View from the Kitchen: The Early Origins of Pickleball

Even though few people had ever heard of this sport until 2019, pickleball has actually been around a fairly long time. It was invented in 1965 by three extremely lonely men from Bainbridge Island, WA, with way too much time on their hands. The sport was named after the dog of one of the three inventors. The dog’s name was “Ball.” I meant to say “Pickles.” I’m just glad his owner gave his dog a simple name like Pickles instead of their original naming idea for the dog: Lord Chesterton of Belvedere. Otherwise we’d all be talking about LordChestertonofBelvedereBall.

The first thing you should know about LordChestertonofBelvedereBall, l mean Pickleball, is that you MUST BE OLD in order to play. In most states, the legal minimum is 60 years old. But check the applicable age restrictions in your region. (In North Dakota, you must be 85 – I have no idea why.) The penalty for underage pickleballing is being forced to watch old people play pickleball. Personally, that strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment.

This sport has become wildly popular all throughout America. According to one study, pickleball surged by nearly 40% between 2019 and 2021 to 4.8 million active players. Compare that to the Mayan sport of Pitz, a team sport once extremely popular in ancient Mesoamerica which involves a heavy rubber ball that teams try to get through a hoop on the wall. That sport’s popularity has declined markedly to the point that you almost never hear the results of a Pitz match on ESPN Sports Center anymore. Experts theorize that its dramatic decline in popularity was because it’s a very difficult game to play – and because the losing team’s players had to be sacrificed to the gods.

In stark contrast, in pickleball, losing players are almost never sacrificed to the gods. Stick with pickleball. Your kids and grandkids will thank you.

– Tim Jones [Check out more of Tim’s View from the Bleachers humor column in the Crab Cracker, at www.ViewFromTheBleachers.net and his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/viewfromthebleachers]