Balls Among Men (and Women!) Pt. II

Slapball

 I created this game my senior year of high school and unlike the version of baseball I proposed, this game has actually been played.

Rules:

1. This game is played with 6-8 people, 3-4 people per team. 
2. Slapball is gender neutral, meaning teams can be mixed, unlike most sports.
3.  The court is preferably a large room, but the game was first played on an auditorium stage. A basketball court might do the trick.
4. The court is divided horizontally down the middle.
5. The court itself has two options:
• Walls are set up at the farthest ends of the court. The purpose will be explained later.
• The ends of the courts are empty, but the court is required to be longer in both directions so the players have the space to run.

Gameplay:

1. Teams start on their respective sides of the court. Suggestions for team setup:

2. The person in the front, i.e. closest to the line, is the server. The server tosses the ball (see below for details) into the other side of the court, and it must bounce at least once. Because this is the serve and the beginning of the round, it must be a gentlemanly toss, meaning that it cannot be whipped into play, nor can it bounce over the other server's head.
3. Once the ball is tossed in the round has begun, not after the first bounce. This is important for the next couple of rules.
4. The ball cannot bounce on the ground more than 3 times. If the ball bounces more than three times, even after and between slaps, the other team gets a point.
5. If the ball ends up rolling for whatever reason, it is considered dead and the opposite side of the dead ball gets a point.
6. The ball cannot be slapped more than 3 times. This number is cumulative between teammates until the ball reaches the other side.
7. The ball can be slapped 3 times by 1 player, or 3 times between teammates.
8. If the ball comes in contact with teammates more than 3 times, the other team gets a point.
9. While the correct way to make contact with the ball is a slap, i.e. a flat hand, the ball may be backhanded, punched, chest- and/or belly-bumped, and/or head-bounced.
10. The ball may not be kicked. Kicking will result in the opposing team to get a point, but this is subject to the referee's call.
11. Most of these are at the players’ own risk, and is especially not suggested during The Thunder Round.
12. After every 3^rd round, Slapball enters The Thunder Round. A round is over after each point is scored.
13. The balls used are the following:

To acquire one, search the interwebs or ask your local toy store about Helium Balls.

This is the lightning ball. It is filled with helium, relatively light, and is the ball the game starts off with. It bounces quickly, so be ready!

To acquire one, search the interwebs for "ball filled with water and glitter" or ask your local toy store.

These are thunder balls (I have the green one!). No, don’t worry; they are not all in play at once. As stated in rule #10, after every 3^rd round the lightning ball is removed and the thunder ball is put into play. This ball is much heavier, picks up much more speed, and requires a lot more force to slap back. Regardless of this, all above rules, including the bounce and contact rules, apply. Following The Thunder Round, the thunder ball is removed and the lightning ball is put back into play.

14. The game should have a referee to make calls on contacts and bounces, as well as making general calls on other issues that might arise.
15. In order to keep teams and referees fair, in the event of odd numbers, such as 3 vs. 4, after every Thunder Round teams rotate clockwise.

16. Regarding walls: If the ball hits the walls at the back ends of the court and returns to the opposing side without coming in contact with a player, the sending team gets a point.

While this is shown in the diagram, three bounces are not required to count against the receiving team. If the receiving team does not make contact with a ball before it returns to the senders’ side, it is a point for the sending team. 

  17. Rule #1 of Slapball above all rules: Talk about Slapball!

Balls Among Men (and Women!) Pt. I

Today I have a two-for-one special. Last night while trying to sleep, as all great inventors do, I came up with a new game. I'm also going to introduce a very special game dear to my heart.

Baseball

  I really shouldn't have to explain the rules of baseball to any of you, but basically you have people around the field, a person at each of the four bases, and a pitcher. The pitcher throws the ball at the batter and if he's good enough (which no one really is) he hits it and hopefully it goes so far that no one can catch it and he gets to run in a giant square and he gets a point. Doesn't that sound so exciting?

That's actually really really cool.

  So how does such an unsportsy person like me have any hope of changing a game as old-school as baseball? Get rid of the bat.

  "What?!" "You must be crazy!" "I'll cover the bill if you get the tip." are things you are probably thinking right now, but really only that last one if you're watching Reservoir Dogs.

It's true though. It isn't his fault that their tips are taxed. Though he's still a dick.

  Well I'm [probably] not crazy, I was just thinking, we've got kickball, why don't we have a baseball-like game where you punch the ball? Then I thought, that's stupid, mostly because it involved the pitcher rolling the ball to you like in kickball and then you uppercut it. It sounds awesome now, but try doing it. You'll probably miss and remove all the skin from your knuckles.

I refuse to find a picture of torn-up knuckles, so here's a picture of Greg Kinnear.

  The next step to this was to remove the pitch-hit-catch formula and make the batter more of a catcher. Perhaps steps will be easier to understand. Plus, I really like lists.

1. The "batter" has a padded glove like the catcher has on.
2. The pitcher throws the ball to the "batter" like the pitcher usually does. The padded glove is for the impact.
3. The "batter" then has 5 seconds (or 3, we'll see how it goes) to get rid of the ball. The key here is, instead of hitting the ball into the field with a bat, he has to throw it into the field.
4. The rest of it goes as baseball goes; with people yelling useless advice from the stands and distracting the batter with witty things like "We want a batter, not a broken ladder!"

  The reason that I would see this being more interesting than baseball is that you have a bit more control over the ball. Batting is hard, and according to this website the best batting average goes to Ty Cobb with .366. Wikipedia informs me that that means "batting average (BA) is defined as the quotient of hits divided by at bats." From what I learned from backyard baseball, and simple division, even if the coach keeps me on, if I'm shitty but keep going up to bat, my average is going to be incredibly low. 

I don't really need any further education beyond Achmed Khan. His brother was terrible though, not gonna lie.

  That's obvious, and that's how baseball works and we pay baseball players tons of money to be terrible at something that is hard. But I'm sure I'll bring in a lot of flak from baseball fans, so we're going to move on.


  Back to the control thing, you have 5 seconds to identify where the weak points are in the field and get rid of the ball. That seems much more interesting than fighting against the force of a 100 mph ball with a stick. The field would have to be smaller so that home runs were at all possible as well. Plus, because the batter has to be skilled in throwing the ball beyond fielding, the whole team would have to be better at throwing and catching. This could open up pitching beyond the star pitcher. This way you might not have a designated pitcher all of the time, meaning the other team can't just learn any patterns in the game and rely on skill alone. Again, I don't know a whole lot about baseball and don't want to make a fool of myself, but the chaotic factor of a person being able to do almost whatever they want with the ball seems like it would be pretty interesting. Grounders might be much more common, but because the field is scaled down it wouldn't make much of a difference. 


  On the other hand, without bats we wouldn't have awesome things like this: