The Neighborhood Backyard Baseball Games We Played – First to 500

The Major League Baseball Winter Meetings are set to begin today, December 3rd, in Nashville, TN. Trade rumors and free agent potential landing spots for coveted pitchers, fielders, home run hitters are being debated on social media sites, airport gate benches, barber shops, grocery stores, and indoor baseball facilities. I just received notification that the Norfolk Tides will face the Durham Bulls on Friday March 29th, so I know (timing is everything) approximately where I will be in late March. So, this morning I got to thinking about baseball (what a shock, right?) and a game I played in my local Rhode Island neighborhood backyards and open spaces and baseball fields growing up – The Game of 500.

Please excuse the crude drawing of what I remember to be an awesome game and a ton of fun. The Game of 500 – didn’t require any specific space or zone. Nothing was roped off or coned off, in fact the larger the space the better. We had one ball usually, more often than not it was a tennis ball. One friend would bat, the rest of us would “head out” to the outfield area and get ready. Jockeying for position, like boxing out for a rebound in basketball, the lot of us – could have been 4, 5, sometimes 10 of us out there – would push and elbow and get ourselves in ready position to potentially catch a tennis ball. Caught in the air, yes this was bliss and a score of 100 points. Caught on one bounce, look out neighbors I’m going for it because it was worth 50 points. We had no cameras or social media or even coaches watching us. Once the game started, our friendships turned to rivalries which made the Game of 500 hit a level of competition that few predicted, but everyone reveled in.

Let me pause for a second because in a typical baseball practice setting, a youth baseball coach would encourage a player to “call” for the baseball. This “calling out” clears a path for the fielder to potentially catch the ball without running into another player, who is also intent on catching the ball. Calling for the ball gives the fielder time to focus on the play without distractions, which can cause errors – namely dropping a routine fly ball. It also avoids injuries, especially with younger players who run like a moth to a flame to get into the baseball act of catching a baseball. Watch an MLB game when two grown men who don’t call for the baseball collide and the ball drops between them and a fast runner hustles to 2nd base on a routine pop fly. Then watch the reaction of the dugout, the coaches, the managers, who know those plays are worked on at the lowest levels of baseball. And muttering to themselves, “oh yeah, this is why we are in last place.” Ok, back to 500!

In the Game of 500 that we played as kids, calling the ball is just not going to cut it. In fact, you can call for the baseball all you want, I’m still going to jump into your space and try to catch it before you. 500 taught me to want the baseball as a fielder, to be aggressive defensively to want to be the guy on the field making a play. And sure, once I got into a real game and saw that another fielder had a better angle or shot at a play, I would back down and defer to them. But, in the Game of 500, no FREAKING WAY!!! I’m boxing you out, I getting my feet set to jump, I’m checking the competition (I was taller than most kids my age back then). I’m checking the score. “Hey Brian has 450, make sure he doesn’t get the ball.” And there is poor Brian atop the leaderboard who will never, ever get a baseball hit near him and he will never, ever get to 500. Baseball turns into basketball which then turns into rugby then back to baseball as someone catches the ball and throws it into the hitter.

Did you play the Game of 500 as a kid? Wow, that was an awesome way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the summers of Rhode Island. We played in our each other’s backyard, on the beach, at the baseball field, pretty much anywhere we could ride our bikes to that had an open space. And you could never predict the winner because some kid would come out of nowhere and turn into the neighborhood brute attacking the air space and grabbing that tennis ball before anyone else. Injuries, maybe we had some scrapes and cuts and misguided elbows to the face, but they were all part of what you signed up for. In fact, the bruises and scars turned into stories in the lunchroom the following day or that fall. “Hey remember where you elbowed me in the back but I still caught the ball over Eddie? That was awesome.”

Hey Pickleball took off like a rocket, maybe there will be a 500 League popping up? If so, count me in for a spot out there in the outfield!!!