Enterprising Princeton youths create their own blitzball league

When the season of the game you love comes to an end, you can grin and bear it or find another way to keep playing.

And that’s where the Not-So-National Blitzball League in Princeton came to be.

The NSNBL is the product of Jack Ellis and 14 of his friends, Princeton Youth Baseball players between the ages of 10 and 16 who – as their baseball seasons were coming to an end – decided they wanted to keep playing.

They ended up forming a small but well planned and executed league in which to play their modified version of wiffle ball.

The league had its World Series on Sunday at Zearing Park in front of a sizable crowd of family members, interested parties and baseball fans, capping a season that may provide the groundwork for a bigger league in the future.

“It’s been really well done,” said Brittany Walter, mother of Daddy Hacks captain and another founder Logan Walter and operator of the World Series’ concession stand. “It was the perfect thing for them between the end of their baseball season and the start of football

“The parents haven’t had a hand in any of it. It’s all them. They’ve thought of everything and they’ve put in a lot of hard work doing this and we’re really proud of them.”

The group had seen games online from Como Blitzball, a league down in Missouri, thought it looked fun and decided to replicate it locally. Not only did they go out and play the game as they saw it, they made up an entire league, altering the rules to fit their play.

The NSNBL rules are similar to wiffle ball, but on a smaller field and with a different, more active ball. It takes three innings to play a game, five balls to draw a walk, there are no leadoffs and if a player rounds third base, he must go home. To get that runner out, a fielder can “tag” him by hitting the strike-zone stand behind home plate.

The group divided their number into three teams and devised a schedule of games (each would play twice a week for two months) to be played in the yards of four of the participants’ homes. They even collected a participation fee used to purchase personalized jerseys, their team name on the front and player surnames on the back, for each one.

The Daddy Hacks roster includes captain Logan Walter, Eli Ozburn, Atticus Spiegel, Dominick Strouss and Ethan Meyer, while playing for the Huckledoos are captain Hunter Spiegel, Jack Heaton, Gabe Heaton, Tucker Cain and Luke Ozburn.

The Chimney Makers are made up of its captain, Ellis, plus Jonah Taylor, Carter Grey, Tristan Salazar and Paxton Knudsen.

The NSDNBL also kept statistics on each player and recorded all of their games, posting them on Youtube, with clips of outstanding plays posted on Instagram.

With the 16-game regular season completed, the league came down to its World Series, which was predictably performed in a professional manner.

Ellis, whose team did not make the final, played public address announcer and umpire from his place behind home plate, introduced all the players, playing the “Star Spangled Banner” and introducing Gary Polson, a friend of the league who threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

When the Series began, it was supposed to be a best-of-3, but when the opener went more than two hours, it was halted there with the Huckledoos taking a 14-3 decision over the Daddy Hacks.

Even as this season was ending, there was still more. A group of players will represent the league at a Blitzball tournament in Freeport on Aug. 10, and enough new players have signed up to give the loop more teams next summer.

“It’s been a lot of work,” Ellis said, “but it’s been a lot of fun, too.”