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On a recent Sunday afternoon at Williamsburg’s McCarren Park softball fields, where one might normally expect to find middle-aged weekend warriors playing in slow-pitch leagues, bats, gloves and beer were noticeably absent.
The guy patrolling shallow left field wore a jersey bearing the name “GhostFace Kickah.” A bandana tied around his face covered all but his eyes. The next inning, the pitcher wore a skirt and one of those hats the Navy slaps on new enlistees. The Jolly Roger flew from the chain link fence on her team’s sideline. Yellow rubber balls occasionally sailed from the batter’s box into the rough outfield grass or skidded across the dusty infield only to be corralled by an alert infielder and hurled to the first baseman.
The strange part? Most of the players had to be at work the next morning.
The kickball—once banished to grammar school memories and gym teachers’ supply closets—has been making a steady comeback over the last decade through a generation of newly minted adults, eager to return or recapture their childhood pastimes. Some social observers have gone so far as to label them “grups” or “kidults” as members of the growing class of young professionals hanging onto teenage and childhood pursuits.
Whatever they’re called, if the two games going on at McCarren that afternoon and their respective sidelines and entourages are any indication, they’re showing up in droves. The simple pleasure of blasting a rubber ball as hard as possible with a solid boot is no longer reserved for the milk-and-cookies set.
