Go kick balls BY SAM PFEIFLE

At the company picnic last week, we were playing Wiffle Ball (oh, so cliché at this point — even Windham has a league now, where you can actually vote for the all-star team!). I assumed it was just about the most accessible team sport I could organize for our ultra-athletic Phoenix staff. Then someone said (I think a six-year-old), "Can we play kickball now?" Ah, a team sport even easier to play. If Wiffle Ball is directly descended from a sport one aspect of which Ted Williams declared "the hardest thing to do in sports," then it simply can't be as easy to play as kickball, where even the least athletic of us can meet shoed foot with rubber ball and probably make it to first base every once in a while.

That may explain the explosive popularity of the World Adult Kickball Association, coming soon to a fair Tree City near you. Well, it's ease coupled with its obvious nostalgia value. Yes, WAKA have their eyes on Portland, and, as soon as they find a field, says WAKA spokesperson Tiffany Ficklin (based in New Mexico), they'll have us set up in a matter of weeks. They're hoping for a fall start, but if field troubles persist (there's a paucity of athletic fields in these parts, about which I've written before) they'll be happy to launch in spring of 2006.

"We have cities across the country where we would love to establish kickball," Ficklin says of their expansion plans, "hip, fun, well-populated cities like Portland. We got started in DC, which is a huge transient city, and so when these people play with us they get transferred to another city and they want to bring WAKA with them." So it's part WAKA expansion, and part WAKA being disseminated around the country by converts. Launched with 150 players in DC in 1998, WAKA started growing to other cities in 2000 and now has divisions coast to coast — including two divisions, 24 teams, and 400+ players in Boston — and have met with almost universal enthusiasm everywhere they go.

Makes sense, seeing as World Kickball have got their shit seriously together: You register (individually or with a bunch of friends) with a $60 to $70 league fee, they find the field, set you up with the organization of the league, and supply uniforms, insurance, the official kickball equipment, and a budgeting mechanism that leaves you with enough money at the end of the 10-week season (eight regular season weeks, two for playoffs) for an awards ceremony and all around party. Where's the party? At the league bar, of course. Every WAKA division has an official bar to which everyone retires following game night. And it should go without saying that WAKA leagues are coed, and even have in their rules that there must be at least four men and four women in the field at all times (they play 11 in the field, with as many as 26 members on a team, and everyone kicks, regardless if they're in the field or not).

"People join for all kinds of reasons," says Ficklin, "to find dates, to socialize, people with kids use it as a date night, and for office workers, nothing's better at the end of the week than kicking that bright red ball as hard as they can." As someone who has played sports all my life (admittedly, none of them coed), I can attest to a unique social environment provided by the team — that whole working-for-the-betterment-of-all thing. Plus, if you're at all competitive, you'll find yourself looking forward to game night all week.

So, if you're interested, check out www.worldkickball.com/melighthouse and sign up. As soon as they've found the field and have 60 interested players, WAKA can create the first four teams and get things rolling. Ha. Rolling. Get it?

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com