The Curse of the Host Team

		Your Junk my Happy Zone
		by Brandon Corbett

There is a curse that hangs over the wiffleball fields of southeastern Michigan. It stirs quietly, nigh unnoticeably. It does not behave like the curses of mummies found in Egyptian architectural digs; it has never claimed any lives, but it has been known to haunt the dreams of every tournament host at night. It gets in their heads. It will never allow them to win!

Our knowledge of the curse goes back as far as our knowledge of competitive wiffleball. It showed up twice in 2005, when we resumed play in 2009, and twice again in 2010. The occurrences are too frequent to be chalked up to coincidence. The wiffle community has come up with a multitude of theories as to why this phenomenon exists: psychological, scientific, athletic related, Bermuda triangular… perhaps some with a scant amount of merit. Yet no one has performed any research into the “why” or “what” is behind its unmistakable presence. So, over this offseason that is what I set out to do: find the source of the reason why wiffle host teams have been damned by the universe.

My initial searches of the popular internet search engine Google for “wiffleball fatalities,” “hundreds burnt to death in wiffleball tournament with poorly organized fire exit,” the similar yet possibly more apropos “tens drown in wiffleball tournament poorly organized to be played on swamp bog,” and the perhaps too on the nose, “ghost haunts wiffleball field” all proved fruitless. So, I expanded my horizons. I changed my search parameters to not only include wiffleball hauntings, but all baseball related games. This was the breakthrough in the case!

Now, softball and baseball are too well-established and played in too many places (even if still usually poorly organized) to be effectively haunted by a vengeful spirit, so I skipped over those cases and landed on a fascinating cricket story out of Dearborn, MI that had all of the elements that made it fit perfectly with our problem. I know, you’re thinking, “why cricket?” Well, maybe they knew what a crumpet is? That’s what you need to know to understand cricket, after all. Now then, back to our connection. In 1982 as part of the launch of the Detroit Cricket Club, a small 4 team tournament was played at a neighborhood park in the suburb of Dearborn. [Ed note: Does this sound like something that might happen in a sport we’re familiar with? Hmm…] The tournament was put on by one of the founding teams from the club, and they invited friends, neighbors, and friends’ neighbors’ kids to participate. One of the latter, a 14 year old referred to in the article only as Todd, is without a doubt in my mind our ghost. The hex that hangs over us is his. How can I be sure? Just read on.

1982 cricket article clipping

The team that came from the cricket club to put the event on had great intentions, but didn’t have enough proper equipment to go around, or the patience and tact to properly teach all the participants the ins and outs of the game. The organizers lacked batting leg guards in a size that fit Todd. In his first attempt he looked foolish trying to swing the cricket bat in an oversized pair, then stumbled and tripped trying to run in them when he finally made contact with the ball. So to remedy this, he did some Goldilocks problem solving, and wore leg guards that were too small for his second time up; an excruciatingly poor and painful decision. One of the bowler’s [“pitcher” in cricket] deliveries redirected off an uneven patch of dirt and caught Todd square in his left testicle. No one got to see whether Todd would have fared better running in the smaller pads, and Todd’s left testicle never experienced anything again after going into the hospital.

Details on the rest of Todd’s life are difficult to come by, but we can assume a few things. First, he never played cricket again. Second, because of the curse we can assume he held onto his hatred for small, independently run sports tournaments, especially those involving showdowns between pitchers and batters. Third, because of the hex that hangs over us he has passed away. [R.I.P. Todd. Your sports casualty is tragic. We feel terrible for you. Please, don’t haunt us.] I know, you’re asking, “why would he haunt wiffle? The likelihood of losing a nut in wiffle is infinitely small.” Well, yes, your nuts are tiny but that’s just going to get us off track. Todd’s vengeance is massive, unlike your small balls, and he is unable to satisfactorily deal out his wrath on only the few cricket clubs and teams in the area. He smites the Greens, Whites, and Blues of the DCC with all of his scorn every chance he gets, but that alone cannot satiate him. He needs more.

Wiffleball makes the perfect secondary target for Todd: pitchers, batters, tournaments organized by individuals played in parks and backyards, and most importantly host teams to use as the whipping boys for his lifetime of anger. [What? You thought the “seem familiar?” question in paragraph four was rhetorical?] By his ghostly logic wiffle is a perfect home away from home for his beyond the grave vengeance. How he effects the gameplay is purely conjecture as I am not a spiritual envoy, but I have a theory based on another wiffle phenomenon: the power of his lost testicle is supernaturally given to rookies, allowing them to play with, literally, 1.5 times the balls of veterans. This is supported by the evidence of outstanding performances by rookies through the history of WSEM, and perhaps it can also explain why some of the best rookie performers (Emery, Falleteich, and Negele) choose not to come back to the game – the feeling from their supernatural possession frightens them away from coming back. However Todd is able to do it, he is effective. In five tournaments no host team has ever won and only once have they made it to the championship. That one time happened to be our first tournament; it is likely the hosts’ early success was due to Todd not yet being aware of us or present in our midst.

Non-believers have tried to convince me that there are “real-world” explainable reasons for both the host teams’ lack of success, as well as rookies’ success. They say that the host team has so much else on their minds, like keeping everything organized and making sure everything is running smoothly, that people know where they’re supposed to be and when, keeping track of wins, losses, rankings and the bracket, and then having to focus on a game with all that going on. Rookies, on the other hand, think about next to nothing; having little experience with the game it is pretty much “see ball, hit ball” and when pitching “see target, hit target;” no over-thinking. Sure that sounds good, like math, but to them I say, “Todd works in mysterious ways…”

[Ed. note: After further, more sober research into the matter it appears possible that the “ball lost” by Todd may have been a ball he fouled off into the yard of a reclusive elderly resident, which would make this more a tale like ‘The Sandlot’ than a tale of sordid revenge. However, even IF this version of the story is true, it would remain possible that Todd, still responsible for the ball, went to get it back and was killed by the crazy old coot. Therefore, he’d still harbor ill will in the afterlife toward the cricket team and club for its poor tournament organization, namely still bringing adequate supplies. So, the case is not yet closed!]

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Brandon Corbett

F'n Squirrels, 17, P

Chief Experimentation Officer