Roachball Goes Open Source

Illustration by Dustin Hostetler

JASON WILSON DIDN’T START OUT TRYING tional rules. The bocce court was too small for to invent an open source sport. While living three bases, so they appropriated cricket’s two-in Brooklyn, he and some friends wanted an base system (but kept kickball’s baseball-inspired incentive to go outside during the cold months, so system of strikes, outs, and innings). From soccer, they formed a winter kickball league. One game they borrowed the idea of throwing the ball back in day, only five people showed up (because it’s when it goes out of bounds, which led to another winter in New York), which is not enough to make important change. As Wilson says, “you can [really] two kickball teams. Not wanting to give up on bean somebody” when you throw a ball in the close their original idea of getting out of the house, the quarters of the bocce court, so they introduced group started wandering around Brooklyn. Walking rules from dodgeball. through the snowy streets, they found a bocce ball Borrowing ideas and adapting the rules became court. Putting the court and the kickball together, part of playing the game. With spring, bocce sea-they improvised a new game, which they called son started and the courts were in use on the Roachball (because, well, it’s Brooklyn). weekends, but the bank drive-through wasn’t, so it

They started playing standard kickball on the became a legitimate court, and the rules changed bocce court but quickly had to modify the tradi- again to accommodate it. As Wilson puts it, “It was

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