Basic Rules

As explained before, the rules had to be simple, because McCurdys have been known to stab each other over the roll of the dice in a Yahtzee game. Seriously. I still have the scar.

McCurdy Wiffle Ball Rules

1. There are no base runners, real or imagined.

2. All scoring is done by the long ball- home runs only. Oh yeah!

3. No balls, which means no walks, because a walk would create a runner on base and if you go back and read rule #1, which is just two rules above this one, you would be reminded that there are no runners and yes, it’s sad you have to be reminded of something that is just two rules away.

4. No called strikes. That is really just too much of a judgment call and can easily lead to a long and bitter argument over whether the ball clipped the corner of the strike zone or was just low, like all the other junk you’ve been throwing. And even when you go back inside the house and eat dinner, you are still glaring at each other over Mom’s pork chops and white gravy, making disparaging remarks about each other  to your way too numerous sisters. No, really, give up the called strikes.

5. Each inning for the side consists of either three hits or two outs. This takes some explaining if our brother Kevin is any indication (and for the record, being an attorney is obviously not that hard to do.) I grant you that this particular rule can be confusing. If you have four players per side, only three are going to get to bat (with one exception that I will explain later.) If the first three players each get a hit, including home runs, the inning is over and the side is retired. But let’s say that you strike out the first batter and the second batter flies out. That’s two outs and the inning is over as well. The only time the two-out rule has any real chance of being invoked is if the first batter gets an out- a swinging strike out or a caught fly ball.

a. A Hit is any hit ball that is not foul- this includes a home run. Make things easy for yourself and delineate before the game starts what the boundaries of a hit and foul are are. Generally, we play that a ball must roll past the pitcher’s mound before it’s considered fair territory.

b. An Out is a strike out (swinging strike, remember?) or a fly ball that is caught by a member of the fielding team.

6. You must have a minimum of one player per team. There is no maximum. That’s completely up to the players.

7. There should be a clearly defined home run line that the ball has to fly over, not roll over. C’mon, I’m embarrassed to even have to tell you that. You see many home run balls rolling underneath the Green Monster?

8. You may be looking over these rules and thinking, “But if you only get three hits per inning and in the last inning, you are four runs behind, what then?” Well, that’s actually covered a couple of different ways, one being that you can actually have areas that are worth more than one run. Maybe the side of a house is two runs, three if you hit the roof, and four if you knock that plastic clean over the house. But even then there are times when it seems hopeless for the losing team. That is why we created the LAST HOME RUN RULE.

It works like this: if the last batter in the last inning of the losing team hits a home run, the inning is extended and every batter on that team can keep batting, in order, as long as they EACH hit a home run. The rotation ends when someone gets an out or just an ordinary hit. This doesn’t happen often, but enough to put some real tension in close games. The LAST HOME RUN RULE may actually  result in the losing team becoming the leading team by the time they have finished the inning, thus putting pressure on the other team to regain the lead. Genius. Sheer genius and yes, the LAST HOME RUN RULE is always capitalized.