By Sam Reeves

First up: Pickleball. What in the actual f*ck is pickleball? The definition I found is “Pickleball is an indoor or outdoor racket/paddle sport where two or four players hit a perforated hollow polymer ball over a 36-inch-high net using solid faced paddles. The two sides hit the ball back and forth over the net until one side commits a rule infraction.” So it’s basically tennis for lazy people. It was first played in 1965 and was invented by Joel and Joan Pritchard. According to “The History of Pickleball” by The Long Cove Club, Pickleball was named after the couple’s dog: Pickles. However, this is what Joan Pritchard said about the game: “The combination of different sports reminded me of the pickle boat in the crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.” Apparently, depending on who you ask, you will get one of the two answers.

Now, if the couple named this game after their dog, I totally get it. If the other definition of it is about a pickle boat crew, I hate it. Either way, the game doesn’t have a name reflecting what is happening. If the ball was made up of smashed-together pickles, they nailed it! Alas, it is not, and now I have to make fun of it because I have nothing better to do. Did your middle school make you learn pickleball like mine did? Why on earth is this something that anyone should be taught in a curriculum for gym class when they are 12 years old? I remember we had make-shift courts around our gym, and all of us kids would just hit the ball as hard as we could. We were 12, so it wasn’t like we were hitting bullets past each other. It was enough to piss off the gym teachers though.

The name doesn’t necessarily make the game, but it should be something that you can visualize. When I hear pickleball, I don’t think, “oh, that’s like tennis but on a smaller court.” I think, “how the hell did they get a ball of pickles? That shouldn’t be possible”. Don’t get me wrong, I would kill to see people hitting a pickle back and forth with paddles. I would watch that for hours on end. I do wonder how many pickles you would go through during a match. I would get sneaky and throw a cucumber in the mix, just to see if the people were paying attention.

This is not to knock Joel and Joan Pritchard for inventing a nice backyard game for people. If they named it for something between them and didn’t let someone patent it under a different name, then they are heroes. One would venture to guess they never expected it to take off and be a known entity at any time. It was just something they did on their little plot of land for fun. I just know some executive from a gaming company came to their house and tried to buy the rights to it, and they made their dog Pickles bite them. I doubt that’s true, but it’s funny to think about.

Anywhoodles, (yeah, I stole that word from Sean O’Brien, who stole it from Brockmire), but nothing bad will happen to me because, as we all know, I am built differently. I think pickleball should stay the name it is, simply for the dog Pickles. If anyone tries to change it: punch them in the neck for Pickles.