If you're going to play with these guys, remember the three key
rules: no substitutions, no ghost runners and no bouncies.
Kickball is making a comeback, thanks to a group of
twenty-and-thirty-somethings in Surf City looking for a laid-back
alternative to softball.
In case you can't remember grade school sports, kickball was that
baseball-esque game with the big red ball and the hulking neighbor
kid who could rocket the thing into the sky like a Scud missile.
And the best part of the game? A dodgeball-esque provision in the
rule book allowing players to throw runners out by hitting them with
the ball.
"It definitely takes you back to the past," said Chris Hoffmann, a
27-year-old investment banker. "I think everyone remembers playing as
a kid."
Now the sport is back, sans the six-graders and the badly mixed
Tang. The newly formed local league, which costs $67 to join, offers
a T-shirt, lighted ball fields and an excuse to spend a work night
acting like a kid.
About 50 people showed up for the opening of league play Monday at
the Edison Community Center. Two dozen spectators watched and cheered
during the back-to-back games as teams with names like Pound Sand,
Peloteros, Rubber Ballerz and the Isotopes faced off in five-inning
bouts.
"At first glance, you get a lot of raised eyebrows because it's a
6-year-old's game," 27-year-old league founder Jake Fischer said.
"But in many ways, that's the beauty of it. You get a bunch of adults
out there running around playing a children's game but loving it and
taking it at face value."
Kickball has been all the rage on the East Coast for years,
especially in Washington, D.C., where leagues sometimes play on the
Capitol Mall.
The league was created "by four guys with the inspired notion of
combining kickball and drinking," World Adult Kickball Assn.
organizer Orion Walker said. "They developed a social-athletic
league, where literally anybody could play, and the mingling at the
bar afterward was as important as anything on the field."
The game eventually spread west, first sprouting up in San
Francisco and later in Hollywood and Venice Beach.
After a year playing in Northern California and a subsequent
transfer to Orange County to take a job with Marriott, Fischer began
looking to form a Surf City Division and enlisted the help of the
World Adult Kickball Assn., the governing body for the sport.
Fischer launched a word-of-mouth campaign and hosted a few ad-hoc
pickup games. Within about two weeks, 25 people committed to play. By
