Nice Guys Finish First!

Thirty years ago, when we were kids, free time was just that – free.  If you weren’t in school and you weren’t at home eating, sleeping or watching Road Runner cartoons, you were outside with your friends, playing freely.  It was what sociologists would eventually call “pick-up play,” (as opposed to the “organized play” of today’s team sports).  You know things have gotten pretty bad when the scientific community has created an anthropological term for the way we used to play.

Pick-up play; that’s what we did.  Just you and your friends.  No schedules.  No structure.  No adults.  How in the world did we ever survive our childhood in the absence of indoor soccer practice in the off-season?  It’s a miracle, is what it is.  And what kind of cruel deprivation was it for our generation to have never known Fall Ball, or private batting lessons, or pre-season clinics?  Shame on our parents for their neglectful ways. 

Although in defense, my Grandpa Tony would every so often load me and my friends into his big Plymouth station wagon and drive two towns over to the only batting cages in Suffolk County, Long Island.  He’d hand us a bag of nickels and sit back with his italian ice while we had at it.  It didn’t quite qualify as a batting lesson, of course.  There was no instruction whatsoever.  We just looked like a bunch of kids trying to swat our way out of a bee swarm.  Helluva’ lot of fun, though.

Waboba Magic

In my long-standing wish and prayer for the return to pick-up play in the modern age, all I can say is thank God for the von Heland family.  Who the hell is the von Heland family, one might reasonably ask, assuming one does not get tongue-tied in the asking?  Well, the von Helands are a Swedish family who single handily restored my faith in the notion that kids can still get together and play a game… outside… involving a ball… without any structured organization or involvement whatsoever from adults.  I know, it’s a novel and startling concept today, isn’t it? 

Waboba Ball

The von Helands invented the simplest of recreational toys called the Waboba ball.  It’s one of those inventions that makes you smack your own head in self-effacing ridicule and angrily demand an answer to the question, “why the hell didn’t I think of that?!?”  The Waboba ball is about the size of a tennis ball.  Made of a polyurethane center, and covered in a Lycra material, its unique claim to fame is that it has an uncanny ability to skim along water’s surface endlessly when thrown in a side-arm fashion.  It’s that simple.

And here’s the real magic of the Waboba ball.  Each year for the past eight years I’ve packed up the family SUV for summer vacation and headed down to a little island off the coast of North Carolina.  It’s a primitive sort of place.  No cars allowed (golf carts only), no boardwalks, no arcades, no mini-golf or go-karts.  In fact, there’s virtually no commercialism whatsoever.   Essentially it’s just you, the kids and the beach.  We’ve loved it for that reason.  But I have to admit, I’ve always held some typical American fear that we might be bored without the usual overstimulation of video games, movie theaters, computers and the maddening array of other entertainment that oozes out of every pore of our society.  And as a result, each year I over pack, bringing every recreational aid known to mankind that could possibly be employed in a beach-house vacation.  With a luggage carrier strapped to the roof, and another one plugged into the trailer hitch, our Ford Expedition is so overloaded that the Beverly Hillbillies would be embarrassed to ride with us. And this year was no different, with one exception.  This year my wife tucked a Waboba ball into her beach bag.

“Pick-Up Play” Lives On

From Day One throughout the entire two weeks of our stay, the football, Frisbee, surf board and four boogie boards – which took up plenty of space in the Beverly Hillbillies’ Expedition — never saw any action on the beach.  The Waboba ball was all we needed.  My own three teenage boys were joined by two of their friends on the trip, and the “W ball” dominated the day for these teenagers.  After a first few incredible skips along the surf, The Waboba ball’s allure was instantly established.  It seemed to unleash an inner primitive childhood instinct for anyone in its presence, the playful instinct that had been all but masked over and rendered inoperable by the debilitating effect of years of organized sports.  The boys’ natural youthful spontaneity automatically kicked in, and as passersby looked on with both curiosity and admiration, the boys quickly started to fabricate games and form teams.  Even the old man (that’s me, duh) was called upon to jump in and even up the sides (well, sort of).   Rules were created, and then constantly re-created as the games went on, just like the old days.  Three versus three.  Skim the ball towards your opponents.  If it goes by, you score.  If they block it, you don’t.  If they catch it, they score.  When you all get tired- or if one of you takes a Waboba to the nuts – the game is over.  It was just that simple.

The Incomparable "Spaldeen"

These were kids ranging in ages from 13 to18 – all of whom had played competitive travel youth sports and high school sports for years – who were entertaining themselves for hours per day with a simple make-shift “sport” and a singular rubber ball.  My faith in the prospect of pick-up play was restored.  My nostalgic heart was as warm as toast, even though my throwing arm seemed to be crying out for emergency Tommy John surgery.  I didn’t mind the pain, though.  I was reliving my youth on the beaches of Coney Island in the 60’s, when my Grandma Mac would send us 13 grandchildren down to the ocean from her beach bungalow, tossing us a ball from her porch as we left.  It was, of course, the incomparable pinkish-colored Spalding “Spaldeen” rubber ball.  And along with the waves, it was all we needed to entertain us for the entire day at the beach. 

So this summer, as I stood knee-high in the surf next to my teenage sons, employing my best goal-tending stance and preparing for my famed Ted Abernathy 1960’s vintage submarine pitch, I couldn’t help but think of the phrase – “pick-up play.”  Thanks to the Waboba ball, it lives on.