Growing up amidst three family houses there wasn’t much yard space to play baseball. So as kids we choose to play Wiffle ball. We made up our own rules. In fact I can’t remember any Wiffle ball set coming with rules. We kept it simple. A batter had to bat from his non-dominant side of the plate. If you were a right-handed batter like me, you had to bat from the left side of the plate and vice versa. Since other surrounding houses kept our field dimensions in check, we had to invent ways to take advantage of these circumstances and we did.

If you were to hit a ball off of any home that was in fair territory above the first floor that was ruled an automatic double. If you punched one out above the second story window, you were rewarded with a triple. And if you had reached over the third story window that constituted a home run. It wasn’t about running the bases, it was about how much distance you could send that Wiffle Ball through the air.

The Wiffle Ball was born in 1953 in Fairfield, Connecticut by inventor David Mullany who designed a ball that would curve easily for his 12 year old son. Today Wiffle ball is not just for kids any more. There are Wiffle ball tournaments run by associations dedicated to keeping this sport alive and unlike when I was playing with friends there are rules to play by and specially built fields of play. But no matter what anyone does to further the sport into modern times, I much rather hit one off a three family home then over a fence.