Yeah the title and the way Ben Stiller looks in the movie alone has me anticipating.

Not to brag or anything, but I fucking rule at dodgeball - nothing like the sound of a nice flat dinky smacking some hapless dwid right in the head. I LOVE dodgeball.

Did you guys ever play a more controlled variation called Bombardment? where you defend your cones while tring to knock down the cones on the other side - a game of skill, strategy and aggression - my favorite game of all time.

Did you guys ever play a more controlled variation called Bombardment? where you defend your cones while tring to knock down the cones on the other side - a game of skill, strategy and aggression - my favorite game of all time.

yea, we call it "Republican Convention".

I ruled at dodgeball as well. It is the perfect game of attack and defense. Aggression and danger of being hit. I was always very good at catching the ball when someone would whizz it at me.

We played a variation of the game once called hotbox. It was like survivor. Everyone is in the middle and after you get hit by one of the roaming throwers on the outside who have two balls, you are out. The people on the outside could throw the ball across to one another to help try and get you out too. Last man standing is the winner and the second to last usually gets pegged the hardest as the sole target left.

Dodgeball rules.

Yes Mark, I remember back in elementary school in sunny SoCal we always paired off the Republicans vs. the Democrats. Sometimes we would team up against the Whigs and the Federalists, but not usually.

By the way, last time I checked, my old summer camp had outlawed dodgeball as too violent and dangerous. What the hell is this world coming to? It is a controlled display of violence and danger. Next thing you know, TAG will be against the rules because it involves touching.

It goes along with not requiring gym anymore - no wonder the country is full of fat, soft wussbags.

EVERYONE should have to take gym all the way through high school and be HAPPY about it - no wonder pussies like Bill Gates run America.

Wait, when did they not require gym class anymore? I haven't been that long out of high school (about only a half decade) and last time I checked, I had to take them.

Anyway, Craig, hotbox was probably the most popular one we played at my middle school. I never tried all that hard though, too stressful and I thought I was too cool to look like a fool trying to contort my body to avoid a ball.

I will say that I absolutely loved Super Dodgeball, the game (on the ol' NES). Now that game was awesome.

States and school districts differ, but my son only had to take gym his freshman year of high school - pathetic.

Tenth grade. Third period PE. Rainy day. No basketball today. We have to stay in. Coach says, "The varsity football team wants to play dodgeball with you guys." Coach has the look of a hyena that just stumbled across a wounded springbuck. So the 120-pound weaklings form a line near the east wall of the gym. Some nervous glances. The Pirates enter through a door on the west side, striding, grinning, drooling, letting their knuckles glide along the freshly waxed floor. Coach tosses six volleyballs to the scrawny sophomores. A chance for a preemptive first strike. On the enemy side, Dick Schaarf, who had pubes at age 8, with his baby sequoia neck, the overhanging brow, 6-ft long arms, and flattened Jerry Cooney nose, looks about as scared as a musk ox surrounded by a mob of angry hamsters. The weaklings can't help but register his derogatory smile. But the center of their attention, the sum of all their fears, is 280-lb Tim Gouge, the 5-megaton ICBM that would answer our first strike. Should all 6 balls be spent on trying to incapacitate ruddy-cheeked, buzzcut Gouge, the guy with fingers like a 32 Louisville slugger? Or should we try to take out the backs and ends, specimens who closely resembled actual humans? Thing is, those guys are quick. That's their job. On the other hand, Tim Gouge would just stand there and absorb damage, like a German Panther tank would absorb a volley of spears launched by a band of pissed off Visigoths. We ponder. We decide to go for the lesser behemoths, instead of Gouge. We let fly. Whack, whack, thud, skid, whoosh, oomph. Good start. Four direct hits, mon capitan! Slowly Gouge turned. We saw that he palmed a volleyball. His beady eyes burn holes in the scrawny hides of the weaklings, who are regrouping, thinking about that safety in numbers thing. We are battening down the hatches, rigging for collision, looking for something to crawl under, instinctively turning sideways to protect what little manhood we would be able to salvage. He lifted his 60-pound arm, cocked it, the ball seeming to shrink in the distance. Artillery ready, sir! We are tingly with adrenaline. The world goes temporarily slow motion, like it does just before a car accident. Fire! A millisecond after he lets go, my brain quickly calculates the balls' flight path, then taps me on the shoulder and says, "You will live." The screaming projectile, somehow maintaining its cohesion against the hydrodynamical stress of its high Mach number velocity, is aimed about 10 feet to my right. I feel the rush of air. The geekling target, to made an example of by the Mighty Gouge, somehow manages to elude death by impact trauma, and the ball's trajectory, otherwise destined for a hyperbolic orbit around the Sun, is intercepted by the wall, which, fortunately for the wall, is composed of reinforced concrete, and will probably recover from its injury. The sound is something that our troops had not anticipated. I know what it feels like to be in an open field with 105 mm artillery shells raining from the sky. The sonic boom reverberation makes for devastating psychological warfare. What little morale we had left makes a roadrunner dust trail. The battle is as good as over in terms of territory. We gladly relinquish it. We run for the exits, crawling over each other like starved rats lunging for Winston Smith's cheeks. The laughter we leave behind is designed to bring us back, out of pride. The Pirates ain't done with us by a long sight. But the feeling of impending safety is too overwhelming. We are finished.

It could have been a moment of glory. I could have stayed and become a local legend. I could have been a Daniel or a David or a Jack and stood up to the lions or the giants. Damned hindsight.

Ah, yes. Dodgeball. Gotta love it.

Duane, classic, immediately enters the Comments Hall of Fame, no five year waiting period.

However, one of the GREATEST virtues of dodgeball is that you don't have to be a human ziggurat to be successful. It's all about fear and banishing it. I was VERY lean as a kid and teen but I could throw real hard and, if you decided there was nothing to fear - that you could catch anything they sent your way, no fucking prob - then it's all just glory.

I loved dodgeball because you DIDN'T have to be big.

Thanks, Eric. I could have used an injection of that fearlessness, no doubt.

But mostly I just loved throwing the ball as hard as I could at people - the proper visualization is to throw the ball through them.

geezuz olsen, yer scarin' me with this luv 'o dodgeball stuff.

I use to love playing dodgeball with my buddies. I can't wait to check out the Extreme Dodgeball show on GSN. Have you heard about it?