So we were trying to explain to the future Mrs. RandBall exactly what “hotbox” is the other day. As a baseball-loving kid, we used to play this all the time. But in retrospect, trying to describe it, hotbox sounds fairly ridiculous. It consisted, basically, of two people playing catch at designated “bases,” (usually someone’s jacket, or a similar object) while at least one other person ran back and forth trying not to get tagged out. In order to entice them to run, you could throw pop-ups, or grounders, or intentionally drop the ball, or other such shenanigans. If they were tagged out, they took your place, and you got to be the runner. Well, the future Mrs. RandBall isn’t really much of a sports fan. She thinks runners in the real game should be able to go wherever they please (thus eliminating the need for baselines) and that the pitcher’s rubber should be a safe haven where nobody can be tagged out — a safe haven between all the bases, if you will. So as you can see, we need to commiserate about hotbox in another forum. In fact, we think hotbox should be a part of every game of RandBall from now on. Did anyone else play this game as a kid? (And in the comments, please take the care to write hotbox all as one word. The reasons are obvious, and separating them could turn RandBall into an entirely different type of game).

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