A New Variation

Growing up, my sister and I used to play "apple ball." The basic premise was that we'd take the apples that had fallen off of our apple tree, and thus were unsuitable to eat, and pitch them to each other. We'd then try to hit them into the marsh behind our house. Mostly we wound up shattering the apple and spraying applesauce into the yard. But, oh well.

Last night I discovered yet another variation on baseball that results in shattering the ball, albeit more dangerously. It works like this:

• Get large blocks of ice for carving.
• While carving the ice (outside, preferrably), let the large chunks of ice that fly off gather in a pile.
• Get an aluminum pipe.
• Clear out the area of any unsuspecting passers-by.
• Have one person pitch the baseball to softball sized ice chunks to the person holding the pipe.
• Watch as the ice shatters when it connects with the pipe.

As an aside, try to avoid having the ice shatter into the batter's face. That stung.