THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER | Saturday, April 19, 2008

IRVINE – It’s the bottom of, let’s say, the 200th inning, and Concordia University freshman G.M. Ciallella cranks a pitch over the left field fence – also known as the school’s basketball gym – to tie the game 316-316.

Welcome to what’s billed as the world’s longest Wiffle Ball game, a 60-hour marathon that began on the college campus at midnight Friday, continued Saturday and was set to wrap up at noon today.

Partly a way to build campus spirit, the two-and-a-half-day ballgame was created as a fundraiser for diabetes. The dual motivations were on display as Ciallella took advantage of the opposing team’s inattention to dash home and score on a later play.

“Anything to win, anything to win,” hollered Ciallella, himself a diabetic. “I mean, it’s all about the cure. Sorry.”

A cure is close to the heart of senior Peter Ferry, one of the event’s founders, who helped launch the game in 2006 after his brother was diagnosed with diabetes.

While pondering ways to raise money for disease research, he learned that his father in the 1970s had held a 53-hour Wiffle Ball game to raise money for breast cancer care.

Impressed, the classmates got their hands on some plastic bats and balls, then settled on the nice, round number of 60 hours, and held their first game, raising more than $2,000. The next year they topped $3,000, and this year they’re shooting to collect $4,000 for the American Diabetes Association.

The roughly 100 players rotate in and out of the game over the course of the 60-hour showdown, playing three hours at a time for either the Heavy Hitters or the Super Sluggers. There was an attempt to count the innings this year, but everyone lost track after about seven hours, somewhere around the 43rd inning.

Just before noon on Saturday, after an infielder beaned a baserunner with a ball – a legal play that counts as an out – the score was still tied, 319-319.

With 24 hours left to play, Ferry pondered his options if the deadlock remained intact at noon on Sunday. Would extra innings be in order?

“Maybe extra minutes,” he said.

The Orange County Register | Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Peter Ferry likes to play Wiffle ball, and he’ll be playing it at least once a year now while he’s studying at Irvine’s Concordia University.

Ferry, 19, a sophomore from Milwaukee, Wis., came up with the idea of trying to break the world record for longest Wiffle-ball game, to raise money for diabetes research, after Ferry’s dad, Patrick, said that he was the current record-holder, at 52 hours.

Ferry said he also picked Wiffle ball because it’s easy to play and the equipment is cheap.

Last month, Ferry recruited about 50 other students and staged a 60-hour game on Concordia’s soccer field, breaking his dad’s record, he said.

They used the soccer field because a Wiffle ball can’t be hit far enough for a traditional baseball diamond, he said.

They raised between $6,000 and $7,000 in pledges and from a raffle the school held with donated prizes. The students plan to donate the proceeds to the American Diabetes Association in Santa Ana, he said.

The event was so successful, Ferry’s decided to make it an annual affair.

“It was great,” Ferry said. “We had a lot of fun and brought everyone in the school together.”

Q: So why were you playing Wiffle ball for diabetes research?

After my younger brother, Andrew, was diagnosed with diabetes, I wanted to do something to help. My dad had told me that he set a world record in Wiffle ball when he was younger to raise money for breast cancer, so I decided to try to beat his record.

Q: When did you play the game?

We started at midnight on Thursday, April 21 – Friday morning, really, and played all the way until Sunday at noon. It was 60 hours altogether

Q: How did you avoid getting too tired?

We had three shifts of teams that would come in and play three hours, then take a break for six hours. Altogether, about 50 people participated.

Q: Did anything unusual happen?

Well, it poured rain on Saturday night, but we played through it. Afterwards, there were a lot of colds. And a duck ran into the fence and got its head stuck. We had to pull the fence out to free the duck.

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