In the 1960s, when I was but a lad, my pops was a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The Club was old school personified, having been established in 1880 and occupying its spot on Seventh Street downtown for almost 100 years. Members of the LAAC have won ninety-seven Olympic medals, so while it had the appearance of a fairly exclusive men’s club, it was actually a badass sports club. Anyway, sometimes when my dad worked out he’d bring along me and my brother, and while he was working out, we’d ride the elevators and explore the Club, often ending up on the roof.

They had five or six paddleball courts up there that were entirely enclosed, kinda like chain-link cages, so we could take in the view and hit the ball back and forth without fear of ending up flattened on the pavement twelve stories below. A paddleball court is a little smaller than a tennis court, but it’s the same basic concept with service boxes and a similar net. You play with a regular tennis ball, but you hit with a wooden paddle, maybe twice the circumference of a ping-pong paddle, that has aerodynamic holes in it. We made up the rules as we went and we especially liked hitting the ball straight up and watching it ricochet off the top of the cage. I’ll always remember the distinctive sound that was made when the solid wood paddle came into contact with the tennis ball.

I heard that sound again, or at least something close to it, not too long ago while out walking the dog. We often walk by tennis courts, typically empty, yet on this day there was a little action, but it wasn’t tennis action…It didn’t sound right. It sounded more like the paddleball we had played as boys, but that wasn’t really it either. I stopped, the dog stopped, we peered as best we could through the green mesh wind block. They were hitting something alright but it wasn’t a tennis ball, it was too loud, a sharp popping sound instead of the hollow whack of a tennis ball. The suspense was killing the Labrador, so we went and pressed our face and muzzle against the screen.

What we witnessed that day, and we sure wished we hadn’t, was the bastardization of everything sacred and holy about racket sports. The dog commented that it was a hideous mutt of a game and, she added, that she knew a thing or two about mutts. The bastardizers stood on two or three makeshift “courts” inexactly carved out of a single regulation tennis court. They held some modified version a paddleball paddle, initiated points with the diagonal orientation of a tennis serve (though the ball was hit underhand) and played points that could only be described as a cross between ping-pong and playground foursquare. The last and greatest indignity was that the ball they were tapping about in this activity appeared to be a Wiffle ball. So here’s what they’d done, they removed all the grace and cardio of tennis, all the hand-eye coordination and spin slammability of ping-pong and all of the court-covering, shot-making magic of badminton and then, finally, they destroyed and defiled the best friend any freckle-faced nine-year-old ever had, the WIFFLE BALL! It was shameful and disrespectful and no Labrador should ever have to see such things.

We came to learn that this silly racket mashup was something called “pickleball,” though we didn’t see cucumbers of any sort nor did we notice any glass jars filled with yellowy-green liquid. It turns out the thing most pickled in this scenario are the brains of those engaged in this activity. The sound it makes is unnatural, a public nuisance actually, and striking a perforated sphere with a flat wooden paddle is nothing short of Whiffle ball abuse. They seem to play a lot of “doubles” and four dudes on a shrunken court with only a makeshift net between them is just socially awkward. It’s certainly nothing young children should observe.

♦

I have had many a sandwich rendered inedible by the presence of a pickle. The pickle’s vinegar stench and sweaty demeanor, its stray seeds and rubbery texture refuse to stay in their own lane, and so, when placed next to a sandwich, the pickle quickly begins to pollute the sandwich, starting with the bread. On a brave day, I’m able to eat around the toxic spill the pickle creates, but most days, the pickle damage is simply too deep, the vegetated aura impossible to overcome, and the entire sandwich must be sacrificed.

Tennis and badminton and ping-pong must not become the sandwich, to this new pickled invader. No one wins in a pickled society. Keep pickles off our plates and pickleball off our courts.