Dodgeball's Days Could Be Numbered

On his podcast Adam Carolla often talks about the [w]ussification of our country. Pretty sure this qualifies: dodgeball, a staple of public education for as long as there have been red rubber balls to wing at classmates, is now at the center of a lawsuit.

Twelve-year-old Shane Reese was sitting in the bleachers at a Bronx middle school when an errant throw nailed him in the face. The rules of dodgeball stipulate that you can't hit a player above the shoulders so if Reese had been participating, he'd still be in the game.

He wasn't participating. Worse: it wasn't a forgiving red rubber ball, but a rock-hard soccer ball. And worse than that: Reese had just had dental surgery. So taking one to the chops with a round brick didn't exactly advance the healing process.

Teachers at a Bronx school are being portrayed as dunces for letting students play dodgeball with hard soccer balls in a crowded gym - leaving left one kid with busted teeth.

The city offered 12-year-old Shane Reese $20,000 Monday to head off a lawsuit stemming from a head shot he took in the crazy game last year at Intermediate School 219.

A judge will decide dodgeball's ultimate fate, but in the meantime the New York Daily News reports that the National Association for Sports and Physical Education issued a statement in 2006 discouraging dodgeball, a long-held recess ritual, from being played in schools.

And when a spokesman for the organization heard the circumstances under which Reese was injured, he exclaimed, "That's chaos!"

Clearly, the liberals are ruining this country.

via Deadspin