The Brett Butler ofWiffle ball

Joe Lorton leads off … he’s a pesky hitter, and short enough where he’ll just kill you if the ball is thrown too low. He’s the type of hitter that if we were to allow base running (real Wiffle ball players don’t), you just know he’d lead the league in steals or something equally annoying.

But today, there’s a wind. He isn’t swinging; he’s letting the balls sail by and miss the strike zone … something most every Wiffle ball player in the universe cannot control himself to do. I mean, we’re there to hit, not improve our on-base percentage.

But Joe is the type of player who literally wants you to take the walk, to take the pitches and affect the pitcher’s pitch count, because in Wiffle ball, there is no bullpen — the bullpen is the next game’s starting pitcher. And even though it’s just Wiffle ball, as most old-timers find out, throwing a weightless piece of plastic around as hard and fast as you can for nine innings is going to cause some ligament damage (as my chiropractor can attest).Joe’s being a jerk, but it’s a great league. Some people play racquetball, others golf.

On Sunday, in the middle of the Kansas City slums, you can find 10 to 20 30-somethings rocking the fast plastic with a few coolers of beer.There’s this one kid, Craig Whitney, who allegedly was a standout pitcher for the University of Vermont. And he can run the ball up to the strike zone at around 70 mph — which would translate to being in the upper 90s if it was baseball. Whitney throws a no-hitter or perfect game at least once or twice a season; the rest of his games are usually shutouts.Yeah, Whitney is a jerk, too.

Me? My game is from the Jersey Shore, further refined at College Park, Md. My debut at Rock Hill? I tossed a no-hitter. (I’ve thrown three in my six-year career at Rock Hill, and I’m the only pitcher who can stand up to Whitney — jerk that he is.) Sometimes I wear my Don Mattingly jersey, but usually I don’t. I don’t want to desecrate the No. 23 on the off chance I may have a bad day.

Luckily I, like, never have a bad day.

And it’s true. Part of Wiffle ball is the chatter, the mental aspect. You don’t talk the other guy down — that’d be rude — but you do talk yourself to ridiculous heights. And you drink cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life or on paydays, bottles of the local brew, Boulevard. (Since Budweiser went Belgian, we lost that critical sponsor … but then, who hasn’t?)

One year … one year me and Lorton, we finally got to Whitney just by calling our shots before every at-bat. Sure, we struck out about 70,000 times, but those eight or nine times we actually connected and went yard? It was enough to turn him into a 15-game winner. I mean, we really rattled him.The jerk.