I was at some store the other day — Hannaford, I think it was — when I came across a display of Wiffle ball sets. 

For about a solid minute, I just stood there staring at the display. Here was bright yellow nostalgia standing tall next to the hot dog buns and charcoal briquettes. 

And it was the real deal, too. This wasn’t some knockoff abomination called Woofle Batt or Slugger Fun Time Ball, it was a by-god original Wiffle, invented back in 1958 by baseball enthusiast, John W. Wiffle. 

I like to think so, anyway. I’m not looking it up. 

The indisputable fact is that no imitation brand could ever take the place of Wiffle, which features a long, thin yellow bat solid enough that it stings like hell if your best friend Richie gets frustrated and whacks you across the lower back with it. 

This bat was so durable that it wouldn’t crack even after years of rigorous play and/or friend whacking. It was just the right thickness for the ritual known as “hand over hand,” which was used to decide which team would bat first. 

The Wiffle ball, likewise, is a marvel of human achievement. The size of a standard baseball but made of hard plastic, the Wiffle ball features eight open slots on one end that allow for some really funky aerodynamics.  

Back in the day, every neighborhood had a kid who claimed that with a standard Wiffle ball he could throw a bona fide curveball, knuckleball, slider, sinker, forkball, breaking ball and at least three other pitches he had invented. 

I know this to be true, too, because I was that boy. 

The Wiffle ball might last for years before developing a crack around one of the grooves. At this point, the neighborhood kids had to have a backyard summit meeting to decide whether to play with the ball with the crack as is, walk to LaVerdiere’s and get a new ball, or to tape over the cracked ball completely, which would drastically change the nature of the game — a taped over Wiffle ball would sail about nine times farther than a naked ball (which put you at risk of landing the ball in Old Man Pouliot’s garden) and it would no longer possess its aerodynamic properties allowing the alleged pitching ace (me) to throw his junk. 

The backyard summit preceded almost every game. Here was decided what the rules of the game would be. This conference could get heated and there would be occasional fistfights because so much was at stake. 

Is catching a ball off the roof an out? Is throwing the ball at the runner allowed? Will we use ghost runners? If a batter returns the ball to the pitcher by hitting it, are we allowed to beat his ass? What about those dorks who bat one handed, do they also get a beating? Will four consecutive foul balls be declared an out? If someone hits a ball into the Vigue’s yard, who has to brave the mean dog there to retrieve it? 

There was also the ritual Laying Of The Bases. Today, first base is Todd’s new windbreaker, bought at the Mammoth Mart in the spring, and Todd implores us all to not spit on his coat when standing on first. 

Second base is an old hubcap found in the stream up behind Brookside Elementary. 

Third base might be a shingle blown off the roof in the last rainstorm, a bicycle seat pulled off my Huffy, one of my mother’s nice serving trays, a sofa cushion, Rusty’s Six Million Dollar Man beach towel, a “no trespassing” sign we ripped off somebody’s fence while we were trespassing there, a piece of cardboard pinned down with tent stakes, a floor mat swiped from a 1972 Pinto, some old lady’s bloomers yanked from a clothesline or some dead animal found at the side of Drummond Avenue. I think it’s probably a porcupine? 

The games would last all day. Sometimes they lasted for several days if we were disrupted by darkness, a lost ball or some mean old lady with a broomstick come to reclaim her underthings.  

We don’t need anything special for home plate because the grass there has been worn down to the dirt by all the spitting we do while standing at bat.

Sometimes we had two players per team, but in better times it was three a side. Rosters depended on which kids were grounded, laid up with poison ivy or sent away to summer camp because their parents just didn’t know what to do with them. 

During games in my backyard, throwing the ball at the runner was almost always allowed. If you hit the runner between bases, he was out, and there’s no sense arguing about it, Kevin, because we all heard the WHAP sound when it got you right in the neck. 

In addition to catching balls off the roof, a fielder could also try to catch a ball as it came tumbling out of the good climbing tree right behind second base. If the ball got stuck up there, the fielder could climb the tree, retrieve the ball and record it as an out. 

Actually, I don’t know if that last one is true. There was an all-day conference to decide the matter, but so many kids took to brawling over it, the matter was never sorted. 

Wiffle ball was everything to us back in those endless summers of youth. Out there, even the gawkiest kid could, for an afternoon, be Willie Stargell, George Brett, Bobby Murcer or Dwight Evans. We adjusted our batting stances to emulate our current heroes and we worked endlessly on our spitting — if a kid couldn’t effectively spit through his front teeth, clearing his chin at least once in a while, could he really be expected to have any baseball skills at all?

We’d come away from every game with an awesome variety of injuries. Our knees would be bleeding through the grass stains after making diving catches even when diving wasn’t necessary. Our elbows, bleeding humps of pure gore.

At least one kid would have been bitten by the neighbor’s dog, two would suffer various contusions after falling out the climbing tree and one of us would have an angry red welt across his lower back thanks to the free-swinging and short-tempered Richie — who was abnormally large for his age, now that I think of it. 

Wiffle ball, I’m pretty sure, accounts for at least 75% of my good memories from childhood. The other 25% involve neighborhood girls, but that’s a column for another time.

So, now I’m standing in Hannaford as a full grown adult, gaping at the Wiffle ball sets and probably blocking the aisle for more mature and responsible shoppers. 

The sight of those bats and balls gave me old man thoughts: “By gory, people just don’t get out and play Wiffle ball like they used to,” I mused, pants pulled all the way up to my armpits. “It’s a darn shame, is what it is. Kids these days, I dunno…”

But that geriatric rant was followed by an even more unsettling thought: Maybe it’s not that nobody is playing Wiffle ball anymore. Maybe it’s just that I’M not playing, even though the Wiffle ball and bat can still be had for under ten bucks and there are backyards everywhere. 

Somewhere along the years, I got to thinking that Wiffle ball is a thing for kids and kids alone, but apparently that’s a lie. 

As it happens, there are adult Wiffle ball leagues all over the land, and the rules have been tediously spelled out so you don’t even have to have bloody backyard summit meetings to come up with them on the fly anymore.  

These pro Wifflers play on regulation fields using regulation bases and there are no roofs, trees or mean dogs to worry about as the game is underway. 

It all sounds like a lot of fun and yet I can’t escape the feeling that it misses the point. I feel like closer to the spirit of the game are those grown-ups who still play in their backyards where running the bases with beer in hand is common and the risk of diving headlong into the barbecue grill is always there. 

I feel like if there’s not at least a small chance that some fool is going to require hospital treatment at the end of the day, you’re just not playing the game right.