Pickled

 That day in Spiece Fieldhouse it was July and humid and the place was one big sweaty drum section, making its sound in a syncopated whap-whap-whap that came from everywhere and could only be called Baller Jazz.

It was the sound basketball makes in the summertime, when a million kids with a million dreams hit the road for this tournament or that tournament or some other tournament.

This day it was the USSSA Boys National Basketball Championship, and there were 1,500 ballers there with 1,500 look-at-me signs hanging around their necks for the college coaches in their shorts and sandals and golf shirts emblazoned with their school logos. On a dozen or so courts, kids were taking it to the tin or pulling up for the J or flushing a dunk (with authority!). It was like being in a sneak-squallin’, ball-callin' house of mirrors, one multiple exposure after another.

And it was Spiece Fieldhouse's DNA -- a beating basketball heart in a basketball state, where the jerseys of famous Hoosiers hung from the rafters and Hoosier basketball memorabilia that greeted you the instant you stepped in the door.

You can say goodbye to all that now.

Blame market saturation or market demand or the weather, if you like, but mainly blame the rise of pickleball. Last anyone looked it hadn't yet taken over the world, but it had all its outlying provinces surrounded And now that includes Spiece Fieldhouse, erstwhile hoops mecca.

At the top of the week, local media ran stories about the demise of the Fieldhouse, or at least the basketball part. This summer they'll close the place down, tear up the basketball courts and replace them with pickleball courts. Demand, meet supply.

Somewhere John Wooden just rolled over in his grave and uttered a most un-Wooden-like scream. Pickleball over basketball? In Indiana?

Well, yes. It's for all the reasons listed above: The market is full to the brim with basketball tournaments and basketball facilities, including right here in the Fort. But there's a market for pickleball, whose popularity is exploding.

And, no, I don't know why.

Oh, it's not that I have anything against it, or bear it a grudge because I got hurt playing it (I didn't, because I haven't). And I suppose it keeps our senior citizens occupied, and as one myself I can say that's not a bad thing.

Pickleball is great for seniors, because it's kinda like tennis if you shrunk it in the dryer. It’s Giant Ping-Pong is what it is, and you play it with a kinda ping-pong ball and an oversized kinda ping-pong paddle, and it sounds a lot like ping-pong.

Pock. Pock. Pock. And an occasional, satisfying thwock! when you really lay into one.

Tennis players, or so I've been told, tend to hate it, because pickleball is taking over their courts in places. Also the whole pock-pock-pock thing drives them nuts. Which I can understand, because I could see how it might eventually feel like audio waterboarding.

And yet ...

And yet, pickleball is THE thing now in leisure sports, precisely because it's so versatile. Seniors can play it, kids can play it, professional athletes can play it. In fact there's both amateur and professional competitive pickleball, with tournaments everywhere.

So, it's here to stay. And Spiece is merely filling a need by converting to it. It's one of those bidness decisions, and from the looks of it a pretty shrewd one.

Get ready, Fort Wayne.

The basketball whap-whap-whap is gone. Here comes the pock-pock-pock.