I joined a dodgeball league once. I didn’t do it for the chicks.

It was during the summer of 1999, in a league run by the National Amateur Dodgeball Association.

While I have always been athletic, I didn’t necessarily join the league to keep fit.

And my nose has always been rather pointy, but I didn’t play dodgeball in hopes of flattening it.

The premise of the game is what motivated me to join. Take an eight-inch rubber-coated foam ball and throw it at someone. Hard as you can.

Being a young American male, violence is simply in my nature. I constantly have to find techniques to manage it, to harness it. Now and again, I am just another menacing youth nearing subjective detonation.

To control my violent tendencies during the summer of 1999 I could have chosen to become a street vigilante, but nobody seems to respect them anymore. I could have trained to become a prized pugilist, but my nose isn’t nearly that pointy. I could have joined the army, but I figure I’d rather have eight-inch rubber-coated foam balls thrown at my face.

The rules of the game are simple: Two teams, a minimum of six to a team. The game is played in a rectangle of at least fifty feet in length and thirty feet in width. The object of the game is to eliminate each player on the opposing team. One of the ways to eliminate a player is by catching a ball he or she throws at you before it touches the ground. The other way is to pummel them with the ball. At the time I joined the league, this was precisely the quasi-violent, outright mortifying concept I had been seeking to help parallel my personality with my sadistic instincts. I had dodgeball zeal.

I attended my first practice that summer in a high school gym, expecting all the players on my team to be angry young men similar to myself.

I was quickly surprised to discover that I was the only male on the team, if you count something named Sam. Sam was a middle-aged transvestite giant with long, ashen hair who rarely bathed and had sports goggles on his (her?) face to protect his (her?) eyes from being popped out by the force of the eight-inch rubber-coated foam ball. I proceeded to exchange greetings with all of my friendly teammates, prepare myself for a thorough practice, and develop my skills in preparation for our games.

A week later we had our first match. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and I was ready. My arm felt strong and my body agile and prepared to dodge anything thrown my way. Our team was nicknamed the Denver Dodgers and we were scheduled to play the Littleton Lefties in a park that was accustomed strictly to dodgeball matches. We even had a referee.

All of us Dodgers lined up in the formation we had practiced the week before, where each of us was spread far from one another in hopes of isolating our opponent’s throws. The referee blew the whistle and the game began.

Balls were flying everywhere and a tall left-handed woman on the other team threw a ball at me so slowly that I almost had trouble catching it.

She was out.

I sturdily wound up and heaved the ball at a small Asian man on the other team, hitting him dead in the groin. He collapsed to the ground moaning, clutching his ailing organs.

He was out.

A fat woman threw a ball at Sam, swiftly bouncing it off his (her?) back and I caught it while it was still in the air.

The fat woman was out.

I spun around with the ball in my throwing hand and rifled it across the playing field, hitting a young, thin girl in the ear. She went down in a gasp and a scream.

She was out.

A big dude on the Lefties was winding up to throw at me. He saw me smash the girl on the side of the head. He let the ball soar from his left hand, his eyes engrossing and mad. The ball was flying at me at a tremendous rate of speed and chapped the skin on my hands when I caught it.

Big dude was out.

I took a baseballer’s crow hop and whipped the ball at a prime Lefty. I hit an old lady in the center of the face and her nose exploded in a cascade of blood. The old lady passed out face-first onto the grass.

She was out.

The game quieted as I stopped and looked around, ready to dodge another ball. My Denver Dodgers appeared to have won, but I was the only player on the field still playing. I looked at the bodies strewn about the grass, at the referee making his way toward me through their tangled, writhing obstacle course. I was catching my breath, smiling and letting the excitement and adrenaline flood my system as the referee approached.

“You’re not supposed to hit anyone above the shoulders with the ball, young man,” he scowled. “It’s against the rules.”

“Oh,” I said, and looked at the old lady, still passed out on the grass as one of her fellow Lefties tried to slap her back to consciousness. The big dude was hugging and consoling the girl I had pegged in the ear. She was crying. The Asian dude was crying, too, but his wails were much more muffled.

“I know,” I said and walked off the field in jubilance and relief.