25 Years and Going Strong

This year marks a quarter century milestone.  There is a group of you who will be thinking, “Oh, Pete’s going to give us remembrances of our high school glory days.”  Indeed, this summer was my 25 year high school reunion.  It was great to see folks from a life almost forgotten, even if just for a brief time.  Having so many recognize me while I stood, slack-jawed, because I just couldn’t place the face with a name was interesting.  Have I changed so little in 25 years?  Personally, I feel like a completely different person, but that’s not really the case at hand.

This is about a much richer anniversary.  It is a landmark in time that I marvel at every year.  2011 is the 25^th Annual Ralston Cup Invitational Wiffleball Tournament. 

Indeed, I’ve been hosting a tournament to play wiffleball on the same weekend every summer since 1987.  The fact that it has moved this one year to accommodate a single player, and you know who you are, is astounding and gives some insight into the event and the players.  First a quick history:

It was summer in 1987 and my friends and I from high school had just finished our first year away at college.  Most of us hadn’t seen each other at all and I was lamenting not seeing the guys in so long.  So my dad suggests a day playing wiffleball.  Invite all the guys over, pick teams and play.  “What a great idea”, I thought.  So, I made some calls and got half dozen 3-man teams together.  It was a great group of friends, uncles, and cousins.  We played in my back yard in Berlin as we did for years growing up.  We got a trophy, a box of balls, some new yellow bats and a keg.  It was a great day, enjoyed by all.

Since that fabled day so long ago, the field has grown to nine teams.  Players have come and gone, but the tournament vibe has been consistent.  It’s been amazingly consistent.  This is a group of men (there are no women allowed in the yard this day) that come together for what could be considered the purest reasons.  We gather to verbally hammer each other all day while sweating in the sun with a beer in one hand, a cigar in the other, munching chicken and peanuts, and scratch and claw our way to be last winner of the day.  It’s shocking how hard men will play in order to have their names inscribed on a 25 year old piece of plastic.

We play on a field that gives even the best players fits.  There are no bases to run, but rather hit for “distance” to get base hits.  Home plate is about 45’ from the back of my parent’s house.  The higher up the house you hit, the more bases you get.  The roof is a home run.  There are two patios; one screened, one glass, with a large garden in the space between.  There are bushes, rocks, and chunks of drift wood around which to navigate.  Home plate itself is an 8” wide piece of twenty year old wire shelving that I tore out of my closet one year.  One strike and you’re out.  One foul and you’re out.  A ball caught anywhere, even off the house and you’re out.  And to top it, it’s slow pitch…and the pitcher is only 23 feet from the batter, so better stay on your toes.  Because of the incredibly close quarters, I’m sure there is some cheesy hyperbolic reference to Thunderdome to be made here, but I’ll allow you to fill in that blank.

We have been playing so many years that there are now a handful of kids playing that were not even born when we started.  The oldest player is near seventy, and is still dangerous.  His physical game may have slipped a little in twenty five years, but by most is considered the penultimate heckler.  He can drive lesser players to madness, effectively changing their game.  And this is an important part.  Generally any player not active in a game is seated inches from the foul line armed with the aforementioned beer and food.  From that vantage point, the verbal assault is launched.  It’s exhausting for both assailant and assailed.

Men have lain flat out on beds of rock to catch a ball.  I personally put my hand through a window in one attempt…caught the ball, thank you.  Ribs have been cracked diving through fences.  There has been at least one trip to the ER for a split knee.  We played through rain so hard one year; the entire yard/field was 3” deep of mud.  One player tried to have his young brother play, but the little guy couldn’t take it and was reduced to tears halfway through the day.  I tried to award a sportsmanship trophy the first year, but there were no good candidates, so we switched to MVP along with the championship cup…that works out a bit better.  I once heard my own father, after hitting a game winning home run for our team, call one twenty-something player on the other team a dog dick after enduring the younger mans jibes for a whole game.  Yeah, it really is as great as it sounds.

It’s hard for me to convey the utter joy, excess, competitiveness and camaraderie that go on through the first Saturday in August each year.  It’s one day in a year that we look forward to all summer.  I suppose that someday a summer will come and go without a Ralston Cup, but I can’t see that far forward.  I started this when I was only nineteen.  I’m forty three now and my oldest son is twelve.  He is chomping at the bit and will be ready to endure the day in a couple years, with his younger brother not far behind.  I can only pray that when that day comes he and I and my dad will be able to play as the first three generation team.  I look forward to seeing all four Ralston names etched on that glorious decades old plastic cup.