This story didn't make the online edition for some reason. And got severely lobotomized in the printing/editing process. So here it is in its entirety.
SOUTH PLAINFIELD: Steve Cavico of the Kane Park professional whiffle-ball team in South Plainfield heard more than he saw. Standing stolid, 48 feet from the mound and gripping the wooden handle of his wide plastic blue-barreled bat, he last saw the hollow, hole-filled ball leave the pitcher's hand near his ankles, whipping the grass with a sputtering whistle until it quickly rose and smacked the sheet- metal striike zone, almost at his neck. Cavico could only freeze in admiration.
"Oohh, nice pitch," he said. "Whoa!''
If you haven't heard of Kane Park, it is likely you have never been in Kevin Kane's backyard, which bears that stadium-like nickname and which is where the team had its humble beginnings. And you likely haven't heard of the FastPlastic professional whiffle ball league, which had its last regional qualifying tournament of the season yesterday at Veterans Park in South Plainfield. Kane and Cavico's teammate Kris Nagy is the Northeast regional director.
"What you can do with a whiffle ball simulates high competition baseball, and the guys are great,'' said Nagy, 25, who is from South Plainfield but currently lives in The Bronx, N.Y., and works for an environmental engineering firm in Manhattan. "It's all see-the-ball, hit-the-ball with this game. Half the battle is seeing the ball.''
And this sport, moving from backyards to the big time across the country, is something to see.
Yesterday morning, Kane Park, whose four-member team wear matching blue-and-orange jerseys, battled mightily in a 2-0 loss against the pitcher from The Old School Risers, a Maryland team that traveled the farthest for this 16-team all-day tournament. In addition to that wicked rising fastball, the Maryland pitcher throws an evil split-fingered something that looks like a beautiful meatball before dropping clear out of sight.
"If you've never seen a pitcher before, he's very tough to hit and see what he's doing," said Cavico, 34, a technology salesman from Brick. "But we've hit guys like this before. Sometimes it's early in the morning, and you're barely awake."
Rather than wake before dawn, Nagy and Kane, 27, who teaches history and law at Woodbridge High School, set up the eight fields Friday, taking five hours to erect the carefully measured orange construction netting and PVC pipe that mark the backstops and outfield fences. Kane said that the materials cost about $1,500, which includes insurance to use the park, and comes out of each team's $100 entrance fee.
The top prize for this tournament was $400, with second place worth $200. But the real prize is in accumulating enough points over the season to qualify for the playoffs, and a chance to win travel expenses and the honor of representing the region at the national tournament in Austin, Texas, this Columbus Day Weekend.
Last year, The Swingers from Middletown blew through the field of 40 teams from 14 regions across the country, riding a 9-0 record to the national championship and a $3,500 cash prize. With the sport's growing popularity, this year's prize is expected to be $5,000.
FastPlastic plays six innings of whiffle ball, in which teams of two to five players compete in a game with imaginary runners. Three strikes are an out, and four balls are a walk. A pitcher and two fielders can field ground balls for outs if they catch them on a fly or handle them cleanly in front of a line painted on the ground and then make a smooth throw to the backstop. Balls that stop rolling before a fielder or that pass them are singles. Balls that roll to the outfield fences are doubles; those that hit them on a fly are triples. And over the fence is a home run.
Hits advance imaginary runners much as real runners would in a baseball game. A single scores a man on second. Doubles clear the bases. There are other peculiar rules, but mostly they adhere to those of Major League Baseball.
The average age of players hovers in the mid-20s, though Kane said that they had a 45-year-old play in a previous tournament. And although one-time San Francisco Giants pitcher Chuck Hensley played in Texas last year, these are not world-class athletes.
The Niffs, a team from New Hyde Park in Long Island, N.Y., swig from Budweiser cans at 9 a.m. and smoke cigarettes between at-bats. Does this cause them any trouble with, say, eye-hand coordination? "Right now, no,'' said Nick Tullo, who said he was "20...um, 21."
But, as The Wiffled Wonders from South Plainfield are learning, it takes some considerable skill. Playing against the Hit Men from Vineland, Wonders pitcher Jimmy Quartuccio was feeling his age: 15.
"I thought I'm gonna play people my own age," Jimmy said of his first pro game in April. "And I come here and people are driving their cars and bringing their kids. I'm the youngest guy around here."
Jimmy, who plays baseball for Colonia High School, was on the mound against the Hit Men in his green-sleeved baseball shirt and green kneesocks. As sweat fell from his brown moptop and scraggly facial hair, he slid into his wind-up again and again, throwing hard, but throwing many more balls than strikes.
After the game, Elvin Cortez, 33, of the Hit Men told Jimmy: "You've got to take your lumps. Throw strikes. If you overthrow all the time, you're gonna get hurt."
Which is just what happened to Jerry Riso, 31, of the defending champion Swingers. "I threw too much last year, and it was doctor time," he said. "I never thought I'd have to go to the doctor for whiffle ball."
But the ball itself requires doctoring to achieve that insane movement. "You've got to scuff up the ball the right way," Kane said. "You can't take it out of the box and throw.''
Dan Erhardt, 17, of the Wiffled Wonders said he buys a dozen balls at a time. "I have a two-hour ritual," he said. "I sit in my driveway and rub them against the pavement in the blazing sun and number them. One time we used a cheese grater."
As the sun receded and the Mud Ducks beat the Swingers 3-0 to win the tournament at 7:30 p.m., almost everyone agreed their sport was ready for primetime.
"This should be on ESPN," Dan "Neif" Ennis of the Niffs said between drags on his cigarette. "They have hot-dog eating contests, Scrabble and Foosball tournaments. Why not whiffle ball?"
The answer was easy to see.
