500

It's a game of catch, is what it is. With score. It's called 500. And the point of it is: you're not really playing for points. You're playing for fun.

I quote:

"the game begins with the thrower calling out a number (typically a multiple of 100 between 100 and 500), and then throwing the baseball/football/flying disc,(hoseball), or hitting the baseball with a baseball bat, in the general direction of the group. The person that catches the throw gains the number of points called out. The process is repeated until one of the players reaches or exceeds 500 points. That player then switches places with the thrower, and the game continues. Typically, all player's point totals are reset when a new thrower is instated."

See, the thrower/hitter decides ahead of time what the catch is worth. And then the real catch is that when someone finally "wins," everybody's score goes back to zero. As if the score really doesn't count. As if you don't ever really win. You just get to throw/hit.

O, you can play with everyone keeping their score. But what, actually, is the point. Especially when the pitcher/hitter can also call "infinity" or "negative infinity" or, somewhat less mystically, "jackpot."

"Infinity?" you ask, pondering endlessly the mathematics thereof. I quote again:

"If a catch is attempted but missed (i.e. the object is touched but dropped), the player must deduct that throw's value from his total. When this rule is combined with the above rule (ie infinity is allowed), the math is bent slightly such that infinity accumulation is additive. This means that dropping two infinity/jackpot throws would yield a score of negative 2 x infinity. If an infinity/jackpot throw were then successfully caught, the player's score would be negative 1 x infinity, or simply negative infinity. Varying by region, this variation can be used selectively by using the term "hot" (e.g. calling "400 hot" would mean that the aforementioned variation would be in effect, however calling "400" would mean that merely the standard rules would be in play)."

500 is clearly a game that is played in what I have come to call the "Spirit of Junk." That is, rules may vary, apparently endlessly, the only point being the fun of it all. Or, as my friend Stork, co-Defender of the Playful, would call it: "The Spirit of the Game."


Funspotting by Noise

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith