0-2 (Oh-Two)

I had lunch with an old friend the other day. He reminded me of a few things that we shared as kids. The things we did that no one else will ever share. We laughed at our mutual memories, inside jokes, and long-silent slang. He reminded me of 0-2, and although the audience for the following minutiae may be small, I wanted to better remember, so I wrote it down.

0-2 was a whiffleball variant game that some of the neighborhood kids invented. It served a very specific purpose. It was created for those times when we couldn't get enough guys together for a whiffleball game. 0-2 was ideally suited for four, and could be played one-on-one, while a proper game of whiffleball required at least six. There were many times as we got older that cars, girls, summer jobs, and maybe even schoolwork pulled us (some of us more than others) in every direction, and it became more difficult to get together. And of course this was the 90s, when kids and adults could be unreachable without alarm.

For those times when, after a dozen phone calls, and talking to a number of parents (or letting it ring ten or more times and returning to the group with "no one's home"), we were frustratingly short, we played 0-2. While we played whiffleball in my backyard (Dumont Diamond!!), 0-2 was created to be played on the site of the tiny hockey rink (Foley Forum!!) they built every winter, in the Foley's backyard across the street.

It was called 0-2 because that was the count. That was always the count. Zero balls and two strikes. Let me back up a bit.

There was a pitcher and a batter, and maybe an extra fielder. Behind the batter, against the side of the garage, sat an old aluminum and canvas lawn chair, facing the pitcher with a bike tire propped on the seat. The tire was tied down or attached somehow to make a circular strike zone. 

Everyone batted left-handed. That wasn't specifically the rule. The back of the house covered what would have been the entire left side of the field, and because nearly all of us were right-handed, we had to turn the batter around to avoid peppering the house. When the occasional natural lefty batted, he would be forced to hit from the right side, often slamming liners off the house. There was nothing we could do short of allowing them to hit from their natural side, (not an option).

The count was always no balls and two strikes, the batter was hitting from his unnatural side, and any pitch to hit or go through the bike tire was strike three. There were no bases to run.

If you're not familiar with our general whiffleball rules, (and why would you be?) we used only the skinny yellow bats and non-curvy, round-holed balls (from Mills & Greer!!). We allowed a certain amount of tape (usually hockey tape) on both the handle and barrel, enough to give the bat a better grip and a bit more weight. Occasionally, following intense debate, a bat would get banned for excessive barrel tape.

A batted ball caught or fielded before reaching the low, wire fence between the Foley's and the Churchill's was an out. Hitting the fence on the ground or on the fly was a single. Over the fence on the fly was a double. A ball landing on the Churchill's camper or garage roof was a triple. Over the garage was a homer. Fair territory was essentially the width of the yard. Any ball off the house (to the left) or into the woods (to the right) was foul. The game only shared a couple of things with our traditional whiffleball: two outs per inning, seven inning games. 

We played with ghost runners. There were no bases or running the bases. There wasn't room, and besides that wasn't the point. We had all of that across the street; this was a leisurely game, more of a whiffleball version of H.O.R.S.E.  Ghost runners means that you remember who's on base. Hit a single, man on 1st. Follow it with a double, runners on 2nd and 3rd. Although it prompts a lot of "4-2, one out, runner on 2nd" verbal reminders between batters, it's very simple and is unlikely to cause an argument.

I don't remember throwing a lot of curve balls. The batter was already at such a disadvantage, I think we mostly just hucked it in there. Another oddity, strikes (outs really, the batter always has two strikes) were determined by the bike tire, regardless of whether the batter swings. This created a strange circumstance in which the batter can swing and miss a ball outside the strike zone (bike tire) and not be out.

For a few years we spent a lot of time in that backyard, playing a little game that didn't matter, and shooting the shit all the while. We didn't keep track of wins and losses, hits, strikeouts or anything else. It was just a blip, long gone and mostly forgotten.