Cousin of Flubber

Fred MacMurray would be so proud. Has anyone else ever heard of Slamball? I stumbled upon this because I left the TV on the station that I use to run my videos. It seems Slamball was invented in a warehouse in December 2000. The question is why?

The court is about the size of a basketball court. A regular basketball seems to be in use. The inventor’s goal was to “create a sport that combines the excitement of basketball, football and video games.�

What is different is that at each end of the court there are four trampolines surrounded by a padded area. One is under the basket, one is at the free throw area and the other two are off to the sides. The only hard surface is the mid court region. Players must bounce the ball just like in basketball, but they can launch off of these trampolines and soar half the distance of the court before touching down so about three bounces will get you from end to end, just like in the old movie, Flubber.

It is basketball at hockey speed being played by human kangaroos. Tactics involve timing your bounces on the trampolines so that your opponent is going down when you are going up. This makes it really easy to stuff the ball into the basket as you bounce higher than the basket.

Like hockey, it is difficult to send the ball out of bounds because, like hockey, there is an enclosure, which the players and the ball bounce off of. Play does get stopped fairly often due to “fouls� which seem to entail some kind of rules of right of way when you are sailing through the air and crashing into people. Scoring seems to be similar to basketball, although I found it a bit hard to follow.

The teams have names that come straight out of the fourth grade: The Slashers, The Rumble and The Maulers, to name a few.

The coach of The Rumble dresses like a race track tout, while The Slashers guy is a sort of albino/zombie. Colorful stuff. I would  guess the average player’s age at early to mid-20s. They should know better by now. One popular sports thing that is missing is fights. I guess it is hard to throw a punch while wobbling around on a trampoline.

The fans were packed into the stands, all 10 rows. I don’t know if they have to pay to see this. I think that would be a bit much. It is not clear if the players are paid or are serving out some grotesque form of community service.

 This is just silly.

Bill Abrams resides (and watches silly sports) in Pine Plains.