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FeaturesJuly 7, 1996

I remember growing up in Mayfield, Ky., that when baseball season ended, wiffleball season was just getting into the swing of things. I've always wondered why wiffleball never caught on in an organized fashion. Maybe it is because of the numerous different types of bats and balls that can be purchased make for a difficult decision for any would-be organizer...

I remember growing up in Mayfield, Ky., that when baseball season ended, wiffleball season was just getting into the swing of things.

I've always wondered why wiffleball never caught on in an organized fashion.

Maybe it is because of the numerous different types of bats and balls that can be purchased make for a difficult decision for any would-be organizer.

I remember dreaming up different divisions as a kid. There was the Taped Bat and Ball League. This league was for those wiffleballers that just wanted to see that wiffleball travel a few feet farther and sting just a little more as you were pelted running down the base paths.

This league usually sported six people per team, sometimes we had enough for nine on both sides, if we employed the all time pitcher and catcher rule for the lazy or injured kids that at times would come to play.

The taped division was where most of the home run leaders played, and it was where the pitcher was limited to two basic pitches; the fast and slow balls.

The tape made throwing curve balls more difficult. Although, with just the right amount of roughed up tape on the ball some Jim dandy curves could be served up.

Trouble was, you never knew when your fast ball was going to end up in the little kid's ear and then as he went screaming home to his mother, you knew today's game was soon to be postponed due to a cry baby.

Soon after, I remember instituting the batting helmet rule for those more prone to cry.

I remember another league I created. I created it for the wiffleball purist. We weren't allowed to alter the ball or bat in anyway.

This made for games that could be played in much smaller fields and made for some great pitching duels. We limited this league to four players per team.

The curve balls in this league were the dominant pitch and since we rarely allowed a batter to walk, many at bats seemed to go on endlessly as many pitchers never learned to control the wiffleball curve.

Then we made the Taped Bat and Racquetball League. This was the league were home runs and strikeouts were just about even and the only stat that ranked higher than those two were the number of errors commited as the blue racquetball was both hard to see and field.

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Another version of the Taped Bat and Racquetball League was the Taped Bat and Tennis Ball League. We used our gloves in this league and the dimensions of the fields were moved back to accommodate the distance at which a properly taped wiffleball bat could wallop a tennis ball.

There were many other leagues that came and went. They were based on the numerous different versions of new and improved wiffleballs that came out in the late seventies and early eighties.

I remember one league almost caused me to go broke buying a new and improved wiffleball. It had a fake leather covering with stitches to make it look like a real baseball and it covered a hard plastic ball.

It really would fly when you hit it. The only problem was it shattered about every 10th hit. We really loved that wiffleball, but it never would last for us and eventually we had to go back to the more conventional forms of wiffleball.

There was a brief time when we formed a purist league using the big fat red bats, but the large wiffleball that came with it usually dented after one or more games and those dents were almost impossible for anyone ages 7-13 to get out.

There were many ways in which wiffleball bats and balls could be altered using tape as the primary altering substance.

Duct tape was the best at staying on whatever it was applied to. Electrical tape was good for a lighter ball that would, in the proper conditions, travel farther than the duct taped ball.

Masking tape never worked well and it was always a boring and frustrating game when the only tape we could find was masking tape.

Duct tape worked well on bats as well, electrical tape was okay for use on the barrel of the bat, but usually I had to rewrap any electrical tape bat with duct tape after two or three innings.

Sometimes the inside of the ball was altered with a wad of duct tape. This made for interesting flight paths for the ball, but we later banned any altering of the wiffleball's core.

The top of a wiffleball bat could be sawed off and the bat could be loaded with any substance that would fill the bat. The trouble was, not even duct tape would hold the contents inside the bat for more than five or six at bats.

We had a lot of fun with those cheap plastic bats and balls and some duct tape and I always wondered why it never caught on as an organized sport.

I guess it must be the Little League baseball lobby. They are more powerful than they let on. So wiffleballers everywhere always remember the Little League is watching you.

Michael Wells is the editor of the Jackson USA Signal.

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