What if there were a Wiffle game, but nobody brought a ball?

Like a rudderless ship spinning in the North Atlantic Gyre seven wifflers met to play, and not one of us brought a ball. Stats brought a bat and chalk and put down the lines whist Dave (R-OH) walked home to get some balls. The hit lines were pretty good today, foul lines were fair but, naturally something was wrong: the plate was too close to the wall. Also the pitching rubber was not quite directly in line with the plate. More on the rubber later.

They're hard to see in this telephonic photo, but the lines were quite good.

Not having Peter poses another problem - who's to make the teams? Stats refused to even make an attempt. Rather, through the modern magic that is cellular telephonic communication, we called Peter (sidelined at some soccer game) and asked him to make the teams. Worked like a charm.

Home standing Brent, Eric, Kurt and Matt hosted Dave, Hansoo and Kim. Thanks, Commish.

It was a tight, scoreless game until it wasn't. The breakthrough came in the last inning, wherein Brent surrendered four runs, all off the home run bats of Kim, who blasted two VERY deep homers. Dave also hit two past the line, but by such time the defense, slow to respond to stimuli, had learned to position themselves beyond the homer line. In fact Dave's final out was a pulled blast that was caught a good ten feet past the homer line and about 6 feet foul. Sorry, Dave, not your day. It was Kim's; he drove in all four runs today and got the pitching win.

Did I mention that this final inning was the FOURTH inning? Which I think has to bring our little discussion here back to the Pitching Rubber. Yes, today the deep rubber finally caught up with Brent, but that's not the story of the day. The deep rubber is really slowing down the game. Pitchers are having a very hard time hitting the zone, still (despite five, yes five, Beltrans in the first nine outs of the morning). And compounding the issue is that the batters, with the extra second to look at the pitch, are getting fooled less. TPD means both "total plate discipline" and "thirty pitch doldrum." Folks, we had only 40 At-Bats today, total. It's taking forever to complete these at bats. Brent probably threw fewer pitches than anyone, today, and his half inning was one of the shortest, timewise, of all. Not sure if that's how he saw it, though.

Anyway, we gotta think about this.

The other unpleasant aspect of this game was that someone down Aberdeen Avenue was taking down a tree, sawing it up and mulching the branches.  The constant noise cut down about 95% of the chatter, and made it impossible to hear some foul tips.

Dave, Hansoo, Kim - 4
Brent, Eric, Kurt, Matt - 0

W: Kim
L: Mackintosh