Memorize To Avoid:

The Secret To Making It Up As You Go Along

By Traktor Traylor Hitchens

As a four-time Calvinball champion and living legend, the incident during yesterday’s Mega Rad Championship Scrumble left me sick to my stomach. No other words or feelings describe this absolute betrayal of C-ball history and sports norms.

Here’s the thing about Calvinball. You have to be more than just a good athlete. You have to be a scholar of the game. You need to know every single play that’s ever occurred in every previous ACB scrumble. If you don’t know every play, you can’t make it up as you go along, and you’ll repeat a past play. It’s that simple.

History is heavy. Too many kids nowadays can’t shoulder the burden. Most don’t even try. That’s why the Bracket is on track to break the Penalty Legislation record this season. And it won’t even be close. Back when I played [ed. note: from 1999 to 2008], the most Pen Legs the i-tees dished out in a season was 58. Last year’s season? 453. Something’s clearly wrong.

Don’t give me that garbage that, “Well, there’s been 15-16 years yadda yadda yadda worth of plays since then that players need to memorize to avoid, meaning an extra 23,138 blah blah blah plays to memorize and avoid and gukka gukka gukka whatevs.”

That’s no excuse. And that’s not how Calvinball works. Not how it’s ever worked. Sure, success in this Bracket means knowing every single last play ever played and never ever playing that play ever again. If you don’t know the past, you can’t win in the present, and you won’t have much of a future. The secret is memorizing every single play ever played. But it’s twofold in that, sure, you need to avoid repeating the past, but you also have to tweak those past plays to transmogrify them into wholly new ones.

Even with a million more plays to memorize and avoid, every scrumbler still has infinite plays left to play. I’m not exaggerating here. There will always be an infinite number of plays left to play. Always. It comes down to creativity. And heart. And being a competitor. And having the drive to win.

There’s an episode of the 1990s “Tick” cartoon where a deranged inventor invents a time machine and travels into the past to kidnap famous inventors so that he can invent their inventions instead. Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, a cavewoman who invented the wheel, and those types of nerds. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch it. This is the exact same kind of cheat-rigging scenario. Stealing from the past to invent a fake future. Think about it.

That is why I am strongly against introducing any of this AI bullshit into Calvinbill. I said it to my colleagues in the press box during the 2024 Championship Scrumble, and I stand by my statement now and forever. But I have to disagree with some of my colleagues on the overall benefits of AI. The Big Rip-off opened my eyes to the biggest problem that technology moves way too fast for the way too old.

Because, thankfully, there’s a silver lining to this surge in Pen Legs and a way to use the most advanced technology to win big…

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This generous OGEE giveaway brings me to another point. I know the Polliwoggy team owner is worth billions. And I’m not trying to tell him how to run his business. But unless the team gets the tax incentives that the state refuses to grant them to build a better Calvinball Court, maybe they should consider leveraging some of that wealth for a real payday by investing in OGEE. The guaranteed ROI on OGEE might be the only way to resolve the stalemate. Especially since Governor Tumblebumb refuses to bend over backward and let the taxpayers cover the $3 billion price tag over the next 40 or 50 years so that the billionaire team owner doesn’t have to use any of his own money. Why does the governor insist on making fans suffer like this?

Or here’s an even better idea: How about the fans come together, pool their resources into investing in OGEE and bringing home bank on TrakBets so that they can buy the team and build a better court. Hell, with the fanbase as owners, we can finally get people in charge who actually care about winning championships instead of hawking merch and securing broadcast licensing. Until then, I’m placing a prop bet that the most popular mask for Polliwoggy fans during the 2025 Bracket will be a brown paper bag without any eyeholes. You better bet on that!