Wiffle ball strike zone brick wall12/19/2023 ![]() ![]() Throughout the company’s history, it has recorded just one television advertisement: an early 1960s spot starring Yankees ace Whitey Ford showing a group of kids how to use a Wiffle ball to throw pitches “just like a major leaguer.” “Watch Jimmy curve the ball!” the voice-over intones after Ford has shared the secret. The Mullanys made the ball the family business, and stores and consumers didn’t need much convincing to devour the new toy. They could throw curveballs and sliders and sinkers and knuckleballs that were fantastic without really very much physical effort.” But when they stumbled upon the design that we use today with the eight oblong holes on one half, that worked the best. “They tried all different combinations of cutting holes, adding weight,” the younger Mullany says. He said, ‘Well, maybe we can make a ball that will curve without a lot of effort.’”īorrowing materials from a friend who made packaging for Coty perfume, the Wiffle ball patriarch set to work. Mullany’s grandson-also named David-now serves as the president of Wiffle Ball Inc., and he recounts of his grandfather, “Having been a semi-pro pitcher, he knew that that wasn’t the greatest plan of attack for these guys to be that young and snapping off curveballs. The ball’s invention had come decades earlier, in Connecticut in the summer of 1953, when an out-of-work former industrial league pitcher named David Mullany learned that his adolescent son and his friends had developed sore arms from trying to throw high-effort curveballs in the backyard. Wiffle ball was a household institution by that point, the thin yellow bat and perforated sphere a staple in yards and playgrounds across the country. The WWBC grew organically from there, to 10 teams, then 14, then 24 by the end of the decade. The kids loved it and played the whole summer, and then he invited other groups from around the city to an eight-team tournament. They didn’t take to baseball or volleyball or any of the other activities, so as a last resort, Bottorff says, he brought Wiffle balls and a bat one day. ![]() The World Wiffle Ball Championship was born in 1980 in Mishawaka, Indiana, a suburb of South Bend, where a 19-year-old summer park director named Jim Bottorff was searching for ways to occupy a group of restless campers. ![]() Over the course of the weekend tournament in Midlothian, these Wifflers will explain the past, present, and future of the sport’s appeal-and why it has spread, been legitimized, and even displaced more traditional sports as the game of choice throughout the summer. ![]() And as other less traditional sports find new players and audiences-ultimate frisbee, bowling, an upcoming tag TV show-Wiffle ball is capturing that alternative energy, too. “It brings back the kid in you.”Ĭontrasted with its parent sport of baseball, which some spectators believe is suffering from the three true outcomes’ takeover, slow pitch Wiffle ball also brings constant action and excitement. “It’s something for us to be competitive, but also have fun at the same time,” says Jay Ryans, pitcher for the Cult West Warriors, who entered this year’s tournament as the three-time defending champions. Long a sport that lived primarily in kids’ backyards, Wiffle ball over the past decade has boomed for adults, too: as a nostalgic reminder of youth, as a conduit for intense competition, and as a spectator sport all in one. Welcome to the world of competitive Wiffle ball, specifically the annual tournament now held in the Chicago suburb of Midlothian, Illinois, in late July, believed to be the oldest in the country but now just one of hundreds that dot the summer calendar nationwide. “Is it blowing out?” one pitcher asks a teammate who has just returned from checking field conditions. By noon, the Weather app will put the heat index at 108 degrees already, with the overnight dew still glittering in the outfield grass, some teams arriving early to the 40th annual World Wiffle Ball Championship are removing layers of clothing to shag fly balls shirtless, or gulping from buckets of water after completing a warm-up jog, or strategically positioning tents along the painted foul lines to ward off the rising sun.īut the main weather question has less to do with the heat than the wind, which Wiffle enthusiasts are quick to highlight as the key tactical concern when approaching a competitive game. Even at 7 in the morning, Memorial Park is hot. ![]()
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