By Tim “Shoe” Sullivan

As a 12-year old growing up in Stevens Point, the most fun I ever had was playing in my only year of Little League.

The year was 1961, and I was fortunate to have the late Garth Whitaker as the manager. My Firefighters’ teammates included Tommy Jensen, John “Yatch” Herek, Mike Simonis, Dave Garber, and about 15 other kids, and everyone got along great. 1961 was also the year I started playing wiffleball. And what a ride that was.

All of the games were “one against one”. A pitcher and a batter. No bases. We used “imaginary runners”. Nobody ever ran anywhere. If you got a walk, your imaginary runner was awarded his imaginary first base. If you then hit a double, you would have imaginary runners on second and third. And so on.

The wiffleball “field” was our driveway. Almost all of the neighborhood kids who played wiffleball in our driveway hated it because we had some crazy rules. Charlie Rossier. My brother Casey. Tommy Jensen. The Stroik brothers. None of them cared for wiffleball in the driveway.

The home plate area was fine, and nobody complained. The garage served as the backstop. No problem there. We had a pillow set in front of the garage, and that was home plate. So far so good. But then came the bad news.

If you hit the ball straight up the middle between the two houses, and it wasn’t caught by the pitcher, you got a single. Or a double if it rolled into Water Street. Or a home run if it reached the street on the fly. Guys hit home runs into Water Street maybe once every lunar eclipse. The big problem…in fact, the only problem, was the foul lines.

To the immediate north of home plate was Mrs. Schmidt’s house. All line drives that smashed into Mrs. Schmidt’s house were ruled foul. In other words, left-handed batters were basically screwed. They would hit the ball a ton and only have a strike to show for it. And right-handed batters weren’t much better off. If a righty smacked the ball and it went a few feet to the side of the driveway, it would always hit our house. Too bad; foul ball.

A batter could even break a window and still only get a strike. And then came another strange “ground-rule”. If you hit a pop-up past Mrs. Schmidt’s chimney, it counted for a home run. If you hit a little fly on top of OUR roof, you also got a homer. This was kinda like Fenway Park with two “Green Monsters”. Everyone was mad ‘cuz they could hit line drives all day and have nothing to show for it, but they could easily lose the game on a simple short pop-up.

The opponents always complained, but if they didn’t like it, they could go fish for bullheads in the Wisconsin River a block away.

It never hurt if you were a decent enough batter, but the name of the wiffleball game was the pitching. The problem was, I sucked at pitching. We used a wiffleball with a bunch of round holes, and my pitches always came in straight as an arrow with little speed.

And most of them weren’t even strikes. When I did get one of them over for a strike, the ball usually came back whistling right past my head. My win-loss record was pathetic. A lot of imaginary runners scored for my opponents.

But later in the summer of ‘61, fate intervened. I was in the Sport Shop downtown. Garth Whitaker, my Little League manager, ran the place. He showed me a brand new wiffleball which came in a small box. Either a picture of Pete Rose or Mickey Mantle was on the cover.

I bought one for under a buck. Immediately brought it home. I put on my little Johnny Podres glove, even though there actually wasn’t an opposing hitter. Stepped on the pitching rubber which was about 20 feet from home plate, and threw it at the garage as fast as possible.

Darn thing broke about three feet. I missed the entire garage and hit Mrs. Schmidt’s car in her parking lot.

This was awesome! I fired that ball at least 50 more times at the garage and never hit it twice in a row. Then I sat down and took another look at the box. And there it was! They had a small diagram which said if you hold the ball this way, then the ball will go THAT way. Or at least it’s supposed to.

So I held the ball a certain way, and son of a gun — best curve ball you ever saw. And simple to control.

The neighborhood kids didn’t have a prayer. As soon as we started using that new wiffleball, EVERYONE struck out! All the time. Many many times I’d throw three pitches and strike someone out. They’d miss it by two feet. Simply unhittable. Nine pitches. Nine strikes. Sit down. The huge advantage I had was the knowledge of how to grip the ball.

Nobody else could figure it out. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t come close to hitting it, either. But the other pitchers were so wild, all I had to do was not swing and take walks. Was on the winning side of countless 1-0 games.

The years passed. Had to find new opponents. That wasn’t easy. Nobody wanted to play if we used that ball. And then, maybe 20 years ago, a bunch of Pointer hockey players moved into Schmidt’s house. Those guys were great hockey players and won a national championship, and I partied with them a lot.

During the winter parties, I kept talking about the wiffleball, and eventually damn near the whole team couldn’t wait until spring to try it out. In particular, a big defenseman named “Franco” was always making jokes about wiffleball. He never let up. I knew right then that he’d be the first guy to bat for them.

Finally spring arrived. They had a half barrel on their back porch (about ten feet from home plate), and the long-awaited game began. I batted first. Their pitcher, a backup goalie, the one who played Elvis songs all winter, threw his first pitch. It hit me on the foot. Man on first. His second pitch almost hit a sparrow in the tree behind the garage.

He walked me 10 straight times, and most of his pitches weren’t even in the same zip code as the home plate pillow.

Eventually they came to bat. I yelled: “Okay Franco, get in there!”

Finally. Their whole team was cheering him on; “come on Franco! You can do it!’ Stuff like that. So big Franco stepped up to the plate. He dug in. They had their choice of a wooden bat, a thick red plastic bat, or a black plastic baseball bat. Franco chose the black baseball bat.

I wound up and threw the ball as hard as I could right at his ear. Franco jumped back. The wiffleball actually started out a few inches behind his head. The hockey guys roared. And just like that, it broke down sharply and cut through the middle of the plate. He had zero chance of hitting it — strike one.

Next pitch was the same thing; strike two. The hockey guys were laughing their butts off. And Franco was mad. Gave him a third curveball. Franco swung at it and missed it by three yards. Grab some pine, Franco…the next 12 Pointers all went down swinging.

We played for about two hours. Score was in my favor. Franco struck out about five more times. But then another goalie, a short lefty named Tony Bergeron, came up to bat with a plan. Instead of swinging, he’s merely flick his bat and foul the pitch off.

God, he must’ve fouled off about 20 pitches and I was getting damn tired. Finally got him out on a weak grounder. But I was exhausted. A winger, Ryan Akia, was next. Big tall guy. I threw that curveball at about half-speed, and Akia crushed it over my house’s roof. They went on to win as I had nothing left. And right at the end, my other neighbor “Minnow” asked to bat.

I threw him another half-speed curve and Minnow nailed it. A dump truck was slowly cruising down Water Street. Minnow’s long flyball sailed into the street on the fly and landed in the back of the moving truck. We ran out of balls. Game ended on the longest wiffleball home run ever since that truck kept going Lord knows where.

But it sure was fun while it lasted.