Among the many features of Redsfest 2006 was the indoor wiffleball field, where real-live grown-ups played real-live wiffleball on a real-live indoor/outdoor carpet.

I didn't watch much of the wiffleball tournament, but when I caught glimpses, I noticed a striking difference in skill. One team seemed to just keep batting around, another seemed like they just couldn't get the hang of a hollow plastic bat and ball with holes in it.

I'm not sure which would be more embarrassing.

The best part is that, after the tournament was complete, the program actually showed general access to the wiffleball diamond for even us non-homemade-team-shirt-wearing plebeians.

Thankfully for everyone involved, the wiffleball diamond featured a device you probably didn't know existed, and will soon discover you cannot live without: a wiffleball pitching machine. Just think of it: gone are the days of lobbing a wiffleball 15 feet in the air to make the vertical distance of eight feet between you and the batter, only to have the wind pick it up halfway there and send it into the neighbor's yard! Finally, a wiffleball moving in a more-or-less straight line!

What will they think of next??

Hanging high above the wiffleball diamond were enormous jerseys to demonstrate the new team look if Ray King were on the team. The CTS took these photos well before the fashion show, so if I'd been on my game, we could have been showing off the new threads a whole hour earlier than we did.


But it's probably better that we didn't. There's got to be some privilege for the people who skip work to go to Redsfest.