Fort Reno Park, the site of this season’s wiffleball Sundays, has been shutdown by the Feds due to high levels of arsenic found in the soil:

Research geographer Dr. Terry Slonecker said he was doing follow-up work on the clean up of World War I-era munitions and chemicals discovered in 1993 in the Spring Valley neighborhood near American University, when he detected the arsenic. However, it wasn’t in Spring Valley, but in Fort Reno Park.
Slonecker said he was using a satellite imaging system that could detect grass and other vegetation growing in arsenic contaminated soil. One image pinpointed a huge area in the park.
A soil sample report confirming the findings caused the National Park Service to close the park. The heaviest concentration of arsenic is believed to be in the southwest corner, near the tennis courts.
The levels of arsenic found in the soil exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety threshold. Experts said that arsenic at a level of 43 parts per million requires a cleanup and that the preliminary tests at Fort Reno showed 100 to 1,100 parts per million.

Thankfully, I do not recall ingesting any of the soil during our games.

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PWL photos
This past Sunday marked the start of the Potomac Wiffleball League’s spring 2008 season. Because the federal government hates wiffleball, we’ve been forced to move our games to Fort Reno Park near Tenleytown. The location itself isn’t too bad, but I miss Gravelly Point and the planes that fly overhead (not to mention it was a short drive from where I live in Arlington).
In addition to new fields, we’ve also changed our team name to the Crazed Mud Puppies. I had no idea what a mud puppy was until I googled the phrase. I imagined a deranged puppy (dachshund, most likely) rolling around in a puddle of mud. In reality, a mud puppy is some sort of salamander and looks like this:

WTF?
So far we are 1-1 this season. Granted, our win was due to the other team forfeiting, but whatev.

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Tony took a short break from rebuilding the Iraqi Air Force (seriously) to photoshop some signs for a protest (date TBD) in front of the Department of the Interior, where the anti-wiffleball National Park Service is headquartered. Thanks, dude.

I think we’ll also need wiffle bats, a drum circle, face paint, bullhorns, and whatever else people bring to protests. It can’t be too hippie-ish, though, as us PWL’ers are all hard working professionals. A protest song would be cool. I vote for “Killing in the Name” by Rage, mainly due to the last verse.
Fear us, National Park Service apparatchiks!

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Just learned from the PWL Commish that the bureaucrats over at the National Park Service are putting an end to our glorious wiffleball Sundays at Gravelly Point:

The formality and lack of a personal nature caused my senses to prepare for bad news immediately. I’d received several notices from the United States Department of the Interior over the last few seasons. Usually a confirmation of the permit to engage in organized sports activity, in this case wiffleball, at one of the National Park Service managed properties, in this case Gravelly Point, part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway National Park.
This form letter, however, was different. It was notifying me that the last thing that was right about America was about to change. It was shattering not only my hopes and dreams, but taking away something that has become so much a part of the lives of close to 60 people.
Starting January 5, 2008, weekend sports activities at Gravelly Point will only be permitted from 6 AM to 9 AM.
No, that’s not a type-o…three short hours, 180 minutes, and quite possibly the worst 180 minutes of the day. For league that plays from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM, the new rule is a death certificate.

The federal government’s anti-wiffleball stance does not surprise me, as it is generally acknowledged that the federal government disapproves of any activity that its taxpaying citizens might enjoy (i.e., travel to Cuba, Cuban cigars, absinthe, and large scale securities fraud).
You can sign a petition to the NPS that asks them to reconsider their anti-wiffleball stance, but I think this calls for some real action, like making protest signs and marching on the Department of Interior headquarters.
If the NPS still says no, then why not continue to play regardless? Would the Park Police really arrest us for playing wiffleball? On second thought, they probably would.

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Straight outta the pages of Sports Illustrated!
In honor of today’s rain out (horrible weather in DC?! I’m just shocked!) I have uploaded some photos from our two seasons playing wiffleball with the Potomac Wiffleball League. Most of these are from the League website.
Summer 2006 – Ballers for Jesus
Even though we only won ONE game the entire season, we had the best t-shirts in the league. And that’s what really matters, right?

There were plenty of people who didn’t “get” our shirts. Our team name was “Ballers for Jesus”, which might lead you to believe that we were a group of Bob Jones University grads playing Wiffleball in the name of Jesus Christ. The Jesus on our shirt, however, is not Jesus, the Jewish carpenter of long ago, but rather Jesus Quintana of “The Big Lebowski.” If you are a newb and have not seen this movie, go out and buy it, as it is quite possibly one of the greatest movies of all time (”Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man”).

Back of my shirt

Mike at bat

Starr gets a piece of one

Ryan pitching

Someone probably hit a home run off of me prior to this picture being taken
Spring 2007 – DC Wifflehouse
We decided to ditch Ballers for Jesus and, after much debate and a thousand long message thread on GMail, finally settled on DC Wifflehouse for our new team name.

DC Wifflehouse after a win: Geoff, Mike, Ryan, and me

Mike at bat

Ryan steps up to the plate

Me

My double to right field

Ryan zombie runs to home, scores
A few more are available here.

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The Commish of the Potomac Wiffleball League asked me to do the “6 Innings” (6 innings for wiffleball vs 9 innings for baseball) interview for this week’s issue of “This Week in Wiffleball”. Here’s the result:

6 Innings with Lindsay Fincher

Fresh off her birthday before Week 4, which was celebrated with cupcakes in between games, we’re sitting down with Lindsay Fincher of the DC Wifflehouse. Whether it’s being featured on the front page of the Examiner (Read Here) during practice, or traveling the world, Lindsay is part of the new generation of players that will help define Wiffleball for years to come. Sure, Ryan Hughes is the head of the Ballers…er…the Wifflehouse, but Fincher is the heart. A 6 Innings profile can’t do her justice, so check out Lindsay’s blog at lindsayfincher.com.

Name: Lindsay Fincher
Team: DC Wifflehouse (2006 – Ballers for Jesus)
Age: 25
Hometown: Rancho Mirage, CA
Resides: Washington, DC
Employer: Big Energy
Seasons: Summer 2006, Spring 2007
Bats: Left
Throws: Right

TWIF: What is your favorite baseball team and who is your favorite baseball player of all time?
LF: "Los Angeles" Angels of Anaheim. Tim "King Fish" Salmon.
TWIF: What is your favorite thing about Wiffleball?
LF: Competing, the cute matching t-shirts, beaning batters for the hell of it knowing they can’t take first, and the planes from National Airport roaring overhead.
TWIF: If you could put a Wiffleball anywhere, where would you put it?
LF: I’d like to hit one over the big orange fence someday, but I’m always content to smack one straight back to the pitcher and watch him writhe in pain, even if it’s an out.
TWIF: Who is the player in the league you’d most like to see get hit by a car while chasing a foul ball?
LF: At the risk of being kicked out of the League, I’d have to go with you, the commissioner. I’m not big on authority figures, and your absence would result in a total collapse of The Canvassers, the PWL equivalent of the New York Yankees.
TWIF: Ryan Seacrest or Ryan Hughes?
LF: Hughes. You think Seacrest knows his way around a Wiffleball field? Please, he’s too busy serving as Simon Cowell’s pool boy.
TWIF: During Week 4 you celebrated your birthday week by ripping a double in your opening at-bat, your first career extra base hit. As you continue to grow and develop as a player, what advice would you give to the young kids out there just starting out in Wiffleball who have dreams of making it to the show in 15-20 years?
LF: First, you can never take enough BP. I’d recommend, at minimum, two hours in the batting cages each day. Second, find yourself a good agent – someone who is willing to step up to the plate for you and negotiate an endorsement deal with In-N-Out or Stolichnaya (sorry, gotta show my sponsors some love). Third, and most importantly, stay away from the hard stuff and the Wiffleball groupies, no matter how tempting. I’m not going to name names (saving it for my autobiography), but we’ve already got too many Darryl Strawberrys running around the Potomac Wiffleball League.
Next up: Wiffleball action shots!

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We interrupt this regularly scheduled South Caucasus travelogue to tell you that you totally shoulda picked up a copy of the Examiner yesterday from your local news rack. If you didn’t, you missed out on my front page debut showing off my mad wiffleball skillz:

Oh yeah, I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I play on a Wiffleball team in the Potomac Wiffleball League. We usually play every Sunday, but this past Sunday was an off-week, so our team took some batting practice on the National Mall. We created our own little field, using a mound of gravel as a backstop, and moved around some U.S. Park Service cones to mark the outfield. Ryan’s old California license plates made an excellent pitching rubber and home plate. We even used the multitude of tourists TO OUR ADVANTAGE (yes, it can be done!) and had them shagging foul balls for us. Now if only we can train them to stand on the right and walk on the left on the damn escalators! Anyways, a photographer from the Examiner snapped some photos of us playing ball and the rest is history. If you want me to autograph your copy, let me know…this is definitely the only time I will be in the paper for anything sports-related.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

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