World Series Incoming: The Phillies Are Using Pickleball To Get Ready For The Season, Might Go 162-0
The Dink -- Phillies outfield coach Paco Figueroa takes elements of foursquare, squash, and pickleball to help his players learn to communicate, move, and field better.
In Pacoball, they use pickleball paddles but switch out a wiffle ball for a racquetball. They also play on a 30x30 stretch of grass with no net. To mimic using their gloves, they must also hold the paddles in their off hands.
“It helps with a lot of things,” Figueroa explainbed recently to Sports Illustrated. “Moving different directions, agility, you gotta drop to get the ball, go in to hit it. I envision our three outfielders [playing across from another three outfielders] doing a lot of communicating – ‘I got it, I got it’ – and you’re switching positions.
It's been heartbreak in each of the past 2 seasons for the Phillies. They got a little taste of some championship ball a couple years ago but fell short against the Astros in the World Series. Last year they ended up choking their nuts off against the Diamondbacks in the NLCS after bringing a 3-1 series back home to Citizens Bank Park.
Something obviously needs to change for this team to get over that hump. Maybe a big trade. Maybe a big free agency acquisition. But Dave Dombrowski seems rather content on just not doing a damn thing with this lineup. At least nothing meaningful.
So what are the Phillies going to do? What is going to take this group to that next level and ultimately call for another parade down Broad Street? Pretty simple, actually. They're just going to jump on the bandwagon of the fastest growing sport in America. Potentially the fastest growing sport in the world.
I mean just look at Kyle Schwarber's face in that one photo. It is literally impossible to not have the greatest time of your life while playing pickleball. Well…unless you keep popping up your 3rd shot drops and getting your partner crushed. Or you are slicing your backhand cross-court dink too much and it ends up in the net every time. Or you're playing against some prick who has zero character and keeps lobbing you into the sun.
But other than those situations, pickleball is dangerously exhilarating. You show up to a court one time thinking it's just a hobby for retired people, and next thing you know your entire Instagram algorithm is pickleball tutorial videos and targeted ads for new paddles. It's addictive as hell, which is my only fear for the Phillies here.
Adding pickleball to their training regiment can do one of two things--it can either jumpstart one of the most prolific dynasties the game of baseball has ever seen. Or the boys can get so addicted to pickleball that it becomes the only thing they think about, and the only thing they ever want to do. They become so swept up in the pickle craze that they retire from baseball in order to pursue a career on the PPA Tour.
So yeah. The Phillies are either going 162-0 this year, or they're going to have to forfeit the entire season because they don't have enough dudes left to field a team. One or the other, very little possibility of something in between.