Take them out to the (Wiffle) ball game
Ryan Norris does meticulous preparation. He shows up at the ballfield at least an hour early from hie Newton home and carefully measures eight narrow triangles, marking their boundaries with orange spray paint. In his trunk, he carries several models of 31-inch bats. Most are plastic. And yellow. The best bats were made in the late 1990s and are just a few grams heavier than those made in other years. In this game, every little bit counts.
For at least two hours each Sunday, Norris and about 40 others use those skinny bats to try to knock the daylights out of a finicky ball about the weight of an empty soda can.
Welcome to the ''sport" of Wiffle ball, a game that in recent years has ballooned in popularity from friendly battles at a neighborhood barbecue to a pursuit that prompts grown-ups to endure winter training.
''The two greatest things in sports are striking someone out and hitting a home run," said Chuck Freedman of Newton, a consultant for
You don't have to be particularly athletic to dominate the game (pregame nourishment at a recent game consisted of a box of doughnuts in a tent on the sidelines). If you can develop a talent for consistently hitting a ball straight for 80 feet, you'll be a star.
''It's really remarkable when you go to tournaments where there are 80 or 90 teams, and you see the diverse physical specimens," Norris said. ''You come up against guys who are 6 feet 2, 300 pounds. They're sweating and they're breathing heavily. You also come on 12- and 14-year-old kids who have these quick, long swings. I've seen 12-year-old kids who are just as good as 28-year-old guys."
Norris, a 25-year-old software developer, started the Charles River Wiffleball League in Newton two months ago to fill a ''black hole" in suburbs west of Boston that lack a regular venue for the game. Players come each week from as far away as South Boston, Westborough, Weymouth, Hanover, and Acton.
Norris recently developed software to update the league's website with stats -- everything from runs batted in to WHIP, an acronym for measuring walks, hits, and innings pitched. Scorecards at the games keep track of what happens on each pitch.
''The stat-keeping alone shows how geeky we get about it," Norris said. ''We're talking about [using] other sabermetrics you can use to measure someone's value in the game. It makes the league really geeky, but it also shows how unique we are. When I have an opponent the next week, I check out their team's stats to prepare."
There are 14 teams, each of which puts up $175 to join the league, including father-son and husband-wife squads. One team is made up of Waltham High School juniors, who have to solicit rides from their parents to get to the games. Their team name is Jamaica (which they don't have an explanation for), and they are 2-10 on the season. They don't seem to mind.
''Who's ready for the next pounding?" said Scott Giacomozzi, 17, after losing a game, 10-0, to the Glamour Shots, one of the best teams in the league. They lost the second game of the double-header as well.
Each week, teams get together for two games. Many of the players are backyard Wifflers -- those who played growing up but are far from experts of the game -- but several teams use the league as a warm-up for major tournaments throughout New England.
Wiffle Ball Inc. was founded in the 1950s by David Nelson Mullany, who started making hollow plastic balls to make it easier for his son to throw a curve in backyard pickup games. In their Connecticut neighborhood, a strikeout was called a whiff. When they started playing with this new ball, it sailed past most hitters and they started calling it Wiffle ball. As the story goes, they dropped the ''h" so they would have one less letter to print if they ever had to make signs for the business.
The first year, a broomstick was used as a bat, but later the company started making plastic bats.
Now, bats come in all styles, with names such as Ledge Sledge, Black Magic, and Wiffle Pro. The Charles River Wiffle Ball League bans bats that are not made of plastic.
One of the advantages of the game is that it requires so few players. There are between one and five players per team, with no more than three on the field at any one time. Games have only six innings and last about an hour, compared with baseball's nine innings, which typically last around three hours.
There are also no base runners. Instead, hits are determined by how far the ball goes: a single for at least 40 feet, a double for 60 feet and over, a triple if it hits the wall, and a home run if it goes over the wall, which is 80 feet from home plate.
There are no catchers and no umpires (though disputes are overseen by Norris, the commissioner). Instead, there's a strike zone that is 18 inches wide and 25 inches tall and sits 15 inches above the ground. The strike zone is made of plexiglass and if the ball hits the glass, it's a strike. Unlike baseball, you can also strike out on a foul.
The game is very much in the pitcher's favor. Some have reported throwing no-hitters in back-to-back games.
''The ability to be a good pitcher and a good hitter is the earmark of a very good Wiffle ball player," Norris said. ''It's what made me a lesser Wiffle ball player. I threw out my arm several years ago, and now I can't find the strike zone."
Pitching speeds vary, but in the Charles River League, anything above 40 miles per hour is illegal. Norris keeps a radar gun in his car in case there are questionable pitchers.
It is also illegal to do anything to the balls to affect their flight, which means no Vaseline or sandpaper. The balls are the same size as a baseball, but about one-sixth the weight.
Typically, there are six pitches used in Wiffle ball: the fastball, curve, riser, sinker, screwball, and knuckleball. The sinker and the riser are typically the most difficult to master because they are thrown sidearm. (A riser, a pitch that is difficult to throw in baseball, starts low and sails high.)
John Phillips, who is originally from France and now lives in Providence, is leading the league in hitting, with a .638 batting average. Tim Speros, who lives in Arlington, is leading the league in home runs, with 20. He plays, fittingly, for Who's Your Papi?
On a recent Sunday, Freedman, who has one of the best earned run averages in the league, broke the plexiglass on one pitch.
''It was more precision than speed," he said. ''This is a game of continued perfection."
Norris conceded that he probably spends too much time on Wiffle ball. His wife, Liz, goes to most of the games but sits on the sidelines and reads. ''Coordination is not one of my strong suits," she said.
Over Labor Day weekend, the league will have its championship, with the top six teams from the regular season making the playoffs. The winning team will get $750, and the runner-up will get $300.
Norris is also looking for a venue to host a fall league, and he envisions having two divisions next year, one for ''backyard" Wifflers" and one for ''pro" Wifflers. Official league jerseys could be on the horizon.
''You can practice chess and you can practice checkers and understand the game," Norris said. ''I don't think Wiffle ball is anything different. You can't just pick it up today and dominate tomorrow."
For more information, or to compare your own backyard accomplishments with those of the Charles River Wiffle Ball League, visit www.charlesriverwiffleball.com. Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. 
