THEME GAMES Havelock Hewes

From time to time, we eschew our normal practice of making up even teams in favor of a theme game in which sides are made according to preferences of, or facts about the players. Some of our theme games have been Fathers vs. Non-Fathers for Father's Day, Mets Fans vs. Yankee Fans during the mets-yankees world series, Manhattanites vs The World, and Marvins (those in Marvin Cohen style garb) vs. Freds (those in Fred Lang style uniforms) for Halloween, Communists vs. Capitalists and Christians vs. Jews. After the players have been divided into groups there are usually some players who don't fall into either group, these are divided in a way to make the teams as evenly skilled as possible. We also play some theme games based on innovating the game, such as our Backwards Game in which players ran from home to third base to second base to first base and home again. Some suggested games of these sort which we have not yet tried are a Both Ways game in which batters could decide to run to first or to third base and the defense would have to adjust, and the NyQuil Game in which all players would be required to take a large dose of NyQuil before the game. There is often some grousing from players about these games. "What if I don't consider myself a Capitalist or a Communist?," "Its not fair to make me drink NyQuil!" On average, we play about one theme game a season, though we encourage more. We have always imposed these games on the players with the caveat that no player need fall into either category to play, and, if we really played the NyQuil game we would allow players to opt out so that an even number of NyQuil players would be on each team. As for rules experiment games, everyone is required to play by the new rules. It has been suggested that we run a small number of games with some limited form of base stealing or that we try out some rules changes regarding retarding the ability to throw hitters out at first base from the outfield over a period of, say, ten games. It is expected of players to have, if not a positive attitude toward these games, at least a reluctant acceptance of them.