Pirateball

A haphazard individual sport played on a baseball diamond, described by one of its designers as “extremely stupid”.

Rules

Pirateball is like baseball in aspect, and ideally is played on a baseball diamond, but is an individual sport. The minimum number of players is three, comprising a batter, a pitcher and a first baseman. If you have more players, you can put them in the outfield or have a catcher, but too many fielders makes the game pretty much impossible, so if you have six or more players you should just start a batting queue. After each at-bat, players rotate through positions (with a minimal crew, it goes batter to first baseman to pitcher to batter and so on).

You will need two wiffle bats, a wiffle ball and a beach ball or one of those big latex balls you get at K-Mart. If you don’t have a second wiffle bat you can just use an umbrella or something.

Here is how an at-bat works:

• The pitcher throws the ball in the batter’s general direction. Don’t be a dick about this.
• The batter swings at the ball. There aren’t any balls, only strikes, so you might as well swing. Foul balls count as strikes.
  • You get four tries at hitting the ball to get it into play.
  • If you miss all four, the pitcher throws a fifth pitch, using the beach ball.
  • If you miss the beach ball, not only are you out, you lose a point and don’t get to have sex for five years.
• Once you hit the ball, you run to first base, HOLDING ONTO YOUR BAT. If you drop it out of habit you’ll have to go back for it.
• You will need your bat because when you get to first base you will have to fight the baseman, who has the second bat. Luckily for you, the rules specify that he is “kind of a wuss” at this.
• Having touched first base, you head directly to third, over the pitcher’s mound (literally over: you have to jump), and then head for home.
• The pitcher and fielders, if any, are spending this time getting the ball and trying to get you out with it. Catching the ball does not count as an out, nor does tagging: you have to be hit by a thrown ball. If one player throws and misses, a different player has to take the next throw. This is why the game gets a lot harder with more players.
• If you reach home untagged, you score a point for yourself, and you can be pretty proud of it because almost nobody ever scores.

The game continues to cycle through batters until it is dark and everybody is tired. The winner is the player with the most points.

Photos

<flickr size="m">ludocity%3Agame%3Dpirate_ball</flickr>

(These are the ten most recent Flickr photos of Pirateball. To add your own, just add the "ludocity:game=pirate_ball" tag to your Flickr photos.)