Toy Hall of Fame gets it right with Wiffle Ball

My reaction to the 2017 Toy Hall of Fame class in four words: It's about darned time.

When the world's most important hall of fame announced its most recent list of inductees in early November, the most important toy of my childhood finally got recognition: The Wiffle Ball.

The Wiffle Ball was joined in the 2017 class by the paper airplane and the board game Clue – while 2017 nominees such as the Magic 8 ball, Matchbox cars, Pez candy dispenser and the card game Uno were left on the outside, looking in. As was sand, which failed in its bid to join 2008 inductee stick in an "also appears in nature" category.

The toys are enshrined at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York, which has been naming toys to the shrine since 1998 (the legendary first class that included Barbie, Crayola crayons, Erector set, Etch A Sketch, Frisbee, LEGO, marbles, Monopoly, Play-Doh, Teddy bear and Tinker toy).

There were undoubtedly some tough choices this year. For instance, both My Little Pony and Transformers failed to make the cut, continuing the ongoing dominance of baby boomer toys. There was likely criticism that the board game Risk failed while Clue made it: Does the shrine favor detective work over international diplomacy?

But, alas, who cares? The Wiffle Ball is in!

For the uninformed, Wiffle Balls are plastic baseballs with what the Hall of Fame calls "eight oblong slots cut into one hemisphere." The result is a "baseball" that dodges and darts when thrown by a savvy 13-year-old.

The plastic balls arrived in the early 1950s and came at the perfect time: the spread of suburban backyards made them a perfect place for a baseball game that shrinks the field.

For baseball fans of my generation (particularly those of us who weren't very good at it), the Wiffle Ball was magical. You could throw curve balls that broke either way. You could throw knuckleballs. And you could hit against your friends with a plastic bat . . . all in a confined space.

My pal Dana and I played Wiffle Ball constantly during the summer (plus variations of it, with tennis balls replacing the plastic ball to make home runs easier to hit). At Stanhope Field, all of right field was off a retaining wall, which allowed the ball to roll and roll and roll – and led me to hit almost exclusively left-handed to take advantage of the dimensions.

The point isn't so much that I could hit lefty or that I could strike out Dana with a knuckleball or even that I set the single-season home run record (all of which are important), but that the Wiffle Ball allowed the two of us – and generations of kids – to play baseball without having to gather 18 people to play regular baseball or even a half-dozen to play "work-ups" (perhaps another column).

Wiffle Ball made my middle school and early high school summers fun. I welcome the Wiffle Ball into the Toy Hall of Fame and await the day that its every-other-sport partner, the Nerf ball, can join it, in the same way that Raggedy Andy joined Raggedy Ann two years after she was inducted.

And if you disagree with me, I'll strike you out with a knuckleball.

Just like I could strike out Dana. And set a single-season homer record against him, in case you forgot what I wrote three paragraphs ago.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.