Playground games serious fun for neighbors

The summer kickball season is winding down now, but if you’re interested in getting in some kicks next year, try:

o Your local neighborhood association (for totally informal games), or

o Mike Gamby at Vancouver Parks and Recreation: www.cityofvancouver.us/parksrec/page/adult-sports or mike.gamby@cityofvancouver.us (for the city’s league).

The secret, experts say, is in the leading edge of the leading toe.

“The hardest part is not kicking pop flies all the time,” said Jennifer Sosky.

OK, that’s one secret. The bigger secret — the open secret — is not taking adult kickball too seriously. You get a sense of that from local team names such as Fun Police and Ump Yours. And you get a sense of that from rules that aim to keep things friendly. The team at the plate also provides the first- and third-base coaches who call safes and outs according to the honor system. Pitches are supposed to be “like rolling a ball to a teammate,” the rules say.

In other words, it’s all as friendly as can be — or aims to be.

“OK, some players are a little full of themselves,” admitted one player who asked not to be named. “The sooner you nix that, the sooner you have a good time.”

Kickball is traceable to a 1917 book called Playground Games, which described it as a kinder, gentler cousin to baseball — played along the same lines but with kicking feet instead of a swinging bat. That made it easier and safer for young children.

Fast forward a century to find us living in a culture in which the line between childhood and adulthood has blurred. Even as we encourage our kids to get serious about ambition and achievement, the adult good life — especially here in the recreation-happy Pacific Northwest — seems to require hefty helpings of play.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, according to experts such as Stuart Brown, psychiatrist, researcher and the author of “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates The Soul.” That title summarizes what you probably already sense in your bones, but the specific benefits of play for adults as well as children, according to Brown, are both physical and mental:

• Strength and fitness, weight maintenance, coordination and balance.

• Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers.

• Emotional regulation and refreshment, counteracting depression.

• Greater creativity and imagination.

Heck, no less a brainiac than Albert Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research.” As if to prove it, the wild-haired Einstein was famously photographed doing things such as pedaling a rickety bike, bowing a violin, wearing ridiculously fuzzy bedroom slippers and sticking his tongue out at the camera in a way most unbecoming a super-genius.

Laid back

So — from the guru of physics to the infield dust of local ballfields, where teams composed mostly of extended families and neighborhood friends have been squaring off on summer evenings with varying levels of skill and silliness. Some are organized through Vancouver Parks and Recreation, which provides balls and rules and regular Thursday night field time at David Douglas Park; others remain intramural neighborhood association teams that are heavy on smiles and light on anything that smacks of serious competition.

“It’s just neighborhood kickball,” said longtime Arnada neighborhood resident Suzy Marshall of the Arnada Armada on a recent Wednesday, when her team was about to take on the Hough Shazamrox. “It’s real laid back,” she said.

“We like to keep it just competitive enough to be interesting,” said Armada teammate Todd Bachmann, whom you could credit with starting the whole kickball scene here.

Bachmann grew up playing softball and suggested years ago that a low-key league would cement some west-side community. Somebody at an Arnada Neighborhood Association meeting suggested kickball as even lower key, and Bachmann realized that was a better idea.

“It’s really blossomed into something fun over the last three years,” he said.

A neighborhood technology company recently put on a whole home-cooked barbecue for opposing teams at Arnada Park; other local businesses have offered team sponsorships.

But — in a free, friendly, only halfway serious kickball community — sponsorships for what?

Marshall shrugged and laughed.

“Shirts? Water? We broke a ball last year. We’ve got expenses.”

‘But, Mom!’

At David Douglas Park, by contrast, a recent contest between the Ballics and Just Drink Through It — the latter name is a joke, members insist, not a real statement about their alcohol consumption — unleashed a fair amount of competitive grit along with the laughs.

“No bunting!” somebody hollered when one kick didn’t propel the ball far. “You’re not allowed to bunt! Mom, no bunting!”

“Whoa, chill. Somebody look up bunting in the rules,” somebody else responded.

The rules didn’t help.

“A little too much chocolate milk?” said another as the (mostly) good-natured yelling settled down.

Chocolate milk appeared to be something like the magic elixir of the Just Drink Through It team, so maybe that’s what the shirts are really referring to.

According to Jonathan Russo, the “Big Papa” of the Ballics — it was printed on his shirt — many families who play in Vancouver’s league also get into Portland’s Underdog Sports Leagues, and the rules do differ.

“It can be a bit more serious and stressful” in Portland, he said. “Each league has slightly different rules, so you have to adjust.”

The best thing about the city’s adult kickball league — which is open to players as young as 14, with parental permission — is the way it has attracted parents and children who want to play together, everybody said. It’s an especially precious opportunity for families that are about to send recent high school graduates off to college or the military.

“This is our second year, and our kids pretty much begged us to sign up,” said Rikki Green of the Just Drink Through It team.

“What we like about this is playing with our children,” said Russo. “It gets you out exercising together. It gets the kids off video games.”