Monday, June 2, 2014

Hallway baseball

That is the sport of the moment. The boys invented this game and it is all they want to play most of the time (other than Minecraft, of course). Basically it's like stickball, except that instead of a narrow street, we have an even more narrow hallway. Instead of cars for bases we have doors. Instead of a tennis ball, a bean hacky-sack and instead of the broom stick, a sawed-off pool noodle. None of this sounds like to produce success, and I have to admit I was skeptical at first and rather reluctant to get drawn in. It is, for  instance, very difficult to hit a fair ball. In fact, it's difficult to hit it all. The boys have learned that throwing the "ball" at a very high speed from a very short distance is a path to pitching success. Connor, interestingly, is particularly good at this. Then, since you have a foam noodle you have to hit it almost perfectly for it to go anywhere at all. Also almost everything is foul territory.

On the plus side, one can make it to first base in about 1/4 of a second, so if somehow you do get it fair you are in business. Also, especially when Connor is pitching, there are a lot of hit batters so that's one path to scoring, albeit a painful one. Otherwise, funny things just happen in tight quarters, including thunderous bopping on the head of the umpire/catcher for any rulings the batter dislikes.

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