Spring in Little Rock brings another season of the Little Rock Kickball Association, an independent league so big (more than 1,000 players) and rollicking that it’s Little Rock’s equivalent of fight club. You probably come into contact with dozens of kickballers during your week without realizing it: They prep your appetizer orders, open the door for you at hotels, fix your computers, care for your hospitalized children, prescribe your drugs, prosecute your felons. Main difference from a fight club is, the first rule of kickball states that you always talk about kickball.
Adult kickball, oxymoronic as that sounds, has gotten a bad rap. Players — purported grown-ups, mind you — wax nostalgic about how this playground game takes them back to days of recess in short pants. That may be fine for people who force themselves into joyless exercise, and for whom a romp around the bases reminds them of being kids. Fine. Most of the serious players in the league, though, realize that even on its worst day, being a big, strong, fast, wily 20- or 30-something trumps being a puny 10-year-old. Outsiders wonder why adults play a children’s game. But kickball as a grown-up makes you wonder how children commandeered this game built for adults.
At least kickball’s reputation as child’s sport keeps tempers in check. The phrase, “It’s just kickball” has defused plenty of near-fights. And if you care at all about the sport, you are going to get riled at some point.
Take a game in the fall season of 2007. It was one of those rain-slopped days in Little Rock when the grass outfields at Interstate Park turn into Slip ‘n Slides. My team, King’s Court, was playing a team called — I don’t even remember. Someone better than us, most likely. That was and still is pretty routine.
I started the day more than 500 miles away, in Champaign, Ill., on the Sunday morning after a college friend’s wedding. I slept in ’til 8:30, ate pancakes with the family I was staying with, and knew immediately it was going to be a close call to make the 5 p.m. game. Eight hours speeding down I-55 and I-40 was enough to hear the entire audio book of “The Odyssey,” but 10 minutes too long to make the game on time. I arrived to kick in the second inning with my team down and the infield a soggy, boggy paste. The gouged-out mud pools around second and third bases appeared to be full of chocolate cake batter. It was a right fine day for a tractor pull.
When it came time for me to kick, I booted a ball to left field and thought, with a child’s greed, “might as well try for second.” I rounded first, sprinted ahead and belly-flopped into the glop, arriving safely at second bathed in thick, clingy mud. My team cheered. I went on to score the tying run, filth spraying off me all the way, and a tone was set: We were going to win as dirty as we had to.
Later in the game, same story, different tune: Down by a run, I slid through the pig pen into second. On a teammate’s kick, I turned third and stomped home plate to beat the throw by inches. I was called out; our captain protested. The call was overturned. Again, the game was tied. Again, delirium.
We took a one-run lead into the bottom of the final inning. With two outs and runners on second and third, their kicker booted a dribbler to our pitcher (who happened to be pregnant at the time — you gotta love kickball). As the base runners tore ahead, the pitcher scooped up the ball and lobbed it to first.
If our first baseman had caught that ball, we would’ve won. Instead, he bobbled it. From centerfield, I watched dumb as the muddy ball slid through his arms and rolled into foul territory.
Their man on third scored. Their man on second scored. Our one-run lead became a one-run loss.
We stood there a moment, soaked, mud-smeared, bedraggled. Our comeback had gone for naught. But it’s just kickball. We consoled our first baseman, weakly commended one another on a great effort and headed home to hit the showers, upset with a loss and yet satisfied with life. I don’t know that anyone ever brought it up again to our goat first baseman. It was in all a very adult response.