Wiffleball Summers With Pops

Remembering My Father And Lessons Learned From A Plastic Ball and Bat

(Note: This is a personal story. The historical posts return next week. Thank you for indulging me. - Cam)

My Dad, Charlie Miller, at the plate at Miller Wiffleball Stadium in the 1980s

I loathed the rule.

It wasn’t fair.

It went against everything exciting, euphoric, and breathtaking in the grand game of Wiffleball play. Bombastic, street clearing home runs were the reason I played the game.

It was a terrible rule.

How could a ball hit over the fence be deemed an automatic three outs?

How in the name of Eric Keith Davis could I swat that terribly scuffed, slightly cracked plastic ball, over the 6 foot wooden fence, 75 feet onto 45th Street, and have nothing to show for it?

It was a dumb rule.

I loathed the rule.

It wasn’t fair.

But it made perfect sense.

You see, my Dad, player/manager of the Latonia Yankees from 1985-1989, and known neighborhood Wiffleball legend, made and enforced the rule. Here’s why:

Miller Wiffleball Stadium in Latonia, KY as seen overhead today - Google Earth

A few games into the inaugural 1985 Miller Wiffleball season, Dad realized that three hour games with final scores of 45-44 couldn’t be the norm. The dimensions at Miller Wiffleball Stadium on 45th Street in Latonia, KY were 59 feet to left, 65 feet to center, with short porch of 47 feet to right.

The games were long.

The home runs, plentiful.

Most of our games were on weeknights, being that our little league games were on weekends, and his one hour commute from the Cincinnati Milacron plant wouldn’t get him home until nearly 6 pm. By the time our games completed, it was bedtime.

Although we did toy with stringing lights up once.

Once.

So how do you speed up games? You make the super easy, super impossible.

I can vividly remember the day the new rule change went into play. My brothers Chris, Chad, and Chet were waiting on the front porch for the Ford station wagon to make its customary turn-around down the street, before parking in front of the house. I was just finishing up chalking the lines on the field (a process that involved rubbing large pieces of chalk over an old window screen). Dad, in his suit, toting his brown briefcase had barely put his car in park, when my brothers would start shouting the question:

“Do you wanna play Wiffleball?”

A disagreement breaks out during the 1988 Miller Wiffleball League All-Star Game. Dad comes in from LF to restore order. (The banner in CF was our logo, the cardboard nailed to fence were distance markers)

As I finished up the baselines, the chalk becoming nothing more than a nub, Dad changed his clothes into his white t-shirt, gray coaching shorts, and slip on sandals. He emerged from the back door, a Diet Coke in one hand, and his silver Coors Silver Bullet softball glove in the other. Mom looked on from a window in her air-conditioned suite that doubled as our living room.

“New rule,” he said, taking his position in very short left field.

“A home run is a ball that hits the fence on a line drive. If you hit over the fence, it is an automatic three outs.”

I was dumbfounded. I had hit 20 home runs in the span of one week and I protested this absolute abuse of power.

I ranted. I raved.

How could he? Wiffleball dingers were as American as Michael Jackson, the mall, and McDonald’s pies!

“That’s too hard,” I yelled at him.

“Exactly,” he said with a smirk.

And he was right. As he often was.

Playing the outfield became as challenging as being a hockey goalie. And trying to hit the ball on a line, launch angle be damned, was like trying to knock over a pop bottle with a rock from 65 feet away.

The point was to make the easy, more difficult. It was to make the home run, worth it.

Whenever I speak to groups on filmmaking, or talk about my craft, I tell this story. I speak of how this quirky rule made me try and do something that was seemingly impossible.

Easier isn’t always better. Challenge yourself.

The “Miller Home Run Rule” was just one of many lessons I learned playing Wiffleball with him in the 1980s. I’m sure he was just doing what he knew, without being preachy, or making a point. But for me, I look back and realize just how much I learned from him on those hazy summer nights in Latonia.

I learned fairness.

I learned I could be competitive without being an ass-hat.

I learned how to be patient, (although that is one I am still working on).

By July of 1988, the Miller crew packed up and moved to Greenwood, SC. And our league went with us. We had a new field, new rules and still so much fun. Wiffleball was a lifestyle for us. We took it seriously. Very seriously. We had rules. We had a scorebook. We had contracts. We even had Wiffleball cards.

Wiffleball scorebook and Wiffleball card

And having Dad out there with us meant the world to me.

I never told him that.

I wish I did.

I remember his “1988 Kirk Gibson-esque World Series home run trot” imitation that he did after smacking a long home run at the 1989 All-Star Game like it happened yesterday. I’d like to think that he wasn’t just out there to amuse us, but rather he really enjoyed playing with his sons.

By 1990, we had neighborhood friends who wanted to join the league. It had always been just a Miller thing, and I was hesitant to let anyone into our club. For me, it was sacred. It was ours. But Dad decided to hang up the Coors Silver Bullet softball glove and encouraged us to let the neighborhood in on the fun. From time to time, he’d come out to our field and watch, or keep the scorebook. We’d videotape the All-Star Game, and he’d announce it. He’d ask us the standings or who was hot, who was not.

For the All-Star Games, we’d create “TV graphics” by taping logos onto transparent sheets.

In 1991, we moved to suburban Detroit, MI. Once again, the league went with us. We had a new field, new rules, and we were still having fun. But unfortunately, as often is the case, life happens. And you just can’t stop it.

In May, two months after we had moved, Dad had his first heart attack.

It forever changed all of us. I was 17 at this point, and the thought of having to possibly become the man of the house was not something I was willing to accept. It was scary. Our world had changed. He recovered that summer and we pretended that a somewhat sense of normalcy had returned. But there is never really normalcy once you have a heart attack.

My brothers and I had a season in 1991. It was fun, but the games started to be more difficult to schedule. We were older. We were busier. And although we didn’t say it, we knew that it was over.

The Miller Wiffleball League was now just a memory. By 1993, I moved out, and returned to Latonia. My relationship with my father became long distant, with smatterings of in-person holiday appearances, family events, and random visits becoming the norm. Eventually, the rest of my brothers did the same thing.

When we all got together, we’d reflect on those Wiffleball days and shake our heads and laugh at past Wiffleball feats. We always talked about playing a game for old-times sake with Dad.

But we didn’t.

I wish we did.

In 2017, Dad had another heart attack. There was heart surgery. There were kidney problems. Diabetes. And on and on. He had become someone I didn’t recognize when Mom would send photos, or when we got together. This past spring, he was injured in a fall. The recovery was tough, and coupled with his many health issues, it must have been so difficult to even muster the desire to go through the day. But he kept marching on.

The last time I saw my father was the previous June. We met up in the shadow of the old Miller Wiffleball Stadium when they came to town. We talked about the “Miller Home Run Rule” and laughed about the times we forced my brother Chris to retrieve balls that rolled into the sewer across the street. And we took a photo, before shaking hands and saying goodbye. I remember thinking on my way home that day that I hope I would get to see him again.

But I didn’t.

I wish I did.

Just beyond the center field wall at Miller Wiffleball Stadium in June of 2021 Left to Right, Dad, Chet, Cam, Chris, Mom (Chad not pictured)

My Dad passed away on June 30, 2022, merely hours after I had done a radio interview on my upcoming film on Riverfront Stadium. An interview he listened to.

He got to hear my voice one more time.

I wish I was able to hear his.

Wherever my Dad is, I hope he has a heavily taped Wiffleball bat, a Wiffleball, his Coors Silver Bullet softball glove, and a Diet Coke. And I hope one day, we will all be waiting for the Ford station wagon to make its customary turn-around down the street, before parking in front of the house. And we’ll ask him:

“Do you wanna play Wiffleball?”