It was the summer of the
wiffle ball, 1961, the summer
before October 1st, when a
mild-mannered right fielder
from North Dakota, Roger
Maris, unjuiced, would send
number 61 into the right
field stands, breaking the
Babe’s 34-year-old record;
16 years before Rick Ferroli
would begin holding wiffle
ball tournaments in his
backyard tribute to Fenway
Park in Hanover,
Massachusetts; 19 years
before Jim Bottorff
and Larry Grau would
establish the World
Wiffleball Championship
at College Park in
Mishawaka, Indiana. I was
14, playing shortstop for a
wiffle ball team on a dusty
diamond in a city park
in upstate New York. Wiffle
ball innings colored that
summer’s afternoons,
soundtracked by the
screeches and laughter of
the younger kids in the
park’s pool, whose deep end
was three feet, and where,
earlier that summer, a rat
had wandered into the drain
pipe, causing a mass exodus
of kids whose screams
echoed down Main Street,
three miles away. The
magic of the wiffle ball
held us, rivaled only by a
strange, uncomfortable
feeling that had surfaced a
couple years before, that
seemed to grow daily -
indeed, hourly - and
would eventually eclipse our
fixation on the plastic, white
orb, with eight, 19mm
oblong holes. A feeling for
girls, for members of the
opposite sex, who, that
summer, in tight, colorful
tops and short short shorter
shorts, crowded into the
makeshift stands framing
the wiffle ball diamond. We
tried our best to look cool,
to stay cool, as if, unfazed,
we thought only of the
wiffle ball, of sending it
over the fence, out of the
park, so that we could then,
nonchalantly, commence
rounding the bases and
return to our teammates for
back slaps and arm shots in
that pre-high-five pre fist
bump era, scoring not only
runs for our team but
points with the hair-
sprayed, big-haired, big-
eyed spectators. There
were no dugouts. The
members of the team at
bat would sit on a small
wooden bench or on the
grass, and, most often,
would discuss, not the
statistics of baseball,
but the mystical moves
required to get to first,
second, third, and home
with members of the
so-called "second sex"
whose inscrutability
had us shaking in our
Chuck Taylor All-Star
white canvas high tops.
Every year, a few of us
would master the moves,
advance to the majors,
prepared for what Coach
Johnson called the clap,
the drip, crotch rot,
crotch crickets, in other
words, VD, or venereal
disease, warning us to
guard against it by
practicing safe sex,
using condoms, or
prophylactics, or, more
commonly, rubbers.
And, as if having been
given the green light by
some otherworldly force,
most of us knew where
to get them, the source
having been handed
down to rookies by those
who had scored, by those
who been around the
block, by those who had
in fact gotten laid. The
source was Sno-Cone Joe,
whose ice cream truck,
emitting jingly, happy,
cartoonish tunes, would
daily make the rounds
of the city's parks
throughout the summer.
Just go up to Sno-Cone
Joe, ask for a double
chocolate and three
rubbers. And we did.
