The Sport of the Gods!

Baseball may be the Old National Past Time but Wiffle Ball truly is the Backyard Classic. There is something about the curve of a rubbery plastic ball and the contact of the plastic bat that sends chills up my back.

My love for the sport of Wiffle Ball even proceeds that of Kickball, which is equally in it's own right a great backyard sport. Some people may beg to defer but I'm not the only one who feels this way though as there is a large Wiffle Ball family world wide.

There are many cases which exist predominately in the New England area where people have made there own Fenway Wiffle Ball Field. If I ever become a home owner one thing that will be a necessity to me is that my home will have a expansive backyard so I can build my own Wiffle Ball Field.

Part of the fun of Wiffle Ball is each field's diversity of angles to play in the field. This creates for each to game to have a spontaneous outcome that can sometime lead to multiple games played until you can't even see the ball anymore as daylight dissipates.

How do you play Wiffle Ball you ask? Well it essentially is baseball but it differs in that there is no baserunning and rather that the distance of the ball determines a Single, Double, Triple or a Home Run. 

Pitch counts vary by players but it usually is 3 Strikes and 4 or more balls and always 2 outs per inning. The 4 or more balls creates for more opportunities to hit the ball and a less likelihood of constantly walking batters. The 2 Outs Per inning create for fasting moving games.

The strike zone itself is usually determined by either a chair, a backstop with a marked strike zone or sometimes even a trash can.

The size of teams typically consists of 2 to 5 players. I myself find that 2 to 3 players a team usuallly creates for the most fun and a more competitive game.

Wiffle Ball itself was created in 1953 in Fairfield, Connecticut by David N. Mullany. Mullany created it for his 12 year-old son and it got it's name when his son and his friends would describe the sound of a strikeout as a "Whiff."

Hell, even my old man played Wiffle Ball when he was a kid which shocked me because I didn't know they had plastic back in the stone age. Yuck, I so went for the hack comedian route on that stinker.

I don't want to brag but I consider myself the Johan Santana of Wiffle Ball and a great contact hitter. The variety of pitches is determined by your fingering of the ball, the direction the holes are in your hand and the angle of your arm.

This isn't me but this kid is pretty nasty when it comes to pitching. Later in the video it shows him in what looks like a organized league Wiffle Ball game which made me insanely jealous because I want to do that!

While I was searching for images for this post I came across this image for a Nintendo DS Wiffle Ball game. I don't own a Nintendo DS but if this game ever came to the Wii I would seriously go out and buy a Wii for it (I'm already contemplating doing that for the new Punch-Out! game).

Of coarse they would have to do the game right and make it that you had the ability to design your field and set your rules. That would be the only way I would buy the game, plus the Wii would be the perfect platform for it as you could swing and throw just like you would in a real game.

If anybody wants to play this spring/summer hit me up! I know a couple of places we could play and this summer I was planning on having a few BBQ's at my place so I'm sure that there will be a few games breaking out here and there on their own.