December 13, 2025 - Game Recap

Des & C-Jones & Pace vs. Paul & Verlan & Todd
Score: 17-4
Location: Mathewson Park (Coronado, CA)

The time had come for another boys trip--this time to Coronado (San Diego) where the wiffle donor community has planted a flag in recent years.  

After a couple days of burritos, surfing, getting stung by a stingray (Paul), guzzling liters of diet Pepsi (Todd), and late-night YouTube clips marathons, we sobered up for a Saturday morning (12:30) game of wiffs.  

We cobbled together a very workable field at Mathewson Park, away from the sea breeze.  This is the 2nd time this field has been used--the first time being a non-sanctioned friendly game with the youngsters.  [My most vivid recollection from that game was that Crato was in his high school track-coach phase (think athletic sunglasses, a track suit, a mustache, a lanyard), and, embracing his role, he called the young kids into a huddle mid-game and told them not to trust everything they hear in the crooked media, and to look to Truth Social as their trusted news source, and then proceeded to lead them in a rousing cheer of "'Stop the steal' on 3!".]  The field was actually a good one.  Plenty of space.  Appropriate blend of offense / defense.  And some fun quirks, like 2 metal poles in centerfield that served as double-homer targets as well as triples if hit on the roll.  

We hit for teams, and, for the 3rd time in a row, Paul, Verlan, and Todd ended up on the shorter-hitting team.  Perhaps the most formidable opponent of the day was the old-guy injuries many of us were dealing with.  Paul and Verlan were suffering from some sort of tennis elbow thing, and Des was hobbling around in a brace/crutch from a recent hole-in-kneecap operation.  And with Todd being a "never-pitcher", their team would have to figure out who could take the mound.  Paul took one for the team and took his rightful place on the bump.   

We were using a contraband bat from the local Big 5.  My regulation bat that I had tried to bring on the plane had been seized at security for having the appearance of a weapon.  The blue bat's shortness and softer plastic caused the ball to die in the outfield.  

Weak bat notwithstanding, Chris managed to crank a homer and a double in the top half of the first inning.  With Des's and my help with some David Eckstein singles and some walks we managed to end the inning with a pair of runs, but left the bases loaded.  

When it was my turn to pitch, I was excited to debut some new pitching grips/actions I had been working on with my baseball-minded son.  Paul was to be my first victim.  Alas, on the first pitch he saw in the zone he cranked it out for a leadoff homer.  I worked my way through the rest of the inning getting a strikeout or two, and ending the inning with a 2-2 tie.  

On offense, we had a similar top half of the 2nd inning, driving in 2 more runs but leaving 3 ghost runners stranded.  

When it was their team's turn to bat, they put some runners on and Verlan drove in a run.  He was an immensely frustrating out, spoiling my 12-6 overhand curves and my 4-seamers, often earning either a walk or a single past my immobile shortstop.  Des did help me out in the 2nd and the 4th, though, getting some clutch fielding outs when some slow rollers made their way exactly to him, and he managed to bend down without taking a step and casually field the grounders for outs.  

We took our tight 1-run lead into the 3rd inning.  Paul's pitching was getting progressively more erratic.  He tried yelling at the ball for going one way on one pitch, and another way on the next pitch, but I don't think it helped.  The tricky thing about it though, was that we batters were struggling because of his erratic pitching, never managing to find a rhythm or get our balance.  In one instance, Des had a full count and Paul pitched one that was inside but tantalizingly close to the plate.  Des watched it for a while and made a feeble handcuffed swing at it after it was already crossing the plate.  He may as well have swung at it with a chopstick.  At some point in this inning Chris hit a liner to left field that kept casually rolling its way right into one of the metal poles--a triple!  We put up a couple runs, but we by no means felt like we had put the game out of reach.  (Especially with my PTSD from the 2022 and 2018 matchups.)

Stylish wiffler

We held them scoreless in the 3rd.  We put up another 2 runs in the 4th and they tacked 1 on, bringing the score to 8-4 heading into the 5th and final inning.  

Paul came in to nobly finish what he'd started.  But either his elbow was getting too weak or his control was too off, and the wheels started to come off.  Some of you pitchers will know the feeling of despair when you just can't get an out.  Paul was going through that.  But he refused any help, including from our team, and he gutted it out.  Unfortunately, for him, it took him giving up 9 runs before he could stop the bleeding.  

When it was their turn to mount a comeback, I don't think they believed in themselves.  I was getting more confident with my pitching, mixing in all sorts of off-speed stuff that was dropping in for strikes.  It was a tidy inning, and we secured the victory.  

I was very happy for several hours... until Verlan (with Todd's help) smoked us all in pickleball. 

Game Highlights

• A couple watched the entire game from a park bench, a record.
• We all ducked for cover when Paul ended the game on a strikeout, but he said his sore elbow prevented him from doing one of his signature bat tosses.  
• After Chris's triple, he was proud of himself for hitting for the cycle, but Des interjected that he hadn't yet hit a double-homer.  

Game report by Pace Barker

October 20, 2022 - Game Recap

Pace & C-Jones vs. Paul & Verlan & Todd

Score: 18-19

Location: Lambert Memorial Field (Provo, UT)

MVP: Todd

When a man gets into his older years he develops a sort of misty-eyed tenderness that manifests itself in the form of things like openly sharing expressions of love, tearing up when watching shows, or attaching deep meaning to physical places he deems sacred.  

Two of those three things happened this past weekend as we five tetragenarians(?) met up from around the country for a boys trip in St. George by way of SLC and Provo.  Our first destination for the weekend revelry was the hallowed grounds of Lambert Memorial Field for a late-afternoon wiffle game.  As we parked near the tennis courts and walked around the corner my excited anticipation was fulfilled upon seeing the field in beautiful, well-manicured condition, ready for action.  Given how so many things in life tend towards decay or loss or having trailers plopped down on top of them (see: Founding Fathers Field), it felt like we had managed to somehow hack the system to have this treasure of an asset just sitting there in near-pristine condition, like it had been waiting for us to show up.  All the old-man impulses of wanting to wrap my arm around another man’s shoulders and wax nostalgic about all the special memories and meaning of this sacred place started to well up inside me but I was able to hold that awkward urge in abeyance and instead just enjoy the moment.  

Since we were in no particular rush, we were able to leisurely take in the environment with some soft-toss, some ball-scuffing, clearing the field of dog pooh (another old-man activity), and even, a new record: pull-ups!  I don't think anyone in the Gil Tyree community had the installation of pullup bars in left field on their wiffleball bingo card, but there they are.  Fortunately, I think they actually make a nice addition to the field – one more whimsical element to make the field even more perfect than it already was.  

We then hit for teams and started the game (with the longer hitters batting first).  Paul decided to pitch for the fielding team.  He was able to locate the pitcher’s mound by spotting a faint bald spot of grass next to the sprinkler head—a scar that has been cut into the grass by more than a decade’s worth of Cougars’ shoes eagerly pushing off the rubber as they rare back to summon the best of their strength and deception and deliver the ball into the great drama of pitcher vs. batter.  On this particular day—and indeed, this seems to be the new norm in the live-ball era—batter beat pitcher most of the time.  

By my estimation this is the first game to be played on Lambert Memorial in more than 12 years.  So, when that opening pitch came in it was no surprise that there was a sort-of sudden cosmic excitement in the air—as if the wiffle gods’ cameras were all flashing in unison.  The moment was given a touch of the comical when, simultaneous with the pitch, a BYU passerby suddenly appeared from behind the Smith Fieldhouse and zoomed through the outfield sidewalk path on some sort of futuristic one-wheeled electric scooter thing—a record.  We all partially keeled over with chuckles and then resumed the action.  Chris led off with a walk and then I belted a double to left field, narrowly missing the new pull-up bars.  We paused play to discuss what the rules are around the pull-up bars.  Paul proposed that the horizontal bars should be a homerun but the supporting vertical structure would just be a double.  Chris seconded the motion which was then ratified with a 4-1 vote (Todd being the dissenter).  On my very next at-bat I blasted a ball that made its way straight to those horizontal pull-up bars, which I am now going to name “The Camacho Bars,” in honor of the great, former Phoenix news anchor for Channel 3.  Chris and I then pelted a couple more hits and put up another run before ending our top-half tally at 4.  

Chris declined to pitch for our side so I gladly took the ball for our defensive effort.  My command and velocity felt good but I couldn’t seem to get that strike-out pitch past the batters, and the balls they hit were all coming in too hot to be able to make plays on them.  They notched up the score at 4 apiece.  

In the top half of the 2nd inning Paul was struggling with his control, and I was seeing the ball well, and, collectively, Chris and I put up 5 more runs.  Then in the bottom half of the inning they were stringing together some hits and mounting a tit-for-tat campaign. I realized I was never succeeding in getting Paul out.  I got one weak 1st-base-side grounder out of him but it was just beyond my reach, and then I got him to pop a foul ball over the high tennis fence, which is a conditional out depending on if the tennis gates are locked or not.  Paul jogged around the corner and discovered that the courts were unlocked, meaning the at-bat would continue.  He ended up getting another hit off me.  [Sigh.]  I think we’ve faced off against each other so many hundreds of times at this point that it’s very difficult for either of us to get the other one out.  The inning continued with their team amassing 3 runs before I faced Paul again with 2 outs and runners on.  I got him in the hole down 0-2 and then fired a full-strength fastball that he watched go right down the heart of the plate for a called strike.  Paul then broke out into one of his characteristic fits of wiffle rage and tossed the bat all the way to centerfield homerun territory.  

In the top half of the 3rd we ran the score up to 14-7.  They countered with 4 runs of their own to bring the score to 14-11.  The damage could have been worse but I was helped by an over-the-shoulder left-handed outfield catch by Chris that robbed them of a double.  Then again, I also had the misfortune of a grounder going to Verlan at (substitute) shortstop where he fielded it like a statue as it whizzed by him; but in his defense this was only because the late-afternoon sun was at its opposite-of-optimal position, causing the little white ball to be nearly invisible against the backdrop of the incredibly big and blinding white ball known as the sun.  It was also during this inning that we took a vote to determine if we should end the game after 4 innings instead of the customary 5.  I’m not proud of the decision that we collectively made.  

Difficult visibility conditions from the SS position

So, onto the 4th and final inning where we managed to tack on 4 insurance runs despite Paul getting stronger and stronger from the mound as the game wore on.  Their team sounded a little despondent heading into their final chance to catch up but Chris reminded them that 7 runs is like a free throw in basketball.  I started off the inning getting Todd to strike out.  [Feeling good.]  Then I gave up a hit to Verlan and another hit to Todd.  [Grr.]  Then I had Todd down 0-2 and I felt like a strike out was inevitable.  I went with my trusty curve ball, which, at this point, I’m beginning to think is really just like the perfect home-run derby ball.  He gave it a ride to left field (the only direction Todd ever goes), but this one was never going to be caught.  It sailed past the overgrown shrubs, over the brick section of the fieldhouse building, and off the tin portion of the Bluth Monster—good for a 2x homer (6 runs); the only 2x homerun territory in the whole field.  I don’t know where this hit came from, and why the wiffle gods conspired against me.  I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised given how massive Todd’s arms are.  I know the power is there.  But I felt like I was dealing.  And even Todd said he was just trying to not strike out.  Now I was clinging to a 1-run lead with 2 outs to go.  I gave up a single, then a double.  Then I had my substitute shortstop play in to prevent the runner from advancing but it didn’t matter.  Todd clocked a 2-run double off me for the walk-off win.  This somehow felt worse than the proverbial “agony of defeat.”  It’s like agony with a side of impotence.  

With the game over we all came in for handshakes, and then I suggested we all just soak in our time there and sit down on the infield grass and chat, which we did, until Verlan got really hungry, and we made our way over to J. Dawgs.

Huddling near Great Grate for a post-game photo op  

Game Highlights / Other

• In the 3rd inning Todd made a heads-up defensive play when he caught a deep fly in centerfield and alertly threw it towards home to keep the runner at 3rd base.  The throw weakly came in and hit the grass a couple times before reaching the concrete and then slowly rolling at the speed of a turd on its way to successfully hitting the chain-linked backstop fence. 
• I just realized that our only other boys-trip game (in 2018) also ended with me (pitcher) and Chris losing on a walk-off hit by a score of 18-19.  
• As part of our post-game chat we wondered how the 2022 versions of ourselves would fare against the circa 2004 “prime” versions of ourselves.  I personally feel like none of us have really lost a step out there, but I’m probably blinded by my own ego.  Though, I will say, we all looked a bit more awkward than we used to when climbing the soccer fence to retrieve foul balls.  (Who knows if we could even manage to climb the tall tennis fence if it came to that.)
• The big question on my mind: @Mark – Will Land (freshman) fulfill his destiny and wield the bat as the rightful commissioner-heir?

Game report by Pace Barker

July 17, 2021 - Game Recap

Pace vs. Paul vs. Des
Score: 29-23-15
Location: Lambert Original (Paradise Valley, AZ)

In support of our Phoenix Suns, Des and I flew into Phoenix to catch game 5 of the NBA Finals (😢).  And in support of his mother, Paul drove into Phoenix; coming with his family by way of an unofficial, partial Lambert reunion in Denver.  (Let it be remembered that Paul was the 2004 recipient of the Purple Heart Award for his dedication to his aging family members.)

By some tremendous stroke of luck, our timing all synced up such that Paul unexpectedly called me on Saturday morning, and before you could say "R.C. Willey" a wiffle game was underway.  (Crato wanted to make it known that he was eligible for the game (i.e., off the DL from his foot injury), but he had a pre-arranged boating trip.)

The weather was a very manageable, if a bit balmy, high 80's / low 90's.  The summer cicadas hummed a steady droning buzz as a background track to the day's proceedings.  

The format would be 1 on 1 on 1 with each batter facing both opposing pitchers twice for a total of 4 innings.  I started off batting against Paul with Des in the field.  

Des throwing strikes in warm-ups

I hit a first-pitch homer over the left-field wall, then got a lot of ducks on the pond but had some weak pop-ups to end the inning with only 1 run.  Paul then faced Des.  I let a few get by me in the field, and Paul ended up with 2.  Des then came out swinging hard against my pitching, and ended up with 3 runs.  (When subsequently asked about how the game went, Des was very eager to emphasize that he won the 1st inning.)

In the 2nd inning the bats started to heat up.  I added 10 or so to my score, and Paul knocked in several as well.  For Des's turn at the plate he had a couple quick strikeouts by Paul, but then recovered and rallied for 5 or 6 runs.  

It was at this point that we took an unprecedented mid-game break for some of Jane's waffles.  The meal was scrumptious; adorned with fresh berries, topped with cream and jams and syrup, and chased with a backyard concoction of tangelos and blood oranges.  We all partook heartily, including Joelle, who was there as an emissary of the WWC (Wiffle Wives Club).  

This mid-game brunch turned out to have more of an effect than anticipated.  When we resumed play, and as the cloud cover started to give way to the hot sun, Paul started sweating syrup, and Des, overcome with the heat and discomfort, violently shed his shirt and tossed it aside on the exposed concrete.  

I once again mustered only a few runs off of Paul, who followed with 5 or 6 of his own off of Des to bring his tally within 1 run of mine.  

When Des was in the outfield, whenever one of the balls would get stuck in the oleander bushes (which is quite common), he would sort of make a few glances at the ball and pretend to make an attempt at retrieving it.  I figured that in his now-topless form he was worried about the chafe he would get from crawling around in there.  

Digging out a ball from the oleander

In the final inning, Des, hatless and without glasses, was too worn down to consistently attack the strike zone as a pitcher, thus surrendering a bevy of homeruns to me.  I brought my total score to 29.  

In Paul's middle part of the frame, he put up a good effort and looked like he might go on a surge.  But then I got him to hit a pop-up and a ground-out to secure my lead over him.

Des gave it a good effort in his bottom of the frame, but the gap was too wide, and he ended with 15.    

Game Highlights

• Instead of hitting for teams, we shot hoops for the honor to bat first.  
• Des's fitness tracker indicated that he had doubled his daily calorie-burn goal through the course of play, thus disproving the slanderous myth that wiffle is for lazy people.  
• When we were changing into our swimsuits after the game, I took the opportunity to pelt Des with a wiffleball in the right butt cheek.    

Wally in training.  Roping one to deep right and making it look easy.

January 1, 2020 - Game Recap

Pops & Pace vs. Des & Mark
Score: 5-0
Location: Hillside Middle School (Salt Lake, UT)

Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?  An emphatic "no" on this auspicious new-years morn which greeted us briskly with a fresh blanket of snow to help usher in both the new decade as well as a feeling of renewal and invigoration.

Despite the mounting snowfall and its attendant logistical complications, we plowed forth and stuck to our plan to conjoin at the agreed-upon spot for an 8:15 game time.

Seeing Pops roll up it was apparent as he strode towards us in his chic black spandex pants that he has not simply been sitting on his wiffle haunches all these years.  His combination of strength and spryness would be enough to intimidate any pitcher, as would later be borne out. 

After we had all exchanged initial pleasantries, we strolled the grounds to stake out our new field.  We were naturally drawn to the metal backstop some distance away, and settled on using its convex side and orienting our field of play towards a fire hydrant (a triple) and a basketball court, using a concrete wall as the right field foul line and a rock quarry as the left field foul line.  This field had no homerun territory except for two basketball hoops a fair distance away which we said would be good for a 6x homer if the ball went through one of the hoops.

We went through the ritualistic self-toss hitting for teams which started with some self-strikes and some very meekly hit balls by me, Mark, and Des, making for the embarrassing circumstance where we all have to stand awkwardly close to the last batter and wince as he tosses the ball to himself, hoping that he doesn't pelt one of us.  John actually belted a solid deep fly to center, and with that the teams were set.

I should pause here to note that some very unsanctioned activity proceeded from this point forward.  Since no one had any official wiffle gear on them I had to make a stop the day before at Big 5 to get a bat and balls.  They didn't have any Wiffle-brand balls, so I had to settle on getting a couple of "Junk Balls", which are similar in size, but have a ring of holes directly across the middle and have one side that is ridged and one side that is smooth.  I dare say that I actually like the pitching action you get off these balls.  Their big flaw, however, seems to be durability.  They started cracking within the first few AB's.  Granted, the Wiffle-brand balls also crack often in snowy conditions, but this seemed worse.

One other thing to mention is that this wiffle outing was going to need to be a very short one due to the snow shutting down some transit options that would have otherwise been available to one of our number.  One full two-out inning was the (comical) compromise.  Not that the cracking balls would have let us play longer anyways.

Mark took the bump for his squad.  John and I got a couple quick walks.  Then John hit a slow roller to Mark's follow-through side, which he was able to pounce on before it stopped spinning, and thereby hold the ghost runners on 1st and 2nd (despite making a pretend throwing motion to 1st).  Then I drew another walk, and then John hit a routine pop-up just backwards of Mark.  But--and maybe it was due to the snowy conditions or the fact that Des and Mark had failed to take some practice flyballs before the first pitch--the ball felt destined to drop, and drop it did, as Mark got spun around on the ball and couldn't get a hand on it.  One run in.

After that I smacked one into deep center past the basketball hoop, good for a 2-run double, runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out.  John then hit a nice poke-shot double into center-right for another 2 runs.  Then I struck out to end the inning.

For our bottom half of the inning I started out on the mound by first giving John a practice pop-up (which he handled cleanly).  The balls were cracking and crumbling pretty bad at this point but we kept resuscitating them and they seemed to still be working well enough.  Desi ran the count full on me and then drew a leadoff walk.  Then I got ahead of Mark in the count and induced him into a shallow popup for out #1.  Next I got Desi in a quick 1-2 hole and tried my luck on him with a knuckleball which actually worked for a strikeout.  Game over.

Mark then tried to get some built-up frustration out on the terminal balls by pelting them into the outfield.  We then scattered the junk-ball remnants in inconspicuous places around the grounds so that John's daughter, Janie, would be able to find them and be really popular among her friends.

Mark leaving behind wiffle ruins for unborn generations to wonder at

Due to the shortness of the game, those of us that didn't have to leave early (Des, John, and I) decided to make a Starbucks run out of it.  We caught up on bygone names (e.g. Rick Wilden), family dynamics, TV shows, and some of the deeper things of life, like the comparison between decades for a growing family and the joys and pains of seeing how your children express themselves in life.  One inning of ball and 45 minutes of conversing might not have appealed to the brasher, younger versions of ourselves; the ones wearing iconic red Adidas pullovers or blue & gold "jerk shirts".  But for the chic spandex generation of Gil Tyrees it was glorious.

Game Highlights

• Desi inexplicably played us in the Joe-Friend shift the whole game.  We never let on about it.  
• I technically pitched a no-hitter.  
• Pops generously treated at Starbucks.     

Bonus literary reference: "Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of color; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness;... there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow."
-George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Game report by Pace Barker

September 15, 2018 - Game Recap

Pace & Chris vs. Paul & Verlan
Score: 18-19
Location: PARADIS3 Field (Fall City, WA)

As part of our raucous weekend of old college roommates getting together to enjoy some male bonding we made sure to dedicate a morning to a friendly game of wiffle.  The house we were staying at had a lot of acreage in the back, though with some grading challenges, but we were able to scout out a big patch and come up with an orientation that ended up making for some nice confines.

Once we were able to rouse Verlan from his deep slumber in his pitch-black guestroom, and he had appropriately layered himself, we made our way out to the maiden field to get things started.  We were a little late on start time but nobody was more than 15 minutes late so no lap-running punishments were enforced.

After hitting for teams Paul took to the mound to start off the contest.  He gave up a couple walks and a couple singles, plus a 2-run double which went over Verlan's head by quite a ways in the vast outfield which gave us all a chance to witness his interesting running form which I would describe as being very rigid and earnest, with short lunges, involving well-defined elbow thrusts (made all the more interesting by the swishing sounds of his plastic-y overcoat).  In the end of that half inning we put up 3 runs.

Then when it was our turn to take the field Chris took the mound to test out his pitching form.  Having not pitched in over 10 years, and dealing with fresh balls that hadn't yet been scuffed by time and bat contact, he struggled with his command, giving up 11 runs on only 3 hits (including one grand salami by Paul).

In the 2nd Chris and I put up just 1 or 2 more runs as we couldn't find much of a rhythm at the plate.  Paul and Verlan also put up just a couple runs as Chris settled a bit on the mound and as their plate disciple waned a bit.

In the 3rd Chris and I finally broke out for a 10-run inning with a steady string of solid hits all over the field, including a deep blast to the right-center, down-sloping homerun territory that sent Verlan running for an extra 50 feet or so in his pursuit of the ball down the wet grass and soil.  I took the mound in the bottom of the 3rd with a 15-13 lead and threw their hitting off with my rapid-fire delivery and some different arm angles.

Paul countered in the following inning with some erratic pitching that lulled us into taking some bad hacks for some easy outs.  Then they put up a run or two in their half of the frame which took us to the 5th and final inning with a score of 18-16, our lead.

With time running short we switched to a 2-out inning for that final inning.  Chris and I got the bases loaded but hit a couple grounders into the high grass that cut short our rally without tacking on any insurance runs.

In the bottom of the 5th I gave up a quick double to Paul, then got a strikeout on Verlan, then had Paul down in an 0-2 count, one strike away from victory.  I threw a good fast one in on his hands that he was able to inside-out for an opposite field single.  Then Verlan came up with 2 men on and heroically cranked an overhand curve up into the tree above the imaginary homerun line for a walk-off 3-run badonkadonk, earning himself MVP honors for the day.

Game Highlights

• Verlan successfully chased down a deep popup and caught it around his shins while still staying on his feet.
• Paul unsuccessfully chased down a short foul popup, diving into the wet grass with some interesting arm contortions.  This left him a bit rattled when he came back to the mound. 
• Paul set a record by multitasking during a wiffle game, coordinating funeral details on the phone with various church bigwigs back in Arlington.
• For postgame grub we went to McD's for breakfast.  Paul declared (sacrilegiously, in my opinion) that he wouldn't mind if the McMuffin or the McGriddle ceased to exist. 

Church guy 

Game report by Pace Barker