Josh:
I saw this task and immediately wanted to do it. I was in the mood for a game involving a large group of people and checked Wikipedia for a list of fictional games. I'm a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut so when I saw German Batball from his story Sirens of Titan I knew I had found my sport. I didn't know a large enough group of people who would actually want to play but I thought combining forces would be enough to assemble teams.

Laura:
I had been itching to take part in a task and thought collaborating with Josh would be a sweet way to spend our day off. We changed our Facebook statuses and texted adventurous friends.

Some Assembly Required
Gathering supplies involved a trip to the store. After much deliberation, we purchased a child's soccer ball, a beach ball... and some trail mix.


We headed to Laura's house and began construction.

Step 1: Deflate ball

Step 2: Cut out old valve

Step 3: Add water

Step 4: Attach beach ball valve

Step 5: Desperately try to fix leaks using hot glue


We have a batball!

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The Rules
German Batball is played on a field with three bases. The batball is a "flabby ball the size of a big honeydew melon. The ball is no more lively than a ten-gallon hat filled with rain water." You hold the ball in one hand, punch it with the other, and run like hell!

Josh demonstrates his technique:


We were unsure of the technicalities of keeping score and determining outs, so we decided to go with general baseball rules, adding the ability to get a player out by hitting their body with the ball.

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The Game
Our team was up to bat first. We scored two points in the first inning, with the ball mainly holding its shape and water. During this inning, the outfielders developed their defensive strategy and closed in on us, quickly realizing the ball never traveled farther than fifteen feet when punched. We shamelessly stole this strategy when we took to the outfield, but they still managed to outscore us 3-2 by the bottom of the first.

By the second inning, the ball had lost its shape and a lot of water, requiring mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The defense stepped up their game, and our team only scored one point. We held our own in the outfield and only let one player score, even smashing the batball into our dear friend Andrew's face, tagging him out in the process. We will remember that moment forever, though the cameraman failed to capture it.

After two innings, the batball was destroyed, and the game was called with a final score of 3-4.

Here's a [musical] slideshow of the game. Please, please watch it, as it took most of our days off (and our sanity) to create it.



We followed up with a lengthy game of the totally non-fictional and trademarked Frisbee™...