making anything faster than the highway speed limit some serious heat. A single is set at 45 feet, double 65 feet, triple 85 feet, and a home run 95 feet. Short ground balls are fouls, otherwise the rest of the game is similar to wiffle’s big brother, baseball.
Mr. Schultz views the one as the gateway to the other. “I feel like the birth of loving baseball lies within wiffleball. Before picking up a baseball bat, you’re hitting a wiffleball with your parents at like the 4th of July campout or something. I think it’s a great sport, there’s a lot of history with it. Even now today, we get comments from people in their 50s, 60s and even older saying, ‘I remember when me and my buddies were playing wiffleball and you remind me of us.’” We had our own experience of this phenomenon on Saturday itself when an older gentleman approached from further up the street. Given the history of at least some members of our crew, it was a reasonably safe bet a litany of complaints was forthcoming. You’re taking up too much of the street. You’re too loud, too vulgar, drink too much beer. We’d heard it all before over decades at this point, but something was different this time. The man reported that he hadn’t seen anyone take the street like that since he grew up in Brooklyn and he’d come to take a look. He mentioned that he knew the mayor if anyone gave us any problems, and urged us to continue playing. Wiffle ball, you see, has a relatively long history of its own, longer than you might think despite the ubiquitous plastic ball and yellow bat. The first game was played in 1953 in Fairfield, Connecticut. The players were looking for an easier way to play baseball, including both a smaller field and less players. Stickball was already a game in the 1950s, but David N. Mullany went one step further by designing a plastic ball with air vents that could be thrown easily and used on trick pitches for his son, who was twelve years old at the time. The name is an adaptation of the slang for a strike, a whiff, and so wiffle ball was born more than twenty years before I was. Tournament play began in both the United States and Europe in 1977. By 1980, the first World Wiffle Ball Championships was held in Mishawaka Indiana, hosted by Jim Bottorff and Larry Grau. The Championship game continues to this day, and has traveled the world as far as Barcelona, Spain. In addition to MLW, there are fast pitch contests and other leagues including the American Wiffle Ball Association. Interestingly, the wiffle ball was originally used in another burgeoning activity, pickleball, in 1965, but was ultimately replaced by more durable design.
The game is prevalent enough that the state of New York actually attempted to regulate the sport for children though no one had ever accused the company that produces the ball or the bat of a safety issue in over 50 years. In April 2011, the Health Department included it on a list of activities with a “significant risk of injury.” If you organize a game of wiffle ball and another of these activities (does beer drinking count?), you are officially designated a “summer camp” and subject to the applicable government edicts. As the parenting.com website put it, “According to new legislation introduced in New York State, to survive classic schoolyard games like capture the flag is to cheat death.” Public outcry and the accompanying laughter prompted the state to reconsider the classification and the wiffle ball appears to be free once more. At least for now, it serves only as another reminder that the 70s and 80s were a far more free time to grow up (especially with Action Park in full swing). Oddly, I never played that much when I was a kid. We were primarily swimmers and divers in the summer, more into the pool than the ballpark. The swim club that we went to didn’t have a field. The preferred sport for young people was paddle ball, which was essentially pickleball played with a tennis ball. My wiffle ball days didn’t really begin until college and as any regular reader knows, I am far from an athlete whatever the sport. These days, I am more interested in driving than anything else. Let’s just say I don’t have the perfect swing and I’ve been known to drop a ball or two, but athletic prowess wasn’t the point of our little tournament. Fun was, and even when you make a mistake, the laughter, the jeers, and the good natured jokes more than take the sting off of any failing. At the end of the tournament, my team was middle of the road at two and two despite a few errors on my part, though I did manage a home run and for reasons I cannot explain appear to have an inside out, opposite side of the field swing, though certainly not on purpose. No team was undefeated, but as the organizer said: We all won because we spent the day playing instead of working or anything else. We ended with a full game of all the players, inviting some of the even younger children to play. I actually caught a fly ball that time. Three generations united by our love of a plastic ball, friendly competition, and beer, don’t forget the beer.
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