I thought I was the biggest pickleball hater, until I read the story of a cancer patient who told the New York Times that living next to pickleball courts was worse than cancer.
You win, brother.
The source is no longer available for comment. Either the cancer or the cacophony of the pickleball courts killed him. My money is on the pickleball.
Pickleball is lame — or you will be
If that pickle-shit does not kill you, it will make you lame.
Pickleball injuries have been on the rise. As the un-athletic get off the couch to try their hands at the whiffle game, their knees, ankles, and hips creak and break. They fall like so many trailers in a tornado leaving a wake of unpaid medical bills and making orthopedic surgeons great again.
Just ask Forbes magazine: Injuries could cost $400 million a year in medical bills. Even more in lost productivity of the almost retired. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/06/26/pickleball-injuries-cost-americans-nearly-400-million-this-year—and-seniors-are-hit-hardest/?sh=1ab325a8c266
Or for Gibson (and other non-readers) watch this 30-second video:
Even if you miss out on the injuries, as a pickleball “player”, you can count yourself among the lame. Socially lame that is.
Anybody who is older than 10 and not yet in the nursing home, should never take a “whiffle” game seriously.
Pickleball players steals my line
Speaking of death and pickleball, I have a little bone to pick with one Mr. Andre Agassi.
His one laugh line, spit out like a cocaine addict talking about crypto… “Pickleball is where tennis players go to die…” is a direct theft from me.
In 2017 I wrote:
When you are ready to die, try pickleball.
Kieran — 2017
Check out the date on that story… 5 years before Agassi got a laugh in front of a crowd of “lameos” at a god damn pickleball tournament where they stole the likeness and names of some of America’s greatest tennis players, I told the internet the proper way to think of the move to pickleball for tennis players. It took me 500 words, but the message was pickleball is where tennis players go to die.
Andre, feel free to mail me a check for the copyright infringement.
I sense there could be some lawsuits here, going back and forth, back and forth.
Like ping-pong without a table.
But nowhere near as FUN as ping pong can be!
There is no beer-pickle, but beer pong can improve any afternoon.
I play occasionally, indoors where the noise is contained. It’s a fun game fast being wrecked by its insane popularity that will lead people to take it seriously. It’s a game for frivolous fun.
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Exactly. Like kickball or tag. A fun game. Not a sport.
Yeah. I’m sorry to see it trying to become a major sport with $$$. I was happy to find it in my old age. If not fun, not for me
As the Grinch says about the Who’s – the noise, the noise, the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise, NOISE!!
You’re a mean one… Mr. Tennis.
It was invented in the state in which I live, one that also seems to produce a lot of serial killers. Coincidence?
Many evil things have come from Bainbridge Island.