Story of the iconic Wiffle Ball and its family-run Connecticut factory

Summer is in the seventh-inning stretch. Wiffle Balls remain in full bloom, the trademark yellow bats standing tall, huddled together in sports stores, drug stores and hardware stores, at supermarkets, gas stations and beaches.

They are timeless, resilient, perforated, polyethylene-coated Americana, at home in a Norman Rockwell painting or the front lawn of a frat house, lightweight and potent, transporting you back to childhood, shrinking the gap with the child standing before you.

Wiffle Ball is for the best of the best, the ones who throw ungodly breaking stuff on rigorously designed replicas of baseball’s most famous fields, at national tournaments, for millions of YouTube viewers. It is for the toddler taking their first swing, the grandparent throwing their first pitch of the 21st century. It is for the kids prone to breaking windows — and short eight teammates. It is for the college kids, two bong hits deep, holding a ball in one hand and an adult beverage in the other. It is for the athlete, the idler, the scientist, surveying the laws of aerodynamics through a toy weighing approximately 0.7 ounces.

Demand stays strong despite the millions of balls scattered across the nation’s garages, basements and sheds. Tens of thousands will be born today, packaged in endearing and intentionally outdated boxes from Eisenhower’s America (It curves! Bat it! Bounce it! Safe anywhere).