Consumers Credit Union’s Nate Thompson is a National Wiffle Ball League Association National Champion and he’s chatting with Lynne on this week’s episode of Money, I’m Home about the sport and the experience of competing in the championship games.

 

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0:00:06.6 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money I am Home. Welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From Finance to Fitness and World Championships. We have it all here at Consumers. Okay, I’ve always wanted to be on a world championship team, like who doesn’t? Right. You root for your big teams. And now I can actually say I am a family member of a World Series Champion. Welcome in, Nate Thompson!

0:00:33.1 Nate Thompson: Thanks for having me.

0:00:34.0 LJJ: Oh, my goodness. All right. Tell us about, he just is getting off the Wiffle. Well, it’s called the Wiffle Ball.

0:00:41.7 NT: It’s NWLA, a National Wiffle Ball League Association National Championship.

0:00:45.1 LJJ: Did you even know that we had National Wiffle Ball Championships and in Kalamazoo, folks? Right here in your own hometown, we have got the national champions just getting off the field.

0:00:55.4 NT: Just over a week ago. Yep, so it’s kind of all surreal, I think, to everybody on the team. But it’s been a fun week meeting everybody, friends, family, back home and talking about the game and just kind of reliving some of those moments and all the emotions and hard work that went into it.

0:01:08.6 LJJ: You are going to hear about how to play Wiffle Ball. It’s a whole different experience than baseball. I’ll tell you what Nate, you’re also a star pitcher, so tell us a little bit about the experience.

0:01:19.0 NT: Yeah, so I was able to pitch in the national championship game. My teammate, Mike Hogan, pitched the game before. So, the rules of the champion or the tournament, if you pitch more than two innings, you have to take a game off, so we kind of alternated on Sunday. He started the game, and then I went to the next and vice versa all the way to the championship.

0:01:36.3 LJJ: What a team experience.

0:01:38.2 NT: Yes. It was a lot of fun.

0:01:39.2 LJJ: Okay. Back up the bus a little bit and tell us how you got involved in Wiffle Ball

0:01:44.0 NT: Yep. I started playing in the Kalamazoo Wiffle Ball League, which is right down the road at Fletcher Park, 10 years ago, so it’s my 10th year playing six times going to this tournament. I’ve met a couple of friends who had been in the league for a while, and then got involved and just loved it. I had been playing some softball at the time, but the competitive nature of Wiffle Ball was a lot more fun to me.

0:02:02.3 LJJ: Tell me a little bit about what happened in the ones before, and this had to be surreal.

0:02:08.1 NT: Yeah, so we finished… Our best ever finish before this year was second. We’ve been kind of around that sixth to 10th, a lot of other years, but we’ve been pretty close multiple times. We’ve always felt like we had the talent to do it, and this year, we’ve just finally all put it together and we’re able to kind of get over that over the top and to the mountaintop of it.

0:02:26.0 LJJ: How do you actually practice? Is it a year-round practice? Explain a little bit about the league, and how you find your players?

0:02:32.5 NT: The league in Kalamazoo, there’s a social and competitive division. We have 14 teams total over a 100 players. The Kalamazoo league’s been around since 2006. A lot of us do practice once the weather kind of gets warm in the spring. We start practicing. I like to pitch in my barn in the winter just for practice. Kind of gets me off the couch in the colder months, so we’re all practicing as much as we can all year round just for stuff like this. Yep.

0:02:56.3 LJJ: You’re going to teach us a little bit about pitching, but I just want everybody to know that I am holding the bat. This is the world championship bat.

0:03:07.1 NT: It is.

0:03:08.3 LJJ: Like this was in the game.

0:03:09.2 NT: Yes. Yep.

0:03:09.4 LJJ: Aren’t you going to frame it? [laughter]

0:03:10.0 NT: I’ll probably use it tonight because we have another game at 6 o’clock tonight, so I’ll probably use it later today.

0:03:13.7 LJJ: So, you just continue on playing.

0:03:17.5 NT: Yep.

0:03:18.1 LJJ: That’s awesome. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about pitching.

0:03:19.9 NT: Yep.

0:03:20.3 LJJ: It’s totally different than baseball.

0:03:21.0 NT: Mm-hmm. Completely different. Yeah, I played baseball. I was an outfielder in baseball, and never really pitched, so throwing a Wiffle Ball, I feel like it is completely different. It’s more like, add your wrist motion, I would say, than just like a baseball when you’re throwing it with your arm. And then depending on where their Wiffles are, that’s kind of where the ball’s going to break. Curve ball, slider, risers are probably the most popular pitches.

0:03:39.5 LJJ: Do you do more than that or are those your three go-to’s?

0:03:41.8 NT: Those are my three go-tos. Yep. Curve ball, riser, slider.

0:03:45.1 LJJ: Not only are you pitching, you don’t have a catcher?

0:03:48.6 NT: Nope. It’s just a board and that’s the strike board. So all you have to do is hit that board and it’s a strike. It’s five balls for a walk.

0:03:54.9 LJJ: I mean, it has to be really difficult to pick your team. You’re all great.

0:03:58.9 NT: Yeah. We have a lot of good players in Kalamazoo. There’s, like I said, there’s over a 100 players, and we only can take eight to the tournament. And then of the eight, which all eight of the players on our team played, at some point we had six guys pitch. So, it was a team effort, and I think that’s what kind of made it so special at the end is seeing some of those guys that have been playing for 12 years, or when Kalamazoo Wiffle Ball League started, finally seeing some of those guys win it. And my teammate, David Ayers, he’s one of only two players to ever play in every NWLA tournament.

0:04:28.0 LJJ: Wow!

0:04:29.4 NT: So, to see him kind of finally get that championship was pretty cool.

0:04:30.9 LJJ: Do you get like huge rings?

0:04:33.4 NT: We talked about it getting some rings, but I think for now, we’re just getting some t-shirts and some hoodies with some championship logo or something on it. But I did hear a teammate mention something about ordering some rings, I think that’d be pretty cool.

0:04:44.1 LJJ: I do, too. And how can people get involved? Is it something that you like, you kind of have tryouts for? You can just do a walk-on.

0:04:51.6 NT: Anybody can start a team. We have spring training every year, and fall ball for anybody that just wants to come try it out. Fall ball, I believe it’s four weeks, spring training is three weeks. So if you’re ever curious about Wiffle Ball, you can come out, kind of just put some feelers out there and…

0:05:05.9 LJJ: That’s so cool.

0:05:06.2 NT: Get used to it. So, yeah, it’s fun.

0:05:06.4 LJJ: Tell me, when did you actually start, like when did you first find out about Wiffle Ball comparatively to, you said you played baseball.

0:05:12.8 NT: Yeah, so my friend, Josh Rotan and Jordan Bucklew they were on the Diablos, which is our team in Kalamazoo here. And then they got me to come out and try it and I was pretty much hooked ever since.

0:05:23.0 LJJ: You even built yourself a barn pitching mound.

0:05:26.0 NT: Just a little like bullpen area, yeah, so I can throw in the winter. Yep.

0:05:28.9 LJJ: That is just awesome. So, what is it about Wiffle Ball that… It was featured on ESPN. It goes all the way. How many teams come from all over?

0:05:39.6 NT: I think, the team we played in the championship game was Missouri. I played in that tournament last year, which is a separate tournament also in Pennsylvania. There was a team that flew in from Japan, so it’s all over the country. This is just in the US for the NWLA tournament, but there’s teams all across the world that play Wiffle ball.

0:05:56.2 LJJ: What is your favorite memory of this trip?

0:06:00.1 NT: My favorite part was honestly just seeing all my teammates and just the excitement after the game, the emotion, seeing that out of the teammates, it’s indescribable. It is pretty cool.

0:06:08.0 LJJ: So family members, they have to just love watching you.

0:06:11.0 NT: Yeah. There’s always a pretty good crowd on Monday nights watching the games and stuff. It’s pretty casual but competitive at the same time. It’s a good community. Everybody is kind of there for themselves. It’s a fun community to be a part of.

0:06:22.3 LJJ: Consumers is proud of you. We’re excited and when all of a sudden it was, Nate’s on ESPN. It’s the biggest deal I’ve ever been involved in. I’m excited to be able to talk with you.

0:06:35.6 NT: Yeah. It was cool like having like the camera crews and all of us around at the stadium and stuff, it was pretty surreal experience. I think some of us are still kind of soaking it in, and just kind of being like, wow, we are on ESPN. Like, because I feel like as a kid, like that’s your dream, right? As a…

0:06:51.5 LJJ: Absolutely.

0:06:52.0 NT: Any athlete or anything, like you just, I want to play on ESPN.

0:06:52.5 LJJ: Yeah. You don’t want to be on the top 10 list of mistakes of the week but… [laughter]

0:06:56.7 NT: Yeah, exactly, but not top 10. But I think just being able to experience something like that is truly once in a lifetime.

0:07:02.9 LJJ: How did you become the pitcher?

0:07:04.5 NT: So, typically, most teams have three or four pitchers, so it’s just whoever can kind of throw strikes and yeah, just kind of learn along the way and pick up new pitches and always continue to try to find some new tools, because batters will catch on. So, if you’re not constantly adjusting your game, the batters are going to catch onto it, so you always got to try and come up with something new. So even just like when you lift up your leg, just kind of hold it there for a second, kind of get the timing off of the batter, because there’s no box or anything in like baseball, and you can’t steal bases. It’s always a constant, constant trick, especially against the teams that you play against a lot.

0:07:36.5 LJJ: Okay. Now let’s talk about the batting.

0:07:38.2 NT: Batting is kind of the same thing, so depending on what the pitcher is throwing, if they’re going to throw like a big slider, you might adjust your stance a little bit. If it’s breaking late, you want to have kind of more of a open stance, so you can reach that ball. So, if they’re throwing the out slider like outside, you want to be able to get to that pitch, because if it’s breaking late, depending on where you’re at in the batter’s box, you might not be able to hit it.

0:07:58.1 LJJ: What’s the longest you’ve ever seen a Wiffle ball go?

0:08:00.8 NT: Probably in the championship game, I think Gus Skivvy hit one about 150 feet off of me. That was, it was a net probably 45 feet tall behind me, and he almost hit it over that.

0:08:13.1 LJJ: Wow.

0:08:14.0 NT: That was probably one of the farthest hits I’ve ever seen. Yep.

0:08:14.2 LJJ: So, when that happened, what was the score?

0:08:16.3 NT: So, we were down 4-1 going in the last inning.

0:08:18.5 LJJ: Oh, my goodness!

0:08:19.6 NT: So we scored four in the bottom of the, because we only played six inning games, so we scored four in the bottom of the sixth to win it.

0:08:25.8 LJJ: Okay, so folks, Nate Thompson’s going to pitch to me. I got to find out. What are you going to pitch? I got to get ready.

0:08:30.2 NT: I’m Just going to throw fastball to you.

0:08:30.3 LJJ: A fastball?

0:08:31.4 NT: Yep. Oh, right off. [laughter]

0:08:34.3 LJJ: Oh, I’m sorry. I hit the world champion, folks.

0:08:37.9 NT: That was perfect.

0:08:39.8 LJJ: Thank you so much. Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Nate. Oh my gosh, you guys, what a great experience, and congratulations.

0:08:47.0 NT: Thanks for having me. It was fun.

0:08:48.8 LJJ: Thank you for watching and listening today. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. I’d like to thank Jake Esselink for his production skills. Thanks much for listening today.