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2010 Big League Wiffle Ball at the Connecticut State Nutmeg Games- Beehive Field

New Britain, CT

by Mack Dreyfuss

In the film For Love of the Game, the phrase “Clear the mechanism” is used by Billy Chapel, an aging professional baseball pitcher played by Kevin Costner. His entire life is in chaos. His mercurial girlfriend of four years is leaving him. In a profit-over-decency mentality, his team’s new owners are trading him. His aging body aches against the strain of the job he loves.

Like so many of us who work for a living, he goes to work anyway. Because that is what you do. You keep going.

Chapel’s physical, emotional, and spiritual resources are bleeding out when he takes the mound, but it doesn’t matter. He feels the familiar hide of the baseball in his hand, the cleats dig into the dirt, the light fills the stadium, the sounds of the ballpark fill his ears, and the smell of the grass fills his nostrils. The familiar meditative glory of a simple mastered work disciplines the lonely man from pain to perspective as the opposing team, the opposing fans, and a foreign city threaten to drive him shamefully from the tiny plate on a tiny mound of dirt, in the center of their stadium.

The love of the game clots the bleeding and balms his wounds. He orders his mind to “Clear the mechanism” and attacks.

His mind reels through the events of his life between pitches in the meditative brilliance of the game. Each opponent is silenced with ground outs, fly outs, and strike outs. Late in the game, even the opposing crowd sheds their animosity and reverently watches as Chapel approaches a perfect game.

When the final pitch is thrown, Chapel has done the imaginable which is so often unattainable. With tenacity, perseverance, and discipline, he ends his career on his own terms and gains order, perspective, and peace. A spiritual working man’s humble mentality slaughtered the lion of chaos in the center of the stadium for all to see including his own ego, his girlfriend, his teammates, his team’s profiteering owners, his opponents, and the opposing mob of fans. It is a gift from Reality that can’t be pillaged, a gift to a tiny man that now sealed into history, could not be taken away.

It is often in the laying low that the greatest glories are unleashed. This blog, which I call, Clear the Mechanism, will be a celebration of these concepts.

For more from Mack Dreyfuss, check out www.themackdreyfusslounge.com

New Kids on The Block

August 14th, 2010 marks the date for the 4th annual Reds Community Fund Summer WIFFLE® Classic.

FOR RULES AND REGISTRATION please go to:
www.reds.com/summerwiffle

Tournament Director, Brian Blinn, approached the Reds several years ago with this idea and through a lot of hard work and dedication to the game of Wiffle, has been able to convince the Reds that this is a fun and unique event worth hosting.

The tournament is set up as a Round Robin in the morning and a single elimination tournament in the afternoon (seeded from the round robin play). 50+ teams play in this annual event and it seems to grow every year. What started out as a “local draw” has turned into a regional and NATIONAL draw now. Teams from as far away as North Carolina and Arizona come to play!

The top 4 teams from the Summer Classic are invited to the indoor tournament at Redsfest in December! Also, the winning team receives trophies and they get to throw out the coveted “first pitch” at a Reds Game the day after the tournament! All teams that enter get a T-shirt and ticket to the Reds game the following day as well (among other freebies).

The event is a fundraiser for the Reds Community Fund (the non-profit arm of the Cincinnati Reds) which has dedicated itself to at-risk youth throughout greater Cincinnati. Whether it’s renovating baseball fields, providing opportunities to kids with disabilities, underwriting expenses for inner-city teams or hosting a “Reds Rookie Success League”, the Reds Community Fund finds a way to connect kids with the game of baseball. More than 30,000 kids will benefit from the Reds Community Fund in 2010.

Palisades WBL’s “This Month In Wiffleball” is back for our second season. Episode 1 catches up with all the action from the first 4 Weeks of the 2010 Palisades WBL season. Visit www.PalisadesWBL.com for more info

There’s more and more content popping up of the Jonas brothers playing wiffle ball.  And it seems like with each subsequent video, they get worse and worse.  More wiffs, foul balls, weak ground balls, etc.  This one even has a foul ball that hits the other brother in the face.  And these pitches are coming in ssssssoooooooooo sssslllllllloooooooowwwwwwww…it reminds me of the first years of little league, when your coach pitched to you…underhand.

Diablo Wiffleball

Jeff Augustine, of Diablo Wiffle sent this in. “Our little piece of heaven in Southeast Missouri.”  “We call it Sherwood Yards.”  “This is a shot from the roof looking down over the field.”

Here’s an old WiffleUp! flyer that we found in high school. It was posted on a corkboard outside the guys locker room….13 years ago. Junior year. We played in the New Haven tournament that year…behind Yale Field. It was a beautiful day…until the wiffle started. I don’t think anyone on our team even got a hit…never mind scored a run or won a game. That day was a real eye-opener as to what competitive wiffle ball was all about. We were the best of the best in neighborhood games…yet the worst of the worst against people who came out for the competitive circuit…playing for $$$ was a whole new ballgame. One team that we got crushed by was “In the Box”, captained by Tom Locascio.
We entered the tourney under the team name “First ta Fight”. This was the farm team that eventually became “Boondock Saints”.

We give this kid an A for effort, and an A for his love of wiffle. However, we have to give him a D for camera work. Kind of got dizzy and light-headed after watching it a few times. Very creative and low budget scoreboard, backstop and strikezone. Highlights: the Monster and the signage.

GFY…You should be watching the game right now, not reading this blog entry. Actually, i should be watching the damn game too. However, it’s top 5, yanks are up 6-2. do i want to put myself through the misery, as i have the past 2 days?? Yes i do…because I’m a fan and I have faith that Tito will bench Ortiz tonight because he sucks. He can’t do a god damn thing without Manny carrying him. Big Papi…nice guy, terrible hitter….sorry, have to be honest.