By David Everett Fisher
It is with a heavy heart that we had to cancel the Wiffle Ball Tournament this Saturday. We quit it at the very last second, but it had been sinking for some time. While I’m not going to get into the details, I can say that we all learned something.
This Podcast is a labor of love for the three of us. It’s like a band or a zine, it is something that we put work into in the cracks in our schedule. We love baseball, we love talking about baseball, and we think that other people would love to hear us talking about baseball.
Baseball is a complicated game. It is so full of little tweaks, twitches, and so much happens away from the ball. Where a fielder is standing says so much about everything else that is happening in the game. There are stories, history, and poetry that intertwines a game of baseball. There are gods and monster who have played the game. There are heroes and villains who have faced each other. There are unwritten tradition that permeates the DNA on the diamond.
We want to capture that. What is going through our heads when we are in the bleachers watching a game – what is going through any fan’s head. We want to be the place where a fan can get in on some trash talking, bemoaning the business side, and praise for the stars.
It can be a hard task to accomplish when the internet is the speed of light (or faster) breaking news and thoughts on the game. It can be daunting to talk to the back of fan’s heads that are walking away from the game. It can be tedious to compete with fans who prefer fantasy stats over the actual game.
We want listeners. We thought that playing a game of wiffle ball in the street would be this great way to attract listeners. We tried partnering up with two great non-profits that help kids play our favorite game and houseless veterans. We wanted to bring a loud party to NW 13th and have fun and have everyone leave and think, Rabble Rabble Cheeseburger Baseball Podcast did this. If they can do that, what’s their podcast about? We want to create a community of baseball fans.
We couldn’t do it. We decided to call it with bruised egos and a lot of lessons learned. We tried too long by ourselves when we should have asked for help. We took on way more than the three of us could handle. We waited for something that wasn’t happening to happen.
We won’t dwell on the should haves and could haves, but we have some concrete ideas for when we try this again, which we will.
It can be daunting to do this podcast and not really get a lot of listener reactions. We love the few who do, but we keep thinking, what can we say that will insight a reaction. How do we get people to love baseball with us? We aren’t kidding, we really want to know. We want to watch baseball with you, we want to be a part of your baseball diet.
The three of us are super busy. Andrew runs a couple of businesses, got engaged to a Mets fan and is getting ready to cohabitate, plays baseball for the Multnomah Expos, still involved with his rugby team the Portland Pigs, goes to church, and still finds time to volunteer and help others. Sean got married this summer, works, and finds his time volunteering as well. He and his gorgeous saintly wife also have cats, and now he is in the American Sign Language program, which is one of the hardest degrees to get. I also got married this spring to a beautiful Goddess and work full time at a local grocery store, volunteer several hours a week, hangs out with his beautiful wife and dog, Rufus, I try to write as much as I can, and am about to go on a three week honeymoon to southern Italy, which has been a dream of mine for my whole life. We live very full lives. I’m sure I missed things for all three of us.
We love baseball. This is what brings us together. We want you to join us and listen to our podcast. I know there are officially five-thousand-gazillion podcasts out there, but we make this one and we would like you to enjoy it.
If you are disappointed in the cancellation of the Wiffle Ball Tournament, then I would like to profusely apologize to you. It wasn’t in the cards for this to happen this time. We are very interested in doing it in the future. We are also open to meeting you somewhere and playing a game of wiffle ball if that would make you feel any better.