Wiffle Ball: 2-on-2 Game Play – The Purest Form

This post is the second in a series about growing up playing Wiffle Ball in our Alley. In the first chapter in this series, I described three varieties of Wiffle Balls used in our Alley games and their associated strengths, weaknesses, and impact on game play. In this post, I will focus on the predominant style of game that we played, 2-on-2.

Though we would play with many different permutations of players in our Wiffle Ball games, the purest and most pleasing form of game play had to be 2-on-2. It was a perfect coupling between the athletic ability of the players and the physical properties of the main Alley Field. While well-played 2-on-2 games had scoring that mirrored the games our major league heroes were playing in, the single biggest strength of 2-on-2 play was action:

• When your team was batting, with only two hitters in the order, you were generally either on base or at bat.
• When the other team was batting, you were either pitching (initiating play on every pitch) or covering the entire field on defense.

Along with the idiosyncratic ground rules of the main Alley Field (to be covered in a future post) and the normal Wiffle Ball rules, 2-on-2 games carried a handful of special rules that evolved over time. These rules weren’t haphazardly applied. They were extracted out of a natural selection process that was several hundred games in the making. Two of the more important ones follow:

1. Pitcher’s hand was enabled. This meant that the pitching rubber doubled as first base. If you had a comebacker to the mound, the pitcher only had to reach Pitcher’s Hand before the batter reached first base to get an out. (When I say pitching rubber, you should realize that our pitching rubber was just a square chalk mark on the Alley pavement.)
2. Liberal Force-out Policy. Any runner on base would have to score on the next batted ball put into play. That runner could also be forced at any base. So for example, a player on first, could be forced at second, third, or home.

2-on-2 games also could be categorized based on whether an optional 5th player, termed the All-time Catcher, participated. An All-time Catcher didn’t get to bat. He was basically a subcontractor pulled into a game for one-purpose: defense. The term All-time Catcher is a bit misleading – the 5th player selected as the All-time Catcher didn’t have to catch for all-time (that would have really sucked), rather just for that game. 

Games where an All-time Catcher was employed were further subdivided into 2 classes as well, based on whether the All-Time Catcher was deemed to be live or dead. If the All-time Catcher was live, then he could participate in the game as a defensive player on a batted ball. That is, he could catch foul pops and make putouts in plays at the plate.

In games in which the All-time Catcher was dead, he was relegated to a strictly utilitarian role. A dead All-time Catcher that was particularly athletically-challenged and couldn’t keep in front of a pitch was also referred to as a retriever. A retriever would often spend more time chasing pitched balls back to that huge collection of bushes across from the Brooks’ garage than he would in the catcher’s box. A retriever was where good game flow went to die.

The competence of the 5th man usually dictated whether the All-time catcher was live or not. (No thanks, I’ll take care of it.) If you had 5 men ready to go, then somebody was going to be the odd man out and many times that 5th guy could ball. Volunteering to put work in as an All-time Catcher allowed one to build up street credits and to be a part of the game (in some small role). Since we would typically play a half-dozen or so games each day in the summer, getting your turn as All-time Catcher “out of the way” was also a strategy employed.

Games without an All-time Catcher radically increased the importance of pitcher control. If you were batting and your teammate was on base (a frequent occurrence), then you had no catcher behind you. If you took a pitch, you had to assume the retriever role! If the opposing pitcher was having trouble with his control or was just being a prick, you spent a lot of time in that game retrieving.

For the most part this problem was self-correcting. If your control was poor, you simply wouldn’t be allowed to pitch, or worse, play in a 2-on-2 game with no All-time Catcher. Word got around fast in our hood.

Savvy pitchers though, such as Your Faithful Servant, found ways to exploit the 2-on-2 game with no All-time Catcher. This is game-within-the-game type of stuff. I found that some hitters would have a different patience level with no All-time Catcher behind them. You couldn’t be blatant about it, but, with good control, you could throw the ball off the plate and get these impatient hitters (who despised retrieving) to swing. There was a threshold that you could walk to your advantage. On the off-chance that your pitch was on the other side of that threshold, you could always mutter “Sorry about that one”.

Even then, they were playing checkers and I was playing chess.