It’s the end of the world as we know it. Pickleball has not only gone professional, but there are 3 pro leagues.

I shit you not. Adults can pick up a paddle and win prize money for hitting a whiffle ball over a net.

This has to be the world’s newest profession. What does it have in common with the world’s oldest? They both suck.

They suck in the PPA (Professional Pickleball Association) the APP (Association of Pickleball Professionals) and they majorly suck in the MLP (Major League Pickleball).

There’s other tournaments and “prize money” and new groups and greedy bastards are trying to cash in on the bonanza of an aging population playing a kid’s game for cash.

But almost everything about it is wrong.

Never mind that sports is overblown in our self-indulgent society. Never mind that paying millions to grown men to throw a pig skin, or run the bases, or shoot a ball through a hoop while others go homeless and starve is immoral on any scale.

It’s the goddamn whiffle ball and small court that we should mind.

The pictures on the pro websites look silly. The “action shots” of people grunting and them holding this short little paddle (some with two fucking hands) looks like play time at pre-school not payday for a pro.

Imagine if we did to basketball what Pickleball is doing to tennis. We would call the new sport “RelishBall.” We would replace all the 10-foot glass backed hoops with 6-foot Little Tyke plastic backboard and ball set.

Players would have to stay out of the “bathroom” ( 7 feet away from the plastic hoop) and make dink shots instead of dunks.

We would push the college kids, high school drop outs and gang members off the public basketball courts and cut them into 4 courts small enough for an octogenarian to cover in two steps.

We would fuck up the scoring and let people have multiple chances at free throws if they missed. Score would be kept as 8-4-2, with the last one showing how many tries you get to start a point.

Players would not be allowed to shoot from above their heads, and all shots would have to be from below their waist with a limited follow through.

Sounds addictive right? Well it beats the hell out of “watching wheel” all day.

And of course there would be so many different “professional” leagues, associations and tournaments, that every player who has every “shot a Relish” could claim to be a pro no matter how old, slow and uncoordinated they may be.

If that doesn’t sound ridiculous to you, have fun at your next professional Pickleball encounter. I’ll play in one of those tournaments right after I’m signed into hospice.