Interesting article you wrote on kickball (Cheap Seats, “Playground Bully,” 3/3). Apparently there is no balanced journalism when it comes to so called “kiddie games.”

As a five-season World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA) player, I know intimately how hard WAKA works to provide a fun, successful league. If the company is doing it for profit, that is its right. I appreciate WAKA’s professionalism. In a tournament I played in, there was a very questionable event; it looked like a team cheated. WAKA took its time to review the information and offered a fair, reasonable decision. Why is kickball so different from football, baseball, basketball, or any other professional sports organization with a governing body? It is a business that runs with the dual purpose of being profitable as well as providing a much needed sporting activity for adults. It seems like WAKA has a right, as does any business, to protect its hard work from copyright and intellectual infringement. Are you next going to harp on ASCAP for keeping people from plagiarizing songs? Or do you reserve your scorn only for games you played as fourth graders?

WAKA is no Goliath. It is a well-run business with hard-working, dedicated professionals who work exceptionally hard to provide a fun, athletic opportunity to thousands across this country who are not able to, or interested in, playing softball. And let’s face it, beyond recreational softball, there is not a lot of opportunity for adult recreational organized sports in this country for the average Joe. Kickball is fun, social, competitive, and a pleasure to participate in. It feels to me that a few individuals have potentially taken it upon themselves to break copyright laws for their own betterment (or because they have an ax to grind): Do you really do them a service by blindly taking their side of the story? Any reasonable organization entering into litigation will of course keep tight-lipped about the suit, as WAKA has, and therefore this article was only informed by the defendants’; the result is an uneven and extremely biased article.

Thank you for your initial effort to follow this story. I look forward to an update when the case is decided. I hope at that time that the article takes a more even approach. Certainly if this story deserves space in your paper, a balanced article shouldn’t be too much to ask for.

Virginia Beach Tiki Titans

Virginia Beach, Va.