At the hill’s base, in the field between the street and the baseball diamonds, I could see them hitting.

No one knew quite what to make of it at first, plastic bats of all colors, shapes, sizes unsheathed and tested for wind resistance, durability, feel. Those seasoned zero in and find their club of choice without hesitation and crack a beer in preparation for the coming game, setting sights on those nameless rubber balls sold in the back of Walmart toy sections and now appropriated for the game these parkgoers are soon to enjoy.

It’s a ragtag group, not in a shambolic or shallow sense but more so in terms of solidarity: people of all walks of life, varied ages, races, subcultures, sexes, all convening on this Sunday afternoon (and every Sunday afternoon for the past few years) to blast these massive bouncing balls at one another with Day-Glo wiffleball bats whose barrels feature names like Lightning scrawled in manic ’90s font.

Slowly they convene, take to playing field to discuss the rules of play, to honor their mothers with a brief incantation and only seconds later collectively launch five or six bouncy balls into the sky—and the game begins: folks dancing frantic across the field, dodging, deflecting, leveling shots at one another in what appears to be organized chaos but in fact borrows the stratagems of dodgeball and applies it to the individual, meaning it all boils down to the last man standing. Though, that’s hardly a chief concern. No one is here for the sole purpose of winning, not really; they’re here for the camaraderie inherent, for the fresh air and the spark of bat and ball beneath the Minneapolis sky. . . .

There’s not a boy in America who hasn’t at some point in their adolescent restlessness MacGyvered the knickknacks of their parents’ garage into some bastardized backyard sport (my neighborhood once championed a game (forever nameless) that involved rollerblading around the driveway with a football and attempting to throw it through a basketball hoop . . . many a knee were claimed by that game). This idea perhaps best exemplified in David Zucker’s “Baseketball,” wherein the heroics of a bygone age have given way to lucrative corporate athletes and championed egotism, and a new sport cemented on hijinks and friendship becomes America’s most beloved game. And while many of our made-up games faded with our youth, Johnball—a game invented by a few Lakeville/Northfield middle schoolers back in 2005—has thrived, with devoted chapters rising in Minneapolis, colleges like St. John’s and Eau Claire, and as far from Johnball’s nucleus as Pittsburgh.

“It was more or less an accident,” co-creator John “The Johnfather” Hilsen said. “We were at this going away party for an older, much beloved couple from the neighborhood, and at one part of the yard there were bats and at one part of the yard there were balls . . . Of course, pretty soon we started hitting the balls at each other and made a little dodgeball game out of it.”

“We realized it was fun trying to dodge [the balls], trying to block them with the bat,” William Bird, the sport’s other found, said. “We started developing rules a little bit, brought in friends eventually. It was nothing big, it was just this thing we were doing for fun. We didn’t even have a name for it for the first couple weeks.”

The game ultimately became known as Johnball, owing to Bird’s joke that Hilsen probably wanted to name the game after himself. And like many of Johnball’s key components, the on-the-fly ended up sticking. No hard feelings on Bird’s end, though.

“It’s catchy,” he said. “I like the name Johnball.”

Through the creators’ high school years, the game and its participants continued to grow. Rules solidified a bit but left room for change and expansion. The backyard shenanigans churned on, but as the core group neared the end of high school, a question arose: would Johnball die when everyone went off to their respective universities. But when the gang went their separate ways, the game went with them, growing in college towns for the next four years. Again, the Johnballers wondered, Would the game die when we all leave college?

“The Minneapolis chapter really calms all my fears about that,” Hilsen said. “It’s been kind of inspiring to see a bunch of guys in their mid- to late-20s getting together to play. And I mean, they are dedicated. They play every Sunday in Minneapolis: New Year’s Day, Easter, Christmas Day . . . It’s like a religion to those guys.”

The Minneapolis chapter owes its strength in large part to its captain, Casey Prescott, who decided to start up the chapter in September of 2011. The group has not missed a Sunday since.

“I fell in love with it,” Prescott said. “And really if you show up one time you fall in love with it pretty quick.”

The standard free-for-all version of the game is fairly simple. Each player has three lives. A life is lost anytime the ball touches a part of the body (except for the bat hand). It sounds easy, and indeed part of the appeal is the intuitiveness of it all; but as Hilsen has said, “It’s a game that takes seconds to learn and years to master.”

Johnball becomes more nuanced as the collective chooses. There isn’t one set type play; there are more mini games within the sport which its participants liken to multiplayer video games such as Halo. One of the simple beauties of the game is that it can change as necessary based on attendance, player habits, or as a result of a random idea to try something new in the spirit with which the game was founded.

However, a few rules do transcend game types. Every version begins with a huddle in which players level their bats to balance the many Johnballs that will soon be hoisted into the sky to start the game. There’s a brief discussion wherein the group decides to honor someones mother. The chosen woman’s name is then said in unison, with an emphasis put on the last syllable as players send the Johnballs skyward. Another universal nuance is the presence of Kentucky, a deflated ball placed somewhere on the battlefield that encompasses all evil in the world and therefore drains all of a player’s lives should they step on it.

Both the mother’s incantation and Kentucky highlight the tongue-in-cheek demeanor with which the game is regarded. In essence, Johnball is about being ridiculous and having fun, and so when players speak of the game it is often in self-aware hyperbole and goofiness.

“We like to be goofy at all ages,” Bird said. “Johnball just kind of brings that out in us. It has a lot to do with the spirit of the game. People don’t play this game to win; this isn’t a competitive sport where you bring the team together and if you lose you have a bad day.

“It’s a sport where you have fun in the process of playing, and if you do something that was really fun, even if it puts you at a disadvantage—like if you wore a goofy Halloween costume to the game, or you went out there as Santa Claus and hit the ball around with a giant candy cane—that might not be to your advantage, but it adds to the spirit of the game. Everyone loves that, they just feed off of it, and that’s what makes Johnball unique.”

And though the game roots itself in the wacky, there are elements to its foundation that are taken with a refreshing amount of sincerity.

“Each chapter kind of has their own rules,” Prescott said, “but Minneapolis’s are honesty, sportsmanship—you don’t pout, you don’t call people out if you think they’re being dishonest, be as sportsmanlike as possible—number three is documentation, kind of saying we’re here, playing this game, come watch, come play, and number four is friendship; that’s what it’s all about.”

Prescott believes so strongly in the honesty aspect of the game that he got a tattoo on his calf of Abe Lincoln—exemplar of honesty—playing Johnball.

And though it’s not one of the four expressed precepts, Johnball’s unspoken fifth rule is inclusiveness. This is a game that on any given sunday garners players who are young, old, black, white, male, female, seasoned vets or perplexed newcomers—all are welcomed and encouraged to join in, and the game itself is tailored so that anyone can play.

“The rules of the game are simple enough that you can get it very, very quickly,” Bird said. “And it’s not a demanding game where, say, kids can’t play. So you get people from a wide range of backgrounds: parents, kids, teenagers, college kids; even in high school we noticed we had a wide range: jocks, preps, nerds, goths, what have you—people from all different social groups coming together to play the game ‘cause it’s universally fun.”

“There’s something about the game itself that you can play at your own pace,” Hilsen said. “It’s not like baseball where you’re in this rotation of going in and out of the spotlight. It’s as demanding as you want it to be and engaging as you want it to be. I think there’s very little pressure in playing the game.

“Speaking of that, my buddy Adam Kunkel, who plays Johnball at St. Johns, his brother has Down Syndrome, and he says Johnball is one of the few games that he’ll go out and play and get excited about. That’s really cool to see.”

With such a passionate ethos, it’s easy to see why Johnball is growing. This past year marked the game’s second National Championships, which hosted chapters from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. And while their numbers do not yet rival other recreational sports, one imagines that Johnball will continue to spread, because it’s a game rooted in all the right things: honesty, integrity, and above all, simple and unifying enjoyment. One can imagine Naismith nailing his first peach basket to the wall in this same spirit.

And where do Johnballs creators see it going?

“We created this thing in middle school and it’s just grown nonstop, been getting bigger and bigger, and growing on its own,” Bird said. “I don’t even have a hand in a lot of it anymore. I’m in Pittsburgh; I can work with the Pittsburgh chapter. But seeing posts on Facebook and albums of the national team, and seeing all this stuff go on without me, it’s like my little kid is growing up. I hope it continues. It feels good.”

“I think it will keep spreading,” Hilsen said. “Every couple months there seems to be a new Johnball league somewhere. But I have no idea. I just want people to play it and enjoy it. I want it to be a reason for people to come together and have a fun time.”

 

To learn more about Johnball, its full rules, and gametypes, go to playjohnball.com or swing by Matthews Park in Seward on any Sunday at 2 p.m.

Photo courtesy facebook.com/JohnballForever?fref=ts