Coffee Time: Top 5 Pitchers

		Coffee Time
		by Carl Coffee

My first "Coffee Time" article for The Skinny will focus on the most important player on any wiffleball team: the pitcher. From when we first started hosting wiffleball tournaments in 2005 to this past year, every winning team road the coattails of a hot pitcher. David Negele, Joe Emery, Eric Falletich, Brian Constanti, and Brandon Corbett all were the reasons why their teams won their respective tournaments. We currently have six teams signed up for our inaugural season, so this will rank the top 5 pitchers in the league from those teams. I am going to use past stats, personal experience hitting off of these pitchers, and future potential. Enjoy!

#5 Dylan Braden [Git r Done]

Dylan of Git r Done is one the youngest and most talented players in the league. His team shocked everyone in the 2010 Flag-a-Palooza by reaching the finals. This young gun was the reason for their success that day. He won 3 games for his team with a 2.83 ERA while striking out 36 batters, which included 4 first pitch strike outs. Dylan is only going to get better this season and in my opinion is a potential MVP. Although he made this list at #5, he may not even pitch much this season. Teammate Dennis Pearson appears to be his team’s number one pitcher. If that's the case, then Dylan will easily be the best number two pitcher in the league.

#4 Maclin Malloy [Westside Warriors]

Maclin Malloy is next on the list at four, but ranks first in the league for coolest name. When the Warriors made their debut at the Flag-a-Palooza last year it appeared they used trial and error to find their number one pitcher. After watching Whelan, Woods, and Shore all try their hand, Malloy took the mound and ran away with the job. He pitched 21 innings that day: winning 3 games, striking out 26, including 4 first-pitch K's, and had a 1.43 ERA. Malloy wasn't able to play at the Hoppes September tournament, so I haven't been able to see that much of him, but his stats do not lie. I expect big things from him this summer.

#3 Chad Hoppe [Wiffling DeLoppes]

Although Chad Hoppe ranks in at #3, in my opinion he is the poster boy for pitchers in our league. There isn't a team out there who depends more on one player. With that said, I have to rank him here because in the three tournaments his team has played in he hasn't been to a championship game. The one thing that is stopping Chad from being #1 is run support. When you see Chad on the mound, you think to yourself "I can hit this guy", then before you know it he hangs a curveball on the first pitch that somehow hits the corner and you are out. In the three tournaments Chad has played in he has put up some incredible stats. His three ERA's have been (1.54, 1.56, and 1.38) and he has a combined 98 Ks! I've gone to bat against Chad many times and you definitely have to be on your toes. Along with his pitching he is also one of the best defensive pitchers in the league, and always knows where to be when the ball is in play. I may regret putting him at #3...

#2 Brandon Corbett [Flying Squirrels]

I've been playing wiffleball with and against Brandon now for over six years and it is crazy to see him dominate at pitching like this. When we first started playing competitive wiffleball in 2005, this guy wasn't even a pitcher! It wasn't until 2009 when we put together a team and realized none of us were pitchers that he jumped on the mound and quickly learned the role. You can easily notice the improvement Brandon has made if you look at the stats from the three tournaments he has pitched in. First case in point, ERA: (2.94, 1.11, 0.26). Second case in point, Ks: (13, 17, 20). Third and final case in point, Wins: (1, 2, 4). In every single tournament Brandon has gotten better. At the Hoppe's September tournament he only gave up one earned run in 19 innings! Getting about one per inning he doesn't rack up the strike outs like Chad does, but as his short stop I know what he does better than anyone in the league... get ground ball outs. Brandon is a very accurate pitcher which means the batters take a lot of defensive swings against him. Defensive swings equal ground balls, which equal easy outs. It is going to be tough to improve on his last pitching performance at the Hoppes, but I wouldn't bet against him!

#1 Brian Constanti [Newport Ass Kickers]

I had a tough time deciding whether or not to rank a player at #1 who has only pitched in one tournament over two guys (Chad, Brandon) who have pitched in three. I thought if over and then I reread Brian's stats from the 2010 Flag-a-Palooza tournament; at that point my decision was easy. Much like the Warriors, Brian and team Kickass did not know who their pitcher would be at the start of the day. Once Brian took the hill, they found their guy. Brian won an amazing 5 games for his team that day, and only allowed 2 runs in 29 innings (0.34 ERA). His fastball had so much late movement, it was virtually unhittable. Brian struck out 42 batters in the tournament and easily won the MVP award. When I found out that his team was joining our league, (Newport Ass Kickers) it got me very excited. Having the chance to bat against great pitchers is an exciting challenge, and there is nothing more satisfying than getting a big hit off them or beating them on the field. If he can continue to pitch like he did in the Flag-a-Palooza, Brian and his team will be a favorite to win it all.

I hope you enjoyed my rankings. When the season gets underway and we start playing some games, I will adjust the rankings every month or so. I look forward to hitting against all of you!

-
Carl Coffee, 18, SS
Flying Squirrels Captain
Commissioner of WSEM

Getting Wiffleball in the Palm of the Hand

[We begin the reminiscence with our first narrator, a veritable pied piper who led wiffleball into southeastern Michigan, league founder, Carl Coffee.]

Competitive wiffleball first caught my attention in the early summer of 2004 thanks to a Google search for "wiffleball tournaments." I saw that people all over the country took this weird, silly game very seriously. With further research I found that there were some competitive tournaments near where I lived. I’d taken a job upstate and wasn’t living at home that summer, so I wasn't able to get much playing time in. Still, I decided to sign up for a tournament in London, Ohio, and brought along Dave Gapske, my brother, Nick, and the pseudonymous Mac36 to fill out our four man roster. We drove down to what seemed like the middle of nowhere and only had one team practice, in the motel parking lot at 11pm. We ended up going 3-3 the next day, but had a lot of fun. That tournament began my love affair with competitive wiffleball.

Dave Gapske, Nick Coffee, and Mac36 of the first Lugnuts
posing for a photo at London, OH's most famous landmark.

After we played in London the summer was almost over and I was about to go back to VA for college. Still in those last months in the summer of 2004 we built a makeshift field and had some batting practice at Brownstown Middle School. I always loved to go to BMS during the summers because it was very isolated and no one would bother me. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but BMS would soon become our home for competitive wiffle.

As the spring of 2005 came I was pumped to start a wiffleball league. We used a lot of the rules from London with one very big difference... fast-pitch. Wiffleball in my mind was always meant to be played fast-pitch style. In most wiffleball leagues, fast-pitch does not involve base running. I love the uniqueness of our leagues rules, and that they have stuck to this day. Anyway, with the help of Dave, we started a webpage and called our league: the Downriver Wiffleball League. The webpage wasn't much to look at, and later, as we tried, we discovered that forming an actual league was extremely difficult. The interest in competitive wiffleball in the area just wasn’t at that level.

When I came back to Michigan in May we decided to build a field. Dave and I, along with Nick and Brandon Corbett, dragged some leftover construction materials and built our very first field in the Northeast corner of BMS. Our strike zone was even made using discarded wood from a construction site. The outfield fence was mostly orange construction fencing, and in left field we propped up some tall temporary chain-link fencing. Here is picture of our first field:

The Lugnuts playing on Danger Field, 2005

On one of the fences there was a sign with "Danger" on it. That sign coupled with our realizing that someone could be hurt on this unstable, heavy wall we had built prompted one of us to come up with the name “Danger Field.” The naming fun doesn't end there; our version of The Green Monster needed a name, so Brandon used his wit and came up with "The Rodney.” The name and nickname stuck. We’ve even had memorial patches for The Rodney.

2009 Danger Field memorial patch

We gave up on having a league and turned our attention to hosting a few tournaments that summer. Our first tournament, Wiffle Palooza, was held the Saturday before Memorial Day and we were able to draw eight teams. Most of the teams were old high school buddies, but one team was a writer for the News Herald and his sister. He even wrote a story: http://www.wifflehouse.com/ybn/archive/2005_05_29_archive.html.

With eight teams and only one field there was a lot of waiting around that day. The tournament was still fairly successful and besides my team, it was everyone else’s first experience with a competitive wiffleball tournament. An unlikely star, David Negele, came out of nowhere to dominate the tournament. He won the MVP award and led his team to a 1-0 victory in the championship against Nick, Dave, and myself. It was Negele’s first and only tournament with us. He would never play again. We decided that our next tournament would be held near Flag Day and this time we would need to add a second field.

Brownstown Middle School was still under construction, so finding material to build a second field was easy and fun. To make building our second field quicker we used some fencing that was always present. For our right field fence, we used the tall fence from the tennis courts. For our left field fence, we used the fence from the track. For the remaining part of the field, we used material found on the school grounds. For you wifflers who played with us in 2009 and 2010, our 2nd field in 2005 was built where our present day Pacman Park/Southfield is. We called this field Gill Yards, because we used a lot of the old hurdles which were from the track to support the fencing in center field. The hurdles brand name was, of course, "Gill".

Our second tournament only had six teams, but I still consider it a huge success. With a little more advertising on wiffleball.net and the newspaper article we were able to gain some attention. This Flag Day tournament had three teams of high school friends, and then three teams of guys we did not know. One of those teams even came up from Ohio, which at the time made us feel really special. With the two fields and having only six teams, this tournament ran very smoothly. I remember the temperature at the time was over 90 degrees! An unknown guy named Joe Emery, who was well in his 40s, stole the show in the playoffs with his pitching, and took the MVP award along with a championship. [He had so much fun out there that he even gave back a portion of the winnings!] Even though the focus back then was on offense, pitching won the championship in both tournaments.

As the summer went on we started to focus in on slow-pitch in order to train for the London Wiffleball Tournament. We replaced Mac36 with Brandon, who’d been practicing with us despite fielding his own team since our league played only three fielders while London had four, and we were very confident to do well. Well, our 2005 London experience was exactly the same as 2004. We went 3-1 in round robin play and then 0-2 in the playoffs.

Wiffleball in 2005 was filled with trial and error, sweat and blood, winning and losing, but what I remember most was feeling like a kid again: playing a game that was every bit as fun as it was competitive. I'll never forget that summer and the guys who were a part of it.

[Now, the part where we switch narrators and hear the nostalgia from another source, Brandon Corbett, and bring it into the modern era.]

It’s funny; with all the differences over the years, I didn’t remember that we only played two fielders behind the pitcher, Wiffle Fest style, in 2005. That’s a pretty big difference in the game to not pay attention to, but hey! Most of us were too focused on putting up offensive numbers to notice things like "fielders," I guess.

Carl mentioned that offensive focus, and that, without a doubt, is the biggest change in our game over the years: the style of play. In that first season it was all about hitting statistics and power numbers. Our practices were batting practice, home run derbies; I can remember Nick and me dragging a tape measurer into the woods, through thick underbrush to see if he had set a new distance record; sort of accurate, completely worth it! It was all about building an admirable fence and then crushing the ball over it. Conversations about the game and the stats back then only used the letters RBI, HR, and SLG; maybe ERA once or twice, but nobody brought up stats like WHIP, first-pitch strike, K/BB ratio, or KPI (strike-outs per Inning). It was a completely different attitude toward wiffleball than we have now. League-wide pitching was approached very differently, as a secondary concern really.

We billed ourselves as a fast-pitch league, but most pitchers seemed to throw a mid-pitch game: huge sweeping curves, wacky motions, going around the batters back, through their legs, or over the top trying to clip the top of the strike zone. It was as though everyone was their kid-self again on the mound, reliving the game as it was played back then. The objective wasn’t so much to make the batter miss, as it was to keep it arced out of their reach. There are three pitching performances, though, that stand out to me from that first season: David Negele and Joe Emery, who Carl mentioned, as well as Dave Gapske from Carl’s Lugnuts. All three were fireballers, true fast-pitch pitchers. Negele’s arm held up longer than Gapske’s and won his team a championship, just as Emery’s arm won him a championship. The dominance of their fireballing style on the mound revolutionized pitching and Downriver Wiffle.

August 15^th, 2009, Downriver Wiffle held its first tournament in over four years, and nearly every pitcher came out throwing heat: true fast-pitch wiffleball. The game had completely changed. Pitchers weren’t being cute; they were trying to blow batters away. Batters weren't sitting back waiting to drive a ball; they were fighting off pitch after pitch trying not to be struck out. For the first time our rules and style of play were working toward a common goal, a pitchers’ league: 5-ball, 2-strike count, first-pitch strike/no swing strike-out, three fielders, and the pitchers absolutely bringing it. Gapske and new teammate, Eric Falletich, from Clownshoes formed the most dominating one-two punch I have ever seen. Falletich, in his only tournament, recorded 45 outs. 42 were strikeouts. Clownshoes led the revolution from the mound that ended our “steroid era” with all other pitchers striding right behind them. … Of course, this was the first year I pitched, so my opinion may be bit biased, but the numbers back it up.

Since 2009 the Squirrels and DeLoppes have never played a game that was
decided by more than two runs, or had more than eight total runs:
two extra inning affairs and two walk-off wins are included in this pitching duel rivalry.

One thing that has always been the same throughout the years, though, is the feeling of invention, creating something that is its own, something different, something new, something that is yours. Every season, whether with tournaments or the league this year, we’re creating something that only so few people will get to be a part of and that is special. We have a competitive sports league we’ve built with friends and great talent from across the Metro Detroit area and beyond. That’s amazing, and there are so many ways to be inventive with wiffleball: your rules, pitches, field designs, team names, logos, league identities [*Expect future posts about many of these!]. Every one of these, everything about this game is something to have so much fun with.

What I really hope we can accomplish with the league this year is to form a community that bonds over wiffleball, makes the game a part of their lives along with the friendships that come from it, and will continue the growth of the game in the Metro Detroit area. When we started Downriver Wiffle in 2005 there was little interest and next to no enthusiasm for wiffle here. Over the past couple years people like the Hoppes, Shore and his guys, Pearson, the Bradens, and the Constantis have shown how interest is rising and that the enthusiasm is becoming audible. I hope to capitalize on the momentum we have and not let the interest wiffle has in Metro Detroit right now fade the way it has in the past, but instead keep wiffle expanding in Southeast Michigan and throughout the state. Maybe when we come back in 2012 we’ll have enough teams to have divisions: North and South, East and West… South and East – be all ACC-like with their Atlantic and Coastal – whatever the names. The idea that interest in wiffleball has started showing signs of becoming so prominent that it can support something like that in Southeast Michigan is one of the most terrific things I have ever been lucky enough to have a role in helping make a reality.

Wiffle is just flat out fun, always, everything about it; it is a dream, while at the same time being a reality: millions of times more rewarding than fantasy sports. Having this league, getting lost behind the scenes in running things is absolutely a happy place. We could change the plans for our championship trophy and play for “the Fountain of Youth,” because that is really what we have assembled here.

[We are here. We are excited to be: bright-eyed, beaming with hope and brimming with ideas. We have brought wiffle through a lot over the last five years and now are letting it carry us into uncharted territory with the league starting up. We are going to share with you as much of this stuff we’ve experienced, fantasized, and divined along the way as we can in future columns here on the Skinny. We hope you find some interest in this and, more importantly, some fun always, because we are going to have fun with this. This column. This year. This game. Cheers!]

What is Wiffle in Southeast Michigan?

Wiffle in Southeast Michigan is a fast-pitch, base running wiffleball league that also hosts a number of tournaments during the warmer months of the year. Our pitchers' mound is set 45' from the strike zone [which is 30" high x 22" wide] inside a 5' radius "pitchers' poison" circle for force outs. 3 defenders play behind the pitcher and can record outs by tagging a base or runner, catching the ball in the air, throwing to the pitchers' poison, or pegging a runner between 3rd and home. Base paths are 45' to every base. We use a 5-ball, 2-strike count to keep batters engaged and swinging in an attempt to prevent the ability to sit on an easy "hitter's pitch" and the slow-pitch softball hitting derby scenarios that would ensue. We like our game as much like baseball as we can make it. So, we skew our rules accordingly. We like good pitching. We like exciting plays, good competition, small-ball, manufacturing and earning runs, and spectacular defensive effort. We still get our fair share of light-tower bombs, and everyone loves that!

You can read more in depth and about all the little specific details on our Rules and Regulations page. For further information about how we play our brand of wiffleball get in touch with us on Facebook, which we use prominently for releasing info on upcoming events, or send us an e-mail and we will be more than happy to talk with you about any and every question you may have.