SPB plays Skidmore Commencement and Wiffle Ball

An ominous forecast led band members to pack rain capes before heading to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center this past Saturday to perform at Skidmore College commencement. As it turned out, capes were unnecessary. Blue skies and warm weather prevailed, setting the stage for fine day. Skidmore commencement is one of my favorite gigs. SPAC is a picturesque venue and the Skidmore students are among the most appreciative of our audiences. It's quite a rush marching down the lawn toward the amphitheater, flanked on both sides by walls of cheering students and their families. Surely it is for events like this that the pipes were made.

With 636 members, I'm told the Class of 2008 was the largest in Skidmore's history. Nevertheless, the students filed into the amphitheater with effortless efficiency. Our opening performance seemed to last only about 10 minutes. The class took their seats and the opening speaker stepped to the podium. We marched out of the orchestra pit and headed back to our base in the parking lot.

For sure, a well-organized academic procession can keep our opening performance brief, but there's no way around the wait we endure while the commencement ceremony transpires. If you've been reading the blog, you know that the typical format for a commencement performance is to play the bookends of the show. For Skidmore, we usually have a good two hour hiatus between the opening and closing performances. Never at a loss for a good time, the band has devised a variety of creative diversions to occupy the break. I confess that, for this gig, I look forward to the break as much as the performance.

Chief among the SPAC break time activities is Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby. This is a game of precision and skill. Aside from the usual challenges of all Wiffle sports, which derive from the absurd expectation that a plastic game ball weighing about as much as a Dixie cup will somehow behave like the real thing, our game incorporates the added challenge of the parking lot playing field. The object becomes not so much to hit a home run as to prevent a line drive from careening off the hood somebody's Lexus or to stop a grounder from becoming irrecoverably lodged under some collosal SUV.

I shudder to think what could've happened if we'd decided to toss a caber instead of play wiffle ball. Of course, Wiffle Caber Toss might not be so bad.

- JSS