By Living Room Realty, December 20, 2019
Pickleball.
Stop — you’re serious, that’s actually a thing? Pickleball???
And the name comes from where exactly?
According to legend, this sport began here in the Pacific Northwest, up in the Seattle area about fifty years ago. A man and a few of his friends improvised a game to entertain their bored families on vacation with disparate elements of other games. They had a badminton net, but neither rackets nor shuttlecock. They had a Wiffle-ball but no bat. So from loose plywood did they fashion paddles. And from the crucible of boredom, random objects, and innovation came the sport of Pickleball.
But why is it called that? There must be a reason for such a unique name.
A common misconception is the game took its name from the inventor’s dog, Pickles. Nope. Pickles the dog got his name from the game.
Pickleball scrapes the bottom of the barrel for its equipment, very like the “pickle boat” in crew — the team made up of the other teams’ leftover rowers.
Mystery solved.
But hold on. Where does “pickle boat” come from? That has nothing to do with crew.
Oh! That term was borrowed from sailing. Where the last boat to finish the race was called the pickle boat. That makes perfect sense.
Or does it? Pickles have nothing to do with sailing either.
But sailing borrowed the term from fishing tradition, where the last boat into port was (quite literally) the pickle boat because they took time out at sea to brine and pickle the herring they caught.
So Pickleball the name, is like Pickleball the game, made up of the leftovers of other names and metaphors.
See if you can make sense of it yourself and try your hand at Pickleball at St. Johns Racquet Center.
