BOYS CREATE A WHIFFLE BALL FIELD OF DREAMS

To the few people who even know it exists, Groves Park looks like a tiny meadow nestled among some trees along Jean Ann Drive. Last week, a group of neighborhood boys looked at the overgrown grass and saw a baseball field and the new home of the Cape Girardeau Area Whiffle Ball League.

The infield chatter of 12-year-olds filled the park Saturday as teams played practice games before the start of the just-formed league's first tournament. The Fangs, the Trojans, the Orange Monkeys, the Li'l Pimps, the Spartans, Kitty Litter and a few teams with unprintable nicknames bantered with each other and wore their baseball caps rally style as they prepared for the first of five tourneys planned for the summer.

The idea to adapt the park for Whiffle Ball originated with neighborhood friends Steve Miinch, Ty Craft and Scott Brueckner but soon involved pals Tony Leuckel, Daniel Martin, Brandon Cooper, Andy Ligons, Luke Riehl, Brad Baker and Trevor Allee. The boys are mostly eighth-graders at Central Junior High School and seventh-graders at Schultz School. Brad and Trevor are fifth-graders.

Last Monday, some of the boys brought out a lawnmower and carved a diamond shape into the shin-length grass. The mown baselines are 45 feet long. They mowed another strip about 10 feet past the diamond to mark home run distance and erected orange foul poles in left and right fields. The home team call themselves Kitty Litter, so the field naturally has been christened the Kitty Litter Box.

A Whiffle Ball is a plastic sphere with holes in it that enable pitchers to throw dipsy-doodle curveballs and sharp sliders. The boys use the standard yellow Whiffle Ball customized with black electrician's tape.

Rules of the game

The official Whiffle Ball regulations prevail with variations voted in by a players committee. In official Whiffle Ball, no one runs bases. In the CGAWBL, bases are run with abandon, but stealing and leading off are not allowed. A walk requires six balls, but it's still the same old three strikes and you're out.

Umpire Tony Leuckel controls how fast the pitcher can throw, and his strike zone extends from the ankles to the neck. He loves to say, "Yerrout."

Arguing with the umpire is a $5 fine. Punching a fellow player means a $10 fine and expulsion from the game.

Fielders put out hitters and runners by hitting them with the ball but are not allowed to hit the runner in the head. In that case, the runner gets an extra base.

No bicycles are allowed on the field.

Jenni Miinch, Steve's 12-year-old sister, has been made the official concessionaire and scorekeeper. One of the league rules is that no one can argue with Jenni.

Saturday, the boys grilled hot dogs as the tournament awaited the arrival of two more boys from another part of the city.

Luke Riehl's sister, 6-year-old Alex, and her 10-year-old friend Kassie Stovall brought their pompoms and practiced a cheer.

"Firecracker, firecracker, boom boom boom,

Boys got the muscles,

Teachers got the brains,

Girls got the sexy legs and we won the game."

Five of the boys play on the city's USSS baseball team, the Cape Flames, who travel to other cities to play similar teams. They say their coaches like them to play Whiffle Ball.

"The coaches like it that we're not sitting inside and doing Nintendo," said Brandon Cooper.