Member-only story

I Used to Be an Internationally Ranked Wiffleball Player

Here’s what it taught me about life.

Chris Wojcik
14 min readJul 11, 2023
Summertime wiffle ball with my friends and our dads — circa 2015.

“Wiffleball is life” — Chris Wojcik, November 16, 2012, aged 15

Today, I am a professional Jiu-Jitsu athlete.

According to one particular website, I’m even ranked in the tAop 15 in the world for my sport. Rankings don’t interest me as much as they used to, however.

What I’m really proud of is that I get to play my favorite sport, all day long. Jiu-Jitsu has taken me across the Atlantic Ocean and around the world, and it’s taught me more about myself than I probably ever wanted to learn.

But before I became one of the top-ranked grapplers in the world, I was the starting left fielder for “Pitches Ain’t Hit”, the formerly 12th-ranked slow-pitch wiffle ball team in the world.

This was a real team with real athletes and very lofty goals. If the picture above doesn’t prove how serious my friends and I took slow pitch wiffle ball, here’s our team’s official Twitter account. We haven’t been active in a while, but I promise — we were.

Playing highly competitive wiffle ball with my friends in the brutal humidity of the Chicago summers were some of the best memories of my young life. The stories from that time still make me smile just thinking…

--

--

Chris Wojcik
Chris Wojcik

No responses yet