I was the homerun queen

We grew up playing wiffleball in our backyard. There were many benefits to playing wiffleball which ultimately helped me with my softball game. We didn't have not one kid that could throw a strike in our neighborhood. Consequently we learned to hit anything that was pitched our way.

We kept track of all our homeruns. Ricky Irvin was the homerun king and I was the homerun queen. This was consistent over all the years that we played in the backyard and I would have sworn that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we were the oldest 2 kids in the neighborhood. It definitely helped the youngest ones though because everyone of them became allstars. My sister, Rhonda, and Sis (next door neighbor) were the first girls in Little League in Logan County. They were too good to play with the rest of us girls. Rhonda was one of only 3 players that could throw the ball from the centerfield fence to homeplate without a bounce and she was one of a different set of 3 players that could actually hit a bona fide homer over the centerfield fence. She was awsome.

Back to wiffleball though. To hit a homerun that counted in our backyard it had to land on the balcony. It didn't count if it hit the kitchen porch, it had to hit the balcony behind my parents bedroom. I don't know how we decided this because if we hit the ball off to the side of the house it could go twice the distance. The balcony rule was the rule that we all lived by. Of course by the time you ran down the ball that had actually gone farther it was still a homerun most of the time because it was pretty easy to outrun the fielder that went to get it. Even if they did get the ball quickly then accuracy throwing it back was a problem too.

All I know is we had an awful lot of fun in the backyard. And we became experts at climbing up the porch rail to the balcony to retrieve the ball...sometimes we even had to go on the roof to get it. People would freak if they saw kids doing that today, but we didn't think the first thing about it. It was just what had to be done to play the game.