toed the line

Over-the-line

Over-the-line is a game related to baseball and softball. Like those games, you have the batter, pitcher, and fielders. Because a game requires only three people per team, it's considerably easier to get a good informal game going. Equipment consists of a rope (or lines marked in the sand), an "official" softball bat and a rubber softball. No ball gloves are allowed except in women's games, however golf gloves may be used when batting. Game play, however, is very different.

The name "over-the-line" is a registered trademark of the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club (OMBAC) of San Diego, California, which organizes an annual tournament that is one of the city's largest summer social events. An over-the-line court is normally made up on a beach and comprises a triangle and an open ended rectangle marked by ropes or lines in the sand. The base ("The Line") of the triangle is long, and the distance from the line to the opposite point ("Home") is also . The rectangle is comprised of two parallel ropes or lines that extend out indefinitely away from home starting from the two ends of The Line and at a right angle to The Line. The area between the parallel ropes and over The Line is fair territory. Everything other than the triangle and fair territory is foul territory.

Unlike in softball, the batter and pitcher are on the same team. The batter stands at Home. The pitcher stands anywhere in front of The Line, not in the triangle. Fielders (the other team) stand behind The Line, in fair territory. The objective for the batter is get a hit which is to hit the ball into fair territory without a fielder catching it. A hit may also be made when the fielder who catches the ball crosses over the line (or the line's extension) or drops the ball in either fair or foul territory. No bases are physically run, however.

An out is made if (a) the ball is hit into your triangle, (b) a batter gets a strike (swings and completely misses), (c) the defenders catch the ball without crossing over The Line or its extensions, (d) a batter has two fouls (a foul is a ball that lands in the foul territory, a pitch taken at or a balk), (e) a player bats out of order or (f) either the pitcher or batter touch but do not catch a struck ball (if the pitcher or batter catch it there is a no pitch). The ropes work against the batter. Three outs and the half inning is over.

The scoring system is as follows: a) The third hit in an inning scores one run and each subsequent hit scores another run and b) A home run (a ball that lands past the Fielder furthest from The Line, not over, just needs to be past) without it being touched by a Fielder scores a run and the unscored hits that preceded it. The hits are then reset to zero.

Annual Tournament

Over-the-line was invented on the beaches of San Diego, and continues to thrive in the area. It is seen largely as a novelty game in the inland counties (and, debatably, the beach counties as well), but still persists as a physical education activity at local high schools, and most visibly in the practice of an annual tournament held on Fiesta Island. By far the locale's most notorious activity, the annual "OMBAC OTL Tournament", organized by Old Mission Beach Athletic Club, is a prominent staple in San Diego's party sub-culture. The tournament has a knack for producing adult themes and motifs; team names, often variations of the sport's equipment-namely bats and balls-are seen as explicit enough to discourage any youth attendance. Combined with copious amounts of alcohol, the tournament has gained a reputation for its hedonistic and sexual overtones. Perhaps in an effort to legitimize the sport, the OMBAC has made strides to cut back on these and some of the tournament's other, more offensive, elements. It seeks to define a purpose for the tournament beyond "beer, babes, and bats on the beach."

The tournament has gained a negative stigma above and beyond the debauchery it seems to champion: as the population that began the event continues to age (the tournament began in 1953), it garners increasingly severe critiques from both spectators angered at the adult elements, and those younger tournament goers who find the older participants increasingly out of place. Despite this, the OMBAC expects 52,000 people to attend the event in 2006 over the two July weekends it is held.

Some feel it is a legitimate sport that many players take seriously. Those that create the negative stigma are those who play in the tournament without having a passion for the sport. It is highly organized, but it is not appropriate for children to attend this event.

Some players have been in this tourney for 40 plus years of its' 55 year history, and still enjoy it.