Seven Things You Need to Know about Pickleball

#1: No pickles were harmed in the creation of this newsletter. WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE

The editor of Parade magazine (circulation 33 million) popped up in my email a couple of months ago, asking The Question of our Age: “Do you play pickleball?”

Unlike everybody else in the world, I answered, “uh…no.”

But, as a journalist, ignorance is my competitive advantage: There’s so much I know very little about! And, my editor went for it!

The resulting article hits newspapers on Sunday July 24.

Or you can read it here.

As I incorporate the Next Big, Orange, Bouncing Thing into my life, I made a few observations that didn’t quite fit into my article, including…

#2: Like the pickleball itself, the sport’s creation story is full of holes. The game’s creators’, on Bainbridge Island off of Seattle, couldn’t agree on how the game acquired that ridiculous—I mean ridiculously popular!—name. It was either christened for 1.) a ball-chasing dog named Pickles, or 2.) the second-string—or pickle—boat in a race, made up of an odd assortment o…