Spikeball sucks the fun out of everything

After being out sick for must of my scheduled umpiring last week and working sick for the rest, the other night I was back on the field in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for what turned out to be an exceptionally good shift of games. Now, was it really so much better than my average umpire shift is? Perhaps not; I may have just felt that way because the previous time I was out there I was getting by with the aid of cold meds and barely able to stand up by the time the shift was over. Regardless, I had a good time out there and I daresay the players all did too.

But anytime I'm umping at Cap Hill, there are problems. This time, thankfully, it wasn't the soccer hooligans; the soccer guys actually volunteered to move out of the way ahead of my asking them to, a first and possibly a unique event in the annals of time for all of history. No, this week's Cap Hill shenanigans centered around two groups of people: the completely wasted tribe of eight or ten folks in deep left field that didn't even react when they were hit with a fly ball and some of whom were riding this giant spool like they were in a log roll or something and not caring when the giant spool became an interference object for would-be extra-base hits; and the perpetrators of a half-dozen or so games of spikeball being played in deep right field.

I don't understand spikeball, I had to even ask what it was called, but I do know that even though spikeball players think they're only using a small confined space, that changes every time their ball bounces off their little trampoline into our field of play. Which, it turns out, is pretty often. So there were a lot of instances of me halting a pitcher in mid-motion, calling time out between pitches, that sort of thing, when an errant ball and/or a person chasing it got in the way.

As I said, this was otherwise a really good evening out there, the prime reason for which was all the players were in great moods and were jovial and laughing and having a good time among their own teams and bantering with their opponents, just a fun tenor that usually is ... more subdued, I guess?  Anyway, one of these banterings was in progress when I had to call time out again, and the catcher—one of my favorite players in the league, I always enjoy when she catches—said unprompted, "Spikeball sucks the fun out of everything."

It was just a throwaway line, said in jest but kind of a ha-ha-then-we-move-on comment, but for some reason in the moment it just ticked us. The line itself became kind of fun, thus rendering it its own oxymoron, but we had plenty of opportunity to repeat it as the night wore on.

I'm next on the field on Sunday at Green Lake, which I'm not looking forward to as much because it's a five-gamer. Those are only fun for, say, three-and-a-half games, then they're in the category of can-this-be-over-now-no-there's-more-oh-crap.