Adult kickball is kid kickball, but with beer and smokes on the sidelines. And players are very serious about taking the game lightly.
By BRADY DENNIS
Published September 10, 2004
TAMPA - It's mostly nostalgia that lures them each week to Al Lopez Park. That, and the beer.
And the camraderie. And the chance to slide through the mud and act like 11-year-old children again.
Most of them are in their 20s and 30s, professionals who work in banking or graphic design or real estate development or science.
But Thursday evenings, while their peers are still stuck at work or home watching Seinfeld reruns, they gather to play that greatest of childhood games:
Kickball.
* * *
The adult version of kickball closely resembles the game played on elementary school playgrounds across the country.
Pitches roll over the plate, no "bouncies" allowed. Batters are out if they kick four fouls, if the ball is caught or if they are beaned by it while running toward base.
No ghost men are allowed on base. All ties go to the runner. And teams always shake hands after games.
By the same token, the weekly games at Al Lopez Park have evolved quite a bit since those innocent fifth-grade days.
For starters, participants show up toting huge coolers and lawn chairs. They drink before the game, during the game and most certainly after the game. They decide which team will bat first by holding a beer-chugging contest between opposing players.
It's not uncommon to see someone pitch, catch or sprint to base with a cigarette hanging from his lips. An occasional, and sometimes more than occasional, profanity echoes through the evening air. The players also give each other nicknames - Pepe, Train Wreck, Jam Master C, Danimal, Baby Steps and Easy Like Sunday Morning.
It's better not to ask what they mean.
* * *
The World Kickball Association was born in Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s, the result of a bar room conversation between friends.
The game has flourished ever since, thanks to the thousands of young co-ed professionals who have rediscovered in the game a sliver of their lost youth.
Divisions have started across the country, from California to Colorado to Maine. In Washington, D.C., there are 17 divisions with hundreds of teams and thousands of players.
The man most responsible for bringing kickball to Tampa is 30-year-old Ryan Barry of South Tampa, who played for years in Washington before he moved to Florida. He and his roommate, 28-year-old Dan Hammond, managed to sign up three teams last year.
This season they signed up five teams with about 15 players each, making it finally feel like a genuine league. The season began July 29 and ends Sept. 30.
Barry, the veteran of the group, takes pride that he helped bring the game to Tampa.
"You tell people you play kickball, and they look at you funny," he said. "(But) kickball is one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I've met so many people."
Most kickballers agree that the social atmosphere attracts them more than any other reason.
"I'm new here (in Tampa). I didn't know anybody," said 23-year-old Joe Levy of South Tampa, who works at Raymond James Financial and manages the kickball league's Web site. "Once this league started, it changed my life. People at work make fun of us, but they don't understand."
The games themselves seem more tailgate party than competition. They turned the first week's games into a mini-Woodstock, sliding through the mud and rain. They even showed up as Hurricane Charley threatened Tampa Bay.
And the socializing doesn't end with the final out.
After each week's games, dozens of players head for food and drinks at Lee Roy Selmon's, which has sponsored the league. On Aug. 28, there was a mid-season party. They've even sung karaoke together.
They keep score each week, but winning and losing take a back seat. How good you are pales in comparison to how fun you are.
Said 26-year-old Katie Rief, a second-grade teacher at St. Mary's Episcopal Day School:
"You don't have to worry about being picked last."
* * *
The Thursday sun is setting.
During the evening's first game, Team Brun jumped out to a big lead over the Snak Pacs. But in the fifth inning - the last one of the game - the Snak Pacs fought back.
A long ball into the right field tree, a grounder through the gap in left field, and all of a sudden it was anybody's game. The spectators (yes, there are kickball groupies) cheered from their lawn chairs on the sidelines. Teammates high fived and chanted for each batter.
But the comeback fell short. The Snak Pacs lost 5-3.
And now, with the sky growing dark, the Toejammers are battling a team called Name Pending. It's not going well. They have lost every game of the season and wear their inferiority like a badge of courage.
They are pretty sure they're going to lose this one, too.
"This has become a defensive chess match of biblical proportions," says Toejammer Ruben Kajkowski, 25, full of sarcasm. But he's smiling, and so are his teammates.
So is Joe Levy, sitting on the sidelines, taking it all in. He seems perfectly content, beer in hand, listening to the thwack of the red, rubber ball and watching it float toward the outfield.
"Ah," he says, "the life of a kickball all star."
To learn more about Tampa's kickball league and the World Adult Kickball Association, visit www.worldkickball.com
