Story Published:
Nov 27, 2009 at 2:31 PM CST
Story Updated:
Nov 27, 2009 at 2:30 PM CST
Each April, in the Tennessee Highlands, Campbell Ball opens its season with an induction into their Hall of Fame.
After a meal of hot dogs and burgers, the teams are chosen and a game of Campbell Ball (known in some parts as whiffleball) is played in the Tennessee Hills from the gloaming to dusk to darkness. (It’s okay, since they have a generator and 5 or 6 lights to light up the field).
Zach Henson, 23, is this year’s Campbell Ball Hall-of-Famer.
He started in 2001 and retires with 752 career home runs with 13 home run titles.
Zach created the online Campbell Ball Message board and perfected the Campbell Ball website.
But Zach’s greatest contribution happened in 2004 when Campbell Ball was going to be shut down forever since the area behind Kelly Campbell’s house was no longer available for games.
Kelly Campbell had announced in March of that year that on the following Sunday, they were going to have closing ceremonies, stopping the game forever.
However, plans changed when Zach Henson called Campbell on the preceding Friday and said his parents would be willing to provide a field in Algood.
So surprising the 2004 crowd, after the “closing ceremonies,” on that sad Sunday, Kelly and Zach paraded the group over to the new field, basically weeds, and all of the now-not-so-sad players broke in the new Henson field with their first game.
Zach’s vision preserved the game and the ministry.
Kelly Campbell, Pastor at the Cookeville Collegeside Church of Christ, invented Campbell Ball in Cookeville, and an estimated 5000 people have become Campbell Ball veterans down through the years.
